The Heart of the African Conflict Zone: Democratization, Ethnicity, Civil Conflict, and the Great Lakes Crisis

Abstract

■ Abstract In the 1990s, simultaneous with a wave of democratization that proved only partially successful, Africa was swept by protracted civil conflicts, which had a number of novel attributes. The Great Lakes region-Congo-Kinshasa, Rwanda, and Burundi-was the epicenter. In their dynamics and demographics, the violent combats became interpenetrated, embroiling the three countries in intractable struggles. Their extraordinary complexity, and multiplicity of state and other actors, interrogated a number of distinct literatures. State decay and collapse, a broader phenomenon in Africa, was especially marked in Congo-Kinshasa. In all three countries, the irresistible pressures for democratization-which were part of a broader African patterntriggered violent struggles over definitions of identity, citizenship, and indigeneity. The legal, moral, and analytical issue of genocide returned to the research agenda with a vengeance with the Rwandan catastrophe in 1994, and mass ethnic killings in Burundi and Congo-Kinshasa. The new dynamics of African civil wars and warlord politics demanded inquiry. Finally, the necessity of international intervention to contain and mediate the violence brought new attention to peacekeeping issues.

War rape survivors of the Second Congo War: A perspective from symbolic convergence theory

“…To repress this wariness and substantiate loyalty, Kabila began initiating consociations with Rwanda and Uganda. In 1998, he uttered his gratefulness for their support and urged for the abrupt removal of external troops (Young 2006). Rwandans and Ugandans felt deceived once more and seized weapons.…”

Against ethnicity

“…That was not how the epiphenomena became fixed in the first place. 5 Hutu and Tutsi ethnic identities in Rwanda may be traced to a clumsy Belgian administrative attempt to classify men by the number of cattle they owned in the 1933-34 census (Young 2006), but these identities have been fixed by a historical sequence of subsequent violent episodes. Peacemaking requires more than an appeal to reason.…”

On the Danger and Necessity of Democratisation: trade-offs between short-term stability and long-term peace in post-genocide Rwanda

“…As Reyntjens notes, however, whether or not the distinction between Hutus and Tutsis has any empirical basis, it is very much part of the identity of every Rwandanthis is even more true after the genocide, which has crystallised ethnic identities in terms of 'survivors' and 'perpetrators'. 43 In this sense the forceful imposition of an official 'narrative' of ethnic unity can be seen as a fairly crude reversal of the previous regime's 'mythology' of ethnic conflict, 44 which superimposes a new discourse upon the previous one without challenging the autocratic nature of identity creation that has enabled the political manipulation of ethnicity in Rwanda. As Uvin writes, 'the absence of ethnicity is as important a political marker as its presence'.…”