by MAHMOOD MAMDANI
For the institutions that claim to represent ‘the international community’ – the Western press, international NGOs and UN agencies – the armed conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo has been a paradigm of senseless violence. The number of casualties is indeed staggering. In 2001, the New-York-based International Rescue Committee started providing estimates of war-related deaths since the conflict began in 1998: they rose from 1.7 million in 2001 to 5.4 million in January 2008. If correct, these figures account for about 8 per cent of the current population of the country. They were called into question in 2008, however, when two Belgian demographers concluded that the excess death toll between 1998 and 2004 was in the order of 200,000 – one-twentieth of the IRC’s estimate for the same period, but still a shocking number of victims.
The violence in Congo may seem unintelligible but its roots lie in institutional practices introduced under colonialism, which 50 years of independence have only exacerbated. At their heart is an institution known as the native authority. Since the colonial period, native authorities have had jurisdiction over ‘tribal homelands’. As a system of power, the native authority claims to represent age-old ethnic identity. But ethnicity refers to cultural difference, and there is no necessary link between culture and territory. A system of tribal authority, however, asserts a necessary connection between power, culture and territory. Ethnic identity preceded colonial rule, unlike tribal homelands or the native authority. This is why in Congo, as in other areas of ‘indirect rule’ – colonies ruled through a devolved system of tribal powers – ethnic cleansing was the rosy dawn of colonial occupation. The native authority is based on a single politicised identity, the ‘tribe’, and distinguishes two kinds of ethnic groups: those who are indigenous and those who are not.
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