(Not) Talking Like a Motorola: Politics of Masking and Unmasking in Kinshasa's Mobile Phone Culture KU Leuven
The expression ‘talking like a Motorola’ (koloba lokola Motorola) was long used during Mobutu’s reign to indicate the undesired disclosure of information. It manifests the perception of many Kinois (inhabitants of Kinshasa) that the Motorola handset was only deployed by Mobutu’s secret service agents in order to detect and report critics of the regime. Today, mobile phones are no longer the preserve of political agents. Nearly everybody can have ...