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Abstract
My aim in this article is to address the question of the relationship between the ethnogenesis of the Banyamulenge in South Kivu province of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and their status as nationals and citizens of that country. I do not intend to present a history of the Banyamulenge, aspects of which have been thoroughly researched by several noted scholars. Nor do I undertake an account of developments following the first Congo war of 1996/7 to the present day. Rather, I will focus on three principal questions that have impacted on the formative relationship between the ‘Banyamulenge’ of South Kivu province and the broader Congolese society; namely, the diverse historical forms and stages of regional migration of Kinyarwanda speakers into pre-colonial, colonial and post-colonial Congo-Zaire; the nature of the post-independence Zairian state and its role in the manipulation and instrumentalisation of group identifications in the Kivu provinces; and the import of the discourses of nationalism and ‘nation-statism’ in the postcolony.
Note on Contributor
Anthony Court is an Associate Professor in the College of Graduate Studies. He specialises in comparative genocide studies and political theory. His interest in archives has produced new research interests in material culture and written texts that have taken him to Poland, Germany and Rwanda. He is currently lead researcher of a five-year project to map and record the remains of the Nazi system of forced labour sub-camps in the Upper Silesian region of Poland. Titled ‘Re-placing Labour: Exploitation and Extermination in Nazi Occupied East Upper Silesia, Poland, 1944–1945’, the multidisciplinary and inter-institutional project incorporates the use of Google Earth mapping, GPS-enabled photography and filming, cartography, oral histories, and archival research. The findings of the research project will be published in Holland in a forthcoming book.
Notes
1. The so-called ‘Hamitic Hypothesis’, formulated by Europeans in the 19th century and propagated during the colonial period by the Church, missionaries, administrators and, with some variation, the Tutsi court itself, held that ‘the Tutsi clearly belonged to a higher order of humanity than the Hutu. For this reason, they were seen as ideally equipped to act as the privileged intermediaries between the European colonizer and the “dark agricultural” masses’ (Lemarchand Citation2009a:54) in what became known as the system of colonial ‘indirect rule’.
2. Vansina adds that most critical historians do not view Gihanga as ‘a historical figure. They suspect that the stories about the geographic extent of his reign were created to justify King Rwabugiri's [largely unsuccessful] attempts to conquer these regions’ (1998:43, fn8).
3. Interestingly enough, a view not shared by Richard Kandt, one of the earliest travellers to the region (2010:14–17, 21–22).
4. North and South Kivu, together with Maniema, were originally organised as the province of Costermansville created in the Belgian Congo on 1 October 1933. In 1947, the territories were renamed Kivu. On 10 May 1960, Kivu was divided into the separate provinces of Maniema and Nord-Kivu, reunited in 1966, and then divided into Maniema, Nord-Kivu and Sud-Kivu in 1988. The territories in question have ‘largely remained unchanged since the Association Internationale du Congo’, established by King Leopold II in 1875; ie, the founding of the Congo Free State (Weiss and Carayannis Citation2004:116). In other words, these territories were incorporated into the Congo at its foundation with only minor subsequent territorial adjustments in relation to neighbouring colonies during the colonial period.
5. As Des Forges notes, this phenomenon was also true of the outlying regions of the kingdom where Tutsi ‘remained ethnically and culturally more distinct from the Hutu, yet dealt with them on the basis of greater equality. Distant from the Court, they paid less attention to the fine points of culture so much admired by their counterparts in the central Kingdom … Both the Tutsi and the Hutu of the outlying regions resisted the extension of control by the Court and resented the cultural and social arrogance of the people of the center’ (Des Forges Citation2011:13).
6. Opinion differs on the date of the first arrivals. Prunier: the first arrivals during the 17th century, with most arriving at the close of the 19th century (2009:51). Weiss and Carayannis: the first arrivals during the 18th century, a claim Turner questions (Turner Citation2007:190) who elsewhere describes them as ‘ethnic Tutsi of Rwandan origin whose ancestors settled several centuries ago in what is now South Kivu’ (Turner Citation2001:215). Lemarchand and Pottier cite the mid-19th century (Lemarchand Citation1997:180, Pottier Citation2002:16). Niemann: from early 19th century (2007:32). Vlassenroot appeals to a consensus view ‘that a large group of Tutsi pastoralists had put down roots in South Kivu by the end of the 19th century’ (2002:502).
7. Pottier similarly argues that they were ‘nearly all Tutsi’ (2002:16) whereas Lemarchand describes them as ‘predominantly Tutsi pastoralists’ (2009a:65) constituting a ‘Tutsi sub-group of South Kivu’ (1997:180).
8. This autonomous and predominantly Hutu community around Rutshuru, who belong to the broader Rwandaphone community of the Kivus known as the ‘Banyarwanda’, were later referred to either as ‘Banyarutshuru’ or ‘Banyabwisha’ (Jackson Citation2007:484).
9. The Banyamasisi, who later became known as the ‘Banyajomba’, consisted of groups of Tutsi pastoralists who migrated to North Kivu during the colonial period and hence were regarded by locals as ‘non-indigenous’. As Stephen Jackson notes, moreover, ‘subsequent layers of migration further amplified and confused these original populations. From the 1930s to 1950s, the Belgian administration began deliberate transplantation of both Hutu and Tutsi from Rwanda to Congo’ (Jackson Citation2007:484).
10. Mission d'Immigration des Banyarwanda (MIB).
11. A precedent was set in 1906 when the administration of the Congo Free State adopted a policy of awarding ‘chiefs medals to several supposed leaders’ of South Kivutian Congolese communities. The medals ‘went to communities living along the lakeshore … The Banyamulenge, living in the hills, were ignored’ (Turner Citation2007:80).
12. During this second period, immediately following the abolition of the Tutsi monarchy, approximately 10,000 to 14,000 Tutsi in Rwanda were killed and over 100,000 went into exile (D Newbury Citation2005:272).
13. In this initial wave, approximately 200,000 Tutsi refugees went into exile in neighbouring countries and beyond: approximately 50,000 to Burundi, 70,000 to Uganda, and 25,000 to Zaire-Congo (Lemarchand Citation2009a:31).
14. The name of each collectivité derives from the name of the ‘ethnic group considered “indigenous” to it’ (Mamdani Citation2001:18).
15. Vlassenroot argues that the new name was adopted in the late 1960s to exercise ‘claims to local social and political rights’ (2002:501). Lemarchand cites the year 1976 (2009a:10, see also Depelchin Citation1974).
16. Young's description of the ‘decay of the public realm’ in Zaire, as quoted by Lemarchand, bears repeating. He argues that it ‘is marked by a cumulative deflation of the state apparatus in terms of its competence, probity and credibility. Institutions of rule lose their capacity to translate public resources into sustenance of infrastructures or valued amenities. A pervasive venality surrounds most public transactions. As a consequence, the subject comes to experience rule as simple predation; the aura of the state as powerful and nurturant protector vanishes’ (Young in Lemarchand Citation1997:184).
17. Arusha Declaration, 1967, Part One(c).
18. See Ademujobi (2001:155) for conflation of nation and state.
19. Tuija Pulkinnen misconstrues this formulation: ‘nationalism is an attitude invested in the glory of the state … and loyalty toward one's state is the norm of nationalism’ (2001:49).
20. See, for example, Adejumobi's reference to ‘national citizenship or the state’ (2001:155).
21. It should be noted, however, that the notion of ‘restoring’ Africa to Africa's history presupposes, firstly, a ‘return’ to an imagined ‘original’ state; and, secondly, that ‘Africa's history’ – in all of its diversity and sheer complexity – is reducible to an essentialist understanding.