Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-mlc7c Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-10T10:48:24.108Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

From Autochthony to Violence? Discursive and Coercive Social Practices of the Mai-Mai in Fizi, Eastern DR Congo

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 September 2015

Judith Verweijen
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract:

This article explores the links between autochthony discourses and physical violence through a case study of a Mai-Mai group in the eastern DR Congo. While this group garners support by employing such discourses and related tropes of autodéfense (self-defense), there are clear limits to the capacity of these narratives to mobilize for and legitimize violent action. Furthermore, much of the violence committed by the Mai-Mai is not informed directly by notions of autochthony, but is rather geared toward the consolidation of power. This observation should act as a caution against the a priori coding of violence according to the ways it is discursively framed by its protagonists.

Résumé:

Cet article explore les liens entre les discours d’autochtonie et la violence physique à partir de l’étude de cas d’un groupe Mai-Mai dans l’Est de la République Démocratique du Congo. Alors que ce groupe recueille un soutien favorable en employant de tels discours d’autodéfense, utilisant aussi des tropes associées, la capacité de ces récits à mobiliser et à légitimer l'action violente atteint cependant des limites évidentes. En outre, une grande partie des violences commises par les Maï-Maï ne repose pas directement sur la notion d'autochtonie, mais est plutôt orientée vers la consolidation du pouvoir. Ce constat devrait agir comme une mise en garde contre l’élaboration à priori de schémas de codification de violence d’après des narrations construites par leurs protagonistes.

Keywords

Autochthonyself-defenseviolenceMai-Maieastern DR Congo
Type
ARTICLES
Information
African Studies Review , Volume 58 , Issue 2 , September 2015 , pp. 157 - 180
Copyright
Copyright © African Studies Association 2015 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Appadurai, Arjun. 1998. “Dead Certainty: Ethnic Violence in the Era of Globalization.” Development and Change 29 (4): 905–25.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Assanda, Joseph Mwenebatu. 2008. “Déclaration des Mai Mai de Fizi à la conférence nationale sur la paix, la sécurité et le développement dans les provinces du Nord-Kivu et Sud-Kivu tenue à Goma en janvier 2008.”Google Scholar
Benford, Robert, and Snow, David. 2000. “Framing Processes and Social Movements: An Overview and Assessment.” Annual Review of Sociology 26: 611–39.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bøås, Morten, and Dunn, Kevin. 2013. Politics of Origin in Africa: Autochthony, Citizenship and Conflict. London: Zed Books.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brabant, Justine, and Nzweve, Jean-Louis K.. 2013. La houe, la vache et le fusil—Conflits liés à la transhumance en territoires de Fizi et Uvira (Sud-Kivu, RDC): État des lieux et leçons tirées de l’expérience de LPI. Uppsala: Life and Peace Institute.Google Scholar
Brass, Paul. Theft of an Idol: Text and Context in the Representation of Collective Violence. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Brubaker, Rogers. 2004. Ethnicity without Groups. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brubaker, Rogers, and Laitin, David. 1998. “Ethnic and Nationalist Violence.” Annual Review of Sociology 24: 423–52.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Collins, Randall. 2006. Violence: A Micro-Sociological Theory. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Comaroff, Jean, and Comaroff, John. 2001. “Naturing the Nation: Aliens, Apocalypse, and the Postcolonial State.” Social Identities 7 (2): 233–65.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Commission Electorale Nationale Independent (CENI). n.d. “Elections présidentielles de 2011: Résultats provisoires.”www.ceni.gouv.cd/resultats.aspx.Google Scholar
Depelchin, Jacques. 1974. “From Pre-Capitalism to Imperialism: A History of Social and Economic Formations in Eastern Zaire (Uvira Zone, c.1800–1965).” Ph.D. diss., Stanford University.Google Scholar
Durand, Paul. 2012. “Fizi-Sud-Kivu: Personne n’ose parler des abus des Mai Mai.” Syfia Grands Lacs. Agence de Presse. http://www.syfia-grands-lacs.info.Google Scholar
Eriksson Baaz, Maria, and Verweijen, Judith, 2013. “The Volatility of a Half-Cooked Bouillabaisse: Rebel–Military Integration and Conflict Dynamics in Eastern DRC.” African Affairs 112 (449): 563–82.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Eriksson Baaz, Maria, and Verweijen, Judith. 2014. “Arbiters with Guns: The Ambiguity of Military Involvement in Civilian Disputes in the DR Congo,” Third World Quarterly 35 (5): 803–20.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Eltringham, Nigel. 2006. “‘Invaders Who Have Stolen the Country’: The Hamitic Hypothesis, Race and the Rwandan Genocide.” Social Identities 12 (4): 425–46.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fearon, James, and Laitin, David, 2000. “Violence and Ethnic Identity Construction.” International Organization 54 (4): 845–77.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Foucault, Michel, 1982. “The Subject and Power.” Critical Inquiry 8 (4): 777–95.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Geschiere, Peter. 2009. The Perils of Belonging: Autochthony, Citizenship, and Exclusion in Africa and Europe. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Geschiere, Peter, and Nyamnjoh, Francis. 2000. “Capitalism and Autochthony: The Seesaw of Mobility and Belonging.” Public Culture 12 (2): 423–52.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Geschiere, Peter, and Jackson, Stephen. 2006. “Autochthony and the Crisis of Citizenship: Democratization, Decentralization, and the Politics of Belonging.” African Studies Review 49 (2): 1–7.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Goffman, Erving. 1974. Frame Analysis. Boston: Northeastern University Press.Google Scholar
Human Rights Watch. 2012. “DR Congo: Awaiting Justice One Year After Ethnic Attack.”www.hrw.org.Google Scholar
Jackson, Stephen. 2003. “War Making: Uncertainty, Improvisation and Involution in the Kivu Provinces, DR Congo 1997–2002.” Ph.D. diss., Princeton University.Google Scholar
Jackson, Stephen. 2006. “Sons of Which Soil? The Language and Politics of Autochthony in Eastern D.R. Congo.”African Studies Review 49 (2): 95–123.Google Scholar
Jourdan, Luca. 2004. “Being at War, Being Young: Violence and Youth in North Kivu.” In Conflict and Social Transformation in Eastern DR Congo, edited by Vlassenroot, Koen and Raeymaekers, Timothy, 157–76. Ghent: Academia Press Scientific Publishers.Google Scholar
Pitcher, Anne, Moran, Mary, and Johnston, Michael. 2009. “Rethinking Patrimonialism and Neopatrimonialism in Africa.” African Studies Review 52 (1): 125–56.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kalyvas, Statis. 2006. The Logic of Violence in Civil War. New York: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lanotte, Olivier. 2003. République Démocratique du Congo—Guerres sans frontières: De Joseph-Désiré Mobutu à Joseph Kabila. Brussels: GRIP and Éditions Complexe.Google Scholar
Lemarchand, René. 1994. Burundi: Ethnic Conflict and Genocide. Washington, D.C.: Woodrow Wilson Center Press.Google Scholar
Lemarchand, René. 2002. “The Tunnel at the End of the Light.”Review of African Political Economy 29 (93/94): 389–98.Google Scholar
Malkki, Liisa. 1995. Purity and Exile: Violence, Memory, and National Cosmology among Hutu Refugees in Tanzania. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Muchukiwa, Bosco. 2006. Territoires ethniques et territoires étatiques: Pouvoirs locaux et conflits interethniques au Sud Kivu (R.D.Congo). Paris: l’Harmattan.Google Scholar
Mamdani, Mahmood. 1998. “Understanding the Crisis in Kivu: Report of the CODESRIA Mission to the Democratic Republic of Congo. September, 1997.” Cape Town: CODESRIA.Google Scholar
Marshall-Fratani, Ruth. 2006. “The War of ‘Who Is Who’: Autochthony, Nationalism, and Citizenship in the Ivoirian Crisis.” African Studies Review 49 (2): 9–43.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mouvement de Défense du Peuple (MDP). 2012a. “Déclaration du Mouvement de Défense du Peuple.” April 10.Google Scholar
Mouvement de Défense du Peuple (MDP). 2012b. “Cahier de charge adressé à son excellence monsieur le président de la République Démocratique du Congo à Kinshasa.” December 21.Google Scholar
Mutambo, Joseph. 1997. Les Banyamulenge. Kinshasa: Imprimerie Saint Paul.Google Scholar
Newbury, Catharine. 1988. The Cohesion of Oppression: Clientship and Ethnicity in Rwanda, 1860–1960. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Newbury, David. 1978. “Bushi and the Historians: Historiographical Themes in Eastern Kivu.” History in Africa 5: 131–51.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Newbury, Catharine, and Newbury, David. 1999. “A Catholic Mass in Kigali: Contested Views of the Genocide and Ethnicity in Rwanda.”Canadian Journal of African Studies 33 (2/3): 292–328.Google Scholar
Parti pour l’Autodéfense et la Reconstruction du Congo (PARC). 2007. “Projet de société.”Google Scholar
PARC-FAAL. 2012. No/Ref:001/PARK-FAAL/JUIN/2012. Unpublished letter, June 18.Google Scholar
Rukundwa, Lazare Sebitereko. 2006. “Justice and Righteousness in Matthean Theology and Its Relevance to the Banyamulenge Community: A Postcolonial Reading.” Ph.D. diss., University of Pretoria.Google Scholar
Reyntjens, Filip. 2009. The Great African War: Congo and Regional Geopolitics, 1996–2006. New York: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Snow, David, and Benford, Robert. 1988. “Ideology, Frame Resonance and Participant Mobilization.” International Social Movement Research 1: 197–217.Google Scholar
Snow, David, et al. 1986. “Frame Alignment Processes, Micromobilization, and Movement Participation.” American Sociological Review 51 (4): 464–81.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stearns, Jason, Verweijen, Judith, and Baaz, Maria Eriksson. 2013. The National Army and Armed Groups in the Eastern Congo: Untangling the Gordian Knot of Insecurity. London: Rift Valley Institute.Google Scholar
Strauss, Scott. 2006. The Order of Genocide: Race, Power, and War in Rwanda. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
United Nations Security Council (UNSC). 2011. “Final Report of the Group of Experts on the Democratic Republic of the Congo, S/2011/738.” New York: UNSC.Google Scholar
Verweijen, Judith. 2015. “The Ambiguity of Militarization. The Complex Interaction Between the Congolese Armed Forces and Civilians in the Kivu Provinces, Eastern DR Congo.” Ph.D. diss., Utrecht University.Google Scholar
Vlassenroot, Koen. 2002. “Citizenship, Identity Formation and Conflict in South Kivu: The Case of the Banyamulenge.”Review of African Political Economy 29 (93/94): 499–515.Google Scholar
Wood, Elisabeth. 2009. “Armed Groups and Sexual Violence: When Is Wartime Rape Rare?” Politics & Society 37 (1): 131–61.CrossRefGoogle Scholar