Guerres paysannes au Nord-Kivu (République démocratique du Congo), 1937-1994

Abstract

Abstract Peasant Wars in North Kivu (Congo), 1937-1994. — Northern Kivu Province in eastern Zaire, in particular the Masisi area, was the scene of major, violent conflicts (massacres and "ethnie cleansing") from 1993 to 1996 between natives and groups with Rwandan origins (both recent migrants and populations long settled in the area). This violence fits into a series of "moments of strife" since 1937 and stems from an old historical process involving several axes of tension: demographic and ethnic disequilibrium resulting from migrations, the precariousness of the peasantry and its loss of land, uncertainty about identities owing to political confusion about the nationality of migrants. Violence thus escalated to the point of political/ethnic polarization and followed a "logic of security violence" whereby each of the two polarized ethnie groups saw its own survival as depending on the violent elimination of the other.