GEOGRAPHIES OF VIOLENCE AND GEOGRAPHIES OF HOPE IN THE

DEMOCRATIC : INVESTIGATING THE

SECESSIONIST DEFICIT OF THE CONGO WAR

By

Jaclyn Leigh Burger

Submitted to the

Faculty of the School of International Service

of

In Partial Fulfillment of

the Requirements for the Degree of

Master of Arts

In

International Peace and Conflict Resolution

Chair: Professor Charles Call

Professor Peter Lewis

;an of the School

°l !% P \i I ^ O Q ^ h afp V 2007 American University Washington, D.C. 20016

AMERICAN UNIVERSITY LIBRARY

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. GEOGRAPHIES OF VIOLENCE AND GEOGRAPHIES OF HOPE IN THE

DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF THE CONGO: INVESTIGATING THE

SECESSIONIST DEFICIT OF THE CONGO WAR

By

Jaclyn Leigh Burger

ABSTRACT

Following the outbreak of war in 1998, many expected the Congolese state to

disintegrate into a constellation of micro-states. Based on a rich history of secession,

ethnic particularism, and natural resource wealth, renewed attempts at the

dismemberment of the state seemed inevitable. Yet the Congolese defied expectations of

secession, irredentism, and/or annexation.

This paper explores the elite- and local-level dynamics that might help explain the

paradoxical secessionist deficit of the Congo War. Using a conceptual framework that

emphasizes notions of secession rather than notions of statehood or sovereignty, I argue

that communities in the Congo did in fact secede. Creating structures of social

governance, many communities affirmed empirical secession without activating its

juridical counterpart. By way of examining the economics of non-secession I argue that

the prevalence of the informal economy negated the need for secessionist institutions.

Simultaneously, some communities actively sought recognition and regulation from the

central, Congolese state.

ii

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. PREFACE

While working in the African IGO environment, I often interacted with the human

rights activist, Mr. Pascal Kabungulu Kibembi of Heritiers de la Justice in .

Pascal was assassinated in July 2005.1 He was a tireless human rights campaigner and

his quiet spirit and hope, in spite of the violence and atrocities that colored his daily life,

made a great impression on me. While this research is not a study of the human rights

situation in the Congo, I nonetheless hope that it is something that Pascal would have

been supportive of.

For research purposes, I conducted numerous interviews with Congolese

individuals. The participants came from various backgrounds. Some were refugees and

migrants in , some were prominent, exiled political players, some were

scholars or journalists, and some were from the mining industry. In order to protect them

and in the name of confidentiality, I have chosen to not mention any of my research

participants by name or affiliation. If reference is made to any interviews, I have noted

the place and date o f the interview as follows: (Confidential interview, Johannesburg,

January 2007). While I cannot formerly acknowledge the exceptionally helpful and

engaging personalities that participated in this research I would nonetheless like to extend

my sincerest thanks to each and every one of them for agreeing to be interviewed and for

sharing their in-depth knowledge with me.

1 For more on Pascal Kibembi see the report of Amnesty International at: http://web.amnestv.org/pages/drc-240607-action-eng and the Heritiers de la Justice website at: http: //w w w . heriti ers. or g/en glish/index. htm iii

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. As a note to the reader: the names of places and things have changed numerous

times throughout the Congo’s history. For much of Mobutu’s thirty-two years of rule, the

country was known as . For the sake of coherence, however, I have chosen to use

contemporary names throughout, unless directly referencing someone else. Throughout

the text I have used either the DRC or the Congo to refer to the country and cities or

regions are referred by their contemporary names: (formerly Leopoldville),

Lubumbashi (formerly Elisabethville), (formerly Luluabourg), Mbuji Mayi

(formerly Bakwanga), (formerly Stanleyville), and Katanga (formerly Shaba).

iv

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This thesis could not have been completed were it not for the generous support,

critical engagement, good humor, and patience of my committee members Professors

Chuck Call and Peter Lewis. My special thanks to Chuck for his constant encouragement,

for being an exceptional teacher, for always challenging me, and for having confidence in

my abilities. I would like to thank Peter for agreeing to take me on, for his support, and

for being such an inspiring Africanist who treats the study of my continent with such

integrity of purpose. The grace and passion which with both my committee members

approach the study of peace and conflict has been a great source of inspiration to me.

Their constant encouragement and useful feedback made this labor of love that much

easier.

Professor Nanette Levinson, whom I have worked for as a research assistant for

the duration of my studies at American University, has been a wonderful mentor and I

would like to thank her for her encouragement. I would also like to thank my colleagues

and good friends Alison Long, Kali Glenn-Haley, and Dylan Craig who often acted as

intellectual sounding boards for my ideas throughout the months of engagement with this

topic. Thank you for your friendship and support. My thanks to Jacqueline Damon of

INICA for allowing me generous use of their fantastic maps and also to Renee Dopplick

of Inside Justice for her maps of the provinces of the DRC.

My family deserves the biggest thank you for their love, constant support, and faith in

me. I would like to dedicate this piece to my brothers, Marc and Nic; may you v

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. both always have the strength to rediscover your own geographies of hope. My thanks

also to my brother-in-law Jason for his good cheer and encouragement. I owe the greatest

debt of gratitude to my mom, Julie, the most phenomenal woman I know. Thank you for

your unconditional love and support, and for encouraging me to spread my wings. Thank

you also for literally praying me through grad school.

vi

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. TABLE OF CONTENTS

ABSTRACT ...... ii

PREFACE ...... iii

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS...... v

LIST OF T A B L E S ...... viii

LIST OF ILLU STRA TIO N S ...... ix

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS AND ACRONYMS x

Chapter

I. INTRODUCTION ...... 1

II. ETHNICITY IN THE D R C ...... 15

III. SECESSIONIST TRADITIONS IN CONGOLESE HISTORY 21

IV. POLITICAL BACKGROUND TO THE CONGO WAR OF 1998 TO 2003 ...... 43

V. THE POLITICS OF NON-SECESSION . . . 56

VI. THE ECONOMICS OF NON-SECESSION . . . 90

VII. C O N C L U S I O N ...... 109

BIBLIOGRAPHY ...... 112

vii

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1: An Alternative Conceptual Framework: Juridical and Empirical Statehood and Secession ...... 59

2: Le Billon’s Resource-Conflict Mode Typology .... 96

viii

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1: Map of the DRC’s Provincial Boundaries (pre-2006 Constitutional changes) 15

2: Map of the Ethnic Mosaic of the DRC . . . . . 16

3: Map of the Congo River Basin and Political Borders . . . 24

4: Map of the Congo-Nile Ridge: A Densely Populated Space . . 25

5: Map 5 of the DRC’s Provinces (as of 2006) .... 34

6: Map of the DRC’s External Access Routes: Economic, Centrifugal Corridors 47

7: Map of the Eastern Corridor ...... 48

8: Map of the Southern Corridor ...... 49

ix

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AFDL Alliance des Forces Democratiques pour La Liberation du Congo

ANC Armee Nationale Congolaise

ABAKO Association des Bakongo

AU African Union

CIA Central Intelligence Agency

CNDD-FDD Conseil National pour la Defense de la Democratie-Forces pour la Defense de la Democratic

CONAKAT Confederation National du Katanga

CNS Conference Nationale Souveraigne

CFS

DRC Democratic Republic of the Congo

FNLA Frente Nacional de Libertagao de

FAZ Forces Armees Zairois

FDLR Forces Democratiques pour la Liberation du

FNLC Front Nationale pour la Liberation du Congo

INICA Initiative for

ISDR Institut Superieur de Developpement Rural

LRA Lord’s Resistance Army

MIB Mission d’lmmigration des Banyarwanda

MNC Mouvement National Congolais

x

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. MLC Mouvement pour la Liberation du Congo

MPLA Movimento Popular de Libertagao de Angola

OAU Organization of African Unity

RCD Rassemblement Congolais pour la Democratie

TPD Tous pour la Paix et le Developpement

UN

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INTRODUCTION

The Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) is a paradoxical entity. On one

hand, analysts cast it as the exemplar of state weakness, poor governance, poverty,

violence, atavistic opportunism, and instrumental identity manipulation. On the other

hand, it boasts the world’s second largest rainforest, vast mineral wealth, some of the best

farming land on earth, an extensive network of rivers, and an entrepreneurial population.

Popular perceptions of the DRC similarly vacillate between the untamed imagery of

Joseph Conrad’s Heart o f Darkness and positive depictions of the country as the “second

lung of the world” or the “heart of the continent”. Despite the fact that conflict within the

DRC is purported to have claimed some four million lives, it remains under-studied and

poorly understood.

One of the curious paradoxes of the DRC is that despite expectations, the country did not

fracture and partition during the Congo War of 1998 to 2003. The anticipated secessions

never materialized. Notwithstanding a brutal coercive machinery, Mobutu was a “lame

Leviathan”1; the state’s power was not widely broadcast, nor did it directly penetrate

peripheral areas. Rather strategic satellites of the state were established in necessary

enclaves to facilitate resource and revenue extraction. In many ways, Kabila

1 Term credited to Thomas Callaghy, The State-Society Struggle: Zaire in Comparative Perspective (New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 1984). 1

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inherited a fragmented periphery without a core.2 Consequently, on the surface it

appeared that the conflict challenging Kabila’s rule amounted to nothing more than

senseless and chaotic fighting in the vacuum following Mobutu’s demise. However, the

Congo War did not erupt merely as a function of “inevitable” state collapse following the

withdrawal of patronage or as a result of greed-inspired economic interests.

The weak central state, the salience of ethnicity, the dominance of trans-border

networks, enormous mineral wealth, and a history of political and economic centrifugal

tendencies led many to anticipate secession, irredentism, and/or partial annexation by

neighbors. The carving up of the Congo seemed inevitable.3

Yet the Congolese defied such expectations. Why were there no mass secessionist

movements? What accounts for, and can help explain this seeming paradox of a

secessionist deficit? Understanding the systems of meaning which underpin state-society

relationships and the resultant manner in which communities structure and organize

themselves in the absence of the state might help us understand the paradoxical

secessionist deficit.

The expected carve-up of the Congo was often predicated on one of two

arguments: the “balkanization” of the region as a result of dense and competing ethnic

networks; or the establishment of secessionist states centered around natural resource

endowments. Predictions of “balkanization” were particularly prevalent. Ethnic identities

became salient and were often crystallized along autochthon and non-autochthon lines

entrenching notions of authentic Congolese versus settler communities in the East. Local-

2 Jeffrey Herbst,States and Power in Africa: Comparative Lessons in Authority and Control (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000). 3 Colette Braeckman, "Carve-up in the Congo," Le Monde Diplomatique 1999.

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level ethnic violence between the Luba and Lunda in the Kasai-Katanga interface also

brutalized many communities. Based on memories of the former Yugoslavia, some

analysts expected Congolese ethnic groups to seek their own territorial units for security

purposes. Yet the Congolese strongly discredited rumors of “balkanization”.4 Why did

the salience of ethnic identities in these instances not translate into secessionist and/or

irredentist aspirations?

Mineral resources and the predatory behavior of rebel groups led to expectations

of secessionism and/or partition. Scholarly typologies such as those of Ross (lootability

and obstructability) and Le Billon (point versus diffuse resources) would portend mass

secessionist movements during the Congo War.5 One would expect a resurgence of

secessionist tendencies in Katanga and the articulation of new secessionist movements

centered around fixed, capital- and infrastructure-intensive and copper belts.6 The

extreme fragility of Kabila’s central further led to expectations that greed-

motivated warlordism would translate into full-blown secession since the ‘window of

opportunity’ for partition was ripe and to some extent expected by the international

4 For data on numerous public opinion polls conducted throughout the DRC in 1996 and 1998 regarding the unity of the Congo see details in Herbert F. Weiss and Tatiana Carayannis, "Reconstructing the Congo," Journal of International Affairs 58, no. 1 (2004): 129-136. Weiss and Carayannis provide a quantitative overview of the categorical rejection of partition as detailed in independent public opinion surveys. 5 Philippe Le Billon, Fuelling War: Natural Resources and Armed Conflict (London: The International Institute for Strategic Studies, 2005), Michael L. Ross, "What Do We Know About Natural Resources and ?," Journal for Peace Research 41, no. 3 (2004). 6 Both Ross and Le Billon’s typology dictate that one would expect ‘warlordism’ in regions with easily accessible and marketable resources such as alluvial diamonds and gold. Such behavior was indeed evident in the East. However, in addition to these easily exploited and transportable minerals, the DRC also has a large concentration of fixed mineral deposits (such as copper and gold) that require expensive fixed capital investment and imported technical expertise. Moreover, despite the fact the mining (and some gold mining) is artisanal and labor intensive - it still requires mass processing and the use of expensive refinery machines. (Interview with senior mining executive, Johannesburg, January 2007).

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community. However, just as in the case of defying ‘balkanized’ secession; the

Congolese defied expectations of greed-inspired secession.

A legacy of centrifugal political and economic preferences created expectations of

partition. Politically, the Congolese have always asserted their preference for some form

of ethno-regional federalism. The common purpose of removing Mobutu created a sense

of solidarity among elite and ordinary Congolese, and their external backers. Once

Mobutu was removed, the sense of purposive cohesion dissolved and resulted in a brutal

war. Why did the legacy of centrifugal politics not translate into secessionist movements

during the Congo War?

Economically, Mobutu’s hollowed-out state neglected its regulatory functions and

created the economic space for a resilient and powerful informal economy. Based on this

strong economic foundation, many peripheral areas had the potential to be economically

viable states on their own, and coupled with ethno- in some regions could

have provided a solid basis for secession. At the height of the conflict, many analysts

expected economic peripheralization to provide the blueprint for a new kind of political

order based on the dismemberment of the Congo. Yet centrifugal economics did not

result in mass secession and/or partition. Collette Braekman, reporting in 1999, aptly

captures the ideas that were permeating international policy discussions at the time and is

worth quoting at length:

This exploitation of the wealth of the eastern Congo by neighboring states.. .is clearly incompatible with any ideas of rebuilding an effective central government. On the other hand, it fits in very well with the argument, frequently advanced in the US, that the Congo is ungovernable - too big, too diverse. According to that view, it may, and perhaps should, break up, opening the way for a very loose federation of provinces or a

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constellation of micro-states, which would have special relationships with the adjacent countries rather than a central government.. .Ideas of this kind [are] openly discussed in the American press and in government circles in Kigali and Kampala.. .7

The Congolese people defied the expectations of scholars, analysts, diplomats,

journalists, and policymakers alike. Despite crumbling central institutions, self-serving

elites, ethnic polarization, greedy warlords, the brutalization of communities, and

centrifugal tendencies; the Congolese state remained intact.

The purpose of this research is to examine the dynamics that might help explain

the secessionist deficit of the Congo War. Why did the “carve up of the Congo” not

materialize? What explains the balance and contradiction between ethno-regional

identities and social forms on one hand, and strong sentiments of patriotism and an

emotional attachment to the state on the other? What may aid our ways of understanding

the constitutive effect of regional, ethnic, trans-border, and economic forces? What

relationships underpin the politics and economics of non-secession?81 argue that a re­

orientation away from elite and juridical explanations toward state-society relations and

local-level dynamics might enrich our understanding of the secessionist deficit of the

Congo War.

7 Braeckman. 8 In exploring these questions, particular attention will be paid to Katanga, Kasai, and the .

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Prevailing Discourse: What Explains Africa’s Secessionist Deficit?

The Sovereignty Argument: Costs and Benefits

Englebert and Hummel’s investigation into the broader secessionist deficit of

Africa finds that “Africa offers a significant material premium to internationally

recognized sovereignty”; further they argue that “actual African cases of secession.. .are

usually a function of variations in the relative rewards of sovereignty.”9 This rational

cost-benefit type of explanation mirrors arguments made by Reno who posits that the

relative rewards for warlords in maintaining de facto sovereignty over swaths of territory

often outweighs the costs of pursuing distant capital cities or establishing secessionist

states.10 Ultimately most groups would still prefer to seize the capital, but in the event of

unsuccessful bids to capture it, will settle for localized control. Ross in his conception of

“booty futures”11 argues that the capital city remains the coup de grace in any conflict.

He contends that conflict protagonists will fight for the capital since it is the central state

that ultimately has the authority to determine resource-related contracts.

All of the above arguments focus on the variation in the relative rewards of

statehood and secession. Their conceptual basis is informed by norms of sovereignty and

national, elite-level motivations that either push groups toward secession or not. In his

case study on the DRC, Englebert argues that the structure o f predictability of the state

9 Pierre Englebert and Rebecca Hummel, "Let's Stick Together: Understanding Africa's Secessionist Deficit," African Affairs 104, no. 416 (2005): 399. 10 William Reno, Warlord Politics and African States (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1998). 11 Michael Ross, Booty Futures: Africa's Civil Wars and the Futures Market for Natural Resources{2005, accessed 2006); available from http://www.polisci.ucla.edu/faculty/ross/.

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explains Congolese attachment to statehood.12 The state, regardless of its degree of

decrepitude, offers society more security than the alternative of guerillas, warlords, or

secessionism. These dominant approaches, which focus on the state as a resource as well

as the variation in the rewards of pursuing secession, have certain limitations.

By focusing on the normative aspects of sovereignty, the state-society dialectic is

neglected. Sovereignty-centered explanations assume that the vertical state-society

relationship is mono-directional. The state, in its normative and empirical manifestations,

does to a certain extent shape how society is organized; however, society and non-state

actors similarly determine the character of the state and the likelihood of secessionist bids

t -j in times of conflict. The relationship is thus mutually constitutive. Making the state the

fulcrum in the secessionist debate tends to sideline local-level and state-society dynamics

that might help explain the seeming paradoxes of the Congo War. I argue that

understanding the systems of meaning which underpin state-society relationships is an

important vector in contemplating the DRC’s secession deficit.

A second shortcoming is the limitation that a cost-benefit type of analysis creates.

This type of analysis assumes a rationality framework. “Rational” behavior in reality is

very different to its heuristic counterpart. Rationality frameworks are dangerous in that

they ignore preferences, relational concepts, and perceptions. They dictate choice

premised on ideas of expected-utility, in this case, the expected-utility of internationally

12 Pierre Englebert, Why Congo Persists: Sovereignty, Globalization and the Violent Reproduction o f a Weak State (QEH Working Paper No 95: Queen Elizabeth House, 2003). 13 Callaghy, Kassimir, and Latham also note that state-society relations should not be assumed to be zero-sum. Thomas Callaghy, Ronald Kassimir, and Robert Latham, eds., Intervention and Transnationalism in Africa: Global-Local Networks of Power{New York, NY: , 2001). For more on this also see: Joel S. Migdal, State in Society: Studying How States and Societies Transform and Constitute One Another (New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2001).

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recognized sovereignty. Rationality also frames the issue as an either-or debate, when in

fact it is a question of if, then when and how conceptions of sovereignty modify

secessionist tendencies and local-level conflict dynamics.

The Sacrosanct Borders Argument

Another explanation often used to account for Africa’s lack of secession is the

sacrosanct nature of borders. Post-colonial leaders chose to embrace the European

preference of the nation-state as an organizing principle and rejected customary

alternatives. Herbst notes that “the international embrace of the nation-state was an

important element in the rapid African rejection of any indigenous alternative.”14 The

OAU entrenched the primacy of existing borders and notions of modern statehood. Its

Charter was based on a triumvirate of rights: sovereign equality of all member states,

non-interference in internal affairs, and respect for state sovereignty and territorial

integrity.15

Territoriality was entrenched in Africa because the international system

exclusively recognized nation-states as legitimate international actors. Alternative actors

such as customary tribes or kingdoms were not afforded the same recognition. By

cementing borders, post-colonial African states were able to enjoy the benefits of

sovereignty including access to international organizations and finances. Post-colonial

leaders were also unwilling to impose what would have inevitably been the exceptionally

high human costs associated with determining borders via warfare. Therefore, unlike

14 Herbst, 100. 15 Ibid., 107.

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European state evolution, weaker states in Africa were not eliminated or subsumed

through the process of war. Furthermore, it was in the interests of political elites to

continue the capital-city bias of colonialism and ignore alternative centers of power and

authority in peripheral areas. African leaders, displaying continuity with colonial

tendencies, struck deals of center-to-center accommodation whereby they would not

question each others’ claim to legitimacy. Such center-to-center accommodation allowed

them to consolidate their own positions while simultaneously eliminating the risk of

hostile neighbors on their borders.

For decades, the sanctity of borders and the completely non-comprising position

of African leaders acted as a deterrent to any potential secessionist movements. The lack

of recognition for long-standing secessionist movements such as that of the Saharawi and

Southern Sudanese reinforced existing borders as the bedrock of the OAU. The continual

entrenchment of borders over time simultaneously decreased the feasibility of secession.

The Change in Feasibility Argument

Africa’s secessionist deficit of the 1980s and 1990s is often rationalized based on

changes in the feasibility of secession. During the early 1960s there was a real sense of

possibility regarding secession.16 However, by the late 1990s when the Congo War

erupted, it was clear that there had been not one secessionist success in Africa. The

Eritrean case is often cited as an exception. However, as others have argued, I would say

that the Tigrean movement for statehood is best characterized as a national liberation

16 During the early 1960s the OAU was an incipient institution and its Charter was only written in 1963. During this period there was a real sense of possibility that groups could have succeeded in creating their own secessionist states.

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struggle in the face of foreign occupation.17 Furthermore, Eritrean statehood was not the

result of a successful secessionist campaign per se, but rather the result of an elite-level

political arrangement between Meles Zenawi and Isaias Afwerki. Similar to the break-up

of former Czechoslovakia, elites on both sides of fence struck a deal and agreed to a

popular referendum as a mechanism to determine the outcome. The break-up of

Czechoslovakia and Ethiopia-Eritrea are both the result of mutually agreed upon political

arrangements. Eritrean statehood is thus not primarily attributable to secessionist success,

but rather the result of elite accommodation following military defeat.18

When the Congo War erupted the sense of possibility of the early 1960s had been

replaced by a realistic understanding of the incentives and costs associated with

secession. The trade-off between these incentives and constraints during the late 1990s

might in part explain the lack of secession during the Congo War.

Why Were African Borders Seemingly More Negotiable During the Congo War?

Upon independence and up until the 1970s the international community assumed

that accession to power in the capital city automatically translated into domestic

legitimacy and an ability to broadcast power to peripheral areas. The reality of a sharp

17 As Herbst., 104, regarding the secession of Eritrea from Ethiopia notes: “ it was.. .especially from the perspective o f Eritreans, to a significant degree a question o f decolonization rather than secession.” Similarly, there is a nuanced difference between the separatist agendas of the Tigreans and Southern Sudanese and those of the say the Basques and Quebecois. The Tigreans and Southern Sudanese articulated their desire for statehood based on a rationale of national liberation from foreign occupation and/or invasion; whereas the Basques and Quebecois separatists seek to hive off their respective territories which are perceived as an unwelcome part of the existing state and desire recognition of their secessionist states. 18 Meles and Isaias struck their deal following the joint military overthrow of Mengistu. And as Herbst., 107 notes: “the right to Eritrean self-determination was never recognized...Instead, Eritrea was only recognized as an independent state once a military victory was won over the government in , the traditional way that international society has recognized new states.”

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contradiction between externally recognized juridical sovereignty and the poor empirics

thereof invalidated this assumption. Nonetheless, throughout the Cold War the

international community tolerated African pathologies of kleptocracy and poor internal

legitimacy. In the post-Cold War era, however, Western states were less willing to turn a

blind eye to the poor degree of empirical sovereignty exercised by many African regimes.

Human rights discourse also shifted the international climate away from an

emphasis on the rights of states to an emphasis on individual and collective rights.

Consequently, in the post-Cold War climate a gradual normative shift was put in motion

following calls to couple sovereignty with a degree of responsibility.19 This changing

sense of sovereignty during the late 1990s created international expectations that groups

who enjoyed empirical sovereignty divorced from its juridical counterpart would assert

desires for secessionist states. This climate created international expectations of a “carve-

up” in the Congo.

The context of the late 1990s thus created a paradoxical platform for the Congo

War. On one hand, the declining feasibility of secession within Africa mitigated the

threat of potential secessionism. On the other hand, international expectations informed

by the particular history of the Congo, shifting conceptions of sovereignty, and the

discourse of economic agendas, predicted the articulation of renewed secessionist and/or

irredentist aspirations in the DRC.

19 This normative shift towards responsible and responsive sovereignty is evidenced in the new AU Constitutive Act of 2000 which abrogated the OAU Charter. The Act places greater emphasis on the responsibilities of states to their constituent political subjects, individual human rights, and the need to accede to power via legitimate means -ballot boxes rather than bullets. The AU’s new peace and security architecture as well as its decision to recognize Western Sahara demonstrate the very real shift toward coupling the recognition of sovereignty with a degree of internal legitimacy and responsibility. These shifts occurred post the outbreak of war in the Congo and thus had little effect in this instance.

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Theoretical Framework

While existing explanations for non-secession are compelling; they all display an

elite and normative orientation. Arguments that depend on the relative costs and benefits

of statehood, the feasibility of secession, and the sacrosanct nature of borders employ

juridical and elite-level explanatory frameworks. All of the above arguments look to the

decisions of elites in pursuing or rejecting secessionism. While such arguments may be

persuasive, they ignore the local-level reality of how communities structured and

organized themselves during the Congo War. The purpose of this paper is to investigate

why local patterns of control and authority did not translate into secessionism in the DRC

despite expectations to the contrary.

In tackling the question of what accounts for the secessionist deficit of the Congo

War the chosen approach for this research is one that focuses on the state-society

interface with an emphasis on local-level dynamics. My theoretical framework is further

influenced by peace studies perspectives. A shift in focus from the security of the state to

the security of human beings in explaining the dynamics of non-secession serves as a

point of departure. Similarly zero-sum notions of identity are rejected in favor of an

emphasis on the self-awareness of communities and relative notions• of interaction. • • 2 0 The

limitations of rationality are also rejected in favor of Jabri’s model of “cognitive

rationality” which incorporates “the nature of preferences that parties in conflict express,

the dynamic processes involved in changes of preference orderings and the interactive

20 For more on concepts of self-awareness of collectivities and using a lens of relative deprivation in conflict analysis see Edward Azar, The Management of Protracted Social Conflict: Theory and Cases (Dartmouth, NH: Dartmouth Publishing Company, 1990), Edward Azar and John Burton, International Conflict Resolution: Theory and Practice (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1986).

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nature of the life cycle of a conflict.”21 This is particularly important in the Congo War

where agenda shifting occurred numerous times throughout the conflict and preference

ordering and alliance formation was exceptionally fluid, often displaying the “enemy of

my enemy is my friend” logic.

To explore the paradox of the Congolese secessionist deficit, this paper is

organized as follows: section two provides a brief overview of ethnicity in the DRC to

frame the discussion; section three investigates the historical secessionist traditions of the

DRC; section four provides background to the Congo War of 1998 to 2003; section five

examines the politics of non-secession; section six, the economics of non-secession, and

section seven concludes. Section five on the politics of non-secession delves into state-

society relations and questions how communities adapted to an absent state and why such

adaptations did not spur secessionist ambitions. In examining the politics of non­

secession, it offers an alternative conceptual framework for secession and also

investigates the nationalism-particularism paradox of salient ethnic networks. Section six

examines greed narratives and their socio-economic alternatives that influenced

livelihoods and informal economies at the elite and local-level and why economic

considerations did not translate into secessionist objectives. Section seven concludes and

briefly explores the geographies of hope. The DRC has the potential for constructive

change. In order to realize that potential, it is necessary to investigate what structures,

top-down and bottom-up, might serve as a useful departure point for peacebuilding

efforts. This section seeks to identify that which may help contribute to the reweaving of

21 Jabri as referenced by Joao Gomes Porto, "Contemporary Conflict Analysis in Perspective," in Scarcity and Surfeit: The Ecology of Africa's Conflicts, ed. Jeremy Lind and Kathryn Sturman (Pretoria: Institute for Security Studies, 2002), 12. For more see: Vivienne Jabri, Discourses on Violence (Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 1996).

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social fabric in the DRC and the establishment of a more legitimate state. As Mbeki

noted, “as Africans, we would like to believe that...thanks to the wisdom of the Zairian

people themselves, [Zaire] is not the heart of darkness but the light of a new African

star.”22

22 Thabo Mbeki, "Address by Executive Deputy President Thabo Mbeki, to Corporate Council on Africa's "Attracting Capital to Africa" Summit, 19-22 April 1997; Chantilly Virginia, USA," (Government of South Africa, 1997).

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ETHNICITY IN THE DRC

Throughout this analysis, reference is made to numerous ethnic groups and their

respective territorial spaces. Before exploring the empirics of non-secession, a brief

synopsis of these groups is in order.

■E qua lour

Kins hat .Kongo-

Bemacraf-e Republic of lit# Bongo Existing Provinces 2001

Illustration 1: Map of the PRC’s Provincial Boundaries (pre-2006 Constitutional changes)1

1 Map taken from Inside Justice. As found online at: http://www.insideiustice.com/law/index.php/intl/2005/12/21/p52 15

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Illustration 2: Map of the Ethnic Mosaic of the P R C 2

Ethnic Groups

The Lunda are dominant in the southern region of and are a

trans-border ethnic group. Lunda communities straddle the Angola-DRC border. The

Lunda formed the backbone of Moise Tshombe’s secessionist movement and most of the

! Map taken from INICA Map Center. As found online at: http://www.inica.org

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infamous Katangan Gendarmes, later known as the Katangan Tigers, were from this

ethnic group. The Tigers enjoyed close relations with the MPLA in Angola and were

responsible for the Shaba I and Shaba II invasions. Despite the fact that the economic

base of the province and indeed of the country is situated in southern Katanga, this group

has traditionally been excluded from positions of political power. Of the past six

Governors of Katanga only one has been a southerner, and only seven of the forty-five

administrative, justice and security directors for the provincial government are from the

•j south.

The Luba are found in northern Katanga and the Kasai provinces. This ethnic

group has traditionally been favored by the mining sector and Luba have assumed

powerful technocratic and managerial positions in the industry giants Gecamines and

Miba. The Luba have undergone numerous migrations and resettlements since the early

19th Century and have often come into competition with the Lulua and Lunda groups in

the region.4 The Kasaian secession of the early 1960s had a largely Luba face, and the

repression of the secessionist movement by Lumumba’s central government was labeled

a genocide against the Luba. In the early 1990s, to divert attention away from the state’s

ineptitude, Mobutu strategically manipulated Lunda-Luba tensions in Katanga resulting

in pogroms against the Luba and mass migration of Luba from northern Katanga back to

Kasai Orientale. The Lunda-Luba divide is thus also often captured as a southern-

northern divide within Katanga. This north-south divide was manipulated by Laurent

Kabila, a Luba who entrenched the prevailing northern, Luba bias.

3 Katanga: The Congo's Forgotten Crisis (Brussels: International Crisis Group, 2006). 4 For a more detailed discussion on the Luba, particularly the Lulua-Luba tensions see Chapter 2 in Georges Nzongola-Ntalaja, The Congo from Leopold to Kabila: A People’s History (New York, NY: Zed Books, 2002).

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The Bakongo are situated in western Congo. This trans-border ethnic group is

found in Angola, the DRC, the Cabinda enclave, and Congo-. They have often

voiced secessionist desires and their language Kikongo dominates the region. Because the

group is dominant in the capital cities of Kinshasa and Brazzaville, their secessionist

aspirations have always been dampened to maintain stability in the region. Their

secessionist claims are based on the historical power and independence of the Kongo

Kingdom. The Kingdom pre-dates colonialism and was at its zenith during the 16th and

17th Century. The Bakongo ethnic association played an important role in the

decolonization process of the DRC.

Banyarwanda is a term used to identify Rwandophone settlers (both and

Tutsi) in the Eastern parts of the DRC. A labor recruitment policy facilitated the

immigration of Rwandophone workers for European settler plantations in the Kivus and

throughout the Congo. This policy was enforced via the Mission d ’Immigration des

Banyarwanda (MIB) until 1955.5 The Rwandophone immigrants fell under the purview

of the colonial administration and were not subject to alternative structures of authority

situated in the local traditions and chieftaincies. Hutu settlements were dominant in North

Kivu.

Banyamulenge is a term specifically used to identify a Congolese settler

community in South . The were distinct from and pre-date colonially

recruited Rwandophone communities. A substantial pastoral Tutsi community had settled

on the Itombwe Plateau in by the end of the 19th Century and adopted the

5 Gerard Prunier, "The Catholic Church and the ," Journal o f Religion in Africa 31, no. 2 (2001): 146.

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name Banyamulenge. The Itombwe settlement was one of the earlier settlements and a

result of population movements due to dynastic wars in neighboring Rwanda rather than

colonial recruitment.6 In an effort to distinguish themselves from later settlers the

on the Itombwe plateau attempted to shift their identity from an ethnic-based one to a

territorially-based one, thus calling themselves the Banyamulenge (from Mulenge). This

deepened local antagonisms as it disenfranchised autochthonous groups who argued that

the Mulenge area fell under their customary purview.7

Many of the ethnic cleavages in the Congo are drawn along autochthon and non­

autochthon lines. This divide is most marked in the East. Autochthonous groups refer to

traditional Congolese groups that link their lineage according to family, clan, and then

tribe. Each tribal group is based on a territorial unit, in many cases demarcated since pre­

colonial times and under the leadership of a Mwami.9 The Bafulero, Babembe and

Barega groups are three of the dominant autochthonous groups that neighbor

Banyamulenge settlements. Mai-Mai militia groups in the East recruit heavily among the

autochthonous groups of the region and espouse a nationalistic platform based on the

expulsion of foreigners from the DRC.

6 Ibid.: 149-150. 7 For more on this see: Koen Vlassenroot, "Citizenship, Identity Formation and Conflict in South Kivu: The Case of the Banyamulenge," Review of African Political Economy, no. 93/94 (2002). And Frank Van Acker, "Where Did All the Land Go? Enclosure and Social Struggle in Kivu (Dr Congo)," Review o f African Political Economy 103 (2005). 81 am normally averse to the use of the word ‘tribe’ in contemporary African studies, but this was the manner in which a Kivutian explained the traditional lineage and land-holding systems of the region to me. Interview, Johannesburg, January 2007. 9 In an interview with two autochthonous Kivutians who were part of the executive of an exiled political party, both affirmed that the idea of a Banyamulenge community is rejected by many neighboring groups in the region. Because the Banyamulenge group had no recognized customary system, territorial unit or recognized M wami that pre-dated their settlement there in the late 19th Century, many autochthonous groups still reject the Banyamulenge as “foreigners”. In the nationalistic discourse of the Kivus, the interviewees stated that most autochthon Kivutians reject notions of “ethnic conflict in the Congo” or “local-level conflict in the Congo” and rather accept the notion of “the invasion of the Congo” and “conflict instigated by foreigners”. Interviews, Johannesburg, January 2007.

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The ethnic mosaic of the DRC is dense and sophisticated and this brief synopsis

in no way attempts to do justice to the cultural richness of the Congo. However,

hopefully this section succeeds in providing a crisp understanding of some of the groups

that have colored the dynamics of non-secession in the DRC and also creates a suitable

platform for compelling analysis in the remainder of this paper.

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SECESSIONIST TRADITIONS IN CONGOLESE HISTORY

Different borders have different demographic implications and different political myths associated with them. The territorial shape o f a state thus helps to determine what interests are legitimate, what resources are mobilizable, what questions are open for debate, what ideological formulas will be relevant, what cleavages will become significant and what political allies might be available. Lustick, 1993

The fact that the DRC has never been a Weberian state is widely recognized.

Instead, it has undergone cycles of contraction and fragmentation and continues to

undergo dynamic processes of state formation. The sheer number of secessionist attempts

in the Congo’s troubled past led many to expect a resurgence of secessionism during the

unstable years of the Congo War. Yet such a resurgence was not forthcoming. The

purpose of this section is to determine the texture of historical secessionist attempts and

investigate why they did not act as a motivating platform for renewed secession during

the Congo War. An overview of the basis of the Congolese state frames this discussion of

historical cases of secession.

The Historical Basis of Statehood

The preeminence of internationally recognized juridical statehood has resulted in

dominant streams of scholarship casting the state as an almost mythical, elevated and

detached unit from society and social forces. Agency is attributed to the state as the 21

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manipulator of society, while society is portrayed as the “supine mass”.1 By examining

only one aspect of the state-society relationship, analysts risk falling prey to the “tyranny

of the single-cause.”2 The character of the Congolese state was shaped by exogenous as

well as social forces within the Congo. It is important to recognize that the state-society

interface was not mono-directional in establishing patterns of authority and control in

post-colonial DRC.

Because of low levels of penetration and a capital-city bias, the colonial

administration and subsequent independent Congolese failed to recognize

the existence of competing centers of authority and other legitimate purveyors of the use

of force throughout the territory.3 These internal actors provided the social basis for many

of the secessionist movements of the of 1960 to 1965. Endogenous and

trans-boundary constructions of order and authority as well as social networks critically

molded the Congolese state in the immediate post-colonial period. It was expected that

these endogenous structures, based on their historical experience with secession, would

reassert secessionist proclivities during the Congo War. Surely groups who had

previously pushed for their right to self-determination would seize the opportunity to do

so again, especially in the face of a crumbling center and international expectations of

1 Migdal. 2 Porto, 1. 3 Michael Nest, “The Evolution of a Fragmented State: The Case of the Democratic Republic of Congo” (New York University, 2002), 25-26.. Particularly in Eastern DRC centralized kingdoms continued to function according to their traditional modes of governance and these kingdoms strongly resisted colonial administration when it threatened their own polities. The CFS administration really had no need to penetrate far-flung provinces as local chiefs were recruited as state agents that would carry out the task of labor recruitment on their behalf. This tendency of using local chiefs as proxies for the state continued under the post-colonial government, Mobutu, Kabila and even now, under .

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secession and potential recognition?4 Understanding the motivations underlying the

Congo Crisis secessionist bids might help shed light on this issue. These motivations

suggest that perhaps most of the secessionist bids had less to do with agitating and

pushing for the right to self-determination as a collectivity and more to do with political

and economic imperatives.

Before mining the motivations of various historical secessions, it is worth noting

what exactly it was they were trying to secede from. The territorial contours and inherited

institutional structures of the state determined what various secessionist movements were

seeking to divorce themselves from in the immediate post-colonial period. After much

deliberation, the participants of the 1885 Berlin Conference adopted a quasi-scientific and

naturalist approach to border construction in Central Africa. The hydrological basin of

the Congo River was used to construct the political borders of present-day DRC. Gabon

was similarly demarcated according to the profile of the Ogooue River Basin.5

4 As noted in section one numerous governments, analysts, and journalists were expecting the dismemberment of the DRC. They were actively trying to imagine alternative political arrangements of power in light of Kinshasa’s near complete collapse, and while not forthrightly articulated, a case can be made that perhaps a Katangan, Kasaian or Orientale secessionist declaration might have been accepted by some within the international community. 5 Roland Pourtier, Central Africa and the Cross-Border Regions: Reconstructions and Integration Prospects (Paris: OECD: Initiative for Central Africa, 2003).

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t"'- • x V w - .....

, ..... ' •: / :• / / / — x .

Illustration 3: Map of the Congo River Basin and Political Borders6

The Congo-Nile Ridge in the eastern-most part of the DRC differentiates the

respective river basins and sits directly on the fault separating African highlands and

lowlands. Various mountain ranges and plateaus separate highlands and lowlands in the

Kivu and Ituri provinces. This Ridge is also the most densely populated region in Africa.

6Map taken from INICA Map Center. As found online at: http://www.inica.org

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SUDAN

UGANDA

Eastern Province \

Kisangani D.R.C.

Northern Ki

Maraema

Kindu » \r ~ ■ Southern Kivu 9

TANZANIA

Katanga 100 km

D ensities (Inhab. per km4)

««"»»»"■»»»' Provincial border H + 2CO f : h:: 10-50 (Congo.) mmm 100-200 [ | -th a n 10 Mere than 1 400 m altitude ISG-1&)

Illustration 4: Map of the Congo-Nile Ridge: A Densely Populated Space7

As with most African states, exogenous forces were instrumental in determining

the degree to which a Weberian state8 was established in the DRC. Colonial prerogatives

shaped a state with strong juridical sovereignty but weak empirical stateness. Belgian

colonizers adopted a revenue-driven approach to state formation and power broadcasting

7 Map taken from INICA Map Center. As found online at: http://www.inica.org 8 The standard elements of a Weberian state apply: a monopoly of the legitimate use of force within a given territory and a human community where the dominated must obey the authority claimed by the powers that be.

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in the DRC; mirroring aspects of a Tillyian model of state formation. The mercantilist

aspirations of the Congo Free State (CFS) translated into administrative outposts only

being established in areas that could facilitate ivory and rubber extraction as well as

forced labor recruitment. The CFS administration did the bare minimum in terms of

establishing itself in outlying areas; in many cases forcing traditional leaders to act as its

proxies. Power was broadcast to Kisangani to facilitate rubber and ivory extraction.

Later, with the discovery of diamonds in Kasai in 1914, a colonial outpost was set up in

Mbuji-Mayi. Despite copper deposits in Katanga, it was a political imperative rather than

a revenue-extraction one that led the CFS to extend its reach to . Political

competition with the British sparked penetration of Katanga. Cecil Rhodes and the

British-South Africa Company had their eyes on Katanga and its copper. Reputational

and territorial aspects of colonialist competition between and Britain saw the

CFS extend its reach to Lubumbashi.9

Unlike the Tillyian model, there was no threat of inter-state war in the region to

force the penetration of peripheral areas or the establishment of strong institutions in far-

flung provinces.10 Similar to the political reality of the Congo decades later, the colonial

state comprised of its core in Kinshasa and its satellites - strategic outposts in resource-

rich areas.11

The “core” that the retreating colonial state left in its wake was nothing more than

a decorative shell. It is widely recognized that the Belgians were perhaps the least

9 Nest, 25-26. 10 Ibid. Also for a good discussion on state formation processes in Africa see Herbst. 11 This is an important distinction to make in that the reach of the Congolese state under Mobutu and Kabila similarly concentrated state-resOurces in specific satellites; these areas were not a “new kind of polity” For more on this, and the idea of an archipelago state see Reno, and Nest’s work

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inclined of all the colonizers to establish institutions of governance. An exceptionally

brutal coercive machinery, the , had been created and maintained to

enforce the extractive agenda of King Leopold II and later the Belgian parliament.

Beyond this, very little in the way of institutional infrastructure or human development

was effected.

In a quantitative study that examines the impact of colonialism’s institutional

legacy Acemoglu, Johnson, and Robinson found that the character of a country’s colonial

institutions can have a long-term impact on growth and development prospects. Using

settler mortality rates they argue that if these rates were low, colonial institutions were

created to manage long-term growth and development. If the rates were high, only the

institutions absolutely necessary for exploitation were setup with short time horizons in

mind.12 For the Congo, the latter was the case. Moreover, little effort was made to

prepare for a hand-over of power upon independence.13 As Urquhart noted, at

independence there were merely seventeen university graduates out of a population of

approximately fourteen million.14 Commenting on independence, Nzongola-Ntalaja

captures the insipid reality of the post-colonial state: “given its precipitous nature, the

12 Daron Acemoglu, Simon Johnson, and James Robinson, "The Colonial Origins of Comparative Development: An Empirical Investigation," The American Economic Review 91, no. 5 (2001). In their study DRC’s mean settler mortality estimate is 240. While this is significantly lower that settler mortality rates for places such as Nigeria and Gambia, it is worth noting that the Belgians often preferred using local proxies, particularly African mercenaries. However, despite this, Buell in his 1928 study found that the Congo has the third highest ratio of colonial agents per square mile and per head of population in Africa - outranked only by Mauritania and Benin. (Buell as referenced in Brian Urquhart, "The Tragedy o f Lumumba," The New York Review of Books (2001).) 13 The elite and bourgeoisie colonizers were staunch defenders of their colonial order. Any calls for decolonization were seen as subversive. However, in 1955 a Flemish intellectual, Van Bilsen, had drawn up his “Thirty year plan for the emancipation of Belgian Africa” which was circulated among colonial officials as well as Congolese elites and ethnic associations. The response of ABAKO to the Van Bilsen Plan is often cited as the start of the independence struggle. Nzongola-Ntalaja, 89. 14 Urquhart.

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mass discontent with it, the international context in which it took place, and the crisis it

brought about, the independence of the Congo was also a very fragile political

revolution.”15

A Rich History of Secession: Charting the Congo’s Centrifugal Roots

The inherent weakness of the central government at independence immediately

triggered local strategies of control. However, resistance to centripetal political

organization traces back to the colonial period. The Azande Kingdom in Orientale (1892-

1912), Bayaka Kingdom in Bandundu (1895-1906), Bashi Kingdom in

(1900-1916), the Baluba Kingdom in Northern Katanga (1907-1917) and the

decentralized Bapende Kingdom (1932) all resisted colonial penetration and attempts at

incorporation into a modern state.16 Many of these kingdoms, particularly in the Lower

Congo region and in the North, had close relations due to intermixing, migration and

similar linguistic traditions. As a result, in the 1940s and 1950s a process of synthetic

identity formation occurred; there was an upward-scaling toward overarching identities.

In the lower western reaches of the Congo, previously independent tribal units came to

identify themselves as the Bakongo. In the North, independent tribal identities were

superseded by a wider Bangala identity.17 This up-scaling happened everywhere but in

15 Nzongola-Ntalaja, 89. 16Crawford Young, Politics in the Congo: Decolonization and Independence (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1965), 282-283. In addition to Young, Chapter 1 by Nzongola-Ntalaja offers an in-depth analysis of resistance to colonialism. 17 Prunier: 145-146.

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the Kivus where a difficult geography, punctuated by numerous mountains and plateaus,

translated into local particularism.18

In addition to the resistance of traditional kingdoms, various urban resistance

campaigns also agitated against the centralizing colonial state. There was the

mineworkers’ strike in Katanga (1941), insurrections in Kasai and Katanga (1944), the

dockworkers’ strike in (1945), and the Kinshasa revolt of January 1959 which led

to the decision to grant independence.19 The Kimbanguist Church also played a central

role in opposing the symbiotic, triumvirate colonial leadership of the state, the Catholic

Church, and private commercial interests.

Networks in the form of ethnic associations served as the bedrock for

politicization of an independent Congo. Joseph Kasavubu’s Association des Bakongo

(ABAKO) and Moise Tshombe’s Confederation National du Katanga (CONAKAT) were

two of the more powerful associations. Kasavubu rallied the secessionist cries of the

Bakongo. During the decolonization process the Belgians sought to maintain the

territorial integrity of the Congo and thus appointed Kasavubu as President to dampen

Bakongo secession. Of course the departing Belgians could not appease everyone and

Tshombe was quick to launch a secessionist movement in Katanga following his

exclusion from power at the center. Following hasty and ill-prepared pre-independence

elections in May 1960, ’s Mouvement Nationale Congolaise (MNC)

headed-up a coalition government. Lumumba was elected as Prime Minister. His

nationalist rigor gave the Belgians cause for concern regarding their commercial interests

18 Ibid. 19 Nzongola-Ntalaja, 51-53.

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in Katanga, and hence Western powers were quick to offer support to Tshombe’s

secessionist aspirations.

Katanga (July 1960 - January 1963)

The secessionist bid of 1960 to 1963 was instigated by foreign economic interests,

particularly Western mineral corporations wishing to maintain a monopoly within the

area. The Belgians were quick to offer military and substantive support to Tshombe’s

secessionist quest.

At independence in 1960, the national army, Armee Nationale Congolaise (ANC)

was in shambles. It was poorly trained, lacked leadership and suffered from inter-ethnic

squabbles. The ANC also mutinied against all remaining foreign officers; the vestiges of

colonialism. The ANC mutiny, tacitly orchestrated by foreign interests, was an

underhanded attempt to remove Lumumba.20 To pacify the ANC, Lumumba allowed for

Congolese members thereof to be promoted without training or an effective instrument of

central control. In a politically naive move, Lumumba appointed Joseph-Desire Mobutu

as Chief of Staff. This appointment was made despite rumors of Mobutu’s apparent links

to foreign military intelligence. In doing this, Lumumba “had unwittingly chosen his own

Judas.”21

In contrast to the ANC, the Katangan Gendarmes had been converted into a

highly organized and exceptionally well trained military force under the leadership of

20 Ibid, 97-99. 21 Ibid.

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Belgian Colonel Vandewalle who was in cohorts with Tshombe.22 A day prior to the

declaration of independence, the Belgians intervened militarily - disarming and expelling

all non-Katangan fighters and reinforcing the already well disciplined Gendarmerie.

From 1960 up to and including 1962, Tshombe maintained an independent

Katanga. In January 1963, after calling for foreign support, the central government and

UN forces put down the secessionist revolt. Tshombe’s loyal Gendarmes and their

mercenary supporters fled to Angola. The cross-border Lunda ethnic network made them

quite inconspicuous. The Gendarme remnants were henceforth known as the Katangan

Tigers. In a political maneuver to ensure the territorial coherence of the Congo, President

Kasavubu recalled Tshombe from exile and appointed him Prime Minister, a position he

assumed in early 1964. The Katangan Tiger-Belgian mercenary network would resurface

again later in 1964 to ironically aid Tshombe’s central government in repelling the Simba

Rebellion in the Kivus and Kisangani.

Kasai (July 1960 - September 1962)

While Katanga was marred by multiple secessionist bids and violence, Kasai

made a more concerted effort at establishing empirical independence. During the Congo

War, an entire range of social actors emerged to fill-in for the absent state. In particular,

Miba Corporation and civil society actors organized themselves to regulate basic day-to-

day activities such as education, rubbish removal, and health. The dynamics of these

22 Thomas P. Odom, Shaba 2: The French and Belgian Intervention in Zaire in 1978 (U.S. Army Combined Arms Center, Combat Studies Institute, 1993). 23 It is worth noting that the independent Katanga of 1960-62 itself faced an internal rebellion and secessionist movement from the Luba ethnic group in the Northern part of Katanga

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adaptive capacities and strategies of survival will be discussed in greater detail in section

five.

Kasai declared its independence two days prior to the announcement of

Congolese independence from the colonial regime. This declaration was in part an elite-

level, reactionary move by who opposed Lumumba’s government. In the

lead-up to independence, Lumumba and Kalonji had had a political fall-out with the

MNC splitting into the respective MNC-L and MNC-K parties.24

Prime Minister Lumumba was unsatisfied with the slow pace of UN action in

Katanga25 and thus in the case of Kasaian secession, turned to the Soviets for military

assistance. The Soviets helped airlift ANC troops to Kasai. Fighting was exceptionally

brutal and bloody, initiating mass refugee flows, particularly among the Luba who fled to

Northern Katanga. UN Secretary-General Hammerskjold stated that the massacres

9 f\ against the Luba and civilians in Kasai amounted to genocide. Lumumba’s choice to

turn to the Soviets resulted in a showdown between himself and Kasavubu and ultimately

led to his demise. Since the ANC mutiny had not succeeded in bringing down Lumumba,

Western powers subsequently encouraged Kasavubu to use Lumumba’s “communist”

turn and oversight of an ANC-led genocide as political ammunition. Kasavubu, rather

than hold field-level ANC commanders and officers such as Mobutu responsible for the

carnage in Kasai, chose to accuse Lumumba’s government of genocide. He used his

24 Many moderates within the MNC were unhappy with Lumumba’s radical leftist tendencies and accused him of authoritarian tendencies. This internal rivalry occurred despite Lumumba’s overwhelming popular base. Unable to remove him from the executive of the party, Kalonji and others split from the party. Kalonji’s MNC-K had an overwhelmingly strong ethnic base among the Luba of Kasai. 25 The UN mission to Katanga would only be approved in 1963, two years after Lumumba’s death, despite his requests for assistance as early as 1960. 26 Nzongola-Ntalaja, 106.

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accusations as the basis for Lumumba’s dismissal. Lumumba in turn dismissed Kasavubu

stating that the President had no authority to dismiss the head of the legislature. In a bold

move, Mobutu briefly seized power to unblock the political stalemate in Kinshasa. The

political turmoil resulted in the controversial assassination of Lumumba, orchestrated by

77 the Belgian political machinery and CIA. The secessionist state was forcefully re­

incorporated in September 1962 following a mutiny by Kalonji’s own forces, foreign

assistance, and the persistent campaign of the ANC.

Kisangani and the Kivus

Although very few secessionist bids organically sprung up in ,

many rebel and secessionist groups set up their opposition governments in Kisangani.

Following the dismissal and subsequent assassination of Lumumba in 1961, one of his

deputies, set up a rival government in Kisangani in opposition to what

many viewed as the unlawful removal of Lumumba and external interference in

Congolese politics. The Gizenga government enjoyed popular support and legitimacy.

Many African and Eastern European states recognized the Kisangani government as

legitimate. Following negotiations, Gizenga agreed to rejoin the central government on

27 In 2002, the Belgian Senate publicly admitted to involvement in Lumumba’s assassination. The Senate published a 1,000 page document based on its parliamentary inquiry into the assassination. For the brief details on the admission of guilt see: BBC, Lumumba's Son Hails Belgian Apology.{BBC News Online, 2002, accessed March 2007); available from http://news.bbc.co.Uk/2/hi/africa/1802929.stm. For further details on the CIA’s involvement and CIA-Belgian corroboration see the excellent article by: Stephen R. Weissman, "Opening the Secret Files on Lumumba's Murder," , 21 July 2002.

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condition that a Lumumbist agenda was followed. However, in January 1962, the ANC

retook Kisangani by force and Mobutu had Gizenga arrested.28

The Kwilu/Mulelist Rebellion (January 1964 - December 1965)

A prominent Lumumbist and member of Gizenga’s government, exiled Pierre

Mulele, had received substantial training in the art of revolutionary struggle in China. He

returned to the Congo in 1963 to organize a revolutionary guerilla movement. He used

his home region of Kwilu, in western DRC, to organize and plan the struggle.29

Tahapo

V:-:: Isyl'L&mamL

Illustration 5: Map 5 of the PRC’s Provinces (as of 2006'):30

28 Nzongola-Ntalaja. Gizenga has been a prominent pro-democracy figure in Congolese politics. Following elections in 2006, Gizenga, at the age of 81, was appointed Prime Minister. For details on the Cabinet he appointed in February 2007, see: BBC, Relief at New Dr Congo GovernmentfBBC News Online, 2007, accessed February 2007); available from http://news.bbc.co.Uk/2/hi/africa/6333897.stm. 29 Kwilu is the home of the Mbunda and Pende ethnic groups and is best known for its capital Kwikit, which for most of the Congo’s history was part of the Bandundu province. Gizenga is Pende. 30 Map taken from Inside Justice. As found online at: http://www.insideiustice.com/law/index.php/intl/2005/12/21/p52. Even those these provinces were not in existence in the early 1960s, the current provincial borders proposed in 2006 clearly indicate the Kwilu region more so than the provincial boundaries of the 1960s.

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The territorial scope of the insurrection was quite limited. The Mulelists had

limited success in moving beyond the Kwilu region and in extending their support base

beyond the Mbunda and Pende ethnic groups.

Mulele maintained his opposition to the post-colonial state from 1963 until his

•2 1 death in 1968. Loosely affiliated to the revolutionary Mulelists, an eastern front was

established under the Simbas. The Simbas originated in the Kivus and operated under the

leadership of , Gaston Soumialot, and Laurent Kabila. Gbenye and

Soumialot had been radicals in Gizenga’s Kisangani government and had also received

revolutionary training in China. The Mulelists rebelled against the character of the post­

colonial state, whereas the Simbas adopted a secessionist agenda challenging the state

itself. Although initial direction came from Gbenye and Soumialot, the

was primarily an avenue of resistance for the chiefly autochthonous leadership in the

East. As mentioned earlier, alternative centers of authority rooted in local particularism

continued to operate beyond the purview of state throughout the colonial and the post­

independence era. Networks of local authority established strong inter-autochthon

relationships at the chiefly and local-level. The secessionist movement in the Kivus

marked the first local conflict between customary centers of authority based on pre-

colonial traditions, and the agents of the post-colonial, modem state in Kinshasa. 33

31 Due to ill health, Mulele retreated to Brazzaville in 1967/68. Mobutu promised him amnesty if he would return to the Congo. Upon his return he was assassinated by Mobutu’s thugs. Mulele did enjoy a strong degree of popular support. Nzongola-Ntalaja, 130. 32 Soumialot and Mulele had both been members of Gizenga’s government. Thus the two insurrections were loosely affiliated. While not from the Kivus, but a Luba from Katanga, Kabila was nonetheless part of the Simba leadership. Ibid. and Odom. 33 Vlassenroot. Here I would tend to side with Vlassenroot’s characterization of the Kivu uprising as a challenge to the concept of the state itself, and disagree with Engelbert’s analysis that it was an uprising challenging the state leadership rather than the state itself. Englebert, Why Congo Persists: Sovereignty, Globalization and the Violent Reproduction of a Weak 18.State,

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The Simba Rebellion (April 1964 - July 1966)

The Simbas were militarily less disciplined than the Mulelists of Kwilu and

preferred mass military operations that proved decisive rather than the protracted tactics

of the Mulelist guerillas.34 The Simbas secured Kisangani in August 1963 and established

their own government. They also took 1,600 foreigners hostages in Kisangani, including

Belgian and American citizens. By 1964, they exerted control over more than half of the

Congo’s territory.35 By this time, the Kasaian and Katangan secessionist attempts had

been quelled by the ANC with heavy foreign military assistance, first from the Soviets

and then the UN. Once again, faced with a powerful secessionist challenge, the central

government and its coercive machinery could not reassert control over its own territory.

Part of the reason that Kasavubu recalled Tshombe and strategically installed him as

Prime Minister in 1964 was because of the fact that Tshombe could command the loyalty

of the still powerful Katangan Gendarmes stationed in Angola. Tshombe did indeed

recall his Katangan Tigers to reinforce the ANC. Under the leadership of Belgian

mercenary Vandewalle, the Katangan militia network saved the Congo from

disintegration.36 The Simbas decision to take foreigners hostage presaged their downfall.

Belgian and US paratroopers undertook Operation Dragon Rouge37 to free hostages and

reinforce the ANC.

The Simba rebellion provided the impetus for ethnic polarization in the East,

particularly in the Kivus between autochthons and settler Rwandophone communities.

34 Nzongola-Ntalaja, 132,The Mulelists were trained according to expectations of a revolutionary, protracted guerilla war. 35 Ibid. They secured control of North Katanga, Maniema, Sankuru, the entire Orientale Province and parts of Equateur. Refer to map in section 2 to see a spatial representation of these provinces. 36 Odom. 37 Ibid.

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The Banyamulenge remained quite isolated from their lowland, autochthon neighbors, the

Bafulero, Babembe, and Barega. As noted earlier, the Banyamulenge communities were

distinct from, and pre-dated later Rwandophone migrations which autochthons

considered “foreign. They had adopted a Banyamulenge identity to distinguish

themselves as the oldest settler community. Local particularism had remained strong in

the Kivus, mainly due to difficult geography. The Simba Rebellion brought the

Banyamulenge into conflict with their autochthonous neighbors.

The position that the Banyamulenge adopted during the 1963-65 Kivu

secessionist bid would shape all future local dynamics and ethnic interaction. The Simbas

recruited heavily among the autochthonous Bafulero, Babembe, and Barega. The

Banyamulenge had remained aloof of the Simba egalitarian rhetoric as they feared

•5Q property seizures and cattle redistribution. The Katangan Tigers and ANC brutally

pursued the Simbas into the Kivus. As a result, Simba fighters moved up into the higher

plateaus in search of shelter and food - looting and pillaging among highland

Banyamulenge communities. This drove the Banyamulenge into the arms of Tshombe

and Mobutu’s ANC as they sought to protect their property. The central government was

more than happy to use the Banyamulenge as their proxies in South Kivu. The

Banyamulenge had also decided to join the government front as they were promised

representation, access to jobs, education, military careers, and social services in exchange

for their efforts.39 This alliance proved decisive in cementing local ethnic divides and

antagonisms. The use of Tutsi “foreigners” to kill local boys who had valiantly joined the

38 Vlassenroot. 39 Ibid.

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Simbas would remain as a betrayal in the collective memory of autochthonous groups

and would be neither forgotten nor forgiven.40 By the end of 1964, with the help of

Belgian and American counterinsurgents, the Katangan Tigers, foreign mercenaries, and

Banyamulenge proxies, the ANC had brutally crushed the Simba movement, expelling its

government from Kisangani and re-establishing government control of the city.

A clear pattern of regime survival based on external support rather than a

competent domestic coercive apparatus indicates that post-colonial Congo was indeed a

“lame Leviathan” - a soft yet extremely brutal state. Moreover, the central government

displayed a high degree of path dependency in requesting foreign assistance to prevent

the disintegration of the state.

In this environment of extreme political weakness and due to the paralysis of

various governments, the ANC’s Chief of Staff, Mobutu took power in a coup d’etat in

late 1965. Many of the Katangan Tigers who had assisted Mobutu’s forces in dismantling

the Simba government remained in Kisangani despite the coup which unseated

Tshombe 41 In 1967 the Tigers, under Vandewalle’s leadership, revolted against ANC

battalions in Kisangani in an attempt to reinstate Tshombe. Though poorly organized, by

some stroke of luck, Mobutu’s ANC managed to repel the Katangan Tigers without

foreign assistance. This was the first time the national forces had racked up a success

without foreign military help. A few of the original Katangan Gendarmes survived and

made a quick retreatto Angola following their defeat. Following the 1967 revolt, Mobutu

gave his ANC free reign in unleashing horrific reprisal attacks against local Lunda

40Prunier: 150. 41 Tshombe’s popularity had grown and he was elected in legitimate and free and fair elections in May 1965, prior to Mobutu’s coup.

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populations in Katanga despite their aloofness toward the Katangan Tigers.42 Collective

solidarity and anger over Mobutu’s repression made it easier for the Katangan

Gendarmes to recruit among embittered refugee communities in Angola and the Lunda of

southern Katanga.

Shaba I and II (March-May 1977 and May - June 1978)

While in Angola, the Katangan Tigers forged ties with the MPLA rather than

accept Mobutu’s offer of amnesty. Their military expertise and targeted support was

critical in helping Neto’s MPLA take Luanda and secure it against FNLA advances from

the North.43 They were allowed to reorganize within Angola as the Front Nationale pour

la Liberation du Congo (FNLC). In May 1977, in the invasion known as Shaba I44, the

FNLC invaded Katanga. Again, Mobutu and his now renamed Forces Armees Zairois

(FAZ) had to turn to external support as they were not competent enough to repel the

FNLC. Only with the arrival of French and Moroccan reinforcement was the FNLC

repelled. Again mass reprisal attacks were carried out against local Lunda communities.

In 1978, the FNLC attempted another invasion; Shaba II. The FNLC secured the

important mining town of . Due to the presence of expatriate communities in

Kolwezi, Mobutu was again able to drawn on French and Belgian paratroopers to ensure

his regime’s survival.45 Following defeat, the remaining Katangan Tigers retreated back

42 Odom. 43 Ibid. 44 At the time, Katanga had been renamed Shaba under Mobutu’s Zairianization program. 45 Odom, 120.

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to Angola. Many of them remain there even today. In a January 2006 report, ICG

estimated that some 14,000 Katangan Tigers still remain active in Angola.46

Conclusion

The hasty granting of independence and the lack of robust governance institutions

provided individual political leaders with the perfect opportunity to push the envelope in

terms of the scope of their influence and power. The majority of the secessionist bids of

the Congo Crisis were not under-girded by an overwhelming critical mass of support. The

Katangan secession was primarily driven by the economic imperative of western

interests. The Kasaian secession was largely motivated by the political imperative of

Kalonji based on elite-level antagonism between himself and Lumumba. Neither of these

secessions could primarily be characterized as a bid by a specific, oppressed or

disenfranchised group to assert their own self-determination. Underlying imperatives

reveal that neither were truly about questioning the state itself, rather both secessions

were taking advantage of the opportunity to challenge the leadership of the state in the

most extreme form possible - secession. Central weakness triggered local strategies of

power-grabbing. The possibility of consolidating their own power bases and constructing

alternative states was quite real because of the complete lack of empirical sovereignty of

the modem, post-colonial state. Prominent and powerful individuals rationalized that they

need not hustle for a piece of the virtually non-existent pie, politically speaking, when

they could attempt to bake their own pie.

46 Katanga: The Congo's Forgotten Crisis, 11.Many ex-Tigers were arrested in April 2005. They, along with Andre Tshombe, son of Moise Tshombe, were accused in April 2005 of plotting a secession plan.

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The Simba/Kivutian secession did challenge the very character of the state. It was

largely a confrontation between customary centers of authority and what they perceived

as the ambivalent centralizing state. Shaba I and II, while in part motivated by the

grievances of the Lunda ethnic group, were a manifestation of competition between

Mobutu and the Katangan Tigers over the right to exert authority and the continuation of

a history of antagonistic military confrontation.

The political agendas of secessionist leaders are an important consideration as

noted above; however, reducing motivations for these early secessions to the self-serving

interests of political elites is doing a disservice to the agency of social groups in the

Congo. It is exactly the reduction to such mono-conceptual answers such as “state

weakness” and “political opportunism” that analysts should, but have failed to, guard

against. As Lederach notes, one should look through the content of the problem to the

broader pattern of how things are related.47 While self-serving elites certainly shaped the

character of the Congo Crisis they were able to garner a degree of popular support for

their secessionist bids based on local constructions and understandings of ‘self. At

independence, the Congolese had more of an affiliation and attachment to ethno-regional

identities that pre-dated the colonial system than the mythical concept civic identity. The

exploitative personality of the colonial beast did not provide much of a basis for an over­

arching civic identity. While Lumumba attracted support for a more inclusive and broad-

based conception of Congolese identity, his nation-building project was cut short by

external interference and his subsequent assassination.

47 John P. Lederach, The Moral Imagination: The Art and Soul of Building Peace (New Y ork, N Y : Oxford University Press, 2005), 120.

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While not necessarily bound by a deep sense of nationhood, these early secessions

did lay the foundation for further future particularism. A history of genocide,

compounded by Mobutu’s ethnic agitation in Kasai and Katanga in the early 1990s,

certainly provided the Luba with a basis for wanting to secure their own homeland.

Moreover, ethnic polarization in the Kivus and subsequent massacres against Tutsis in

the early and mid-1990s would lead one to perhaps expect Congolese Tutsi communities

to seek irredentist incorporation into Rwanda. Continued marginalization and oppression

of the Lunda in southern Katanga also provided this group with a political platform for

secession and/or irredentism. Yet none of above occurred.

Local-level structures and mechanisms of control intimate that perhaps at the

mass-level, while quite attached to the idea of "Congolite ”, the Congolese were content

to have the state leave them alone, and in the absence of state penetration or regulation,

satisfied to have non-state alternatives organize day-to-day life. In the context of the

Congo War, perhaps there was no need to push for the creation of a secessionist state if

such a state would merely be susceptible to the same vagaries as its predecessor;

Mobutu’s central state. Or perhaps it is merely a lack of leadership that explains the

secessionist deficit. These local-level dynamics will be explored in section five which

examines the politics of non-secession during the 1990s and the Congo War.

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BACKGROUND TO THE CONGO WAR OF 1998 TO 2003

The localized patterns of authority and systems of day-to-day regulation that were

evident during the Congo War did not emerge as a function of conflict - rather, in most

cases, conflict was superimposed onto pre-existing and dynamic structures of local order.

These structures did not pop up when the bullets started whizzing; rather they developed

over time based on: 1) the specific context of the Congo and its deeply rooted centrifugal

tendencies, and 2) the methods of governance and regime survival employed by Mobutu.

The strategic decisions that local communities made as well as the politics of non­

secession are situated in the context of the war. This section aims to provide a compelling

yet brief overview of key protagonists and events that shaped the character of the Congo

War. The centrifugal tendencies of the DRC, both political and economic, as well as the

strategic context of the Congo War are detailed.

The Congo’s Deeply Rooted Centrifugal Tendencies

Centrifugal Politics

Expectations of mass partition and secession during the Congo War were not unfounded.

Since independence the Congo has been characterized by a weak central state and strong

centrifugal tendencies. The exceptionally hollo wed-out state that remained in the wake of

Mobutu gave few hope that the central machinery would survive the ensuing

43

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onslaught of war. It seemed somewhat rational to expect alternative loci of authority to

assert their independence from Kinshasa during the conflict.

Centrifugal tendencies first emerged in the national debate leading up to

independence. Politicians and the wider Congolese community made clear their

preference for some kind of ethno-regional federation. Ethnic associations, such as

Kasavubu’s ABAKO and Tshombe’s CONAKAT, politicized a pre-independence Congo.

These associations all had offices in Kinshasa to maintain ethnic ties after mass migration

and to push for ethno-regional rights. Groups in Katanga, Kasai, Orientale, and the East

had also hoped for a federal system of government. The dynamic personality of Patrice

Lumumba pushed for a civic sense of nationalism and convinced many Congolese to

subordinate ethno-regional identities in favor of a more inclusive, unitary sense of

national identity. The Congo Crisis and untimely death of Lumumba meant that his vision

was never given a fair chance to flourish in the national consciousness. Centrifugal

preferences remained alive under Mobutu, although brutally repressed by his coercive

machinery. The Kivus and Kasai exercised considerable autonomy during Mobutu’s

reign. Mobutu himself also strategically manipulated centrifugal imaginations to undercut

the possible emergence of a unified domestic challenge to his rule. Lie was particularly

adroit at destabilizing relations in the East and in the Kasai-Katanga interface. By the end

of his rule, centrifugal preferences strongly reasserted themselves. As Callaghy aptly

notes, “it is almost as if Mobutu’s period of unitary rule from 1967 to 1997 was a thirty

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year hiatus that settled very little, thereby demonstrating the power .. .ethno-national

forces have on elite and mass imagination and specific interests.”1

The early attempts at democratic transition saw the Congolese reassert their

preference for federalism with strong regional autonomy. Obviously the experience of a

unitary state under Mobutu had left the Congolese people disinclined toward

centralization. During the tenure of the Conference Nationale Souveraigne (CNS), local

demands based on particularism and regional preferences again emerged quite strongly.

The CNS did not merely reflect the preferences of the political elite. The CNS had a high

degree of consultation populaire2 and reinforced elite as well as local-level notions of

ethno-regionalism. Etienne Tshisekedi and others pushed for unitary statehood; however,

federalist demands won and were incorporated into the CNS-drafted constitution.3

Tshisekedi did not have the same popular appeal or dynamism as Lumumba. To this day,

the CNS might be the most legitimate gage we have of Congolese popular sentiment.

Despite this legacy of centrifugal political preferences, the Congo War to unseat

Kabila did not fulfill external prophesies of secession and permanent partition. The

common quest to remove Mobutu did create a sense of purposive cohesion among the

domestic political class in the DRC. This resulted in their decision to back the military

prowess of the Alliance des Forces Democratiques pour La Liberation du Congo

1 Thomas Callaghy, "From Reshaping to Resizing a Failing State? The Case of the Congo/Zaire," in Right-Sizing the State: The Politics o f Moving Borders, ed. Brendan O'Leary, Ian S. Lustick, and Thomas Callaghy (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2001), 108. 2 Civil society had over 2,800 participants in the CNS and the debates of the Conference were widely disseminated to the Congolese public via daily television and radio transmissions. 3 To this day, most Congolese still regard the CNS-drafted constitution as the most legitimate. This was confirmed in numerous research interviews with Congolese refugees and migrants (Johannesburg, January 2007). Although the current 2005-06 constitution similarly has federal provisions, it is perceived as an imported constitution strongly influenced by EU policy and the French and Belgian governments and thus lacks the same sense of local ownership that the CNS constitution is imbued with.

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(AFDL). Similarly, it was the glue that gave the Rwanda-Uganda-Congolese alliance a

foundation of commonality. Once this basis of a common enemy evaporated, so too did

the veil of cohesion. Cracks in the AFDL alliance resurfaced, differing political visions

among the domestic politico-elite of the Congo became evident, and competition to

secure the right to determine the rules of the game in Kinshasa translated into a brutal

war. While regional grumblings continued throughout the war, no decisive secessionist

movements emerged. It could be argued that regional tendencies and ethnic identities

were subordinate to national survival in the face of external threats. Numerous of the

armed popular defense forces in the Katanga region and the Mai-Mai militias in the East

emerged based on a nationalistic discourse that sought to affirm “Congolite and” expel

foreigners in the face of Rwandan, Ugandan, Zimbabwean, and Angolan occupation.

Centrifugal Economics

The Mobutu regime was motivated by a revenue extraction imperative that would

service the functioning of a well-established and structured neopatrimonial system. The

state’s presence thus only extended to strategic satellites that could funnel revenues to

state coffers. In peripheral areas, which were left to their own devices and devoid of any

state regulation, the informal economy flourished. Moreover, central weakness in

Kinshasa resulted in centrifugal economic orientation to neighboring hubs. The maps

below highlight the economic centrifugal tendencies and spatially demonstrate the major

economic corridors that emerged.

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l^aourtdefd CENTRAL AFRICAN REPUBLIC SUDAN ETHIOPIA CAMEROON

Douala US AN DA < I? g^brewiie KENYA L CONGO gabon V airobl

Brazzavil Points Notre T/WZAN A Kiaoma T abor

Kamtna

Lobltrc .a*******' , M AN. ,

ZAMBIA V CAMBIQUE

- ■ ■ - - A - g L . ;

Beira O

NAMIBIA i

Gaborone o

Johannesbu

SWAZILAND

LESOTH SOUTH AFR GA

1 000 km

Railroad Navigate waterways Main railroad Landlocked cou ntnes

Main roads Secondary railroads Gopperbelt

I U nusuod railroad®

Illustration 6: Map of the PRC’s External Access Routes: Economic. Centrifugal Corridors4

' Map taken from INICA Map Center. As found online at: http://www.inica.org

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In the East, landlocked Rwanda, , Uganda, and Malawi benefit from their

position along the eastern trade and transport axis which ultimately finds its outlet via the

ports of Mombassa and Dar-es-Salaam. This orientation to the east is a result of pre­

colonial patterns that established Arab trading posts from the hinterland to the Indian

Ocean.5 This legacy continues today as ethnic trader networks of Lebanese-Syrian and

Indo-Pakistani communities operate along this corridor.

c. a , r . , SUDAN ETHIOPIA * **

KENYA Piuvince Ct eritate

M l N M Nwd

Illustration 7: Map of the Eastern Corridor6

5 Pourtier, 14. 6 Map taken from INICA Map Center. As found online at: http://www.inica.org

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The common use of Swahili strengthens the Eastern corridor. The ecology of

eastern DRC renders it favorable for agricultural farming including vegetables, fruit,

beans and animal husbandry. Prior to dislocation and agricultural disruption due to war,

produce from the Kivus and Ituri was airlifted to supply Kinshasa. Numerous trading

centers and ‘middlemen operators’ are also situated along the -Bunia axis. Gold,

diamonds, and coffee are traded via the economies of Kigali, Kampala, and .

The cities of Beni and Butembo in North Kivu are largely considered Nande trader posts

and attest to economic success despite the lack of government regulation and public

officials.7

KASAI , ^ Bujumbura ( N * . 1 'i

TANZANIA

ANGOLA ZAMBIA

ZIMBABWE

BOTSWANA NAMIBIA

Illustration 8: Map of the Southern Corridor8

7 For more on this see: Pourtier, 34. 8 Map taken from INICA Map Center. As found online at: http://www.inica.org

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Maize and other staples are produced in the savannah lands of the south. Maize is

the staple food of the region and trade therein plays a role in wider regionalization. The

southern corridor is composed of various cross-border ethnic networks, particularly the

Kongo, Luba, and Tshokwe that consist of transnational communities across the Angolan

and Zambian borders.9 South Africa is the main outlet for Katangan minerals and is the

main customer for Congolese electricity from the Inga Dam.10 In turn, South Africa is the

main supplier of agricultural and industrial goods, such as cars, to DRC. Hence the

phenomenon of left-hand drive vehicles in Lubumbashi. Previously, the rail outlet to

Lobito and Benguela on the Angolan coast was the quickest route for Katangan minerals.

The disruption of the railway due to civil war in Angola has strengthened the southern

corridor toward Durban, Beira and Maputo.

At the height of the conflict, many analysts expected economic peripheralization

to provide the blueprint for a new kind of political order based on the dismemberment of

the Congo and a “loose federation of provinces or a constellation of micro-states”.11

Political and economic centrifugal preferences were given ample time to entrench

themselves during the thirty-two years of state neglect under Mobutu and created a very

specific legacy which shaped the context for the Congo War.

9 These ethnic networks are trans-border by nature, and not due to contagion or spill-over. For more on this see Tatiana Carayannis, "The Complex Wars of the Congo: Towards a New Analytic Approach," Journal of Asian and African Studies 38, no. 2-3 (2003). 10 Pourtier, 14. 11 Braeckman.

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The Context of Regime Survival and Political Background of the Congo War

The exploitative legacy of the colonial CFS remains embedded in the collective

memory of the Congolese people. Following colonialism, they survived the tumultuous

years of the Congo Crisis from 1960 to 1965. They endured the brutality and ineptitude

of Mobutu’s “imposed peace” for some thirty-two years and sought to reassert their voice

in the CNS of the early 1990s. The catalytic domestic resistance to Mobutu in the form of

riots at the Universite de Lubumbashi and increased general defiance were compounded

by mass dislocations from the of 1994. The unraveling of Mobutu’s

neopatrimonial system was inevitable with the large influx of refugees and former

genocidaires.

Despite promises to militarily pursue former members, by 1996 it

was quite clear that Mobutu’s coercive machinery was in disarrays and neither able, nor

willing to, fulfill the promises he had made to manage the security situation in the East.

Moreover, the insecurity of Rwandophone settlers (both Hutu and Tutsi)12 provided the

post-genocide Rwandan government with ample justification and a security imperative to

move into the DRC. The multi-ethnic and multi-national AFDL13, bound by a common

12 In 1971, Rwandophone settlers, who could prove residency in Congo prior to, and including up to 1950, were granted Congolese citizenship. Citizenship was granted as a political move by Mobutu to consolidate his regime and ensure a support base in the East. In 1981 this law was revoked, and an ancestral connection to the territory up to and including 1885 had to be proven for Rwandophone settlers to claim Congolese citizenship. This meant many communities had their citizenship revoked and were stuck between two worlds - that of refugee and citizen. These “in-between” communities felt threatened by the influx of people from Rwanda and Burundi and organized against the Mobutu regime, which they opposed as it had overseen their empowerment and subsequent disenfranchisement. They were further disillusioned with the Mobutu regime as it failed to stop attacks in the region and ensure their safety and security. For an in-depth discussion on the citizenship crisis in the East, see Chapter 8 of Mahmood Mamdani, When Victims Become Killers (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001). Also see Georges Nzongola- Ntalaja, States, Borders and Nations: Negotiating Citizenship in Africa (Edinburgh: Centre for African Studies, University of Edinburgh, 2004). 13 The ADFL was formed as a joint-venture between Rwandan Minister of Defense, Kagame, and President Museveni of Uganda. Their agenda was to create a favorable security situation in the East and

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agenda of unseating Mobutu, ushered in fifteen-months of peace-time rule by Laurent

Kabila. Kabila’s peace-time tenure was short-lived. In part, his attempt to distance

himself from his previous foreign backers (Rwanda and Uganda) and his quest to reassert

his domestic legitimacy directly led to the outbreak of war. A brutal conflict, the Congo

War (formally from 1998 to 2003), ensued as various rebels and factions fought to secure

Kinshasa. If the bid for Kinshasa proved unsuccessful, most groups settled for local

strategies of control as they “agenda shifted” - being relatively content to control local

politics and resources in lieu of the capital.

Following the disintegration of the AFDL, the trigger event for the war is largely

credited to mutinies within the Kinshasa and Goma army barracks during July 1998 by

Tutsi elements of the armed forces. The predominant discourse argues that insecure and

vulnerable Banyamulenge elements orchestrated the mutinies. However, as Nzongola-

Ntalaja notes such discourse might have been part of a wider Rwandan propaganda

campaign. He argues that the ‘invention of a civil war’ between Kabila and the

Congolese Tutsi (Banyamulenge) provided Rwanda with a new excuse to create another

external rebel movement. The protection of threatened ‘Tutsi brothers’ in the Congo was

citied as the raison d’etre for the creation of the Rassemblement Congolais pour la

Democratie (RCD).14 While many of the mutineers may very well have been

Banyamulenge, many of them were also foreign, Rwandan Tutsi who had been

unseat Mobutu. They recruited Kabila, a known anti-Mobutist with revolutionary tendencies to give the movement a domestic, Congolese face. Uganda wanted to unseat rebel organizations that had been using eastern DRC as a base to launch attacks and Angola similarly supported the AFDL as it was dissatisfied with Mobutu’s support of UNITA. UNITA used Congolese bases for lucrative diamond and arms trade. For more on Uganda’s role see John F. Clark, "Explaining Ugandan Intervention in Congo: Evidence and Intepretations," Journal of Modern African Studies 39, no. 2 (2001). 14 Nzongola-Ntalaja, The Congo from Leopold to Kabila: A People's History, 227-229.

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incorporated into national Congolese structures as payment for their military involvement

in the AFDL. The mutinies happened in the wake of Kabila’s dismissal of Gen. James

Kabare, his Rwandan Chief of Staff.15 As Nzongola-Ntalaja points out, the mutiny in the

East was in fact led by Rwandan and not Congolese armed force members, Commanders

Ondekane and Buki, both whom General Kabare had strategically put in charge of

important and sensitive posts such as Goma. Thus, despite using the rhetoric of a threat to

Congolese ‘Tutsi brothers’ as an excuse for the creation of RCD, in reality, the RCD was

created with the aim of unseating Kabila and ensuring Rwandan interests in the region.

Rwanda was eager to see Kabila’s removal from power following attempts to reduce

Rwandan influence in his government.16 The RCD was and is perceived as an occupation

force by most within the Congo.

To pursue its interests Rwanda created the RCD rebel movement and the

parastatal NGO, To us pour la Paix et le Developpement (TPD), linked to its Military

Intelligence Directorate.17 Both the RCD and TPD would ensure that Rwanda had

avenues for leverage in the post-war Kivutian landscape.18 The RCD and TPD ensured

Rwandan de facto control of the Kivus and provided a platform for post-conflict

15 Kabare and Kagame were the key Rwandan players in the AFDL with Laurent Kabila. It is believed that their connection with Kabila and the founding of the AFDL was facilitated by US intelligence. For more on this see Wayne Madsen Testimony (2001) before Subcommittee on International Operations and Human Rights. May 17th Hearing. Available at: http://www. internationalrelations.house. gov/archives/107/iohr 107.htm. The AFDL consisted of Congolese Tutsi fighters (from both the Banyarwanda and Banyamulenge communities) as well as Rwandan Tutsi fighters. 16 Prunier corroborates this narrative stating that blurring the distinction between Congolese Tutsi and foreign Tutsi was a useful propaganda tool of the RCD, and in fact all parties to the conflict. Rwanda cited the threat o f former genocidaires to its own citizens as well as the Banyamulenge in South Kivu as the raison d’etre o f the RCD. Prunier: 157. 17 The Kivus: The Forgotten Crucible of the Congo Conflict (Brussels, Belgium: International Crisis Group, 2003), 20. 18 For a good discussion on the political role of the TPD see the excellent work by Denis Tull, "A Reconfiguration of Political Order? The State of the State in North Kivu (Dr Congo)," African Affairs 102 (2003).

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influence. The rapacious and locally discredited RCD caused Uganda to distance itself

from its erstwhile ally, Rwanda. The close ties between Museveni and Kagame broke

down following the collapse of the AFDL. Uganda was quick to note the complete lack

of local credibility of the RCD and how this undermined its operations. Uganda thus

sought to buttress its own interests and distance itself from the local rejection of the RCD.

It found a willing local partner in businessman, Jean-Pierre Bemba, who would act as an

auxiliary for Ugandan interests in the DRC. Bemba was a wealthy businessman from

northwestern DRC, and was able to mobilize popular support in a region traditionally

neglected by Kinshasa. Bemba was a businessman turned “political creature of

Museveni”.19 Uganda provided backing for its own proxy rebel movement, the

Mouvementpour la Liberation du Congo (MLC) under Bemba’s leadership. The MLC

gave Uganda a way to guarantee its own discrete interests in Eastern Congo.

The general instability in the region saw foreign wars exported to Congolese soil.

The conflict between the Forces Democratiques pour la Liberation du Rwanda (FDLR) -

comprised of former genocidaires and Congolese Hutu recruits - and the Rwandan

national army essentially amounted to a foreign war fought on Kivutian soil with both

groups targeting civilians. As a result, massacres and counter-massacres of ordinary

civilians suspected of supporting one or the other side regularly occurred. As noted by

Human Rights Watch, while the Rwandan government and FDLR both showed respect

for the laws of war inside Rwanda, neither exercised any restraint on Kivutian soil. 20

Aspects of the between the Buyoya’s Tutsi government and

19 Nzongola-Ntalaja, The Congo from Leopold to Kabila: A People's History, 231. 20 Rwanda: Observing the Rules of Law? (New York, NY: , 2001).

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Nkurunziza’s CNDD-FDD similarly played out on Congolese soil. Ugandan rebels

opposed to Museveni’s regime, including the LRA, also set up positions in Eastern DRC.

Although victimized and brutalized by conflict, many Congolese were not mere

innocent bystanders to conflict. Localized conflict simultaneously occurred alongside

foreign and inter-state wars. In particular, ethnic identities became salient and were often

crystallized along autochthon and non-autochthon lines. Similarly, ethnic Katangan-

Kasaian animosities, manifested as ethnic Lunda-Luba competition, emerged anew in the

Congo War climate.

The mix of external threats and localized competition throughout the war led to

expectations of secession, irredentism and/or partial annexation by neighbors. However,

daily life for all Congolese was neither chaotic nor unregulated. Communities that had

been left to their own devices under Mobutu adapted to the new climate of conflict and

chose not to seek the establishment of their own secessionist states. The politics of their

non-secession is explored in section five.

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THE POLITICS OF NON-SECESSION

The perceived (dis)order of the Congo War and the threat of territorial

disintegration spawned numerous studies examining models o f‘shadow states’,

‘privatized states’, ‘quasi-states’, and ‘state failure.’ In the face of political turmoil “the

common reaction, at the levels of both diplomatic practice and of intellectual analysis,

has been to reassert the primacy of statehood.”1 This emphasis on stateness led to

expectations of multiple secessionist bids in the DRC based on a mix of ethnic identity,

natural resource endowments, and territoriality.

A state-centered approach however hides the reality of local-level agency and

patterns of exchange. This section offers an alternative conceptual model for considering

the dynamics of secession. It argues that pre-conflict strategies of state extraversion

created a context conducive to localized initiative and regulation by social actors. Local

affirmations of empirical secession created a tension as Laurent Kabila’s quest for the

restoration of state credibility clashed with affirmed, localized credibility. This section

outlines cases of local-level empirical secession and concludes by considering other

political innovations, such as the renegotiation of constitutions and internal borders,

which mitigate the threat of secession in contemporary Africa.

1 Christopher Clapham, "Degrees of Statehood," Review of International Studies 24 (1998): 156. 56

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An Alternative Conceptual Model for Secession

Because of an analytical over-dependence on the state, secessions are primarily

viewed via a statist prism. Juridical and empirical notions o f the state serve as the

ontological basis for investigating secession. We are circumscribed by this “conceptually

debilitating crutch” that tends to collapse ideas of the state, authority, and territory. -5 Secession is most often analyzed using notions of juridical and empirical stateness. I

would like to propose an alternative framework that considers and distinguishes juridical

and empirical notions of secession. By adopting a secessionist lens texture is added to the

current discourse.

Juridical and empirical distinctions inform discussions regarding the politics of

statehood. Juridical statehood implies the legal, de jure recognition of a government’s

right to exercise control over a given territory. Empirical statehood implies actual, de

facto control that is effectively exercised over a territorial space.4 Juridical recognition is

not coupled with any responsibility to exert actual control over an entire territory. This

had traditionally created very little incentive for governments in Africa to affect empirical

statehood.5

2 Michael Barnett, "Authority, Intervention and the Outer Limits of International Relations Theory," in Intervention and Transnationalism in Africa, ed. Thomas Callaghy, Ronald Kassimir, and Robert Latham (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2001), 48. 3 For insightful analysis regarding African statehood in this regard see the seminal work by Robert Jackson and Carl Rosberg, "Why Africa's Weak States Persist: The Empirical and Juridical in Statehood," World Politics 35, no. 1 (1982). Robert Jackson, Quasi-States: Sovereignty, International Relations and the Third World (New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 1990).See also Clapham. 4 For a more in-depth discussion of the distinctions as they pertain to Africa see Jackson and Rosberg, "Why Africa's Weak States Persist: The Empirical and Juridical in Statehood." 5 For a good discussion on the sovereignty-responsibility tension see Francis Deng, "Reconciling Sovereignty with Responsibility: A Basis for International Humanitarian Action," in Africa in World Politics: The African State System in Flux, ed. John W. Harbeson and Donald Rothchild (Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 2000).

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When considering the politics of secession, we are most familiar with juridical

secession. Juridical secession implies withdrawal from the state and alternative, separate

sovereignty exercised over a hived-off territorial space with the intent of seeking formal

statehood.

Secession, however, can also be operationalized in a unique, empirical way. In

cases such as the DRC large segments of society decided to recede from the purview of

the state’s political control and its markets. These segments sought to disengage

themselves and purposefully chose not to inhabit the same political and economic space

as the state. Empirical secession implies disengagement without the intent of seeking

statehood.6

This proposed conceptual framework is not premised on a rigid differentiation

between the four scenarios. As table 1 indicates, juridical secession and empirical

statehood are different sides of the same coin.

6 There is a wealth of literature detailing gradual processes of disengagement from the state in the case of the Congo, particularly for the protracted Mobutu era. This concept of disengagement lends itself to framing ideas of empirical secession. For a good discussion on disengagement see Azayra’s chapter on Reordering State-Society Relations in: Naomi Chazan and Donald Rothchild, eds., The Precarious Balance: State and Society in Africa (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1989). Also Chapters one and eight of Michael Schatzberg, The Dialectics of Oppression in Zaire (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1988). For more on economic disengagement see Janet MacGaffey, Entrepreneurs and Parasites: The Struggle for Indigenous Capital in Zaire (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987). Also see Janet MacGaffey, "Fending for Yourself: The Organization of the Second Economy in Zaire," in The Crisis in Zaire: Myths and Realities, ed. Georges Nzongola-Ntalaja (Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press, 1986).

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Table 1: An Alternative Conceptual Framework: Juridical and Empirical Statehood and Secession

Statehood Secession

Elements Elements • Territory • Territory • Formal sovereignty • Alternative sovereignty • External recognition and legitimacy (UN• Establishment of alternative political, legitimated) institutional and bureaucratic structures • Government recognized as legitimate separate from those at the ‘center1 Juridical purveyor of the use of • The creation of an alternative public (de jure) violence/coercion sphereintended to be emancipated • Access to IFI funding from the society it regulates (may also • Right to conclude bilateral and operate according to a neopatrimonial multilateral agreements logic) • Government: Political and institutional • Degree of internal legitimacy structures (whether a facade or Emphasis functionally adept) • Local-level demands for self- • Government: A bureaucracy (whether determination and recognition of emancipated from society or defined alternative structures according to a neopatrimonial logic) Examples Emphasis • South Sudan (pre-Naivasha • Political elite and capital-city leadership agreements), Kurdistan, Palestinian Examples territories under PLO government, • United States, , Ethiopia, Katangan secession of the early 1960s Morocco, Malawi etc.

Elements Elements • Territory • Territory • Alternative sovereignty • No claim to/for sovereignty • Establishment of alternative political, • Localized legitimacy institutional and bureaucratic structures • Communal ties or sense of belonging Empirical separate from those at the ‘center’ • Regulation by private and communal (de facto) • The creation of an alternative public spheres sphereintended to be emancipated • No attempt at establishing an from the society it regulates (may also emancipated and distinct public sphere; operate according to a neopatrimonial no creation of discrete political, logic) institutional and bureaucratic structures • Internal/localized legitimacy Emphasis Emphasis • Local-level dynamics distinct from the • Elite-level leadership and regulation of ‘center’ society Examples Examples • in the late 1990s, the • South Sudan (pre-Naivasha Kivus, Hamas regulated Palestinian agreements), Kurdistan, Palestinian territories during the 1980s, Amish territories under PLO government, communities in the USA Katangan independence of the early 1960s

Distinguishing empirical secession from empirical statehood is analytically useful

and indeed important in the case of the DRC. To operationalize the distinction, the cases

of Katangan secession during the 1960s and Kasai during the late 1990s are instructive.

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Chabal and Daloz note that the modem state, in its various incarnations, “depends

above all on the gradual emancipation of established political structures from society.”7

Empirical statehood and juridical secession would imply established political,

institutional, and bureaucratic structures distinct from their counterparts at the ‘center’.

Ideally, such structures would have sought to emancipate themselves from society in

order to regulate day-to-day private life from a discrete public platform. As Clapham

notes “central to the idea of statehood has been its public character.”8 These structures

would serve as an alternative to their counterparts at the ‘center’ and would also enjoy

local recognition and legitimacy. The Katangan government of the early 1960s that

operated under the leadership of Moise Tshombe serves as an example of empirical

statehood and juridical secession. Alternative political structures distinct from those in

Kinshasa were established. The empirical stateness of Katanga was characterized by such

alternative institutions and popular legitimacy within Katangan society.

Empirical secession, on the other hand, implies a choice to break-away from the

central political system and organize day-to-day life in a manner that is inherently linked

to social pressures and society; empirical secession is not defined by political super­

structures emancipated from society, it is secession for, and by society itself. There is no

distinct alternative public sphere, the private sphere and non-state actors take it upon

themselves to organize and structure the society and communities that they are inherently

a part of. South Kasai during the late 1990s serves as an example of empirical secession.

Much of South Kasaian social life was structured and organized by non-state actors,

7 Patrick Chabal and Jean-Pascal Daloz, Africa Works: Disorder as Political Instrument (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1999). 8 Clapham: 154.

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notably Miba and the Catholic Church. Unlike statehood, empirical secession does not

have a public character. Neither Miba nor the Church were emancipated from the society

they served, but both created conditions of service provision and social regulation

without the creation of discrete political institutions to do so. Similarly, business

communities and religious organizations in the Kivus took it upon themselves to manage

and regulate aspects of social life, such as education, in the absence of the state.

Differentiating the subtleties of empirical statehood and empirical secession

allows for local-level dynamics to be taken into account. Contemporary analysis

myopically focuses on notions of statehood and the discourse of sovereignty to explain

juridical secession or the lack thereof, all the while neglecting very real, localized

patterns of empirical secession. The work of Englebert clearly demonstrates this focus.

Englebert argues that the likelihood of secession is dependent on a calculus of the

incentives and costs associated with sovereignty.9 Reno similarly states that “arguably,

warlord authorities in Congo possess the capability to create separate states by virtue of

their de facto control. Yet, the current attraction of existing sovereignty as a political

resource gives.. .strong incentives not to challenge the sovereignty of recognized

states.”10 This emphasis on notions of statehood and sovereignty zooms in on the

motivations that may drive or restrict political elites of potential secessionist movements;

however, it negates the local-level manner in which empirical secession might be

exercised. Englebert and Reno essentially argue that the weak sovereign state acts as a

resource to kleptocratic elites at the center as well as predatory leaders of challenger

9 Englebert and Hummel, "Let's Stick Together: Understanding Africa's Secessionist Deficit." 10 Reno, 172.

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groups. Englebert argues that rebel leaders in the DRC failed to activate secessionist

claims based on this rationale that they too benefited from a weak sovereign state. I

would concur with him that this does in part explain the secession deficit.

While I agree with Reno and Englebert’s assessment of the varied benefits that

sovereignty offers official and rebel elites, it is important to take stock of the local and

mass-level dynamics of the Congo. Englebert’s investigation into the Congo War’s

secessionist deficit attempts to do so. He illustrates this facet of his argument by

highlighting the instrumentality of poor infrastructure (both a function and indicator of

state weakness). He uses the example of poorly-maintained, pot-holed roads that allow 11 19 the ‘ cadets sociaux’ to benefit from impromptu road blocks and “maintenance taxes”.

In explaining the lack of calls for secession at the mass, poverty-stricken level Englebert

develops what I call his “predictability thesis” - the state, no matter how predatory and

violent, offers ordinary people a degree of predictability. This argument is worth quoting

at length:

.. .the weak state is not only an instrumental resource for predatory human relations; it also represents an intrinsic resource to individuals at the bottom of the social hierarchy. For grass-root Congolese.. .the state remains a crucial resource to the extent that it offers a minimum level o f certainty about public life, the opportunity to form relatively stable expectations about where power and resource lies.. .political uncertainty, warlords, insurgencies and the like, on the other hand, blur the cards of politics for common people, and complicate if not endanger their daily lives. State stability is thereof an intrinsic resource... Combined with the fact that oppressed people who are pre-occupied with survival on a daily basis cannot be assumed to undertake revolutions, this helps account for

11 Borrowing from Bayart terminology, Englebert notes that such cadets are not part of Congo’s elite, but at the bottom of the social and class scale. Englebert, Why Congo Persists: Sovereignty, Globalization and the Violent Reproduction of a Weak State. 12 To quote Englebert in this regard: “their actions show them to be predators who use one effect o f state incapacity - bad roads- - as the instrument o f their predation.”

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the widespread distribution of nationalist sentiments among the population and for their reproduction at a time of failing statehood 13

While this argument is attractive and seemingly persuasive, it is worth

challenging on a couple of fronts. First, let us challenge his assumption that oppressed,

survival-oriented people cannot undertake a revolution or secession. This assumption is

the political equivalent of arguments that posit that poor people cannot care about the

environment because they are pre-occupied with survival. The historical cases of

pioneering local-level environmental leadership in places such as Bolivia prove quite the

opposite.14 Similarly, sustained secessionist movements by the Tigreans and Southern

Sudanese, among the most impoverished on the continent, show that material wealth or

security is not a prerequisite when agitating for political change and recognition.

Englebert is essentially arguing on a material basis for something that is perhaps non­

material in nature - such as the need for cultural rights and recognition.

Second, he argues that the pre-existing sovereign state created some sense of

predictability and perverse security for the poverty-stricken Congolese masses. This

argument does not lend itself to replication outside of the DRC. If such an argument were

well-grounded, one could similarly argue that we had no need to worry about East

Timorese secession since the Suharto regime offered the poor masses a sense of

predictability and security. Moreover, in the case of the DRC it is hard to support the

13 Englebert, Why Congo Persists: Sovereignty, Globalization and the Violent Reproduction of a Weak State. Emphasis mine. 14 For an excellent in-depth and critical discussion of these theories of ‘environmental privilege’ see Paul F. Steinberg, Environmental Leadership in Developing Countries : Transnational Relations and Biodiversity Policy in Costa Rica and Bolivia, American and Comparative Environmental Policy (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2001).He uses quantitative, survey and qualitative data to refute the posited relationship between wealth and environmental concern.

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argument that the Congolese masses enjoyed any state sponsored security or stability

after 1998. Nonetheless, the basic premise of this argument is somewhat compelling in

the DRC case: poverty-stricken people pre-occupied with survival do have much more

reason to be risk-averse. The lack of calls for juridical secession (an inherently risk-

embracing undertaking) might be in part explained by this psychological sense of

security and rootedness that the state creates.

While there were no resounding calls for juridical secession at the mass-level, I

would like to put forward an alternative argument to that of the prevailing discourse -

people chose to exercise secession, just not in the manner that the world expected.

Congolese secession was empirical in nature and not juridical. Englebert’s arguments

may explain some of the reasons why juridical secession did not occur: the

instrumentality of sovereignty, and the predictability of statehood. There may also be

other reasons, such as a lack of leadership, the collective memory of a brutal state,

contentment with the empirical affirmation of secession, and/or disenchantment with the

juridical legacies of statehood in the context of the Congo.

The strategic purpose of this section is to demonstrate the empirical secessions

that occurred in the Congo: private and communal actors, intricately a part of the society

they regulated, structured day-to-day life in enclaves that chose to distance themselves

from the state. The people-centered approach of an empirical secession framework gives

voice to local, mass-level realities of the DRC. In examining cases of ‘invisible

governance’ the question of why empirical secession did not galvanize its juridical

counterpart will also be explored.

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The Canvas for Empirical Secession: Strategies of Extraversion and State Inversion

The Mobutist state’s political legacy was one of regime survival according to “the

four Ps - patrons, pillage, prophets and prayers”.15 Mobutu never displayed any sense of

internal accountability to the Congolese people, however, his social engineering

campaign of ‘Zairianization’ indicates an attempt at mustering a semblance of domestic

legitimacy. As one commentator noted, “Mobutu was the fruit of a Western ideological

war; he was more answerable to external powers than to the internal communities of the

DRC.”16 To cushion himself against his obvious domestic political and economic failure,

Mobutu relied on external resources to sustain his regime and repress the Congolese

population. Mobutu was a master at employing strategies of state extraversion. State

extraversion occurs when rulers build relationships with an external focus to compensate • 17 for their weak internal legitimacy and empirical stateness.

State-society relationships under Mobutu were characterized by coercive

networks. Peripheral areas were kept in check by strategically using local strongmen and

traditional leaders to ensure regime survival. As external funding began to dry up in the

post-Cold War environment, state resources were strategically concentrated in wealth-

generating enclaves. If enclaves were funneling money to Kinshasa, Mobutu was quite

content to leave them to their own devices as long as they did not cross the line in terms

of challenging his rule. While it is widely recognized that Mobutu’s regime never

15 Callaghy, "From Reshaping to Resizing a Failing State? The Case of the Congo/Zaire," 18. Also for more on prophets and prayer aspects see Georges Nzongola-Ntalaja, ed., The Crisis in Zaire: Myths and Realities (Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press, 1986). 16 Confidential interview, Washington DC, October 2006 17 Jean-Francois Bayart, The State in Africa: Politics of the Belly (New York, NY: Longman Publishers, 1993).

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displayed even the most rudimentary features of empirical statehood, toward the end of

his rule even his juridical claim to stateness was slipping. The international stamp of

sovereignty, control of the capital city, was barely in place as Mobutu left coercive forces

in Kinshasa and retreated to Gbadolite, his hometown near the border with the Central

African Republic during the last few years of his rule.

Upon assuming power, Laurent Kabila was more sensitive to considerations of

popular legitimacy than his predecessor and as a result attempted to reconfigure state-

society relationships. Kabila also turned to traditional structures and tried to incorporate

them into the state apparatus. Like Mobutu, he hoped that they would serve as the state’s

acolytes in areas where a formal state presence was not established. His reform plans for

social reconfiguration were cut short by the formal outbreak of war in 1998.

Kabila, based on his historic exposure to revolutionary and Marxist rhetoric,

envisioned a state-society dialectic strongly influenced by popular politics. Despite the

outbreak of war, Kabila did attempt to continue his reform-minded social reconfiguration

program. His attempts at reconfiguring state-society relations were part of a wider agenda

to reshape the domestic political landscape and reassert internal legitimacy. To secure

domestic legitimacy, he undertook a general campaign of harassment against Tutsi

communities in the Congo and his conspiratorial tendencies and paranoia led him to

instrumentally use accusations of a ‘Greater Tutsi Empire’ as political justification for his

increasingly autocratic behavior. His social reconfiguration was inspired by his

1 o relationship with Muammar Gaddafi of Libya. In 1999, Kabila dismantled AFDL

18 During the Simba Rebellion Kabila had received training from Che Guevara and was also exposed to Maoist communism.

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structures and created Comites de Pouvoir Populaire (CPP), or popular peoples’

committees modeled on Libya’s system. State money was distributed to CPPs for public

works and development projects.19 Kabila also undertook an inventory of the bureaucracy

and attempted to undo the entrenched legacy of Mobutist patronage. While using

discourse to convince the outside world that the concerns of the Congolese were at the

heart of his regime, Kabila was as susceptible as the next African leader to the lure of

power. Callaghy accurately notes that if Kabila were truly seeking to ensure domestic

legitimacy and advance the concerns of ordinary Congolese he would have assumed the

90 • mantle of the CNS. Instead, upon assuming power Kabila was quick to admonish any

political alternative that did not center around him. As one Congolese noted, “Kabila was

quick to rebuke everyone and did not recognize those, such as Tshisekedi, who had

remained in the Congo throughout Mobutu’s regime and fought a war of principle

• 91 without guns.” Furthermore despite good intentions regarding state-society relations

and some fresh ideas, Kabila’s revolutionary vigor was anachronistic for many

Congolese. “In a post-Mobutu Congo, the time was not one for revolution, but rather one

• 99 for restoring and re-building, and Kabila was not the man for that.” When war broke out

anew, Kabila said that the war would be long and popular one. He thus tried to recruit

many young Congolese for the fight, envisioning them as the new, young revolutionaries.

However, this revolutionary fervor was misplaced and unappealing to a war-wary

19 Nest, 230-232. Reaction to the CPP vision was mixed. Political elites in Kinshasa were skeptical as it was eerily similar to Mobutu’s MPR while some NGOs lauded it for building infrastructure and creating a sense of togetherness. 20 Callaghy, "From Reshaping to Resizing a Failing State? The Case of the Congo/Zaire," 124- 125. 21 Interview, Johannesburg, January 2007 22 Ibid.

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population that had been on the bitter receiving end of Mobutu’s brutality and perverse

patrimonialism for decades.23

In the end, Kabila’s vision for social reformation did not receive adequate space

and time to develop and his paranoia resulted in a replication of Mobutist patterns of

political governance. Kabila succumbed to the same ethno- and familial-rule mentality as

Mobutu. Kabila’s cousin was appointed Interior Minister, his brother-in-law was

appointed Chief of Staff with Kabila’s son Joseph as his deputy, and his nephew was

Justice Minister.24 In addition to briefly reconfiguring socio-political relations, Kabila

also attempted to redesign patterns of economic governance.

Economic governance under Mobutu was characterized by extraction and

dependence on fixed mineral deposits, notably copper. Because these resources were

point-source and fixed, Mobutu could use his coercive machinery and the threat of

violence against the sector and its workers to ensure that they towed the Mobutu-line.

However, the collapse of the roof of one of Gecamines star performers in the early 1990s

meant that the regime had to increasingly depend on diamond sales. Part of the reason

why Mobutu’s regime collapsed was its inability to exert as much control, or effectively

use the threat of violence against a largely artisanal-based, informal industry.

Upon assuming power, Kabila earmarked agriculture as the engine for Congolese

growth and economic recovery. He also sought to increase state funding via a more

efficient tax system and effective administration. By 2000, only three percent of the

government budget was drawn from Miba and Gecamines revenue and seventy-five

23 Ibid. 24 Callaghy, "From Reshaping to Resizing a Failing State? The Case of the Congo/Zaire."

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percent of the budget was drawn from taxes and custom duties.25 Mobutu maintained his

neo-patrimonial system by placing cronies all along the production chain for minerals;

Kabila in turn attempted to recentralize the minerals sector and also reassert central

control over marketing mechanisms.

Kabila’s vision for economic governance was also short circuited. Despite his

prioritization of the agriculture sector, investment continued to flow to the minerals

sector and his attempts at nationalizing marketing mechanisms were quickly nipped in the

bud by a monopolistic De Beers. Moreover, by 2000 eighty percent of state revenue

was dedicated to the war effort leaving very little budgetary latitude to pursue any

structural reconfigurations of state-society relations and/or economic management

processes.

The “enforced legitimacy” of Mobutu was followed by Kabila’s very dubious

domestic legitimacy. At the elite-level, the actions of Kabila, rebel leaders and local

strongmen displayed much continuity with Mobutist tactics of patronage and clientelism,

neglecting any regard for internal legitimacy. This resulted in a dearth of systems of

coherence at the local-level for ordinary Congolese.

Despite attempts at changing patterns of political and economic governance,

Kabila could not secure his position in the face of internal competition and the outbreak

of war marked by foreign invasion. The legitimacy of traditional structures of authority

such as the chiefs had largely been undercut by conflict. Moreover, manipulation of

traditional structures by both Mobutu and Kabila had seriously damaged their local

25 Nest, 182. 26 Ibid., 193-197.

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legitimacy. As Tull, commenting on their role during the Congo War, states “chiefs are

caught between a rock and a hard place, since they are confronted with antagonistic

demands to which they cannot adequately respond. They are the focal point of non-state

and para-state actors who only superficially recognize their customary authority and do

not hesitate to subjugate them”.27

A legacy of predatory political and economic governance and the outbreak of

conflict in many respects facilitated state inversion - the state became increasingly

JO irrelevant to society. This process of state inversion and a social deficit in terms of local

systems of meaning provided the backdrop for processes of gradual empirical secession.

Empirical Secession; Cases of Invisible Governance

State inversion triggered the adaptive capacity of communities disenchanted with

the central state. Adaptation translated into localized systems of invisible governance

9Q where informal frameworks for justice, morality, and social balance were created.

Empirically, communities seceded from the state and its skeletal regulatory capacity.

Such disengagement from the state was not spurred by conflict but had been continually

occurring in tandem with the gradual processes of state inversion. The empirical

character of Congolese secession can be determined only be investigation and not

27 Denis Tull, "A Reconfiguration of Political Order? The State of the State in North Kivu (Dr C o n g o African Affairs 102 (2003): 440. 28 J Forrest’s concept of state inversion as referenced in Paul Kingston and Spears. Ian K., eds., States-within-States: Incipient Political Entities in the Post-Cold War Era (New York, N Y : Palgrave McMillan Publishers, 2004). 29 The term ‘invisible governance’ as coined by David Hecht and Maliqalim Simone, Invisible Governance: The Art of African Micropolitics (Brooklyn, NY: Autonomedia, 1994).

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definition. By investigating the texture of empirical secession concrete social conditions

are accounted for whereas juridical notions neglect substantive, social behavior.30

The Kasaian Case of Empirical Secession

During the 1990s and for the duration of the Congo War, Kasai displayed an

extraordinary degree of autonomy. Non-state actors, in particular the Catholic Church

and the diamond corporation Miba, were instrumental in organizing the society they were

inherently a part of. Centers such as Mbuji Mayi that were distant from zones of conflict

were more stable than areas under state control due to the provision of services and goods

by non-state actors. This made these centers extremely attractive to ordinary Congolese,

and as a result, cities such as Mbuji Mayi and Lubumbashi experienced rapid population

growth as those fleeing conflict and insecurity in state regulated areas sought economic

opportunities elsewhere. From 1986 to 2000, Mbuji Mayi experienced a three-hundred

percent growth in population.31 Various structural factors made Kasai a suitable region

for empirical secession: the ethnic pogroms of 1992 to 1993 which saw a return of

technically skilled Luba to Kasai; the managerial autonomy of Miba; the post-

Washington consensus aid paradigm focusing on non-state actors, and the influence and

strategic social concerns of key personalities such as Miba’s CEO, Jonas Mukamba and

the Archbishop of Mbuji Mayi.

In the early 1990s, Mobutu instrumentally manipulated ethnic tensions in the

Kasai-Katanga interface to stave off his main domestic challenger, Etienne Tshisekedi.

30 Jackson and Rosberg, "Why Africa's Weak States Persist: The Empirical and Juridical in Statehood," 4. 31 Nest, 156. More stable rebel-held towns also experienced population growth. Lisala for example experience growth of 308 percent.

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Mobutu sought to undermine the agenda of the CNS and deflect

attention away from his regime’s inability to manage the Congolese economy. During the

colonial period and subsequent decades, mass Luba migration to Katanga had occurred to

provide a source of labor for the mining industry and Gecamines in particular. In 1992,

following the collapse of Gecamines and conditions of mass poverty and unemployment

in Katanga, Mobutu convinced the Lunda of southern Katanga that their poor situation

was due to Luba-Kasaian economic dominance in the region. The majority of skilled

technical workers and directors at Gecamines were Luba. Angry Katangan youth

committed ethnic pogroms against the Luba and there was the expulsion of some 1,3

million Luba to Kasai in the 1992 to 1993 period. The expelled, many of them

technically trained by Gecamines, forged socially conscious networks in Kasai.

Mukamba, in an effort to strengthen the technical performance of Miba, absorbed many

of the professional Luba that had fled Gecamines territory. Many of the other

technocratic expellees joined civil society initiatives for service provision, many of them

under the leadership of Tharcisse Tshibangu, Bishop of Mbuji-Mayi.33

Miba, although technically a parastatal corporation, exercised a wide degree of

autonomy, in large part due to the personality of its CEO, Mukamba. Following the

collapse of Gecamines in the early 1990s, Mobutu looked to Miba to be the regime’s new

cash-cow. Mukamba was preoccupied with the economic and social interests of the Kasai

region, and willingly transferred $1.5 to 2 million a month to Mobutu, and in exchange he

32 Katanga: The Congo's Forgotten Crisis. 33 Callaghy, "From Reshaping to Resizing a Failing State? The Case of the Congo/Zaire," 119.

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was left to operate as he pleased.34 This managerial autonomy created conditions for

empirical secession whereby Mobutu’s juridical state was essentially “bought off’ to

leave the region alone. Miba created the Miba Foundation, the company’s service

provision arm to provide for workers and their families. In the area, two out of the three

hospitals were Miba-run. Moreover, Miba and the Catholic Church founded a new

university in Mbuji Mayi when the state education system all but collapsed. These non­

state actors even secured corporate sponsorship from Sibeka, a Belgian outfit, for the

university’s geology department.35

Various social actors in Kasai formed a socially conscious network that attempted

to provide services such as healthcare, education and sanitation, which were normally the

purview of state actors. This network, in conjunction with communities, sought to

implement development projects and secure funding. An organization, the Conference for

Economic Development for East Kasai (Codekor) was established for this purpose.

•5 £ Among other projects, Codekor undertook plans for hydroelectric expansion. The

symbiosis between business and civil society was a localized response to structure day-

to-day life in the midst of conflict elsewhere in the country. Local sources of wealth grew

as Miba made efforts to harness and regulate the booming artisanal sector. Increased

wealth, coupled with population growth resulted in a much larger population in need of

basic services. These developments acted as a catalyst for the boom in civil society

34 Hugues LeClerq, Le Jeu Des Interets Miniers Dam Le Conflit Congolais (Brussels: Conflict Prevention Network, 1999). And Nest, 163. 35 Nest, 161. 36 Ibid. Mobutu had purposely not connected Mbuji Mayi to the Inga dam network that linked Kinshasa, Kanaga and Lubumbashi to the Inga dam electricity grid.

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organizations in Kasai.37 Flourishing civil society characterized the localized pattern of

empirical secession in Kasai. The shift of western donors in the post-Cold War era also

facilitated a degree of empirical secession not previously possible. Western governments

refocused their aid toward funding community initiatives and NGOs as opposed to State

Ministries. This allowed for non-state service provision on a scale previously

unimaginable.38

From the mid-1990s onwards Kasai exercised empirical secession. Ordinary

Congolese in Kasai decided to separate themselves from Kinshasa and opted for service

provision and social regulation by non-state actors. There was no attempt at creating

discrete political institutions to regulate society. Congolese responded well to non­

political regulation by communal social actors, including Miba, the Church, and civil

society. Their rejection of the central state is evidenced by their decision to reject

Mobutu’s new currency put in circulation in 1993. Kasai maintained its own currency

until 1998 when Kabila implemented a new national currency. Throughout the Congo

War, Mbuji Mayi was to a large extent able to insulate itself from conflict because of its

indifference toward actions of the central state and its affirmation of empirical secession.

The Kivutian Case

In the Kivus, service provision was similarly placed under communal control. A

history of conflict meant that traditional cultural values had been severely undermined.

The Catholic Church provided the Congolese with something to attach themselves to.

37 Ibid., 164. 38 For more on this see work by scholars such as Peter Uvin, Aiding Violence: The Development Enterprise in Rwanda (Bloomfield, CT: Kumarian Press, 1998).

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Communal actors and the Church were able to exercise a degree of empirical secession

while at the same time living under conditions of intense violence and foreign invasion.

The Kivus have always been a flashpoint in the DRC narrative. A history of

immigrations, competition over land, and shifting political allegiances characterize the

two provinces. The Kivus are also representative of the complexity of the Congo Wars as

international, national, and local conflicts coalesced and simultaneously played out in the

provinces. Before detailing the substance of Kivutian empirical secession, let us briefly

investigate why salient ethnic identities did not translate into juridical secession in the

Kivus.

Why Did Ethnic Saliencv Not Translate into Juridical Secession?

A thick web of ethnic and counter-ethnic alliances characterized the Congo War

in the Kivus. Alliances often shifted depending on the situation on the ground. Political

dictates trumped ethnic loyalty in the construction of these alliances; hence the

establishment of seemingly paradoxical coalitions. The alliance between North Kivu’s

Hutu Governor, Eugene Serufuli, and Kagame’s Tutsi government in Kigali as well as

the alliance between autochthonous Mai-Mai and Tutsi “Mai-Mai” indicate that ethnic

saliency did not equate with any sense of exclusive nationhood.

Once it become evident that Rwanda would not succeed in ejecting Kabila from

Kinshasa39, Kagame sought to ensure as much Rwandan influence in the Kivus as

possible. In an attempt to win over Hutu refugees and non-genocidaire former military

39 In August 1998, in a rather audacious cross-continental airlift, Rwandan units landed at the Kitona base in Western Congo and made an attempt at capturing Kinshasa. The last minute support of Angolan troops to Laurent Kabila stalled their advance. Weiss and Carayannis. Soon after this failed attempt, a stalemate was reached with Rwandan-backed RCD controlling much of the East.

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men, the Rwandan government sought to recruit Hutu moderates to its cause and dampen

the appeal of FDLR and other extremist groups. Since the RCD has a decidedly Tutsi

identity, the Rwandan government appealed to Hutu moderates through its parastatal

NGO; TPD. North Kivu’s Serufuli headed the TPD. TPD, on paper, was established to

facilitate the repatriation of Hutu refugees to Rwanda and the repatriation of Congolese

Tutsi to the DRC. Prior to the formal 2002 withdrawal of Rwandan forces from the

Kivus, TPD oversaw the resettlement of several thousand Congolese Tutsi in the

area of North Kivu. The TPD gave Kigali an alternative avenue for leverage to that of the

RCD, which was largely discredited in the local context. The TPD allowed Kigali to draw

on a local power base and ensure the continued recruitment of Hutu youths into local

defense forces under Serufuli’s command.40 The cooperation between this Hutu network

and Kigali might seem surprising; however, it reinforces how identity networks were

more contingent on political realities. This alliance allowed Kigali to pursue its political

and economic agendas in Eastern DRC. Thanks to the TPD-Rwanda network, “Kigali

will be able to draw on a local power base to address its security concerns and to wield

considerable political and economic influence in post-war North Kivu.”41

The conflict in South Kivu happened at three levels: local-level conflict initially

between Mai-Mai and the Banyamulenge; between Mai-Mai and the foreign-backed

RCD; and between the Banyamulenge and the RCD. Despite a common Tutsi base, the

Banyamulenge had tense relations with Kagame and the RCD. The RCD and Rwandan

national army had attempted to convince the Banyamulenge to reestablish themselves in

40 Tull: 447. 41 Ibid.

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Rwanda.42 The Banyamulenge who had been in the Congo for generations rejected this

suggestion, and as they had been trying to do for decades, sought to establish their

legitimacy in the DRC. Therefore, the Banyamulenge communities had no desire for

irredentist incorporation into Rwanda, but rather sought affirmation of their “ Congolite”,

Despite a history of suspicion and mutual antagonism, autochthonous groups and the

Banyamulenge joined in an alliance against the RCD in the later years of the Congo War

(2002-onwards). This led to an alliance between “Tutsi Mai-Mai”43 and “autochthon

Mai-Mai” against the external threat of the Rwandan-backed RCD.

These shifting alliances and political agendas are best understood when rooted in

the context of the social networks that they operationalized.44 What appeared on the

surface as atavistic violence and senseless, confused realignment was indeed the display

of a conflict that strategically utilized ethnicity for political purposes. Conflict was

superimposed on many of these pre-existing social networks. Political and military

alliances proved adept at manipulating ethnic identities. Moreover, while these ethnic

differences were crystallized, they did not equate with any particular sense of nationhood

which could have served as a legitimate foundation for juridical secession. These shifting

alliances and the absence of a sense of nationhood explain why ethnic salience in the

Kivus did not translate into juridical secessionism.

42 The reasons for this remain unclear. Purported Kagame wanted the larger Congolese Tutsi communities to reestablish themselves in Rwanda to inflate domestic Tutsi demographics. For a good discussion on this see Vlassenroot. 43 The most well-known Banyamulenge Mai-Mai group is that of Patrick Masunzu. The Kivus: The Forgotten Crucible of the Congo Conflict, 13. 44 Carayannis.

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The Substance of Empirical Secession in the Kivus

In the midst of brutal conflict, Kivutian communities still sought to regulate day-

to-day life and ensure their survival. The Kinshasa view of the Kivus as rebellious

provinces far removed from the capital meant that they were continuously ignored and

neglected by the formal state. The role of the Catholic Church as a service provider in the

face of a progressively collapsing state was especially marked in the Kivus.45 The Church

had large agricultural landholdings which provided a source of employment. It dominated

the education system, including its reasserted control over the University of Bukavu

following disastrous nationalization attempts in 1971. Furthermore, the Church set up a

teacher training college, and provided technical services including radio communications

and mechanical maintenance of tractors and road-grading equipment.46 It also supported

vocational training and local journalists. “The Bureaux d ‘Action Diocesains financed and

coordinated a whole bevy of women’s groups, youth groups, human rights groups which

together made up a very vibrant at times even overbearing civil society.”47

One Kivutian commentator noted that the adaptive capacity of communities in the

East amounted to a social revolution; “communities were self sufficient - the state was a

parasite of the people.”48 This aptly captures the localized dynamic of empirical

secession. This social revolution was clearly demonstrated in the education system.

Teachers and parents would collectively determine school fees for the year for each

family, and parents paid teachers directly. Another example is theInstitut Superieur de

Developpement Rural (ISDR) school in Bukavu. The ISDR was created by priests for

45 Prunier. 46 Ibid.: 156-157. 47 Ibid. 48 Confidential interview, Washington DC, October 2006

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young people as a channel for skills acquisition. The ISDR offers degree programs in

subjects such as Rural Development Studies and Regional Planning.49 Besides education,

communities and individuals in and around Bukavu would also collaborate to maintain

sewerage systems.

It was not only the Church and civil society organizations that shaped the

character of empirical secession in the Kivus. Business networks, actively a part of

Kivutian communities, were similarly involved in facilitating empirical secession from

the state. The city of Butembo in North Kivu serves as a sound example of empirical

secession by, and for a self-sustaining community. Butembo has a population of

approximately 100,000 people and is situated in the ancestral land of the Nande ethnic

group. Butembo, despite its size, has no public officials representing Kinshasa in the

city.50 Nande traders, prominent citizens, religious leaders, and civil society have

regulated day-to-day life. With financing from traders and the business community at

large, the University of Butembo was founded. Moreover, Butembo businessmen

establish SENOKI, an electricity company for North Kivu, in 2002. SENOKI plans to

build a hydro-electric power plant on the Ivugha River which will provide electricity for

the entire province.51

The Kivus were still able to achieve a minimal degree of empirical secession and

regulate day-to-day life despite mass insecurity and intense violence. Other areas such as

Lubumbashi in Katanga were also able to exercise a degree of empirical secession due to

community development projects by church bodies and civil society organizations that

49 Ibid. 50 Pourtier, 34. Refer to the maps in section two and four for a visual illustration of where the Nande ethnic group and the city Butembo are situated. 51 Ibid.

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were able to effectively tap into international financing in the post-Cold War aid

environment.

Why Did Empirical Secession in Kasai and the Kivus not Galvanize its Juridical Counterpart?

The Kasaian case provides a compelling example of empirical secession.

Communities in Kasai sought to distance themselves from the central state. They chose

endogenous actors, such as Miba, the Church, and civil society to regulate daily life

rather than opt for central mechanisms or, politically emancipated secessionist structures.

The Kivus also indicate that communities preferred endogenous, socially-connected

actors to regulate their daily economic and social fundamentals rather than disconnected

state mechanisms. In both cases, these regions were traditionally neglected by Kinshasa

and thus the state had little welfare to withdraw. Further, any withdrawal would have

been inconsequential to large segments of the population. This created an environment

ripe for empirical secession. “Ordinary Congolese learnt to distrust and avoid state

officials, and did their best to organize themselves such that they could minimize their

need for state actors. The stable economic and social elements in Congolese’ lives - the

things they could rely on - were invariably provided by non-state actors.” 53

The Kasaian Case

In the case of Kasai, various factors might help understand why empirical

secession did not translate into calls for juridical secession. The Kasaians were habituated

52 Nest, 135. 53 Ibid., 175.

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to state neglect. In the face of service provision by non-state actors, there was no severe

grievance against the state to mobilize juridical secessionist movements. There was also

no strong political leadership to rally calls for juridical secession. Prominent Kasaians

such as Jonas Mukamba who could conceivably have adopted the secessionist mantle

were constrained by other considerations. For one, Mukamba and the Kasaian elite were

inherently concerned with the socio-economic position of ordinary Kasaians. This was

prioritized over political considerations.54 Since socio-economic considerations were

prioritized, Mukamba and others had a vested interest in maintaining commercial activity

and wealth-generating employment to spur development. If a juridical secessionist

platform had been vocalized, not only would commercial activity haven been severely

disrupted, but the national army would have inevitably come after the Kasaians as it had

historically done.

Economically, Kasaians would have found themselves in a worse position.

Traditionally, secessionist movements are willing to forego economic benefits in light of

long time horizons for self-determination and the promise eventual economic

emancipation.55 In Kasai, Mukamba and other potential secessionist leaders were perhaps

unwilling to adopt such long time horizons and subjugate the Kasaians to protracted

conflict. Thus, the leadership imperative for juridical secession did not manifest itself in

Kasai.

On the mass-level, communities might have in fact preferred empirical secession

devoid of its juridical counterpart. Based on historical violence and brutality meted out

54 LeClerq, 24. 55 For example the secessionist movements of South Sudan and of the Tigreans demonstrate this.

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against the Luba, it is possible that Kasaian communities were simply not willing to

sacrifice lives in the name of juridical independence. Collective memory might have

displaced any desires for juridical secession. While it might be argued that the central

state and its coercive machinery were sufficiently weak that secession would not have

resulted in protracted conflict, but a quick military solution, Kasaians might simply not

have been willing to bear the costs. Additionally, they might have recognized that

secession did not feature in the realm of what was feasible; external recognition would

have been unlikely and outside powers might have in fact sought to reinforce territorial

integrity once again. Furthermore, perhaps non-state service provision better served the

needs of ordinary Kasaians. What incentive was there to pursue the establishment of their

own discrete political institutions if their only confrontation with such institutions were in

the context of Mobutu’s kleptocratic and brutal state? Statehood did perhaps not hold the

promise of great “independence dividends” for the majority of Kasaians.

The Kivutian Case

In the case of the Kivus, while most communities exercised a degree of empirical

secession, the compromised position of non-state service providers undermined the social

integrity of Kivutian empirical secession. This in turn prevented the galvanization of its

juridical counterpart. Empirical secession was comprised as non-state service providers

were perverted for political purposes.

Many politically motivated individuals used the guise of civil society to push their

agendas. The “humanitarian” TPD in North Kivu intimately linked to Governor Serufuli

is a prime example of this. By supposedly promoting the humanitarian concerns of

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refugees and facilitating repatriation, the TPD network was able to tap into resources

from international agencies and finance its veiled political agenda.56 Similarly, civil

society mutuelles in the Kivus took a more political stance than their counterparts found

in Kasai and elsewhere in the DRC. In the early 1990s, the first group of young educated

Banyamulenge established mutuelles and development organizations that mixed political

and developmental agendas.57 In 1992, Groupe Milima was established to promote local

development in the region and soon after L ’Union des Groupements des Eleveurs et

Agriculteurs de Fizi (UGEAFI) was established to promote development on the southern

part of the Itombwe plateau. Both these organizations established good ties with

European development organizations and donors as well as Protestant Church groups.

Funding facilitated development projects but also enabled these to groups to push their

political agenda for citizenship rights. Banyamulenge mutuelles were also established in

Uvira, Lubumbashi, Bukavu, and Kinshasa. Thus, while these non-state actors did create

a degree of empirical secession in the form of service provision and development, they

also acted as conduits for political agendas.

The Church in the Kivus similarly did not enjoy as much distance from political

matters. In other regions of the DRC it had managed to maintain its image as a people-

centered, politically ambivalent institution. This was not the case in the Kivus. Bishops

from both North and South Kivu were ethnically Tutsi which led to accusations of

political involvement in the conflict and vested interests. Moreover, unlike other areas of

56 Tull: 442. Tull in his fieldwork had information passed along to him that stated that TPD was receiving funding support from UNHCR via the Office of the Governor in North Kivu. 57 Vlassenroot. Payment for their loyalty to the ANC and central government during the 1963-65 Kivu secessionist movement amounted to educational opportunities for Banyamulenge. By the mid-1980s the first generation of university educated Banyamulenge had graduated.

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the Congo that were overwhelmingly Catholic, the Banyamulenge community in South

Kivu was ninety percent Protestant.58 This created a rather bizarre platform that

facilitated religious jockeying for influence in the region. Many Protestant-affiliated

groups in Europe and the USA were eager to channel funds to the Kivus to undercut the

hegemony of the Catholic Church in the DRC.

The Banyamulenge chose to not seek irredentist incorporation into Rwanda, but

rather sought to establish local legitimacy in the Congo. As Englebert aptly notes

regarding the Banyamulenge: “the dispossession by the Congolese state of their status as

participants in the system, a blatant case of horizontal inequality, has not resulted in a

will to escape the system, but rather in repeated desperate attempts to rejoin it.”59 At the

same time, direct exploitation by Rwanda and Uganda triggered local nationalist fervor

among autochthonous groups. This external threat dampened any separatist agenda that

might have been lying fallow among autochthonous groups. In the Kivus, a degree of

empirical secession allowed for many daily activities such as education and local media

to continue, however, both autochthonous groups and Congolese Tutsi were fighting for

reinsertion into a central system that had repeatedly ignored and disempowered them -

hence no calls for juridical secession.

Traditional leaders aligned with the nationalist Mai-Mai to fight for their

reincorporation into the structures of modem statehood. The RCD created systems of

civil administration to give the impression of empirical statehood. However, despite the

fa?ade of political structures meant to regulate day to day life, this attempt at empirical

58 Ibid.: 506. 59 Englebert, Why Congo Persists: Sovereignty, Globalization and the Violent Reproduction of a Weak State, 39.

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statehood did not lead to calls for juridical secession as the RCD had absolutely no local

reservoir of legitimacy. However, creating these guises of administration did ensure that

the RCD, and hence Rwandan interests, had a seat at the table during peace negotiations.

Despite a complete lack of local credibility, the RCD’s inclusion in the Inter-Congolese

Dialogue (ICD) enabled Rwanda to implement its strategy of de facto control over the

Kivus for military, political, and economic interests. The ICD also provided

autochthonous Mai-Mai with the opportunity to reassert their desire for inclusion into the

central system. The ceded the Mai-Mai thirteen seats in parliament,

the environment ministry, the Katangan governorship, and command of the ninth military

region of Kisangani.60 The marginalized Banyamulenge ‘Tutsi Mai-Mai’ and popular

defense militias of Katanga were however not included in the negotiations. Their

marginalization, despite maintaining key positions on the ground, continues to pose a

threat to sustainable peace in the Congo.

The political reasons why Kasaian and Kivutian empirical secession did not

galvanize calls for juridical secession are thus discrete and informed by local-level

processes of regulation and legitimacy particular to each case. In the case of Kasai, the

absence of a secessionist-minded leadership coupled with effective social actor service

provision negated the need to articulate a juridical secessionist platform. A history of

being on the receiving end of brutal and predatory state institutions also left the region

disinclined toward calls for emancipated, statist institutions in a secessionist state. In the

case of the Kivus, the perversion of social, non-state actors for political purposes coupled

with the need for recognition as legitimate political players in the Congolese landscape

60 Katanga: The Congo's Forgotten Crisis, 2.

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undercut the likelihood of juridical secession. Banyamulenge and other Rwandophone

communities as well as autochthonous groups actively desired reinsertion into the central

Congolese system rather than incorporation into a new secessionist state.

Conclusion

The cases of Kasai and the Kivus indicate that communities can choose to

empirically secede from central state regulation without necessarily giving voice to calls

for juridical secession. Non-state and social actors, inherently connected to their

communities, may trigger adaptive capacities to regulate daily life. These cases also

indicate the various shades that empirical secession may assume. Kasai displayed a much

more entrenched sense of empirical secession than did the Kivus. An investigation into

the substantive behavior and social reality of Congolese communities indicates that it is

not merely a calculus of the benefits and costs associated with juridical secession that

determine how people organize themselves. While a grounded appreciation of what is

feasible and likely to receive external and internal recognition is obviously active in the

Congo, so too is a realization of the degree of independence communities can achieve via

innovative approaches to governance. Thus, many communities in the Congo did secede

and escape the formal purview of the state - they just chose to do so in a non-juridical,

unexpected manner. Empirical secession allowed many communities to rediscover

localized geographies of hope.

The intricate local-level dynamics of empirical secession for cases such as Kasai

and the Kivus point to a deeper push-and-pull tension that is often at play when

considering secessionist deficits. The exercise of empirical secession is determined by a

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delicate and case-specific tension between purposive choice and local initiative to assert

empirical secession, and forced adaptation and creative capacity driven by the reality of

state failure. In the cases of Kasai and the Kivus, as I would hazard it is with most other

cases of empirical secession, it is a unique interaction that is part choice and part forced

adaptation. The decision at the mass and local-elite level to pursue empirical secession is

thus a strategic outcome based on variations in the constraints imposed by the relative

weakness or strength of central institutions and variations in the degree to which local

agency can be exercised.

The politics of non-secession indicate that substantive and localized systems

during times of conflict are often the result of an interplay between state-society tensions

and local-level agency. Despite conflict, communities in the DRC grappled with political

considerations of legitimacy, credibility, and recognition. Section six will consider the

economic dimensions that help explain non-secession.

Alternative Political Tools of Non-Secession

While this study is concerned with the dynamics of non-secession during the Congo War

of 1998 to 2003, it is worth briefly mentioning the innovative political tools of non­

secession which have subsequently been used to further mitigate any threats of juridical

secession in the Congo and elsewhere in Africa.

When examining the politics of non-secession, many analysts draw on arguments

premised on the sacrosanct nature of African borders. While this argument does help us

understand the lack of secession in Africa; it rests on normative aspects of state-building

and ignores dynamic, internal processes within the state-society interface that shape

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political order. Specifically, such arguments ignore the internal discussions that occurred

between political classes and social actors as many African societies determined new

social contracts in the aftermath of conflict. The provisions of such new social contracts

found their voice in renegotiated constitutions. For example, new constitutions in

Namibia (1990), South Africa (1996), Nigeria (1999), Rwanda (2003), Burundi (2005),

and Sudan (2005) indicate that constitutional consultation between non-state and state

actors may be used as a political tool to make secession even less likely. Popular

consultation with civil society actors is often the mainstay of such processes of

constitutional development. The Inter-Congolese Dialogue is the quintessential example

of this. Such popularly-driven processes contrast sharply with the elitist bias of peace

processes during the immediate post-colonial and Cold War period.

While African borders still remain relatively non-negotiable, constitutional

arrangements to negotiate internal borders have been used to further mitigate the

likelihood of juridical secession. The use of constitutional accommodation is

characteristic of innovation in African state- and peacebuilding processes. Many of the

abovementioned constitutions redrew administrative or provincial borders to more

closely reflect ethno-regional realities. The 2006 Constitution of the DRC is a prime

example here. This constitution provides for devolution of political and economic power

to the provinces. The new proposed provincial boundaries for the DRC also attempt to

capture ethno-regional realities. Constitutional arrangements create conditions for local

accountability. Provincial governments will now be judged on their performance, and

blame can no longer be shifted to Kinshasa - thus dampening any potential secessionist

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platform of grievance against the center. New constitutional arrangements elsewhere on

the continent employ similar political frameworks.

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THE ECONOMICS OF NON-SECESSION

Many commentators predicted secession in the Congo based on the abundant

economic opportunities to do so. The geographic concentration of rent-generating natural

resources provided groups with an incentive to carve out their own economically viable

states. These resources also provided a convenient source of funding for the war effort.

The idea of “war as a continuation of economics by other means”1 is infinitely appealing

in the case of the Congo and it is the economic dimensions of the conflict that have most

captivated scholars. Dominant discourse holds that behavior during the conflict was

largely motivated by a logic of greed, plunder, and predation, conforming to a Collier-

Hoeffler model of conflict onset and duration.

The purpose of this section is to detail the economic motivations that rendered elites and

the Congolese masses disinclined toward juridical secession. The cases of the Kivus and

Katanga, two regions that were most widely cited as potential secessionist hotspots based

on economic motivations, inform this discussion. The argument advanced here is that

economically, localized control of resources and rebel connections to the

1 David Keen, "Incentives and Disincentives for Violence," in Greed and Grievance: Economic Agendas in Civil Wars, ed. Mats Berdal and David M. Malone (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 2000), 27. 2 Scholars and diplomats alike have tended to focus on the economic and natural resource dimensions of the war. See for example to numerous Reports of the UN Expert Panel. For a well-balanced discussion on the economic dimensions of the conflict see Michael Nest, Francois Grignon, and Emizet F. Kisangani, The Democratic Republic of the Congo: Economic Dimensions of War and Peace(Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2006). 3 Leonce Ndikumana and Emizet F. Kisangani, "The Economics of Civil War: The Case of the Democratic Republic of Congo," in Understanding Civil War: Analysis and Evidence, Volume 1: Africa, ed. Paul Collier and Nicholas Sambanis (Washington DC: The World Bank, 2005). 90

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sovereignty-stamped hubs of Kigali and Kampala rendered secession unnecessary.

Rwanda and Uganda, as external partners, had no persuasive incentives to push for

secession. Further, the resource-rich Katanga was no longer the stellar economic prize

that it had been during the early 1960s. At the mass-level, it is argued that the Congolese

might have indeed had a preference and vested interest in maintaining a well-structured

informal economy rather than a regulated one under the purview of a secessionist state.

The Economics of Secession

Besides considering the economics of conflict onset and duration, Collier and

Hoeffler have also studied the political economy of secession.4 In their investigation they

denigrate the romantic notions of nationhood and calls for self-government, stating that

such notions often veil more blatant economic imperatives, or that it is economic

imperatives that galvanize a belated sense of nationhood and/or particularism. Based on

quantitative analysis, they find that: 1) natural resources are differentially likely to cause

secessionist civil wars; 2) levels of education are more important than income in

determining secession proneness; 3) the larger and more dispersed the population the

greater the risk of secession, and 4) higher ethnic fragmentation dampens secession

proneness. They find lower education levels among males to be significant and

hypothesize that the allure of natural resources is reinforced by popular ignorance - elites

are more likely to succeed in convincing uneducated masses of the exaggerated value of

resources. Elites tend to inflate the value of resources for political reasons. Based on their

4 Paul Collier and Anke Hoeffler, "The Political Economy of Secession," in Negotiating Self- Determination, ed. Hurst Hannum and Eileen F. Babbitt (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2006).

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model, regionally concentrated natural resources and the centrifugal population

distribution in the Congo would predispose it to secession. Yet, the most likely

candidates, Katanga, Kasai and the Kivus did not activate secessionist platforms.

When examining the economic dimensions of non-secession, like the politics

thereof, there are elite-level and mass-level reasons that account for the secession deficit.

Why did the various rebel leaders such as Jean-Pierre Bemba, , Azarias

Ruberwa, Mai-Mai leaders and others not espouse a secessionist agenda? Despite dire

economic conditions, why did ordinary Congolese not push for secession?

Elite Leadership: Economics of Non-Secession

The Kivus

When considering secessionist movements, Callaghy’s distinction between

“resizing” and “reshaping” agendas is useful. Resizing aspirations seek to change the

territorial contours of a state via secessionist, irredentist and/or annexation behavior;

whereas reshaping aspirations aim to change domestic political arrangements via

institutional or ideological transformation.5

Despite probable dreams of grandeur and annexation, Rwanda nonetheless

recognized the international condemnation that such action would elicit. Rwanda did

initially gage the international climate regarding potential annexation and/or irredentist

incorporation of Tutsi communities in Eastern DRC. Following initial incursions into

eastern Congo in 1996, Rwandan President Bizimungu suggested that Rwanda had

“reclaimed” territory. As Reyntjies notes, the president stated “if Zaire wants to send the

5 Callaghy, "From Reshaping to Resizing a Failing State? The Case of the Congo/Zaire."

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Banyamulenge back, it should also give us back their lands that used to be Rwandan.”6

At the same time, Kagame called for a ‘Berlin II’ conference to rectify African borders.7

Bizimungu and Kagame’s rather supercilious use of maps of ‘Greater Rwanda’ was not

well received internationally and increased local insecurity.8 The perception of a grave

external threat from Rwanda increased nationalist fervor in the East. This threat in part

explains the lack of autochthonous-based secessionist movements.

Since resizing aspirations were unfeasible, both Rwanda and Uganda (and their

respective auxiliaries, the RCD and MLC) settled for reshaping agendas. As has already

been noted: the RCD was established as a proxy for Rwandan security and economic

interests in Eastern DRC following the collapse of the AFDL alliance and the souring of

Kabila-Kagame relations and the MLC was established as a proxy for Ugandan interests

in the region. Both the RCD and MLC rebel groups, with extensive external influence

from Rwanda and Uganda, undertook reshaping aspirations during the war.

Reshaping agendas were manifest in the establishment of spurious RCD civil

administration institutions. These and other similar phantoms of empirical control

allowed the RCD to be in command of Kivutian and Iturian economies and localized

natural resource endowments. Noting that secessionist or resizing aspirations were

unfeasible, not to mention lacking a sufficient popular base, rebel groups in the East were

content to settle for reshaping programs which allowed them to maintain surrogate

6 Filip Reyntjens, "The Privatisation and Criminalisation of Public Space in the Geopolitics of the Great Lakes Region," Journal of Modern African Studies 43, no. 4 (2005): 589. 7 Ibid. 8 Filip Reyntjens and S. Marysse,Conflits Au Kivu: Enjeux Et Antecedents (Antwerp, Belgium: Centre for the Study of the Great Lakes Region, 1996). The authors critically investigate these claims regarding Rwanda’s territorial history. They find that in fact pre-colonial Rwanda was smaller than its modern-day counterpart.

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economic control on behalf of their external partners. Moreover, because goods could be

routed via the sovereignty-sealed hubs of Kigali and Kampala, rebel groups in the East

had no need to push for the creation of discrete, secessionist institutions to regulate

economic behavior.

The disparity between the productive capacity and export figures for Rwanda and

Uganda for certain resources adequately display the phenomenon. Between 1997 and

2000, Ugandan diamond exports increased by 640 percent and by 2000, Rwandan exports

were 350 percent more than the 1997 level.9 Similarly, in 2001, coltan was the largest

export for Rwanda, generating $44.5 million in revenue. Uganda’s gold exports also far

exceeded its productive capacity. In 2000, Uganda produced only 0.004 tonnes of gold,

yet exported 10.83 tonnes thereof.10 Thus, there was no need for secession or annexation

because of economic imperatives. Rebels and neighbors struck deal of perverse

accommodation that allowed goods to pass through Kampala and Kigali on toward the

international market. In a similar fashion, unscrupulous networks were maintained

between the government in Kinshasa and Zimbabwe. Zimbabwe, however, never created

local auxiliaries or proxy rebel groups in the Congo using the pretense of local

emancipation.11

It would be unfair to disparage the very real security concerns that Rwanda and

Uganda had at the onset of conflict, however, any local degree of sympathy for such

9 Nest, “The Evolution of a Fragmented State: The Case of the Democratic Republic of Congo”, 274. 10 Ndikumana and Kisangani. 11 It was the Zimbabwean National Defense Forces (ZDF) that established a presence in the Congo. While the ZDF did not use the guise of supporting local emancipation for its actions, it did manipulate SADC security rhetoric to justify its presence in the DRC and its very direct involvement in the conflict. Moreover, there were no Zimbabwean-Congolese ethnic communities that could provide the ZDF with a “self-determination” imperative for its actions.

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security concerns quickly evaporated following brutal fighting in Kisangani. Regardless

of initiating factors that sparked conflict, economic agendas came to play a pivotal role in

the conflict. Bloody military confrontation between Ugandan and Rwandan military units

in Kisangani in 1999, 2000 and 2001 amounted to competition over territory and resource

control. Both groups wanted to assert control over this strategic city and its airports.

Fighting over Kisangani convinced local Congolese that the conflict had little to do with

security concerns or the elimination of radical Hutu groups, but was primarily about

resource appropriation of Congolese assets.

The elite-level behavior of rebel groups in Eastern DRC conforms to Le Billon’s

typology of natural resources and conflict mode. Le Billon argues that the degree of

centralization and mechanization of production for resources (point vs. diffuse) and the

distance of the resource from the capital city (proximate vs. distant) inform the strategies

and tactics adopted by belligerents (conflict mode).12 Point resources such as oil and

kimberlite diamonds are likely to be capital-intensive and dependent on substantial

investment and technocratic management. Le Billon posits that if point resources are

distant from the capital, they are likely to induce secessionist conflict.

12 Le Billon.

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Table 2: Le Billon’s Resource-Conflict Mode Typology13

Resource Point-source Diffuse characteristics

Proximate Conflict mode: State Conflict mode: Peasant/mass Control/Coup d’etat rebellion Examples: Examples: Colombia (oil) El Salvador (coffee) Congo-Brazzaville (oil) Guatemala (cropland) Algeria (natural gas) Rwanda (coffee)

Distant Conflict mode: Secession Conflict mode: Warlordism Examples: Examples: Angola-Cabinda (oil) Sierra Leone (diamonds) South Sudan (oil) DRC (diamonds, gold) Bougainville (copper) Cambodia (gems, timber) Western Sahara (phosphate)

This typology adequately captures the dynamics at play for rebel groups in

Eastern DRC, notably the RCD and MLC. The diffuse and labor-intensive nature of most

of the diamond, gold and coltan deposits created conditions conducive to warlordism.

Moreover, because secession or annexation were politically unfeasible, and because of

collaborative ties with sovereignty-stamped Kigali and Kampala there was no economic

imperative for secession.

Katanga

Katanga, on the other hand, defies Le Billon’s hypothesized conflict mode. The

copper industry in Katanga was point-source and also heavily dependent on investment,

capital and mechanization, yet there was no secessionist bid during the Congo War.

Katanga was also relatively wealthier compared to the rest of the DRC. Collier and

Hoeffler posit that richer localities, as a national minority, may choose to create a

political agenda of separation when it is economically advantageous to do so. The

13 Ibid. Adapted from a more comprehensive table on pg. 36

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advantage of separation is that “at some point the rich would be better off if they could

redraw the boundaries of the tax authority so as to exclude themselves. They would lose

the public goods provided by the authority to its population, but would be able to provide

such goods themselves.”14 The political elite in Katanga did not recreate a secessionist

platform based on economic interests as it had done during the early 1960s.

The reason why elites did not re-activated a secessionist bid may be attributed to a

simple change in feasibility. Economically, it was not as feasible or beneficial to push for

a secessionist state in the 1990s as it had been in the early 1960s. In the early 1960s,

Katanga was one of the world’s foremost producers and suppliers of copper. Demand for

the commodity was also higher. Gecamines could not maintain its international

competitive advantage in the face of numerous structural challenges. The company

underwent numerous shocks and changes following cycles of nationalization,

privatization, and re-nationalization.

Due to lower levels of investment and low levels of technological replacement,

efficiency and productivity were at best sluggish by the early 1990s. Under Mobutu, very

little reinvestment and infrastructure maintenance occurred. Technological innovation in

electronics and other equipment also dampened global demand for copper. Moreover,

transportation costs increased sharply with the breakdown of the Kolwezi-Lobito railway

linking Katanga to Angola. This had been the quickest and cheapest transportation route

for Katangan minerals; the breakdown of the railway due to Angola’s civil war meant

that copper had to be re-oriented towards ports in and South Africa.

Moreover, the collapse of the roof on Gecamines star performer, the Kamoto mine in

14 Collier and Hoeffler.

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1990 greatly decreased output. The cost of bringing the mine back to operational capacity

would be prohibitive and the DRC has struggled to secure investment in the sector.

Investors are also more likely to invest in minerals such as diamonds and tin which yield

quick returns whereas investment in copper is a long-term endeavor that may take years

to turn a profit. Further, Katanga lost the monopoly it had on the resource during the

1960s and 1970s as mines in Chile, Indonesia, Australia and elsewhere were brought to

full-capacity for mining operations. The declining importance of the region’s resources is

captured by its contribution to state revenues. In 1974, Gecamines’ contribution

accounted for sixty-nine percent of state revenues, whereas by 2002 its contribution

constituted only five percent - a drop of more than ninety percent.15

Katanga thus did not constitute as fat a “prize” in the late 1990s as it did in the

early 1960s. Economically, it simply might not have been worth it to pursue secession

during the Congo War. There also was no strong foreign backer for Katangan secession

as there had been during the 1960s. In light of structural constraints and poor returns,

Belgium had found greener investment pastures.

At the elite-level, Katangan non-secession is also accounted for by political

considerations. Katanga was Laurent Kabila’s home province and thus generally

supportive of his regime in Kinshasa. Following the outbreak of war in 1998, Kabila was

quick to mobilize Katangan Popular Defense Militias (broadly akin to the Mai-Mai in the

East). These Katangan militias did not have an established legacy as their counterparts in

the East did. Kabila established the popular militias in the hope that they would deter

15 African Economic Outlook: Democratic Republic of Congo (Paris: OECD/AfDB, 2006).Also, by 2000, 35% of the world’s mined copper was from Chile.

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Rwandan forces, or their proxy the RCD, from taking Lubumbashi and thus isolating him

from his home province.16 Despite its rather low-profile in war-reporting, Katanga was a

flashpoint for conflict. The Katangan militias received no training and were armed

without much thought as to the havoc they would wreck. They have been responsible for

some of the worst atrocities in the region, and continue to pose a threat to peace. Unlike

their Kivutian counterparts, the Katangan militias were not included as relevant actors in

the Sun City talks. Joseph Kabila, despite his aim of disbanding and incorporating them

into the new national forces, has been unable to successfully woo them. These rather rag­

tag units continue to brutalize local communities and fight the new national army for

control of taxes, mining areas, and poaching opportunities.17

During the war, Laurent Kabila also agitated historic Lunda-Luba tensions in the

province which prevented any cohesive sense of “ Katanganese” identity from

developing. Such a cohesive identity could have served as the basis for secession.

Kabila’s inner circle was filled with members from his family and Luba ethnic group.

This was despite the considerable support he had received from the Lunda Katangan

Tigers. Military assistance from the Tigers proved pivotal in the AFDL’s capture of

Kinshasa. Once in power though, Laurent Kabila distanced himself from these southern,

Lunda elements and turned to his northern base. The accused master-mind of Laurent

Kabila’s assassination is a former Katangan Tiger and the failed coup attempt of June

2004 is also credited to southern Katangan elements in the presidential guard. Joseph

Kabila has taken little action to undo the entrenched northern bias. Besides the botched

16 Katanga: The Congo's Forgotten Crisis. 17 Ibid.

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attempt at ousting him in 2004, the national police and army arrested high-profile

southerners, including Tshombe’s son, in Lubumbashi in April 2005 in what they claim

was a pre-emptive move against a plotted coup attempt.18

At the elite-level, economic imperatives thus did not equate with secessionist

tendencies as predicted. In the East, rebel elites settled for reshaping agendas in light of

the political and economic unfeasibility of resizing aspirations. Furthermore, juridical

secession was simply not necessary considering connections to Kigali and Kampala

which negated the need to create separate, secessionist political institutions. In the case of

Katanga, the economic imperative of creating a stable enclave for the richest province no

longer reflected the reality on the ground. Katanga was no longer the stellar financial

prize it had been in previous decades and intra-regional fighting undermined any

potential for secession.

Mass Considerations: Economics of Non-Secession

Regardless of the motivations of political elites, it could be argued that at the

local-level poor economic conditions should have mobilized the mass aspirations for

secession. Because successive regimes were reliant on mineral rents and a coercive

machinery to maintain extraction, the central government had no need to create strong

institutions. This meant that Mobutu and others in Kinshasa were divorced from the

domestic economy.19 Reno argues that negligence in terms of economic management and

18 Ibid., 11. Tshombe’s son, Andre, had links to the estimated 14,000 Katangan Tigers that remain in Angola. He is believed to have engaged with them in 2004 on behalf of Joseph Kabila in an attempt to convince them to return to the Congo. 19 Displaying typical rentier state characteristics; except the DRC did not even provide social services or public goods as other rentier states do. For more on the institutional make-up of such states see

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institutional governance can in fact amount to deliberate action taken by a government to

undermine domestic economies and thus ensure personal enrichment.20 Economically, the

Congolese masses had legitimate grievances that they could level against the center. Yet,

discontent with the economic situation did not translate into secession movements. I

would argue that the reasons for this are two-fold: 1) in some cases, communities had so

thoroughly adapted to informal, unregulated economies that there was no need or desire

for a state, and 2) paradoxically, in the case of Eastern DRC, there was no mass-level

secessionist fervor because communities longed for, and needed apolitical regulation of

economic commodities, notably citizenship rights, land distribution, and property rights.

Communities in the DRC adapted to state neglect. The kleptocratic tendencies of

Mobutu meant that the state was completely vacuous in terms of providing public goods

to its populace. During the 1970s and 1980s, some state revenue had been allocated to

social services and agricultural support; however, by 1992, over ninety percent of state

revenue was allocated to the Presidency. 0 1 “Despite state incapacity and war, life in the

late 1990s was neither chaotic nor violent for all Congolese.”22 State neglect reinforced

centrifugal tendencies with local, informal economies orienting themselves to hubs in the

East such as Dar-es-Salaam or hubs in the South such as Durban and Beira. Communities

thus preferred an external orientation. They chose to conduct trade with an external

orientation rather than strengthen internal economic linkages. This phenomenon of

Terry Lynn Karl,The Paradox of Plenty: Oil Booms and Petro-States (Los Angeles, CA: Univeristy of California Press, 1997). 20 William Reno, "Shadow States and the Political Economy of Civil Wars," in G reed and Grievance: Economic Agendas in Civil Wars, ed. Mats Berdal and David M. Malone (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2000). 21 Nest, “The Evolution of a Fragmented State: The Case of the Democratic Republic of Congo”. 22 Ibid., 4.

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“peripheralization”; where internal trade becomes too risky and is replaced by trans-

border trade aggravates capital flight and import dependence.23 Border towns were thus

transformed into “internal gateways”. The local economy in the DRC underwent a

continual process of informalization, including the dollarization of much of the economy

as the national currency all but collapsed.

In the Congo, the economic marginalization of border areas by successive central

regimes empowered informal arrangements and created an economic tradition of

resistance to central authority.24 This resistance to notions of statehood rendered

communities similarly antagonistic to secessionist calls for the creation of yet another set

of supposedly independent and empowered institutions to manage daily economic life. In

many respects, on an economic level, communities simply did not want a state, be it a

central or secessionist one, as they were quite content with established practices of an

informal economy. As Le Billon notes, “many of these informal economies are morally

benign and socio-economically profitable. Furthermore, the possible criminal character of

some activities needs to be judged according to local legitimacy criteria”. 25 Informal

economies often provide welfare benefits to communities when the state has failed to

9 f\ provide such benefits.

23 Philippe Le Billon, "The Political Ecology of War: Natural Resources and Armed Conflict," Political Geography 20, no. 5 (2001): 571. 24 Neil Cooper, Michael Pugh, and Jonathan Goodhand, War Economies in a Regional Context: Challenges o f Transformation (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2004), 37. 25 Le Billon, "The Political Ecology of War: Natural Resources and Armed Conflict," 576. 26 Kisangani argues that “the gains from illegal trade were captured by local communities or intermediaries who built and maintained civic entitlements, such as public schools and even roads. Illegal trade even came to be a form of political and economic resistance that enabled many to flourish at the expense of Mobutu’s predatory state.” Nest, Grignon, and Kisangani, The Democratic Republic of the Congo: Economic Dimensions of War and Peace, For more on informal economy and traders also see Janet MacGaffey and Remy Bazenguissa-Ganga,Congo-Paris: Transnational Traders on the Margins of the Law (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2000).

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On an economic front, one reason for the lack of mass-level secessionist calls was

thus a local preference for the informal economy. The state had severely weakened its

capacity to regulate and distribute wealth and had withdrawn from playing a constitutive

part in the economy of day-to-day life. These informal structures created distinct

socioeconomic systems of meaning for most communities who therefore preferred their

continuance to the establishment of an alternative, formal economy in a secessionist state.

Pugh and Cooper aptly capture this reality when they state that “informal economies not

only deny official authorities control over resources but also maintain an alternative

socioeconomic system of employment and trade that, in turn, generates vested interests in

it continuity.”27

In addition to a preference for the informal trans-border economy in Katanga,

mass-level inter-regional ethnic antagonisms between the Luba and the Lunda had been

fueled by Mobutu and Kabila and thus prevented a collective Katangan voice for

secession. At the mass- and elite-level, inter-regional competition thus trumped the need

to defy the central state in Kinshasa or create a separatist one. This competition was in

many cases economic in nature as groups fought for control and access to important

economic resources. Engleberf s generic assessment is relevant to the Katangan case of

non-secession; “grass-root Congolese prefer [therefore] to voice their local cultural

identities in competition with each other for access to local resources, rather than in

defiance of the state itself.”28

27 Cooper, Pugh, and Goodhand, 35. 28 Englebert, Why Congo Persists: Sovereignty, Globalization and the Violent Reproduction of a Weak State, 6.

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The Collier-Hoeffler model for secession posits that lower levels of education

among males is one of the variables that increases the likelihood of secession. They

hypothesize that this correlation might be explained by the idea that uneducated masses

are more easily swayed toward romantic notions of nationhood and of exaggerated gains

to be had from regionally concentrated resources. While education levels disaggregated

by region are not available for the DRC, it is not inconceivable to conjecture that

education levels in Katanga and Kasai are higher than elsewhere in the country. Both

these provinces have vibrant universities and industries in need of skilled and

technocratic employees. In addition to the unfeasibility of an economic platform for

secession of Katanga in the 1990s, it could be argued that the relatively more educated

mass population of the province was less inclined to believe secessionist rhetoric

appealing to notions of “Katangan-ness” or exaggerated claims regarding the booty to be

had from the copper industry.

The economic reasons for non-secession in the East are very different to those in

other parts of the country. Some business communities in the cross-border regions, such

as the Nande trader networks, clearly preferred the informal economy and would have

resisted attempts at regulation whether from the central state or secessionist institutions.

While communities might have preferred the informal economy, many insecure

communities in the East in fact very much wanted reincorporation into a central system.

Many of these communities had no economic imperative to push for secession

and rather desperately wanted some form of an apolitical ‘leviathan’ to regulate and

manage the contentious issues of citizenship, land distribution, and property rights.

Autochthonous groups felt that historically the governments of Mobutu and Kabila had

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favored Rwandophone communities at their own expense. The Rwandophone

communities (particularly the Banyamulenge) in turn felt that the Congolese state had

empowered and then dispossessed and disenfranchised them. Neither the autochthonous

groups nor the Rwandophone communities felt validated as legitimate participants in the

system. This reality of horizontal inequality and perceptions of blatant ethno-favoritism

by both groups in the Kivus created mass instability which fed into the conflict. Starr’s

comments on sub-Saharan Africa in general are particularly relevant to the Kivus: “in the

absence of neutral or reliable mechanisms by which to seek redress, perceptions that

some identity groups had better access to economic opportunities and/or superior control

of resources became increasingly problematic, creating unmet needs for validation among

groups that felt themselves disfavored.”29 Mai-Mai militias, many of them with close ties

to traditional leaders, were fighting on a nationalist platform, seeking to expel

foreigners• TO and looking for recognition of traditional structures by the central system.

The Mai-Mai had a reservoir of local legitimacy and enjoyed sympathy from other parts

of the country. 31 Banyamulenge militias were fighting for recognition as equal and

29 Martha Starr, "Growth and Conflict in the Developing World: Neo-Liberal Narratives and Social-Economy Alternatives," Review of Social Economy, no. 2 (2006): 217.Emphasis mine. 30 Of course, as noted earlier, Mai-Mai were fighting “veritable” foreigners that were Rwandan citizens and members of the Rwandan National Forces fighting on Congolese soil as well as conflating the term ‘foreigner’ to include Rwandophone Congolese communities. Ntzongola-Ntalaja commenting on the Mai-Mai offers his perspective stating that they lack leadership and training and represent remnants of tribal mentality. He also notes that their use of “indiscriminate violence against innocent Banyamulenge and other Congolese Tutsi who have nothing to do with Rwanda’s invasion and occupation of our country, are practices that are not compatible with the national character o f resistance. Working with the Mai-Mai to correct these errors.. .and to make them more effective in providing security to their respective local communities is a patriotic duty of the highest order.” Nzongola-Ntalaja, The Congo from Leopold to Kabila: A People's History, 243. 31 Every single research interview conducted confirmed the local popularity of Mai-Mai militias. Their domestic credibility is boosted by the fact that they receive no funding from external sources or the central government and are wholly reliant on their own communities. They are perceived as genuinely protecting local resources and needs rather than acting as a proxy for a “bigger brother”. However, this popular legitimacy should not negate the fact that the Mai-Mai are responsible for some of the worst

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legitimate participants in the Congolese political system, and in rejection of RCD

occupation.

The insecurity of the Congo War precipitated a reconfiguration of property rights,

particularly land ownership, which further increased pre-existing grievances and tensions

regarding land entitlement. Land ownership had been a point of contention since

independence. Rwandophone communities settled in the DRC during colonialism had

been granted land by the Belgian colonial administration that did not take into

consideration customary land-holding and distribution rules. As mentioned previously,

with the granting of independence, Rwandophone settlers and autochthonous groups

fought the Kanyarwanda Wars in an attempt to secure their respective property interests.

Ever since then, property and land ownership issues have been a cause of localized

conflict in the Kivus. These already tense relations were further aggravated by conflict

during the Congo War as “control over instruments of violence, rather than customary or

legal title, became the deciding factor in determining land ownership and use.”32 Conflict

further disrupted fragile, local interactions.

In the East, secession was thus unlikely from an economic perspective as trader

networks preferred an unregulated informal economy, and autochthonous as well as

Congolese Rwandophone communities were fighting for reincorporation into, and

recognition by a central system. Both groups wanted their “ Congolite” validated and thus

it was unlikely thatthey would assert secessionist agendas based on local particularism or

atrocities in the war and have targeted and devastated many Congolese rwandophone communities. Reports by ICG give details on their destabilizing role in the conflict in the East. 32 Nest, “The Evolution of a Fragmented State: The Case of the Democratic Republic of Congo”, 106.

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voice irredentist claims based on ethnic affiliation with communities in Burundi or

Rwanda.

Conclusion

This section has attempted to outline the economic reasons that explain the

secessionist deficit of the Congo War. Moving beyond the usual discourse on the

economic benefits of statehood and the fight over “booty futures”33 that would ultimately

fall to the purveyors of sovereignty, it has sought to uncover the economic mechanisms

that figure into the calculus that led political elites and the Congolese masses to not push

for secession. Various economic dimensions help us understand the lack of secessionist

agendas during the Congo War.

The strategies of the RCD and MLC indicate that rebel elites preferred to

articulate reshaping rather than resizing aspirations. Any secessionist, irredentist, and/or

annexation strategies that could have sought to “resize” the Congo were unfeasible.

Reshaping the local political and economic landscape was more feasible and ultimately

more beneficial for rebel groups and their external backers. Rwanda and Uganda had no

immediate economic incentive to encourage their proxies to push for secession. At the

rebel-elite-level there was little need to push for discrete, secessionist political institutions

since political and economic matters could be funneled via the sovereign capitals of

Kampala and Kigali. In the case of Katanga, secession according an economic wealth

imperative was not as feasible as during the 1960s. Moreover, inter-ethnic Luba-Lunda

antagonism saw the conflict articulated as a competition between groups for control of

33 For more on this very argument see Ross’ Working Paper: Ross, Booty Futures: Africa's Civil Wars and the Futures Market for Natural Resources^ accessed).

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local political and economic resources rather than in defiance of the central state, or in

pursuit of a secessionist state.

At the mass-level, many Congolese communities simply might not have been

susceptible to rallying calls around constructed notions of nationhood. Many

communities also simply did not want a state, central or secessionist, and preferred, and

in fact benefited from, informal economic life. On the other hand, the localized character

of the conflict in the East meant that groups in fact wanted recognition and regulation of

property rights from the central state. Recognition from a secessionist state would not

have sufficed, since both autochthonous and Congolese Rwandophone communities were

fighting on the basis of their inherent “ Congolite”.

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CONCLUSION

The expected carve-up of the Congo into numerous states did not materialize

during the Congo War of 1998 to 2003. While the country has innate centrifugal

tendencies, both politically and economically, it remains intact. Not only does it remain

intact, but following successful peace negotiations and elections, it holds some promise

of a better future for the Congolese people.

The case of the DRC’s secessionist deficit indicates how necessary it is to

examine the reality of social conditions and local-level dynamics. In many cases, the

complexity of the conflict has resulted in analysts shying away from local-level dynamics

in favor of seeking to understand the rationale and motives of elite leadership. However,

as the politics and economics of non-secession indicate, it is the interplay between elite-

and mass-level dynamics that capture the multifaceted reasons of why the Congolese

chose to reject secessionist options.

There are shades of differentiation to the secessionist deficit in the DRC. The manner in

which communities chose to politically organize and structure themselves indicates that

some regions did indeed choose to secede - but they chose to exercise such secession

empirically and not juridically. In many cases, communities chose to distance themselves

from the central state and entrusted social actors inherently a part of their community

with the task of regulating day-to-day life. The complete, historical lack of internal

legitimacy of the central state as well as the fragile legitimacy of Kabila’s regime 109

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facilitated the switch to such conditions of localized, empirical secession in the face of

conflict and disenchantment with the center.

The economics of non-secession indicate that there was little imperative to push

for secession in the face of satisfaction with, and gain from the informal structure of the

economy. At the elite and mass-level, despite the vast literature on natural resources and

secession, there was little economic incentive to advocate for secession. In the case of

Katanga, the economic imperative for secession was not as feasible as it was during the

1960s. In the Kivus and elsewhere, the political geography of the resources rendered

them vulnerable to the warlordism that the RCD and a plethora of other rebel groups

displayed. These groups also had no need to secede as they were intimately connected to

Rwanda and Uganda. In Katanga, economic competition manifested itself as intra-

regional antagonism between ethnic groups whereas in the Kivus economic competition

meant that groups sought the regulation and recognition of the central state.

Throughout decades of brutal conflict, the Congolese, for various reasons, have

remained attached the mythical idea of their unitary polity. Their tenacious attachment to

territorial integrity, regardless of the motivations for such attachment, creates a

foundation for peacebuilding in the post-conflict context. While no political document is

perfect, the Congolese have finally gotten what they have been requesting since

independence in their 2006 constitution: a federal arrangement that recognizes local

particularism while accommodating attachment to the idea of “Congolite ”.

In the immediate post-independence era the Congolese voiced their preference for

ethno-regionalism. Lumumba, for a very brief period, was able to sideline such desires in

the name of prioritizing national unity. During the botched democratization attempt of the

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early 1990s, participants to the CNS again favored some form of ethno-regional

devolution. Eventually, in the 2006 Constitution the voice of the Congolese has been

recognized. This constitution provides for a large degree of political and economic

autonomy for the provinces.

While we would hope that the outcome of decentralization will be the local

accountability of provincial governments; decentralization may merely facilitate the

emergence of a new class of local strongmen. Nonetheless, we can be cautiously

optimistic that decentralization will prove to be the foundation of a renewed DRC.

Implementing the new constitution and its decentralization provisions is not without

challenges. Creating a culture of political debate and procedural openness will be a long­

term process. Mitigating potential structural clashes and incompatibilities between the

local and federal institutions is another immediate concern. Moreover, all these nascent

institutions are tasked with the responsibility of overseeing a transition from conflict to

peace and all the complexity that that entails.

The current geographies of hope in the Congo are tempered by historical

geographies of violence. The manifestations of empirical secession throughout the Congo

War indicate the selective decision of communities to continue to walk the terrain of day-

to-day life in spite of violence. This kind of dignity, in spite of violence, determines the

substance of their cautious optimism.

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