![Sample our Area Studies journals, sign in here to start your access, latest two full volumes FREE to you for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/5922/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Area-Studies.jpg"})
Abstract
The handful of studies that exist linking illegal drugs and violence in Africa tend to focus on understanding the role of drugs in shaping armed conflict. The reported linkages made between the trade in cannabis sativa and the continuing violence in the Democratic Republic of Congo are exemplars. Contemporary reports of cannabis use in the region have largely focused on two main concerns: the psychophysiological effects of drug use on conflict actors and the participation of cannabis within the war economy. According to these narratives, drugs and violence are seen to go together, destabilising society, creating insecurity, and spreading HIV. Drawing from four months of qualitative research on the cannabis trade in eastern DRC, this paper presents an alternative story of drug-related violence in the region. Namely, it argues that the dangers stemming from an entanglement with the drug are rather, as one informant aptly stated, the result of ‘security’.
[Sécuriser l’(in)sécurité : relier la violence et le commerce de chanvre cultivé à l’est de la République démocratique du Congo.] Les nombreuses études qui existent et qui font le lien entre drogues illégales et violence en Afrique tendent à se concentrer sur la compréhension du rôle des drogues dans la formation du conflit armé. Les liens entre le commerce de chanvre cultivé et la violence continue en RDC qui sont rapportés en sont un exemple. Les rapports contemporains sur la consommation de cannabis dans la région se sont largement concentrés sur deux principales questions : les effets psychophysiologiques de la consommation de drogues sur les acteurs du conflit et la participation du cannabis à l’économie de guerre. Selon ces récits, les drogues et la violence sont considérés comme fonctionnant ensemble, déstabilisant la société, créant de l’insécurité et répandant le VIH. Sur la base de quatre mois de recherche qualitative sur le commerce de cannabis à l’est de la République démocratique du Congo, cet article présente une histoire alternative de la violence liée aux drogues dans la région. En particulier, il soutient que les dangers découlant d’un enchevêtrement avec la drogue sont plutôt le résultat de la « sécurité », comme affirmé avec grande pertinence par un informateur.
Acknowledgements
This project would not have been possible without the assistance of the courage and insight of those who helped me navigate the realities of a difficult landscape of research from within academic and those on the ground in the Congo. Particular thanks to Judith Verweijen, the staff at CIRESKI, Peace Direct in Uvira, and CRESA in Bukavu and above all, my most trusted assistant Goodness.
Note on contributor
Dr Ann A. Laudati is an Assistant Professor of Human–Environmental Relations, and soon to be a research fellow in the Department of Geography at the University of California, Berkeley, USA ([email protected]). Her research looks broadly at the linkages between natural resources and violent conflict. She has been conducting fieldwork in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo since 2009 to understand the mechanisms through which different natural resources shape the region’s violent landscape.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1. Given the critique levelled at academic writers by Cuvelier, Vlassenroot and Olin (Citation2014), I briefly provide some methodological background. Fieldwork was undertaken between June and September 2012 across South Kivu Province, including the major urban areas (Fizi, Uvira, Baraka and Bukavu) and the rural settings of the Haute and Moyen plateaus stretching across Fizi, Uvira, Walungu and Mwenga territories. I drew on participant observation, focus groups and interviews to capture a diversity of experiences and voices among a range of actors from the Mbuti pygmy growers in North Kivu Province to NGO consumers in Bukavu for more than 100 interviews, 30 focus groups, and 15 production site visits. Access to informants and field settings was initially facilitated with the assistance of the grassroots organisation CIRESKI and Congolese staff of the international NGO Peace Direct in Uvira, and was supplemented with informant referrals via snowball sampling.
2. The term commonly used for the Code de l'indigénat, which was a set of laws creating, in practice, an inferior legal status for natives of French colonies from the mid 19th century that remained in force in some areas until independence in the early 1960s.
3. Cannabis's assumed link to violence is not unique to the Congo or even the African continent. Campos (Citation2012) reveals how a similar untested discourse emerged in Mexico during the late nineteenth and early twentieth century in which ‘marijuana [was seen to] trigger a kind of “madness” in its users that often resulted in delirious acts of violence’ (Campos Citation2012, 104).