Changes and Continuities at the Goma/Gisenyi Border 1

1 No condition is permanent: Changes and continuities at the Goma/Gisenyi border 1 Gillian Mathys and Karen Büscher This is a first draft that needs to be further developed and refined. DO NOT QUOTE OR CIRCULATE IN ANY WAY WITHOUT THE AUTHORS' PERMISSIONS This paper is very much an experiment for this workshop. We have tried to work together from both historical and ethnographic data to sketch a longue-durée perspective of state-border relations at one specific place of the Rwandan/Congolese border. Given the particularity of the data (the historical data tends to be more top-down than the ethnographical data and less local, and because of the limited space, rather anecdotal historical date becomes generalized and inflated) this turned out to be quite a difficult exercise. We hope that this workshop can be meaningful in pointing out ways to better merge ethnographic and historical data on the one hand, and empirical data and theory on the other. Because fieldwork was carried out primarily in the city of Goma, the data tends to privilege information on Congolese center-margins relationships. The historical fieldwork in the region is only in its preparatory stages, which accounts for the lack of local historical narratives. 1. Introduction Recently plans have re-emerged to (re)materialize the border between Goma (DRC) and Gisenyi (Rwanda). Shacks littering the neutral boundary zone between these countries have to be demolished and in order to inscribe the border into the cross-border urban agglomeration of Goma/Gisenyi, plans are on the table to build a road following the Rwandan/Congolese border. This renewed attention for a clear-cut border is not only apparent in the attention for the physical materialization of the border. Since 2007, the DRC has started to train a police des frontières within the framework of the national police. The first border policemen are now ready and will be deployed at the Goma/Gisenyi border in order to " […] surveiller celles-ci pour qu’aucun ennemi ne s’hasarde à approcher notre frontière, à la violer et à agresser même le pays ".2 As such, the state seems to be ready to –at least discursively- reclaim its monopoly on control and violence in the urban border regions. But the border police is also brought in to reinforce control on taxations, migration and customs, or as the governor of North-Kivu put it: " La fraude est presque monnaie courante sous toutes ses formes. Elle est documentaire, elle est fiscale, elle est physique et donc, ce service va devoir nous aider" . 3 This intervention of the Rwandan and Congolese state on their shared borderland is the most recent episode in a long and complex history of changing relations between the Goma/Gisenyi border and their respective centers. Border studies go beyond the spatial and geopolitical categories associated with the nation-state. In African studies, as a reaction against commonly held views of borders as colonial impositions partitioning Africans (Asiwaju, 1985) and borders as spatial limitations to people's mobility, a view of borders was advocated which focused on the connections and large degree of mobility across borders (Asiwaju and Nugent, 1996). A new strand of research inspiring border studies seems to be the focus on the power relations between the centre and its periphery. Das and Poole demand attention for the reconfiguring of the 1 This paper is based on data from fieldwork carried out by Karen Büscher and archival research done by Gillian Mathys. 2 Radio Okapi, 1.11.2009. "Goma: une unité de police des frontières désormais opérationnelle" 3 Ibid. 2 state through its (spatial) margins (Das and Poole, 2004). Others stress the degree of regional differentiation with regards to the distribution of power within states and argue that variations in how states deal with certain territories are not the result of deliberate regime policies (from the center) but rather the result of the ways these areas are structured themselves (Boone, 2003). What these approaches have in common is that they turn upside down state-centre relationships and focus on localized forms of statehood. Studies inspired by this turn see the border as a place of creativity, where state reconfiguration (can) take(s) place and where the border means different things to different people at different times. Yet, these approaches, conveying a picture of borders as multi- layered constructs, run the risk of returning to the paradigm of the nation-state. The attention for cross-border connections is snowed under by the focus on the connections between the margins and its state. Nevertheless, attention for what Cooper calls "cross-territorial processes" is important. He advocates a historical perspective on these cross-territorial processes, in order not to present a past marked by territorial boundedness set up against a present that is marked by interconnection and splintering, but rather more nuanced and pendulum-like motions of territorializing and deterritorializing tendencies (Cooper 2002, 190-191). We have tried in this paper to combine both approaches: a historical analysis of processes of territorialization with an emphasis on localized practices of border- and state making. Starting from the case of the Goma/Gisenyi border we will demonstrate that the regulation of space is more complicated than centralist approaches seems to imply. The incapacity of the Congolese state in controlling its territorial margins, is by scholars often explained in the light of political theories of ‘state failure’. In the extensive literature on state failure and state collapse, the Democratic Republic of Congo is often cited as the pre-eminently illustration of a state that falls short in its three main functions: the monopoly over violence, the allocation of economic resources and territorial control (Zartman, 1995; Migdal; 1988; Lemarchand, 2001). However, in this context of a general breakdown of political authority, state society-relations are being reshaped, and new socio-political and economic constellations emerge, as the result of complex negotiation processes between national and local, state and non-state, formal and informal actors. As such, we argue that these new constellations are the result of the nature of the margins rather than of the nature of the 'weak' state. Consequently, the main argument of this paper is that territorial conceptions and state policy have often been the result of ad hoc decisions influenced by localized practices rather than deliberate policy from the centre. Therefore, in shaping the state through its margins, the state is but one of the actors amongst others. In the remainder of this paper we focus on shifting meanings of the border and what it implies for state-border relations. The first part of this paper deals with historical state border relations. We start with the emergence of the Goma/Gisenyi border followed by the events during WWI. Subsequently we briefly sketch some evolutions during the colonial period to continue with the transition to the post-colonial period. The second part of this paper starts from a thorough analysis of current transborder dynamics by focusing primarily on the case of Birere. Through an ethnographic analysis of everyday cross-border practices we point at the constant negotiation of the ambiguous nature of the Goma/Gisenyi border, namely the border as a place where opportunities linger, but where danger also lurks. 2. Every border is contested: borders and territorial claims In order to look at how cross-territorial linkages and practices of statehood are grounded in the past, we go back to the creation of the Goma/Gisenyi border. Retreating to the past does not mean instrumentalizing the past: a teleological view of (de)territorialization and state making needs to be 3 avoided at all times. 4 This peril of sketching a teleological narrative is linked the choice for the starting point. As Marc Leopold points out, "(a)ny account […] runs the risk of being teleologically determined by its choice of starting point" (Leopold, 2005: p. 6). Letting the past 'begin' with the European occupation in the region, thus ramifies the answers found. Although 19 th century spatial processes are not integrated in this paper, this does not mean that they were not important. As Howard points out: "[…] The imposition of colonial rule brought fundamental spatial changes, formal political takeover should not be seen as the only or most significant spatial break of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. […] Rather than a time marker based mainly on formal European political control, a spatial perspective suggests that there was a long transitional period with different chronologies depending on what aspects of spatial structure and dynamics are emphasized " (Howard, 2005: p. 103). It is thus not surprising that "precolonial" spatial processes coexist, conflict and coalesce with colonial processes of territorialization. Yet, starting with the European occupation in the region is not entirely arbitrarily, as the histories of Goma and Gisenyi are inextricably linked to the border conflict between Germany and the Congo Free State. Between the relatively late "discovery" of Lake Kivu by Count von Götzen in 1895 and 1910/11, lake Kivu and its eastern and western shores were the subject of much debates and discussions between Germany and the Free State (later Belgium). The region which was contested was called zone contesté or streitiges Gebiet . The borders in the zone contesté were mapped during the 1884-85 Berlin conferences, thus before any European had ever seen Lake Kivu. As such the conflict was the result of the truly arbitrarily mapping of political boundaries in unexplored territory. 5 The conflict over the mapping of the region had direct ramifications for the way colonial space was appropriated. In the zone contesté , the relationship between territory and power was pretty straightforward: occupation was linked directly to control over territory.

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