Introduction
Ten years on from the official conclusion of what Filip Reyntjens termed the ‘Great African War’ in 2003, the eastern Congolese provinces of North and South Kivu remain in a state of neither war nor peace (Reyntjens 2009). The December 2011 United Nations (UN) Group of Experts report on the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) blamed various foreign and Congolese armed groups as well as Congo's national army, the Forces Armées de la République Démocratique du Congo (FARDC), for the continuing fighting and resultant widespread insecurity.1 In February 2012, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) reported that in North Kivu province alone, this volatile situation accounted for almost a third of Congo's 1.7 million internally displaced people (UNHCR 2012). Since then, the mutiny of FARDC elements in April 2012 has considerably worsened the humanitarian catastrophe in this part of the country. Primarily involving forces from the former rebel group Conseil National pour la Défense du Peuple (CNDP) that were integrated into the FARDC in 2009, the renewed rebellion known as ‘M23’ is the latest in a series of armed insurrections that has troubled eastern DRC over the past decade.
As a direct consequence of years of uninterrupted factional conflict, ethnic tensions continue to simmer between self-proclaimed ‘native’ or ‘autochthon’ groups and populations of both Congolese Hutu and Tutsi, often called ‘Rwandophones’ or ‘Kinyarwanda speakers’ (both terms denote the language spoken in Rwanda).2 Whereas the former fear a looming ‘Rwandophone rise’, which will supposedly bring about the ‘Balkanisation’ of the DRC, the latter are afraid of their political and economic exclusion and ethnic persecution. Albeit comprised mainly of Congolese Tutsi, and to a minor degree, Hutu, the M23 is predominantly associated with the Rwandophones en bloc. With evidence mounting that the rebels receive Rwanda's substantial support, anti-Rwandophone sentiment has again risen in Congo's political discourse (IRIN 2012).
Nevertheless, the recent rebellion only reignited and brought into sharp focus what is a longstanding identity crisis in the Kivus. The question of identity is the defining constant that runs through the history of eastern Congo. Most noteworthy in its recent past is the consistency with which the identity of the Kinyarwanda-speaking populations, or the legitimacy of their claim to Congolese nationality, has been fiercely contested. However, over the past two decades the construction of Rwandophone identity has been far from linear.3 Instead, the identity formation has been and remains a multidimensional, thoroughly ambivalent and highly contingent process. For example, whereas after the 1994 Rwanda genocide the precise distinction between Hutu and Tutsi ethnicity represented the dominant point of reference, in recent years Hutu and Tutsi have been lumped together under the linguistic identity-marker ‘Rwandophone’. Therefore, instead of seeking to identify unreliable socio-cultural characteristics such as ethnicity or language, this article takes a different, historicising approach.
In order to understand the parameters which define the current conflict over identity, this article analyses the period prior to the two Congo wars (1996–97, 1998–2003). The period between 1990 and 1996 was formative both for the process of Rwandophone identity formation as well as the concurrent radicalisation of Congo's political discourse. During this time, far-reaching national policies concerning the Rwandophones were crafted in the DRC's capital, Kinshasa. Simultaneously, this process was accompanied by the formation of a national reference frame for the political debates on the Rwandophone question, which eventually set ‘nationals’ or ‘autochthones’ against the Rwandophone foreigners. These developments decisively reinforced the local dynamics of violence in the Kivus, ultimately shaping the events of the first Congo war in September and October 1996. From the vantage point of Kinshasa's press, the emergence of this national discourse, as formulated and constructed by a variety of political actors, comes to light and becomes accessible for a detailed historical analysis.
The research for this article predominantly relies on the output of six Kinshasa-based newspapers (see below). In support of this detailed text-based analysis, a series of interviews was conducted with journalists and proprietors from various Kinshasa newspapers as well as several media professionals in 2010 in the DRC's capital.4 On this basis, this article reveals the emergence and strengthening of conflicting identities and elucidates the ‘othering’ process in the parallel political discussions on the nationality question. Particular focus is given to the transnational dimension of Congolese Tutsi, and to a lesser degree Hutu loyalties, which reveals that this not only furthered their exclusion, but also amplified notions of a looming and inevitable Rwandan menace. In this respect, the so-called Vangu Report from April 1995 represents a focal point for this discussion. Created in response to the influx of more than one million Rwandan Hutu refugees into the Kivus in the aftermath of the Rwanda genocide in 1994, this report by Congo's transitional parliament developed a singular importance for the country's political discourse. The Vangu Report transformed the Kivutien ‘autochthones’' powerful memories and mythologised accounts of the past into a potent historical narrative that envisioned an existential Rwandan threat to the nation. Documenting the mutually reinforcing relationship between perceptions of contemporary developments and powerful mythico-historical narratives of the past, this article identifies a key dynamic behind conflicting identities and the radicalisation of political discussions that fuelled the first and second Congo wars.
This historical approach allows the reconstruction of the complex interplay of circumstances and forces that determined the particular identity-markers that were dominant, dormant, or coexisted at any given time. In this way, the Rwandophone identity-prism emerges as a constantly redefined variable, its formation ideologically malleable, politically contingent and therefore dependent on the precise historical context.
The ‘Rwandophone rise’ and the ‘Balkanisation’ of the DRC
In 2009, US diplomats in the Congo were busy grasping the meaning behind the seemingly new concepts ‘Rwandophonie’ and ‘the Rwandophone rise’, as illustrated by the headings of two secret cables sent by the US Embassy in Kinshasa: ‘Rwandophonie: what is it and what it means – the view from Kinshasa’; ‘Dimensions of the Rwandophone rise in North Kivu’ (Wikileaks 2009f, 2009b). In short, US officials supposed that ‘Rwandophonie’ encapsulated the growing fears among the non-Rwandophone populations of a sweeping Rwandophone takeover of the Kivu provinces. Throughout 2009, the US Embassy dispatched a stream of additional cables on the subject, assessing the possible implications of this recent development.
The reason for US concern was the outcome of a secretive deal between Rwanda's President Paul Kagame and DRC President Joseph Kabila at the end of 2008. This rapprochement came as a surprise since the two regimes had been fiercely opposed. During the two Congo wars, Rwanda had invaded and occupied eastern DRC with the involvement of Congolese Rwandophones, in particular North Kivutien Tutsi and Banyamulenge (ethnic Tutsi from South Kivu). While the end of the war in 2003 heralded the beginning of a political transition, which found its conclusion in the 2006 national elections, eastern DRC remained unstable and troubled by conflict. The Rwanda-supported rebellions had enabled Congolese Rwandophones, both Hutu and Tutsi, to control political, economic and security positions in the Kivus. Afraid of losing their power in the 2006 elections, leading Rwandophone figures began to support a new rebel movement under the auspices of the Rwandan regime. Eventually baptised the CNDP by General Laurent Nkunda in 2006, the rebel group conquered substantial territory in North Kivu and developed into a strong irritant for the Kabila regime.
Building on the efforts of North Kivutien Governor Eugène Serufuli to unify Hutu and Tutsi at a grassroots level behind the identity-marker ‘Rwandophone’, Nkunda's CNDP initially portrayed itself as a movement for the protection of Rwandophone interests. However, the 2006 election campaign unearthed deep-seated antagonisms between Hutu and Tutsi from the wars, which led to the failure of this attempt to forge a coalition of Kinyarwanda speakers. With its collapse, the CNDP changed direction and henceforth projected an exclusive focus on Tutsi minority interests, repeatedly advancing the doubtful rhetoric that its raison d'être was to prevent an imminent genocide.
At the peak of its power in late 2008, however, the CNDP rebellion came to a sudden end. As a result of the agreement between Kagame and Kabila, Nkunda's Rwandan sponsors had him arrested in Kigali. In return, the deal gave the Rwandan regime permission to enter the Kivus to confront the Hutu rebels of the Forces Démocratiques pour la Libération du Rwanda (FDLR), its main armed opposition, which traces its origins to the 1994 Rwanda genocide. The price for Rwanda's cooperation also included Kinshasa's implicit recognition of Kigali's continued political and economic interests in the mineral-rich Kivus (International Crisis Group 2010).
With Rwanda's blessing, the CNDP's new leader Bosco Ntaganda, who is also sought by the International Criminal Court (ICC) for war crimes, integrated his forces into the FARDC in 2009. The CNDP subsequently turned itself into a political party and forged an alliance of convenience with President Kabila's coalition for the 2011 elections. Much to the indignation of other ex-rebel groups that had previously been incorporated into the FARDC, however, the CNDP maintained parallel command structures and expanded its politico-economic sway over the region. In February 2012, a member of the UN Group of Experts concluded that ‘Rwandophone ex-rebels’ from the CNDP and other armed groups in the two Kivus had received ‘preferential treatment’ in the military integration process (Stearns 2012). Against this background, it is no wonder that as early as November 2011, Jason Stearns, political analyst and former member of the United Nations Group of Experts, reported from North Kivu that ‘locally people are speaking of the rebirth of the “rwandophonie”’ (Stearns 2011).
Between 2004 and 2006, the ‘Rwandophonie’ project had only a minor impact on Congo's political discourse. Back then it was greatly overshadowed by recent impressions of the central role played by Congolese Tutsi and Banyamulenge in Rwanda's devastating politico-military campaigns during the Congo wars. These, coupled with the disastrous humanitarian repercussions of Nkunda's subsequent rebellion, greatly antagonised the wider Congolese public and continuously fuelled anti-Tutsi sentiments. Since 2009, however, the CNDP's emerging position of dominance has rekindled widespread fears among self-styled ‘autochthon’ ethnic groups of the Rwandophone ‘other’. These threat perceptions crystallised around notions of ‘Rwandophonie’ or ‘Rwandophone rise’. The titles of US Embassy dispatches, based on discussions with anonymous informants and militia leaders from non-Rwandophone ethnic groups in North Kivu, bear testimony to this: ‘Nande concerns with integration and Rwandophonie’; ‘Conversation with prominent Goma NGO [non-governmental organisation] leader about the Rwandophone agenda’; ‘North Kivu Hunde discusses Rwandophonie’; ‘Anti-Rwandophone sentiment amongst the Hunde’; ‘Potential resistance to the Rwandophone agenda’ (Wikileaks 2009a, 2009d, 2009e, 2009g, 2009c).
Gaining momentum since 2009, these anxieties seemed to materialise shortly after Kabila's contested re-election in 2011, at a time when his alliance with the CNDP broke down and the M23 rebellion gradually assumed shape across North and South Kivu. On the one hand, this was probably due to the increasing international pressure on Kabila to enforce the ICC's arrest warrant for Bosco Ntaganda. On the other hand, it appears that as soon as Kabila had secured his re-election as DRC president, his attempt to dismantle the CNDP's parallel chains of command provided the main impetus for the M23 rebellion. Thus, what began in April 2012 as several mutinies of ex-CNDP and other armed elements from within the FARDC over fear of losing their privileged positions, subsequently developed into a fully fledged rebellion that repeatedly managed to rout the DRC's army. Following a ceasefire which had lasted for about three months, the M23 rebels resumed their campaign against government forces in mid November 2012. Within a few days, the M23's sweeping attack resulted in their capture of North Kivu's provincial capital, Goma, which left the defeated FARDC in disarray. Recent negotiations between M23 and Kinshasa in the framework of the International Conference of the Great Lakes Region (ICGLR) seem to have produced some form of agreement to resolve the crisis. At the time of writing this article, however, the details of this deal remain unclear. Should the rebels agree to pull out of Goma and retreat to their previous positions, this will undoubtedly raise the question of what Kabila had to promise the rebels in return. If this involves M23's reintegration into the DRC's army, this would mean a reaffirmation of the status quo of the years between 2009 and 2012, when the Kivus experienced neither war nor peace.
To this point, the M23 – the name of which is derived from the date of the March 2009 peace deal with Kinshasa – has been dominated by officers and recruits from the Kinyarwanda-speaking communities, in particular Congolese Tutsi. According to a recent UN report, however, the M23 also receives substantial support from the Rwandan regime (United Nations 2012). Given its recent history of repeatedly invading and occupying the DRC, Rwandan support severely tarnishes the M23's claims to legitimacy.
The growing fears evoked by the perceived Rwandophone rebellion of M23 are greatly reinforced by the unsettling impression that – once again – this is primarily the result of Rwanda's machinations. Ever since the renewed crisis of 2012, popular tropes of ‘Rwandophonie’ or the ‘Rwandophone rise’ implicated Rwandan expansionist schemes towards the Kivus. These have flourished in political discourse under the concept of the ‘Balkanisation of the DRC’. According to this theory, Western politico-economic interests are seeking to divide up the DRC to facilitate the exploitation of its vast natural resources. This hypothesis views the Rwandan regime as the West's neocolonial proxy, subverting the DRC by perpetuating a state of war. In this context, the Congolese Kinyarwanda speakers are often implicitly suspected of being Rwanda's ‘fifth column’. A brief examination of reports of the M23 rebellion in various Kinshasa-based newspapers clearly shows the prominence of the Balkanisation reference frame for interpretations of the conflict. A selection of headlines from Le Potentiel, Kinshasa's most popular newspaper that daily carries the front-page slogan ‘No to the Balkanisation of the DRC’, serves as illustration: ‘Balkanisation project: the M23 controls an area the size of Rwanda’ (21 July 2012); ‘The struggle against the Balkanisation of the DRC: the Congolese mobilise’ (23 July 2012); and ‘The religious denominations rise against Balkanisation’ (13 July 2012).
In what follows, this article illuminates the conceptual history behind terms such as ‘Rwandophone rise’ and ‘Balkanisation’. It explains and demonstrates that these concepts grew out of historical narratives that are deeply rooted in Congo's violent past. While the concepts and labels around which the fears of the Rwandophone ‘other’ have constantly evolved, the core historical narrative has remained the same. It is driven by mythical visions of perpetual Rwandan expansionism.
1990–1996: canonising visions of Rwandan expansionism
Over the past two decades, the African Great Lakes region has been immersed in conflicts. The genocide in Rwanda in 1994 and the renewed outbreak of the Burundian civil war in 1993 were themselves intertwined with the two international wars fought subsequently on Congolese territory between 1996 and 2003. A decisive trigger for the outbreak of the two Congo wars was the ‘nationality question’ surrounding the Rwandophone populations. While the origins of conflicts about their nationality can be traced back to Belgian colonial intervention, this is not the place for a detailed excursion into the colonial or postcolonial past (Willame 1997, Turner 2007). Nonetheless, the different uses of this history play an important role in defining the fault lines of recent conflicts.
Since independence in 1960, the Kinyarwanda speakers have been characterised as either Congolese citizens, or were commonly excluded as peoples ‘belonging’ to the bordering state of Rwanda. The basic reasoning behind these two opposed positions lies in the composition of what are often simplistically labelled ‘Rwandophones’. In fact, this category subsumes a variety of Kinyarwanda-speaking subgroups. While small populations of Hutu and Tutsi lived within the territory of the DRC before Belgian colonisation, others were forcefully ‘transplanted’ from Rwanda by the Belgian colonial regime. Many more Hutu and Tutsi arrived in successive waves as immigrants and refugees during the colonial and postcolonial period (ibid.). Although a small minority in South Kivu, the Rwandophones of North Kivu constituted a large population grouping at independence. Because of the pressures caused by the high numbers of immigrants and the concomitant fierce competition for land, North Kivu experienced a far more conflictual trajectory than South Kivu.
For many of the other population groups resident in eastern Congo, such as the Nande and Hunde in North Kivu, the impression of continuous inflows of Rwandan migrants and refugees came to suppress the memory of Rwandophone populations whose presence dated back to a period before the colonially enforced immigration. While the different groups of Hutu and Tutsi were increasingly lumped together under the umbrella term ‘Banyarwanda’, meaning ‘those who come from Rwanda’, the other groups styled themselves as ‘autochthon’ (meaning ‘sons of the soil’), as the ‘first-comers’ to the region and thus the ‘real’ natives.
Referring to Stephen Jackson, the idea of ‘autochthony operates as a loose qualifier, a binary operator’ which projects a simple yet powerful ‘local’/‘stranger’ division on different scales of belonging and exclusion in the Congo (Jackson 2006, p. 95). In its constant search for the ‘other’, the autochthony discourse becomes a powerful mobilising force that helps to nurture a perpetual state of paranoid fear obsessed with infiltration and scheming (ibid., p. 111). This development ensured that all Rwandophones could be accused of foreignness and met with anti-Rwandan sentiments. To this day, the Rwandophone migration history constitutes the primary source for the contestation over their belonging. Above all, the incremental migration contributed to the emergence of a historical narrative of Rwandan expansionism towards the Kivu provinces.
Briefly after independence in 1960, smouldering conflicts over rival land rights and political representation between ‘autochthones’ and Kinyarwanda speakers culminated in the so-called Kanyarwanda rebellion when the ‘Banyarwanda’ resolutely fought against their exclusion from the Congo (Bucyalimwe 1997, pp. 521–525). For the Kivutien ‘autochthones’, the experiences associated with this conflict permanently redefined the Banyarwanda label as the embodiment of a multifaceted menace of Rwandan domination (Lemarchand 2009, pp. 12–13). The dichotomy between autochthones and Banyarwanda, as well as the emerging historical narratives of Rwandan hegemonic designs are distinct features of the Kivutien autochthony discourse. As is discussed below, it was this local set of ideas, selective memories and historical narratives that were exported to and ultimately adopted in Congo's national political discourse during the early 1990s.
The Conférence Nationale Souveraine
After a long period of relative calm under the rule of President Joseph Désiré Mobutu, the question of the Rwandophones' ‘dubious nationality’ forcefully resurfaced following political liberalisation in 1990. Giving in to mounting external and internal pressures, on 24 April 1990 Mobutu announced a political opening that would end the one-party system of Zaire, as the DRC was then called (De Villers and Omasombo 1997).
After more than 25 years of Mobutu's monopoly on public discourse, the political opening enabled a relatively free media to emerge. While based and circulating almost exclusively within Kinshasa, the newspapers nevertheless asserted a national Congolese perspective and political discourse. Focusing predominantly on political affairs, these newspapers represent an important ‘mirror of the emerging political discourse’ in Congo.5 The archival holdings for the early to mid 1990s were dominated by newspapers from the so-called red press (Le Potentiel, La Référence Plus, Le Palmarès, L'Umoja, Elima), which opposed President Mobutu and supported Etienne Tshisekedi's Union pour la Démocratie et le Progrès Social (UDPS). Only Le Soft can be described as a pro-Mobutu newspaper. Through the lens of these newspapers, this article now examines the broader evolution of Congo's political discourse and its radicalisation vis-à-vis the Rwandophone question.
According to Marie-Soleil Frère, however, the newspapers also developed ‘a certain power to influence decision-makers’, as Congolese opinion leaders and policymakers paid close attention to newspaper coverage and frequently used the newspapers to communicate political messages (Frère 2008, p. 39). Beyond its use as a historical source, therefore, where possible the Kinois (i.e. from Kinshasa) newspapers are also understood as socio-political actors which constantly adapted their positioning on the Rwandophone question to changing political circumstances. Nonetheless, from their establishment these chronically financially weak newspapers also relied heavily on the provision of (hidden) financial resources from a variety of political individuals and organisations that paid to have their views communicated. Within this practice, which is called ‘coupage’, it is necessary to formally distinguish between articles written and published independently by the editorial staff of the newspapers and those printed on behalf of a client. It is possible to differentiate roughly between three main categories of articles: (1) declarations, statements and communiqués from either Rwandophone or autochthon individuals and groups; (2) articles written by journalists, which positively represent Rwandophone or autochthon positions; and (3) editorials, opinion pieces, feature articles and general reports of current events by reporters that seem to follow the mutable positioning of the newspapers concerning the Rwandophones over time.6 Given constraints of space here, only the latter category of articles features in the framework of this analysis.7
In 1991, the democratic opposition ‘won a major victory by successfully pressuring Mobutu to allow for the holding of a sovereign national conference’ (Nzongola-Ntalaja 2002, p. 187). For Georges Nzongola-Ntalaja, this conference epitomised the ‘overwhelming popular desire for radical change’ and ‘mark[ed] a major watershed in Congolese history’ (ibid., pp. 186, 197). The Conférence Nationale Souveraine (CNS) was to draw up a new constitution, as well as to establish transitional institutions such as parliament, government and electoral commissions. The intention was to transform the political system so that Mobutu's dictatorship would make way for a democratic Third Republic.
To subvert the process of democratisation, however, Mobutu introduced a new administrative policy called géopolitique, which consequently divided and fragmented the opposition. In contrast to entrusting governorship to someone from outside a particular province, as had been a longstanding Mobutist policy, administrators and governors were now recruited from the local autochthon population (Jackson 2006, p. 102). In relation to North Kivu, Stanislas Mararo Bucyalimwe notes that this policy of ‘each province to the natives’ paved the way for ‘incendiary discourses and political actions directed against the non-natives and/or immigrants and this in the name of the ideology of autochthony’ (Bucyalimwe 2005, p. 176). As géopolitique evolved, autochthones, especially Nande and Hunde leaders, successfully consolidated their positions in North Kivu's institutions and administration and, more importantly, as representatives of North Kivu in Kinshasa's new transitional institutions. Henceforth they dominated national affairs concerning the policies adopted with regard to the Kinyarwanda speakers before, during and after the critical period of the CNS (1991–93).
Amongst its other responsibilities, the CNS reviewed the country's contentious nationality legislation. Its discussions focused primarily on the Rwandophones' citizenship status that had fluctuated significantly since independence as a result of Mobutu's power politics. Promoting representatives of ethnic groups that, because of their size or ambiguous political status, could not threaten his regime, Mobutu had supported the relatively small North Kivutien Tutsi population. Thus he nominated Barthélémy Bisengimana to the influential post as director of the Political Bureau in 1969. During Bisengimana's eight-year tenure, a new law was passed in 1972 that extended Zairian nationality to all persons of Rwandan or Burundian origin who had been constantly living in Zaire since 1 January 1950. Once Bisengimana fell from grace however, the Kivutien autochthones pressured Mobutu and in 1981 the cut-off date for the acquisition of Zairian nationality was moved back to 1 August 1885, the formal start of Belgian colonisation. Although the law was not implemented, it established an official basis to justify discrimination against all Rwandophones.
With democratisation underway and in anticipation of elections, self-styled Kivutien autochthon political leaders began in the early 1990s to lobby for implementation of the 1981 nationality law. For them, depriving the Rwandophones of their citizenship would remove an important opponent in the competition for power. Highlighting their ‘dubious nationality’, the Kivutien ‘autochthones’ managed to exclude nearly all Kinyarwanda speakers from the CNS. This move provided the ‘autochthon’ alliance with a prerogative of interpretation on the ‘nationality question’ during the CNS, which resulted in the conference's confirmation of the 1981 nationality law.
During this period, the nationality question surrounding the Rwandophone populations was new and uncharted territory for the nascent newspapers. Although they harboured an incipient anti-Rwandophone bias, which mirrored broader Congolese sentiments because of the Kinyarwanda speakers' perceived preferential treatment under Mobutu (Pabanel 1991, p. 38), Kinois newspaper coverage was initially relatively pluralistic. During the CNS period, the printed press reflected a variety of views on the nationality question, with some newspapers deliberately providing an open discussion forum for the politically disenfranchised Rwandophones. However, the widely publicised proceedings of the CNS not only highlighted and amplified the Rwandophone nationality ‘problem’. The decision of this very popular national institution to confirm the exclusionary nationality law of 1981 had far-reaching political repercussions that also impacted on the newspapers' positioning on the Rwandophone question.
This can be illustrated with reference to an article published in La Référence Plus on 14 November 1992, four days after the approval of the nationality law by the CNS. The journalist Wadambe M'Gini welcomed the fact that ‘the Sovereign National Conference has solved the nationality question by urging the strict application of the 1981 law’ (Le Potentiel, 14 November 1992). According to him, ‘the ambiguity [of the nationality legislation] had been created by the 1972 law, which had provided Congolese nationality en bloc to the “Rwandan-Burundese” immigrants … at the instance of the late Barthélémy Bisengimana, Rwandese by nationality’ (ibid.).
The article highlighted ‘Banyarwanda’ foreignness by pointing out that M. Birhumana, president of the CNS sub-commission on nationality, had shown evidence to conference delegates that ‘corroborated that Hutu and Tutsi did not appear on the map of the Congo before 1909’ (ibid.). Given the date of 1 August 1885 for the acquisition of Congolese nationality, the assumption that no Rwandophones were present before 1909 was tantamount to denying autochthony status to any part of this heterogeneous grouping. To support his argument that the Rwandophones were not ‘authentic’ Congolese, M'Gini also claimed that in June 1981 the ‘[Banyarwanda] demanded in a letter addressed to the United Nations the right to create a new Republic in the province of Kivu’ (ibid.). Extensive research into the origins of the 1981 letter suggests that it is very likely that Kivutien ‘autochthones’ forged the document at the time of the 1981 nationality discussions. Nonetheless, in the context of M'Gini's commentary, this claim about the past was utilised as crucial evidence supporting the view that the ‘Banyarwanda from Congo-Kinshasa (i.e. Congo/Zaire/DRC) do not consider themselves as real [Zairians]’ (ibid.). This journalist therefore not only represented the CNS's affirmation of the 1981 law as the adequate restoration of the nationality order against the intervention of an influential Rwandan foreigner. He also expressly underlined this argument with reference to an alleged ‘Banyarwanda’ attempt at secession in the Kivus. In this context, the use of the past functioned as strong supporting evidence illustrating the ambiguous national allegiance of the Rwandophones.
Without doubt, the CNS endorsement of the restrictive 1981 law had a decisive signal effect on the newspapers. Widely accepted as the legitimate decision-making body on national affairs, the CNS officially authorised the Kivutien autochthones' equation of Banyarwanda with foreigners. As a consequence, the newspapers supported the strict application of the 1981 nationality law. In the wake of this decisive event, the Kinois press gradually internalised the autochthony discourse of Kivutien origins and began to actively disseminate and propagate its tenets. Information gathered in interviews with Kinois journalists and media professionals in 2010 suggests that ‘autochthon’ leaders from the eastern provinces decisively sustained this process, exerting influence over the newspapers as organs of public opinion formation. In summary, an experienced journalist stated that the ‘autochthones’ ‘heavily influenced the alignment of most newspapers in Kinshasa [as] they wanted to unify the national conscience around the problem of the Rwandan immigrants – it is notably … their discourse that was taken over in most of the newspapers.’8
The 1993 War of Masisi
While the nationality debates in the capital diminished after the closure of the CNS, in North Kivu province, seething tensions born out of longstanding conflicts over land and the reinvigorated nationality question escalated in 1992–93. Localised instances of violence came to a head in March 1993, when autochthon militias attacked both Hutu and Tutsi communities, which subsequently retaliated. The ensuing conflict, known as the ‘Masisi War’, lasted for about six months with each side suffering casualties estimated at three to five thousand.
The newspaper coverage of the Masisi War already displayed unmistakable signs of more radical and unconditional positions towards the Rwandophones. A concrete example of this broader phenomenon is a commentary in L'Umoja entitled ‘The Tutsi and Hutu of North Kivu refuse to give up their Congolese identity’ (L'Umoja, 15 June 1993). The author Médard Ndinga Masakuba argued that the nationality problem lay at the root of this intercommunal violence and portrayed the Banyarwanda as aggressors. He accentuated this impression by pointing out that their Congolese identity had been ‘acquired in the most unilateral way by the sole will of … Mobutu’ (ibid.). The journalist detailed how these ‘Rwandan immigrants’ used their ‘growing influence [under the] totalitarian regime of Mobutu’ to occupy influential posts and how they consequently conferred collective Zairian nationality to populations of Rwandan origin in 1972 (ibid.). Central to Masakuba's argument, however, was the assumption that
these immigrants strive to conquer areas in the east of the country. Today more than yesterday, [these areas] are subject to their greed to form an autonomous and sovereign state [called] the Republic of the Great Lakes, which by default could be annexed to Rwanda, the country of their origin. (ibid.)
will necessitate appropriate measures in the fashion of [former] Prime Minister Moïse Tshombe, who during the bloody events called the Kanyarwanda in the zone of Masisi in 1964 to 1965 had advocated the expulsion of Rwandan subjects that had commanded the massacres of the autochthones. (ibid.)
The Rwanda genocide
The 1994 Rwanda genocide had a profoundly devastating impact on the Congo and the wider Great Lakes region (Prunier 1995, Des Forges 1999). As a direct consequence, Rwanda's takeover by Tutsi rebels of the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) under the lead of Paul Kagame led to the influx of about 1.2 million Hutu refugees into North and South Kivu. Among these refugees were thousands of former Rwandan army soldiers and Interahamwe militias responsible for the genocide. This massive influx imposed extreme strains on the host societies in the Kivus and entailed the transmission of the Rwandan Hutu–Tutsi conflict to the area. The presence of armed Hutu forces posed not only a great danger to the newly installed Rwandan regime. It also drastically amplified anti-Rwandophone sentiments among Zaire's political circles and precipitated the increasing exclusion of the Rwandophones from Zaire. Ultimately, this situation set the stage for the Rwandan-led invasion of Zaire under the smokescreen of the so-called Banyamulenge rebellion in 1996.
The Rwanda genocide caused an unprecedented crisis in the Kivus, making this remote region central to national interest and political discourse. The turmoil in its cataclysmic aftermath foregrounded the forging of cross-border alliances between Congo's Hutu and Tutsi and their respective Rwandan kin. The development of transnational kin ties, which had hitherto gone largely unnoticed in the capital, was of crucial importance for the subsequent evolution of Congo's political discourse. From 1990 onwards, groups of Zairian Tutsi and Banyamulenge had supported the Uganda-based RPF Tutsi rebels that fought the Rwandan Hutu regime and who took power in Kigali in 1994. Although some Congolese Tutsi subsequently left voluntarily to live in Rwanda in the wake of the RPF victory they had supported, in the coming years many others were forced to flee to the relative safety of Rwanda. This was largely due to the fact that the newly arriving Rwandan Hutu forces allied with groups of Congolese Hutu and subsequently turned on North Kivu's Tutsi population. The radical Hutu elements among the refugees had brought with them their extreme anti-Tutsi ideology, which advocated the killing of Tutsi as the answer to the Great Lakes region's problems. From late 1994 onwards, these combined forces began the assault on North Kivu's Tutsi, and to a lesser extent, the autochthones, not least in order to create a secure base for their envisioned violent return to reconquer Rwanda.
Alongside the increasing radicalisation and popularisation of the anti-Rwandophone discourse during 1994 to 1996, this emerging state of affairs in the Kivus caused a significant realignment of its conceptual framework. While the construction of a ‘Banyarwanda’ self-understanding had lost much of its significance to Congolese Hutu and Tutsi years before the Rwanda genocide, this article has shown that the label continued to be used as an external identification in Congo's political discourse. At the CNS, ‘Banyarwanda’ was used to collectively challenge the nationality of the diverse Hutu and Tutsi groups in Congo. Subsequently, amidst the Masisi War, the Banyarwanda marker was used to frame and amplify perceptions of an existential threat to the Congolese nation from a unified group of Rwandophones. In late 1994, however, the forceful transmission of the Hutu–Tutsi conflict to the Kivus immediately dissolved the Banyarwanda category; it left ‘Hutu’ and ‘Tutsi’ as the only meaningful points of reference for distinguishing between variously perceived threats.
A good illustration of this changing view is an article by Milenge Kitoga Kitungano in La Référence Plus: ‘The false Zairian Tutsi regain Rwanda’ (La Référence Plus, 28 November 1994). Despite Kitungano's assertion that the Tutsi ‘fear reprisals from the Rwandan Hutu soldiers’, this did not alter his overall interpretation that ‘North Kivu is emptying more and more of Rwandans of Tutsi ethnicity who before the military victory of the [RPF] posed as authentic Zairians’ (ibid.). The Tutsi ‘return’ to Rwanda was perceived as setting a precedent. It corroborated the ‘autochthon’ view that all Zairian Tutsi were really Rwandese who had manipulated Zairian nationality to their advantage and betrayed the country's hospitality. Against this background, the newly arrived Hutu refugees could be expected to act in the same way as Tutsi ‘refugees’ had done in the past. By the second half of 1994, reports of attacks by radical Hutu forces on North Kivutien autochthones were published regularly in the newspapers. As repatriation efforts achieved little, the Kinshasa press increasingly reported that the autochthones considered themselves as living in a ‘conquered country’, besieged by the Hutu refugees. In this context, the newspaper coverage reflected an emerging vision that the Hutu were seeking to establish a state on Zairian territory. In an editorial in Le Soft in November 1994, Ngwanza Kassong' Abor noted that ‘there is a real danger that these refugees, who crossed the border with arms, munitions and baggage [will] establish a state within the state’ (Le Soft, 23 November 1994). In an end-of-year review by Daniel Yalik for Le Potentiel, this perception was significantly strengthened:
[T]he Rwandan refugees make the law in this part of Zaire … they have become the masters over the territory…. Over there, these bellicose Rwandans brought about an entire ‘Republic’ [as] the local populations were chased away by the force of arms of the Hutu refugees who have formed a coalition with the ‘autochthon’ Hutu. (Le Potentiel, 5 January 1995)
Immediately dissolving the hitherto prevailing Banyarwanda label, the imported Hutu–Tutsi conflict also redefined Hutu and Tutsi as identity-markers with varying meanings and perceptions of threat. While the departure of Zairian Tutsi to Rwanda provided paradigmatic evidence for the disloyalty of both Hutu and Tutsi, the emerging transnational Hutu alliance was perceived as history repeating itself; this time, however, on an unparalleled scale and with potentially disastrous consequences to the nation. The potent and immediate threat of a Hutuland, it was feared, would entail the ‘extermination’ or ‘genocide’ of the autochthones.
The Vangu Commission
Henceforth, the transnational allegiance of both Zairian Hutu and Tutsi developed into the decisive factor for substantiating their foreignness and was directly linked to the strengthening vision of a looming Rwandan threat. In this development, the so-called Vangu Commission played a crucial role. Appointed by Zaire's transitional parliament to investigate the situation of the Kivutien autochthones after the arrival of the Rwandan refugees in 1994, the commission included several hardline anti-Rwandophone autochthon delegates from the Kivus. During its field visit to the Kivus in August 1994, the Vangu Commission relied heavily on the Kivutien autochthon witnesses to develop its framework. However, it reinterpreted and reconstructed these within a wider national autochthony framework. Presented to parliament as a 174-page report in April 1995, the Vangu Commission's analysis of the situation in the Kivus was informed by strong mythico-historical visions that entailed a profound reinterpretation of Zaire's past. In retrospect, the Vangu Report had severe implications for the ways in which the Rwandophone question was subsequently politically handled (HCR-PT 1995).
First and foremost, the Vangu Commission's re-imagination of Zaire's past entailed a vision of a ‘pure’ pre-colonial country devoid of foreign elements. According to this view, the autochthones successfully repelled the first ‘Rwandan’ attempted invasion in the late nineteenth century; only the Belgian colonisers' intervention enabled the ‘installation’ and ‘infiltration’ of Rwandans in eastern Congo (HCR-PT 1995, p. 154). The report's treatment of the colonial and postcolonial trajectory of the Rwandophone presence in the Kivus consequently portrayed Congo/Zaire as the victim of perpetual expansionist ambitions of the ‘Rwandans’. This narrative constructed both Rwandan ‘immigrants’ and ‘refugees’ as infiltrators who penetrated national political institutions to establish control over the Kivus and ‘supplant the autochthones’ (ibid., p. 158).
Under these premises, the recent Rwandophone' cross-border activities were perceived to be part and parcel of this historically imagined Rwandan expansionism. Accordingly, the Tutsi diaspora communities in several countries of the Great Lakes region were styled as ‘pockets of Tutsi expansion [created by the Tutsi who] project the birth of a Hamitic empire in the near future’ (ibid., p. 159, author's emphasis). This is the first sign of the appropriation of the mythico-history known as the ‘Hamitic hypothesis’ in the discourse of Zaire's political elite. Initially devised by European colonial anthropology, the subsequently remodelled theory presumes a centuries-old conflict on a regional scale of belonging and difference pitting ‘Bantu’ against ‘Nilotes’. The supposed Nilotes – the Tutsi in Rwanda, Burundi, Zaire, Tanzania and the Hima of Uganda – figure as foreign invaders from the Horn of Africa who aim at conquering and subjugating the central African autochthones from the Bantu groups including the Nande, Hunde, Nyanga and Hutu (Sanders 1960).
However, in light of the perceived imminent threat associated with the united Hutu forces in the Kivus, the Vangu Report also recognised that ‘the Hutu express the same designs by the war they wage against the [autochthones in the Kivus]’ which would ultimately lead to the erection of a ‘Hutuland’ (HCR-PT 1995, p. 170). In this specific context, the discourse of the Bantu–Nilotes antagonism was of little significance. Only under the drastically changed geopolitical situation of the first and second Congo wars did this conceptual framework offer meaningful explanatory potential, which rapidly gained momentum in Zaire's political circles.
The importance of the Vangu Report lies in its synthesis of the local ‘autochthon’ set of ideas, narratives and historical imaginations which it transferred into a national frame of reference: not only the Kivus, but Zaire as a whole, was under existential threat. The report produced a historical interpretation creating a forceful twofold threat to Zaire that was both permanent and imminent. From the outside, Zaire faced the scheming Rwandan state with its perpetual expansionist ambitions. Domestically, however, the Rwandophones were projected as a potent ‘fifth column’, a menacing danger from within the nation's boundaries that facilitated the steady infiltration of Zaire's body politic. As a result, the distinction between internal and external threats was obliterated. The Vangu Commission's political recommendations to the transitional parliament were demonstrably informed by this kind of mythmaking and represented a drastic radicalisation of Zaire's political discourse.
By extrapolating Rwandan expansionism back to the precolonial era and linking this directly to events post-1994, the situation in the Kivus, Zaire and the Great Lakes region was imbued with much greater significance. For the Vangu Commission, the resolution of the post-1994 crisis thus became a matter of great ‘urgency [and] necessity’ (ibid. 172). In view of the ubiquitous danger of Rwandan conquest, the only conceivable solution was to restore the envisioned precolonial status quo. Following the logic that extreme situations require extreme measures, on 28 April 1995 the transitional parliament acted on recommendation of the Vangu Commission and decreed the forced expulsion of all Rwandophones, ‘refugees’ and ‘immigrants’ alike (ibid.).
The mounting radicalisation in anti-Rwandophone sentiment since the Rwanda genocide was greatly reinforced by the Vangu Report: ‘[it] inflamed the nationality question and generated a lot of debate … and all of the country, the whole nation paid attention’.9 In this situation of national crisis, the newspapers embraced the Vangu Commission's radical analysis and draconian policy recommendations. The Vangu Report's deliberate conflation of Rwandophone Zairians (‘natives’, ‘immigrants’ and former ‘refugees’) with the recent Rwandan Hutu refugees was unopposed and generally adopted. By and large, the newspapers assented to the view that ‘repatriating them immediately, unconditionally and, if required, by military force’ (La Référence Plus, 2 May 1995) was necessary to avert the danger of Zaire being ‘dragged … into a war of ethnic cleansing’ (La Référence Plus, 29 April 1995). Henceforth, the newspapers proactively challenged Zaire's authorities, harshly criticising their perceived inaction and complicity in the drastically deteriorating situation in the Kivus. In late August 1995, under growing pressure from the transitional parliament, the Kivutien ‘autochthon’ leaders, and not least the Kinois newspapers, Mobutu decided to forcefully expel about 15,000 ‘Rwandan refugees’. The cessation of the expulsion shortly afterwards provoked a first generalised outburst of violent anti-Rwandophone rhetoric in the newspapers. Pay Dheba's editorial for La Référence Plus set the agenda: ‘We have to kick out the Rwandans and Burundians until the very last one’ (La Référence Plus, 24 August 1995). A week later, Mona Kumbu's editorial in the same newspaper declared that ‘for once this conspiracy against Zaire will not pass. Public opinion is unanimous in demanding the unconditional return of all the refugees to Rwanda … the Zairians totally disapprove of the suspension of the forced expulsion’ (La Référence Plus, 31 August 1995). At this stage, the newspapers took as their role the defence of the Zairian nation. Numerous editorials demanded ‘radical solutions’ in the form of the forced expulsion of all ‘Rwandans’.
‘The Banyamulenge rebellion’
In the course of 1995 and 1996, fear of a general outbreak of war between Rwanda and Zaire grew ever more significant. The Rwandan regime repeatedly claimed its right to pursue invading Hutu militias and attacked their positions within Zairian territory. In contrast to its northern neighbour, South Kivu had remained relatively calm during the early 1990s. South Kivu province has a much lower population density and far less pressure on available lands, a major source of conflict between autochthones and Rwandophones in North Kivu. What is more, the South Kivutien Banyamulenge Tutsi is a relatively small community compared to the demographically larger Rwandophones of North Kivu, who therefore represented a greater threat to the autochthones in envisaged upcoming elections. Nevertheless, the spark that ultimately set off a major conflict between Rwanda and Zaire came from South, not North Kivu.
The Banyamulenge arrived in South Kivu from Rwanda sometime before the advent of Belgian colonialism. Despite their ‘autochthon’ origins, they became identified with the larger Zairian Banyarwanda grouping, which was increasingly associated with Rwandese ‘foreignness’ around independence. In a move designed to dissociate their grouping from the broader Banyarwanda entity, Banyarwanda Tutsi community leaders from South Kivu chose a new ethnonym during the 1960s. The act of naming themselves ‘Banya-mulenge’, the ones that come from Mulenge (the location of their collectively remembered first settlement), was an attempt to emphasise their autochthon Zairian identity (Vlassenroot 2002, p. 505). Yet, this performative act backfired. South Kivu's autochthones immediately viewed this as an attempt at disguising their ‘real’ Rwandan identity in order to stake a primordial claim to Congolese territory.
As a consequence, the Banyamulenge were equally threatened by the confirmation of the 1981 nationality law by the CNS, as autochthon delegates from South Kivu successfully portrayed them as recent Rwandan arrivals. In the wake of the Hutu refugee influx of 1994, a major campaign against the Banyamulenge took shape, which used a ‘new and strong mobilising force [in the form of] an anti-Tutsi ideology’ (Vlassenroot 2000, p. 77). Due to South Kivutien autochthon mobilisation efforts, the Vangu Report prominently dismissed the Banyamulenge as ‘Rwandan refugees’ who had adopted a fake Zairian autochthon identity, and included them in its proposal to expel all Rwandophones. In late 1995 and early 1996, threats turned violent and in mid 1996 the Banyamulenge faced their imminent expulsion from Zaire.
Confronted with this rapidly deteriorating situation, Banyamulenge leaders began to prepare for their self-defence, while hundreds of North Kivutien Tutsi and Banyamulenge recruits were already being militarily trained and equipped in Rwanda. From late August 1996 onwards, Banyamulenge and Tutsi from North Kivu entered South Kivu from Rwanda and began to forcefully claim their Zairian citizenship rights, while both spearheading and facilitating the Rwandan invasion of Zaire.
On 18 September 1996 Kitungano Milenge reported in La Référence Plus that South Kivu was being infiltrated by ‘3000 Banyamulenge invaders … enlisted and trained in the Rwandan Patriotic Army’; ‘These young Banyamulenge, of dual Rwando-Zairian status, know perfectly well the Zairian territory since they have lived here for a long time’ (La Référence Plus, 18 September 1996). Significantly, Kitungano noted that ‘the “Vangu Report” predicted the Banyamulenge attack’ and that therefore ‘Zaire had to expect’ that this was coming (ibid.). As early as 1994, Kitungano reminded his readers, ‘the natives of [South Kivu had warned] that the Banyamulenge represent an active volcano’ and that they would repel all actions aimed at creating a ‘Hamitic empire or a Central African State which [the Banyamulenge] would call the “Republic of Volcanoes” or “Republic of the States of the Great Lakes”’ (ibid.).
From the very start of the Rwandan-sponsored ‘Banyamulenge rebellion’, the trope of Rwandan expansionism was invoked as the key explanatory framework. Characteristic of the self-fulfilling quality of the Vangu Report's vision, the historically conceived narrative of Rwandan imperialism was adjusted and altered according to the new situation in the east. Kitungano's interpretation evidently shows that the hitherto hardly known concept ‘Banyamulenge’ ideally suited the vision outlined in the Vangu report (HCR-PT 1995, p. 159).
With attacks from Rwandan territory increasing in October 1996, all signs pointed to all-out war between Rwanda and Zaire. The missing link that brought about this confrontation became inextricably identified with the ‘Banyamulenge’ label. This gave rise to a rapid redefinition of the Rwandophone Tutsi group identities in Zaire's political discourse. The label ‘Banyamulenge’, which originally signified the relatively small group of Tutsi from South Kivu, was now recast as the catch-all term for all Zairian Tutsi. The Banyamulenge were consequently envisioned as Tutsi infiltrators and Rwandan Tutsi in disguise who, under the smokescreen of a fake Zairian identity, had acted as a Trojan horse for Rwanda.
The Banyamulenge concept evidently came to stand for a perceived new geopolitical reality. With the unfolding of Rwanda's politico-military campaign in Zaire, the historically imagined threat of Rwandan expansionism now suddenly seemed to have come true. From 1996 onwards, the ‘Banyamulenge’ label epitomised the perceived implementation of the Tutsi plot to establish a regional empire.
This widespread perception led to a drastic rise in violent rhetoric; with the start of what was later termed the first Congo war, identities crystallised around racist stereotypes of belligerent, powerful, devious and conspiratorial Tutsi. At the time, however, anti-Tutsi sentiments were further reinforced from an unexpected external source. On 28 October 1996, Rwanda's President Pasteur Bizimungu stated at a press conference that ‘if Zaire wants to expel the Banyamulenge to Rwanda, it should also return their land’ (Reyntjens 2009, p. 53). Bizimungu used a precolonial map of ‘greater Rwanda’ to assert that areas of Banyamulenge settlements historically belonged to Rwanda. Two days later, a document calling for a ‘Berlin Conference II’ was circulated at another press conference held by General Kagame (ibid., pp. 53–54). These historical claims from Kigali clearly magnified fears of Rwandan irredentism that had circulated in Zaire's political spheres for some time. Furthermore, these statements also perfectly mirrored the Vangu Report's depiction of the prevalence of ‘nostalgic attitudes [among] the Rwandese’ based on their precolonial military campaigns in the Kivus (HCR-PT 1995, p. 157).
The aggressive wars Rwanda subsequently waged in the DRC (1996–97, 1998–2003), as well as the important part played by Congolese Tutsi and Banyamulenge in facilitating the invasions and supporting the occupying Rwandan regime, did not help assuage autochthon fears of Tutsi domination. During the war years, mythological representations of Tutsi dominated the country's political discourse. From the originally passive role the newspapers had played in reproducing growing anti-Rwandophone sentiments in the early to mid 1990s, they developed into politically active agents pressuring the authorities to act on the ‘Rwandan problem’. During the first and second Congo wars, however, the newspapers ultimately turned into proactive platforms relaying anti-Tutsi propaganda and inciting ethnic violence rooted in a Hamitic frame of reference.
Conclusion
The period from 1990 to 1996 was in many ways formative for subsequent manifestations and transformations of anti-Rwandophone discourse in the DRC, up to the present day. When analysing the semantic changes to the labelling of the Rwandophone ‘other’, identity markers such as ‘Banyarwanda’, ‘Hutu’, ‘Tutsi’ and ‘Banyamulenge’ emerge as historically situated and politically contingent variables that came to dominate Congo's political discourse at different points in time. In this respect, the 1994 Rwanda genocide and the outbreak of the first Congo war constituted major watershed events. These crises greatly accelerated the polarisation of group identities into conflicting identities and led to a rapid radicalisation of anti-Rwandophone rhetoric. However, the historical perspective taken in this article allows understanding of the powerful repercussions of these contingent events as relatively dependent on the preconfigured reference frames: it was through the lens of the ideologically moulded anti-Rwandophone discourse that these critical junctures were perceived and interpreted.
This analysis points to the strong potential for the agency of political actors in shaping perceptions of present conflicts by employing selective visions of the past. As I argue elsewhere, underlying the continuous redefinition of the Rwandophone identity prism was the ideological mobilisation of the Kivutien autochthones (Huening 2012). In linking the Rwandophone ‘other’ with future-orientated fearful visions of Rwandan expansionism, these political actors clearly fuelled ethnic polarisation and fostered exclusionary dynamics. In the early to mid 1990s, these ‘autochthon’ leaders successfully introduced a coherent set of mythical imaginaries, selective memories and claims about the past into Congo's political discourse. The subsequent canonisation of the local Kivutien autochthony discourse engendered a dominant historical narrative of perpetual Rwandan expansionism towards the Congo. Constantly informed and reinforced by contemporary developments, in particular the increasing degree of Rwandophone transnational activity, this historically conceived vision played an important role in defining the contours of identitarian conflicts.
While the CNS set the course in legitimising the autochthon perspective, the Vangu Commission developed a singular importance for Zaire's political discourse. By extrapolating the Kivutien autochthony discourse onto a national level, this new reference frame pitted Zaire's ‘nationals’ or ‘autochthones’ against the Rwandophone ‘foreigners’. At this stage, the article illustrated the mutually reinforcing relationship between perceptions of present developments and powerful mythico-historical narratives of the past. The Vangu Report's historical vision of permanent Rwandan expansionism was essentially a self-fulfilling prophecy; a historical narrative that was highly flexible, modifiable and malleable according to changes in the domestic and geopolitical situation. Contemporary developments were henceforth perceived and interpreted through the prism of a historically projected, looming and inevitably existential confrontation with the Rwandophone ‘other’. This interaction between past and present is a key historical dynamic behind conflicting identities and the radicalisation of anti-Rwandophone sentiments in Congo's political discourse. The fallout from the 1996 and 1998 wars, in regard to exclusionary politics and violence against ‘Banyamulenge’ or Tutsi, can only be fully appreciated if this predefined yet malleable cognitive map is taken into account.
Relating this insight to the 2012 crisis, this article argues that the core historical narrative of Rwandan expansionism that lies at the heart of these threat scenarios has stood the test of time. It was in the direct aftermath of the Vangu Report's publication that Modeste Mutinga, owner of Le Potentiel, introduced the concept ‘Balkanisation’ in his editorial ‘Towards the Balkanisation of Zaire’ (Le Potentiel, 18 August 1995). This national crisis, at the centre of which was the conflict with the Rwandophones, gave birth to the slogan that came to dominate Le Potentiel's coverage in the course of the second Congo war, and which continues to inform its analysis. An article in early July 2012, entitled ‘After the genocide of more than 5 million Congolese: the M23 aims at the secession of Kivu’, opened with following paragraph:
There is no longer any doubt possible. Behind the M23 movement, it is indeed Rwanda which is acting behind the scenes [and] which is in turn guided by foreign powers which provide [Rwanda] with arms and munitions in order to permanently destabilise the eastern part of the DRC. Since the Rwandan genocide in 1994 … it is the creation of an autonomous state in the Kivus that has been envisaged. This macabre plan has already cost the lives of more than five million Congolese. (Le Potentiel, 7 July 2012)
The article subsequently described the creation of a ‘proxy state of Kigali’ as an integral part of the ‘project of Balkanisation’ (ibid.). In this commentary, Le Potentiel unmistakably establishes a connection between M23, the Rwandophone populations as M23's main recruiting ground, Rwanda and the Balkanisation project; all are rhetorically linked to the ‘genocide of more than five million Congolese’ (ibid.).
Although the newspapers have greatly toned down their anti-Rwandophone rhetoric since the Congo wars, and profess to accept the Rwandophones' credentials as Congolese citizens, these popular narratives continue to flourish. They persist as potent resources available to Congolese political actors to further their interests by mobilising populations along conflicting identity fault lines. Making use of the past in this vein, it appears, will remain instrumental to the DRC's political discourse, in particular in case of an escalating conflict with Rwanda and M23.
Note on contributor
Lars-Christopher Huening is an independent scholar who completed his PhD at the University of Sheffield in January 2012. He is currently working on the publication of his PhD dissertation under the working title ‘A case of mistaken identity? The Kinshasa Press, political discourse and contested representations of Congolese Rwandophones, c. 1990–2005’.