Business of Civil War

Patience Kabamba

Description

Within the context of the absence of effective state sovereignty and the presence of numerous armed struggles for power, Nande traders have managed to build and protect self-sustaining, prosperous, transnational economic enterprises in eastern Congo.

This book discusses the commercial enterprises of the Nande trust networks and the subsequent transnational community they have produced, thereby challenging the assumption that a "weak state" or a "failed state" or even a "collapsed state" can be presumed to signal a "failed" society. It demonstrates the fact that several sovereignties and property right systems can coexist side by side, reinforcing each other - an idea which seems inconceivable for those with a normative view of governmental institutions and state sovereignty.

Rethinking the question of African state formation, the study contributes to the formulation of a more rigorously transnational and local paradigms in the study of post-colonial African state formations. It constitutes an original contribution to critical theory of societal responses to processes of state implosion, and the anthropology of new social formations that emerge when states disintegrate, especially in war-torn Africa. The book also discusses issues related to the dynamics of conflict, new state formation, transnational trade network, ethnicity, and global political and economic governance.

In the midst of abundant anti-ethnic literature on African studies, this study posits that there may be a renewed usefulness and necessity in theorizing the salience and continuing production of 'ethnic' differences in a manner that challenges the notion of ethnicity as merely a devious and divisive invention of colonialism that must simply be overcome.

Informations

• Publié par: CODESRIA
• Date de parution: 20 mars 2013
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9782869785649
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 5 Mo

Extrait

Business of Civil War

Business of Civil War New Forms of Life in the Debris of the Democratic Republic of Congo

Patience Kabamba

Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa DAKAR

©CODESRIA 2013 Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa Avenue Cheikh Anta Diop, Angle Canal IV BP 3304 Dakar, 18524, Senegal Website: www.codesria.org

ISBN: 978-2-86978-552-6

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording or any information storage or retrieval system without prior permission from CODESRIA.

Typesetting: Daouda Thiam Cover Design: Ibrahima Fofana Printing: Imprimerie Graphiplus, Dakar, Senegal

Distributed in Africa by CODESRIA Distributed elsewhere by African Books Collective, Oxford, UK Website: www.africanbookscollective.com

The Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa (CODESRIA) is an independent organisation whose principal objectives are to facilitate research, promote research- based publishing and create multiple forums geared towards the exchange of views and information among African researchers. All these are aimed at reducing the fragmentation of research in the continent through the creation of thematic research networks that cut across linguistic and regional boundaries.

CODESRIA publishesAfrica Development, the longest standing Africa based social science journal;Afrika Zamani, a journal of history; theAfrican Sociological Review; theAfrican Journal of International Affairs;Africa Review of Books and theJournal of Higher Education in Africa. The Council also co-publishes theAfrica Media Review;Identity, Culture and Politics: An Afro- Asian Dialogue;The African Anthropologistand theAfro-Arab Selections for Social Sciences. The results of its research and other activities are also disseminated through its Working Paper Series, Green Book Series, Monograph Series, Book Series, Policy Briefs and the CODESRIA Bulletin. Select CODESRIA publications are also accessible online at www.codesria.org.

CODESRIA would like to express its gratitude to the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (SIDA/SAREC), the International Development Research Centre (IDRC), the Ford Foundation, the MacArthur Foundation, the Carnegie Corporation, the Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation (NORAD), the Danish Agency for Inter- national Development (DANIDA), the French Ministry of Cooperation, the United Na- tions Development Programme (UNDP), the Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Rockefeller Foundation, FINIDA, the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA), the Open Society Foundations (OSFs), TrustAfrica, UN/UNICEF, the African Capacity Building Foundation (ACBF) and the Government of Senegal for supporting its re- search, training and publication programmes.

Contents

List of Maps and Tables ...................................................................................vii Acknowledgements................................................................................................ ix Preface................................................................................................................ xiii

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

8.

9.

Introduction ................................................................................................. 1

“The Failed State”: A Hegemonic Discourse? .................................. 23

The Emergence of the Nande: A Socio-political History .............. 47

Theoretical Issues in the Nande Trading Networks ......................... 77

Strategies and Structural Frameworks that Facilitated Economic Growth in the Nande Region .......................................... 103

Playing the Ethnic Card in the Formation of a Postcolonial African State ........................................................................................... 135

The Elite Question ............................................................................... 151

Gold and Guns: Protecting Capitalist Investment during Social Fragmentation and Violence ................................................... 171

Nande Trust Networks in New Globalised Relations: Invention of Post-postcolonial State? ............................................... 193

10. Conclusion .............................................................................................. 207

Bibliography.............................................................................................. 217

List of Maps and Tables

Maps Map of the Democratic Republic of the Congo ......................................... 2 Map of North Kivu Province .......................................................................... 3

Tables Table 1: Distribution of State Expenditure, 1972-1992 ........................ 71 Table 2: Demographic Evolution of the City of Butembo .................. 109 Table 3: Coffee Export Statistics from 1996 to 2000 ........................... 113 Table 4: Foreign Currency Transfer via B.I.C./Butembo ...................... 119 Table 5: Distribution of State Expenditure, 1972-1992 ...................... 153 Table 6: Tax Regimes for Imports .............................................................. 183

Acknowledgements

This book is dedicated to Charles Tilly who, according to close sources, was reading my manuscript and e-mailing me from the hospital. Tilly was involved in in this project until the end of his life. He remains for me not only an academic mentor, but also an example of a great man and a fine human being. This book would not have been possible without the patience and dedication of Nicholas De Genova. De Genova is an expert on migrations and ethnicity in the United States and Mexico. He went out of his way, however, to deal with African issues in order to make sure that my research was moving in the right theoretical and ethnographic direction. I also benefited incommensurably from Lesley Sharp’s intellectual and methodological inputs. Professor Sharp brought to my analysis her unique exper- tise on African studies and helped me to find the correct wording for the complex and paradoxical situations my research sought to engage. By his insistence on details, Brian Larkin forced me to base my theoretical demonstration on detailed ethnographic experiences. Professor Larkin made very valuable remarks on the organization of this book’s argument. Professor Stefaan Marysse of the University of Antwerp in Belgium was very instrumental in reshaping the question of state formation in Africa. I would like to thank Janet MacGaffey for providing an anthropological construct for my work. This research is therefore based upon the anthropological tradition which she pioneered in the early 1970s. Also, her seminal work on the “second economy” during the autocratic regime of the kleptomaniac, President Mobutu, supported and sustained by the Cold War logic, demonstrated how specific groups like the Nande traders were a contrast to the dominant political elite whose predation destroyed the national wealth. This book is built on that anthropological tradition and brings it a step further by showing how these Nande traders adapted to ever changing conditions even in cases of extreme violence and civil war where trading was even more difficult to pursue than under the predatory regime of Mobutu. I owe Professor MacGaffey an intellectual debt and promise to carry on her legacy.