Zaire (the Congo)

Zaire (the Congo) KASPER HOFFMANN Danish Institute for International Studies and Roskilde University, Denmark Ethnicity and nationalism are formative social and political identities in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (the Congo), formerly known as Zaire. hey acquired their current salience through the country’s state-formation process. Until the last quarter of the nineteenth century the Congo did not exist either as a territory or as a political community. “Kongo” was the name given to an old African kingdom, most of which lies in Angola and straddles the lower reaches of the Congo River in the heart of Africa. Prior to colonization, highly diverse communities with equally diverse political systems populated the Congo. Most of these communities spoke Bantu languages and possessed agricultural and iron-working technologies. hey entered the area in a series of migrations several centuries ago, mixing with and displacing the area’s original human population of hunter-gatherers. he communities inhabiting the Congo varied signiicantly in size and political organization, ranging from the small autonomous communities found among the original population (such as the Bambuti of the Ituri forest) and the small monarchies of the mountainous Kivu region (such as the Bashi) to the large kingdoms of the Bakongo, Baluba, Lunda and Azande (Nziem 1998: 51–55). THE IMPACT OF COLONIALISM ON ETHNICITY In 1885, during the imperial “scramble for Africa,” the vast area of the Congo was recognized by the major world powers as the property of King Leopold II. he Belgian state took over the administration of the Congo in 1908, ater the full extent of the atrocities of rubber exploitation in Leopold’s colony was exposed. he colonial process of state formation in the Congo had a dramatic impact on African political identities and forms of political organization. he sociospatial boundaries between diferent communities had been relatively luid and ambiguous before colonization (Kopytof 1987). he colonial authorities ignored this relative luidity when they created the colonial state. hey applied new theories of the emerging science of anthropology such as evolutionism, difusionism, and ethnography to categorize Africans into speciic human types. In this way mega-ethnic racial categories like “Bantus,” “Nilotics,” “Sudanese,” and “Pygmies” were produced, along with various ethnic or cultural subgroups such as the Lunda, Barega, Bahutu, Bahema, and Bashi. In conformity with the scientiic norms of the age, these groups were placed on an evolutionary scale. he distinctions between diferent groups and subgroups were extremely unclear, and the delimitation of any given group was inevitably an arbitrary reduction of ambiguous realities (Couttenier 2005). Nevertheless, these categories were formative in a number of respects. he colonial authorities attempted to govern through native chiefs who were tasked he Wiley Blackwell Encyclopedia of Race, Ethnicity, and Nationalism, First Edition. Edited by John Stone, Rutledge M. Dennis, Polly S. Rizova, Anthony D. Smith, and Xiaoshuo Hou. © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Published 2016 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. DOI: 10.1002/9781118663202.wberen616 2 Z AIRE (THE C ONG O) with providing recruits, provisions, taxes, and labor to ensure the proitability of the colony (Jewsiewicki 1983). Ater the takeover by the Belgian state there was increased focus on working through customary chiefs. his was an attempt to harness the cultural and historical legitimacy of native political institutions. To this end, considerable eforts were put into studying the native people’s customs and their royal genealogies. In practice, though, chiefs were oten selected from among natives who were deemed it to rule and were beholden to their European overlords and their ideals of civilization. Urgent political interests and ethnic stereotypes played a signiicant part in these selection processes. he natives were grouped into speciic ethnic categories and territories. hese became part of the territorial structure of the state and acquired a legal personality. In this manner the sociospatial boundaries between diferent groups sharpened. In binding the natives to customary subdivisions, the colonial authorities sought to steer the natives’ evolution and to uphold public order in the colony. Ethnic labels were employed on identiication cards and in census categories. hese attempts to control people and territory fed back into the popular consciousness of the natives, who became increasingly aware of their ethnicity (Jewsiewicki 1989). THE POLITICIZATION OF ETHNICITY he irst elections in the Congo took place a few years prior to decolonization in the major cities. Ethnic associations took center stage in the elections and became the primary vehicle through which votes were mobilized. hus the birth of modern electoral politics in the Congo was largely deined by ethnic competition. his irst experience taught the emerging Congolese political class the valuable lesson that control over state institutions could be converted into material and social beneits for their coethnics (Lemarchand 1964). he sudden concession of independence by the Belgian colonial authorities in January 1960 heightened the stakes of electoral politics in the Congo as the center of political gravity shited from the urban to the provincial and national arenas. Decolonization combined millennial optimism with profound uncertainty. Under these circumstances ethnic politics lourished. he new rural electorate constituted 80 percent of the votes. But in much of the country the rural communal identities were too small to be electorally signiicant. To a large extent, therefore, electoral politics revolved around forging coalitions so as to increase the mass of votes. In some cases this was done by stretching the deinition of ethnic identities to bigger ethnic aggregates, such as “Kongo” or “Mongo.” In other cases simple alliances between groups suiced (Young 1965). In the Kivu, the process resulted in the creation of coalitions of “native” groups competing against “Bakusu” from Maniema and “Banyarwanda,” of recent or distant Rwandan origin (Willame 1997). THE BIRTH OF NATIONALISM Nationalism began to take shape in the Congo during the 1940s, among members of a group called the évolués (the advanced) (Makombo 1998: 42). he term évolué was applied to a class of Africans who had achieved literacy and showed other signs of modernization. Profoundly inluenced by negritude, pan-Africanism, and the independence movements that grew in intensity all over Africa, the évolués began claiming independence during the 1950s. During the postindependence elections, most parties shared the anticolonialist views of the pan-Africanist movement. But for some parties this became the foundation Z AIRE (THE C ONG O) of their campaign. he most successful among these parties was the Mouvement National Conglais–Lumumba (Congolese National Movement–Lumumba, MNC–L), led by the charismatic Patrice Lumumba, who became the country’s new prime minister under the presidency of Kongo leader Kasavubu. But this government soon faltered. his paved the way for Mobutu Sese Seko, who—backed by western powers, which were antagonized by Lumumba’s anti-imperialist attitudes—orchestrated his irst of two coups. Ater Mobutu’s coup a series of rebellions broke out in the country, unleashing a terrible war that created a general climate of insecurity and produced deep enmities among various ethnic groups. In the Kivu, for instance, the war sharpened the conlict between the Banyamulenge of distant Rwandan origin and the Babembe. he rebels were eventually defeated by Mobutu’s forces and his western allies. THE MOBUTU ERA In 1965 Mobutu staged his second coup. Two years later he turned the Congo into a one-party state. As the only party allowed, the Mouvement Populaire de la Révolution (Popular Movement of the Revolution, MPR) was framed as a manifestation of the politically organized nation, and the country was renamed “Zaire.” Mobutu rehabilitated unitary Lumumbist nationalist discourse, which was styled authenticité (authenticity) and subsequently “Mobutism,” when the regime drited further into personal rule and kleptocracy. he Mobutu regime attempted to ban partisan political ethnicity. Public ethnicity was a property of the state. Initially this move enjoyed widespread popular support. However, ethnicity as political identity was reconigured, not erased. he ruling clique surrounding Mobutu himself was from his own ethnic group, and the unoicial access 3 to public services or oice went through someone with a similar ethnic background who expected an act of gratitude in return (Young and Turner 1985). THE CONGOLESE WARS Ethnicity was rehabilitated as a form of political identity in the 1990s. his started in 1991–92, when the regime initiated a disingenuous democratic process. During this process the delegates to a national conference decided, at the behest of the representatives of North Kivu, to reairm a law that withdrew the rights to national citizenship from many Banyarwanda and Banyamulenge. At the core of this issue was the matter of land rights and control over local positions of authority (Mamdani 2002). he withdrawal led to civil war in North Kivu and prompted the Banyamulenge in South Kivu to lead the way in a rebellion against Mobutu. he rebels marched into Kinshasa victoriously in May 1997, and their leader, Laurent-Désiré Kabila, was proclaimed president of the Congo. he First Congolese War was followed by another war when Kabila fell out with his former backers Rwanda and Uganda, which launched another rebellion in 1998. his plunged the Congo into an indecisive regional war. he Congolese Wars showed the durability of ethnic political identities in the Congo. During the conlicts ethnic mega-categories such as “Nilotics” and “Bantus,” which were originally produced in the colonial era, were revitalized by Congolese politicians and nationalist militias collectively known as Mai-Mai, which were waging a guerilla war against the Rwandan army and their Congolese allies, many of which were Banyarwanda (Vlassenroot and Van Acker 2001). Claiming to represent the autochthonous Bantu ethnic groups, these largely local self-defense militias framed their combat as a form of national resistance 4 Z AIRE (THE C ONG O) against the invading armies of a foreign Nilotic Tutsi race. Although this ethnonationalist ideology has been highly efective, it belies a bewildering subterranean ield of intra- and interethnic struggles between autochthonous groups and subgroups. Usually these struggles revolve around who has the right to a given territory and its resources. Competing groups oten claim that they hold the right to the land because it is their ancestral land. hus, until today, unitary nationalism and forms of citizenship are rocked by intra- and interethnic competition and ethnic forms of citizenship. SEE ALSO: Boundaries; Colonialism, Modern, and Race; Conlict; Ethnic Politics; Science and Race REFERENCES Couttenier, Maarten. 2005. Congo Tentoongesteld: Een Geschiedenis van de Belgische Antropologie en het Museum van Tervuren, 1882–1925 [Congo Exhibited: A History of Belgian Anthropology in the Tervuren Museum, 1882–1925]. Leuven, Belgium and Voorburg, Netherlands: Acco. Jewsiewicki, Bogumil. 1983. “Modernisation ou destruction du village africain: L’économie politique de la modernisation agricole au Congo belge [Modernization or Destruction of the African Village: he Political Economy of Agricultural Modernization in the Belgian Congo].” Les Cahiers du CEDAF 5: 1–86. Jewsiewicki, Bogumil. 1989. “he Formation of the Political Culture of Ethnicity in the Belgian Congo, 1920–1959.” In he Creation of Tribalism in Southern Africa, edited by Leroy Vail, 324–50. London: James Currey. Kopytof, Igor, ed. 1987. he African Frontier: he Reproduction of Traditional African Societies. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Lemarchand, René. 1964. Political Awakening in the Belgian Congo. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. Makombo, Jean-Marie Mutamba. 1998. Du Congo belge au Congo independent, 1940–1960: Émergence des “évolués” et genèse du nationalisme [From Belgian Congo to Independent Congo, 1940–1960: he Emergence of the “évolués” and the Birth of Nationalism]. Kinshasa, Congo: IFEP. Mamdani, Mahmood. 2002. “African States, Citizenship and War: A Case-Study.” International Afairs 78(3): 493–506. Nziem, Isidore Ndaywel è. 1998. Histoire générale du Congo: De l’héritage ancien à la République Démocratique [General History of the Congo: From the Ancient Heritage to the Democratic Republic]. Bruxelles: De Boeck & Larcier. Vlassenroot, Koen and Frank van Acker. 2001. “War as Exit from Exclusion? he Formation of Mayi-Mayi Militias in Eastern Congo.” Afrika Fokus 17(1–2): 51–77. Accessed February 3, 2015. http://www.gap.ugent.be/africafocus/pdf/ 01-17-12-Vlassenroot.pdf. Willame, Jean-Claude. 1997. Banyarwanda et Banyamulenge. Brussels and Paris: L’Harmattan. Young, Crawford. 1965. Politics in the Congo: Decolonization and Independence. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Young, Crawford and homas Turner. 1985. he Rise and Decline of the Zairian State. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. FURTHER READING Callaghy, homas. 1984. he State–Society Struggle: Zaire in Comparative Perspective. New York: Columbia University Press. De Boeck, Filip. 1996. “Postcolonialism, Power and Identity: Local and Global Perspectives from Zaïre.” In Postcolonial Identitites in Africa, edited by Richard Werbner and Terence Ranger, 75–106. London and New Jersey: Zed Books. Schatzberg, Michael. 1988. he Dialectics of Oppression in Zaire. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press. Vansina , Jan. 1990. Paths in the Rainforests: Toward a History of Political Tradition in Equatorial Africa. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.