Territory and Power - Empty Hands, Open Arms - page 214

unique to BCI. Africa Biodiversity Collaborative Group, supported by USAID, has become in-
creasingle innovative, and that helps cajole its member NGOs into new endeavors. This too may
be a matter of scale. It's harder to shift approach in a big organization. WWF, for example, is con-
strained by being part of a world wide network, with coordinated policy.”
181 but that Sally and Michael John Scherlis stated: “I'd like to see BCI with a really serious,
heavy-weight, grizzled professional, a hard-headed but enlightened administrator taking on a lot
of the work that Sally and Michael do, to free them up to do other things.”
181 But each person I asked John Scherlis pointed out to me that the situation was a vicious cycle:
“The struggle for funding has been caused in part by the perception of problems that are in part
the result of lack of funding. There is a discrepancy between BCI's assets, the opportunities rep-
resented by social capital and commitments for community-based protected areas in the DRC, and
BCI's capacity to pursue them. There would be a significant payoff for conservation from ending
the vicious cycle by investing in BCI's management and administrative capacity.”
181 Many cited their corporate structure This isn't to say that there's not a great deal of investment
in small partner organizations and that the big conservation NGOs haven't done good work
throughout the world. But the question remains as to how much of the massive funding that the
BINGOs receive should go directly to the field, and how much should be used for self-promotion
so that they can remain competitive for fund raising and do advocacy for their programs.
181 And if BINGO employees Others have leveled similar critiques of BINGOs. John Oates offers
his view that “conservation policymakers and senior managers tend to be motivated more by the
material rewards that they or their organizations may obtain from a project than by a deep concern
for the future of threatened nature.” Oates, Myth and Reality in the Rain Forest , 197-98.
182 In Political Legitimacy in Middle Africa Schatzberg, Political Legitimacy in Middle Africa , 3.
Here is the full quotation: “Attention to these apparently nonpolitical spheres is also important be-
cause large numbers of middle Africans do not necessarily share Western assumptions concern-
ing the normative and empirical relationships between politics and the larger social environment.
Furthermore, as we shall see, the inclusion of these sources becomes all the more critical because
middle Africans inhabit a political realm whose boundaries can differ substantially from those pre-
valent in parts of the West.” Schatzberg references Ilunga Kabongo, “Déroutante Afrique ou la
Syncope d'un Discours,” Canadian Journal of African Studies 18 no. 1 (1984): 13-22.
182 The “big man ” Schatzberg, Political Legitimacy in Middle Africa , 2, 10-11, 131; Turner and
Meditz, “Introduction,” in Meditz and Merrill, Zaire: A Country Study , xlii.
182 Mobutu ruled Zaire Thomas Turner and Sandra W. Meditz write: “Indeed, the term presidential
monarch has been used, appropriately, to describe Mobutu. Acting as 'Father of the Nation,' his
self-awarded title, Mobutu presided over a political system that had the formal trappings of a re-
public but was in reality the personal fiefdom of the president, who used the national treasury as
his personal checkbook and disbursed both rewards and punishments at will.” “Introduction,” in
Meditz and Merrill, Zaire: A Country Study , xlii.
182 Contrary to the historically Schatzberg, Political Legitimacy in Middle Africa , 58, referencing
Johannes Fabian, Power and Performance: Ethnographic Explorations Through Proverbial Wis-
dom and Theater in Shaba, Zaire (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1990), 25.
182 Though the notion of Robert B. Edgerton, The Troubled Heart of Africa: A History of the Congo
(New York: St. Martin's Press, 2002), 136; Crawford Young and Thomas Turner, The Rise and
Decline of the Zairian State (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1985), 30-31, referenced in
Turner, The Congo Wars , 50. “The post-colonial state still refers to itself as Bula Matari, in radio
broadcasts in national languages,” writes Turner.
182 or the Belgian Congo's paternalism Turner and Meditz, “Introduction,” in Meditz and Merrill,

Zaire: A Country Study , xxxvii.