The Dynamics of Violence in Central Africa. Rene Lemarchand
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(Rwanda in 1994), refugee flows (predominantly Tutsi in 1959–63, Hutu in 1994), ethnic cleansing (of Hutu refugees in eastern Congo in 1996–97), and the approach of elections (2005–6)—these, as we shall see, are the events and circumstances that have crystallized group identities.
Several phases can be identified in the redefinition of group identities:
1. From the so-called “Kanyarwanda war” in 1963 until 1994, the tendency among “native” Congolese was to view all Banyarwanda living in eastern Congo as the incarnation of a multifaceted menace.
2. After the Rwanda bloodbath, the Hutu-Tutsi conflict metastasized through much of North and South Kivu, causing untold casualties among long-time Tutsi residents and set the stage for the 1996 Rwandan-led and Rwandan-inspired invasion of the Congo by the Alliance des Forces Démocratiques pour la Libération du Congo (AFDL).24 From then on, the Hutu-Tutsi frame of reference became the dominant identity marker and a powerful tool of propaganda for extremists at both ends of the ethnic spectrum.25
3. Yet by 1998, with the second Congo war, as an ever greater number of actors comes into view, the political equations became more complicated, and the straight Hutu-Tutsi cleavage frame somewhat less relevant. A more complex cognitive map emerged causing Hutu and Tutsi to fragment into factions, and enter new patterns of alliances at home and abroad.
4. Not the least intriguing of the mutations undergone by the regional identity prism is the emergence in recent times of language as the principal yardstick for lumping together Hutu and Tutsi under the “Rwandophone” label, a strategy clearly inspired by the provincial authorities of North Kivu to expand their grassroots constituency on the eve of elections.
To grasp the significance of these episodes, something must be said of the long-term social and economic forces that have reshaped regional identities.
Multilayered Conflicts
The theme of exclusion runs like a red skein through the history of the Great Lakes. It lies at the heart of the 1959–62 Hutu revolution in Rwanda; thirty years later it served as the propelling force behind the 1990 invasion of Rwanda by the Rwanda Patriotic Front (RPF).26 Barely concealed by the ban on ethnic labels, ethnic discrimination has since emerged as the hallmark of the Kagame regime, to an extent unprecedented in the history of Rwanda. Burundi is another case in point: political exclusion is the obvious explanation behind the Hutu insurrection of 1972, in turn leading to the first genocide recorded in the annals of the Great Lakes.27 Nor is eastern Congo an exception. Where it does stand as a special case is that the groups targeted for political exclusion are not always the same as those affected by economic and social discrimination. In the 1970s and 1980s, the former were generally of Rwandan origins,28 whether Hutu or Tutsi; the latter included those “native” Congolese communities who insistently denounced the “Banyarwanda” as the main source of economic oppression. Out of this situation has emerged a rich potential for intergroup violence.
THE THREAT OF BANYARWANDA DOMINATION: “KANYARWANDA,” 1963–66
The little-known “Kanyarwanda war” was the first public display of anti-Tutsi sentiment in post-independence Zaire. It lasted from 1963 to 1966 and resulted in large-scale massacres of Hutu and Tutsi. Its focus was the newly created “provincette” of North Kivu, one of the three entities that once formed Kivu province. The decision to carve smaller entities out of the pre-existing province was in large part inspired by the growing fears of Congolese “tribes,” notably the Hunde, that the Banyarwanda were about to tighten their grip on provincial institutions and thus threaten the autonomy of their ethnic neighbors. The geographical focus of the anti-Banyarwanda revolt was Masisi, and it involved, in essence, an alliance of Hunde and Nande elements against Hutu and Tutsi, with the Bashi generally supportive of the Banyarwanda. One of the first moves of the Hunde insurgents, according to one observer, was to reduce to ashes the local administrative archives so as to prevent the identification of the Banyarwanda otherwise than as refugees or foreigners.29 That the insurrection should have had its point of ignition in Masisi—where large tracts of land had long been appropriated by Banyarwanda elements—is no less significant than the burning of provincial archives: in whipping up anti-Banyarwanda feelings, the Kanyarwanda uprising was meant to call into question their claims to the land, as well as their citizenship, as much as their dominant position at the provincial level.
THE LAND PROBLEM
Thirty years after the Kanyarwanda war, Masisi would flare up again in an orgy of anti-Banyarwanda violence. In March 1993, like a bolt out of the blue, armed groups of Nande, Hunde, and Nyanga youth suddenly turned against all Banyarwanda in sight. The intervention of Mobutu's army, code-named Operation Mbata, though intended to restore order, in fact generated further violence. From May to September 1996, Zairian troops lived up to their reputation as a rabble, plundering much of the rural areas south of Bwisha, along the Rwandan border.30 By the time violence died down, an estimated 14,000 people had been killed, most of them Banyarwanda. Although the precipitating factors remain unclear,31 there can be little doubt that the underlying causes of the insurrection lay in the growing scarcity of land, which drove the local peasant communities to the edge of starvation. For this situation the insurgents did not hesitate to hold the Banyarwanda responsible.
One need not go too far back into the past to realize that the colonial state also bears much of the blame. The story has been told many times of how, in the 1930s, Belgian authorities embarked on a vast resettlement scheme designed to encourage the influx of Banyarwanda (essentially Hutu) from Rwanda to North Kivu, the aim being to provide Belgian planters with a cheap labor force and create an outlet for the growing population pressure in Rwanda.32 What is not always realized is that this sudden influx of immigrants played havoc with the traditional organization of the host communities, most notably the Hunde. Not content to expel many Hunde clans from their traditional homelands, the Belgian authorities proceeded to create a Banyarwanda chiefdom in the heart of Hunde domains, the so-called Gishari enclave (Bwisha), headed by a Tutsi chief.33 The Gishari take-over was only the thin edge of the wedge. By 1959 in Rutshuru, the Hutu and Tutsi were ten times as numerous as the indigenous Hunde population (10,193); in Masisi almost two thirds of the population were immigrants from Rwanda.34
Unlike the early migrant laborers who settled in Bwisha and Masisi under the wing of the Mission Immigration Banyarwanda (MIB), the “fifty-niners”, so-called because they fled Rwanda during the revolution of 1959–62, were overwhelmingly Tutsi; they were incomparably better off in terms of material wealth and education than their Hutu predecessors; and they could count on the unfailing support of a leading émigré figure, Barthélemy Bisengimana, who by 1970 wielded considerable power as Mobutu's chief of staff. What Bisengimana could not achieve, bribery usually did. Bribing the local authorities to acquire land became standard practice.
The result has been to set in motion a massive process of land alienation. The extent of the holdings acquired by wealthy Tutsi speaks for itself: Kasungu received 10,000 hectares, Ngizayo 2,000, Bisengimana himself received one of the biggest ranches in the region, over 5,000 hectares.35 The expropriation of native lands was further facilitated by the Bakajika law of 1966, which converted all public land into the domain of the state, followed by the Zairianization measures of 1973. Instrumental as it was in operating massive land transfers into Tutsi hands, the effects of “étatisation-cum-zairianization” were by no means limited to North Kivu. At the root of the Hema-Lendu conflict in Ituri lies a very similar phenomenon. As Thierry Vircoulon has shown, the accumulation of land in Hema hands, with the Lendu often reduced to the status of day laborers, occurred largely at the expense of the Lendu communities, who, like many Hunde and Nyanga in North Kivu, eventually found themselves facing a subsistence crisis.36
While exacerbating anti-Banyarwanda sentiment, land expropriation has had a profoundly disruptive impact on indigenous societies. This is a point of crucial significance to an understanding of the next phase in the regional dynamics of violence. As Vlassenroot has convincingly argued, the cumulative effects of the repeated violations of customary land rights, the break-up of patron-client ties, and the erosion of chiefly authority have created a critical mass of marginalized youth, many of whom later