Karl Marx once wrote that history always repeats itself, the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce. Zaïre in 1978 appeared an apt illustration of this aphorism, except the sequence was inverted; farce preceded tragedy (Young, 1978).
Over a distance of 500 km, the Congolese provinces of North and South Kivu stretch along the borders of the Democratic Republic of Congo with the republics of Uganda, Rwanda, and Burundi. These provinces consist of highlands and volcanoes to the East, and lowlands to the West, mirroring the conditions of the crowded and fertile highlands of Rwanda as well as those of the underpopulated Congo basin. For more than a decade now, the Kivu has been a notorious hotbed of problems and conflicts, where rebellious armies and peasant militia hold sway almost unhindered. This kind of turmoil is not new; as early as the 1920s, conflicts regularly erupted. Clearly, the particular location and history of the provinces are pertinent in looking for an explanation. The colonial history of the region is one of resettlement: Rwandan and Burundian peasants supplied labour to the large coffee and tea estates and cattle ranches in the Kivu highlands. After Congolese independence in 1960, the nature of the problem changed but not the predicament itself; peasants of neighbouring countries continued to flock to Kivu to escape the crowded conditions of their own homelands. Consequently, the biggest post-independence bone of contention in the Kivu is that of nationality which exploded with particular force in the run-up to the 1994 presidential elections in Zaire. In various political seesaw movements, nationality was granted to these immigrants and then repealed according to political convenience. Underlying this controversy, is the bigger and deeper issue of access to land.
This paper is not an attempt to unweave the complex tapestry of causes that led to Kivu's current conflict. Nor is it an effort to situate Kivu's erupting tensions in the regional political dynamics of the last decade.1 Regularly, the war is presented as the local extension of a wider regional and exogenous conflict, itself occasioned and conditioned by the aftermath of the 1994 Rwandan genocide. Such analysis has often eclipsed the endogenous elements of the conflict. It obscured somewhat the fact that Congo and Kivu had a tumultuous history long before the 1994 genocide and concealed these pre-1994 regional dynamics. Although the genocide undeniably was a watershed in many ways, the episode itself was embedded in the various political dynamics of the region. Indisputably, the evolution of Kivu's pre-colonial frame of reference through the colonial and post-colonial history of Congo/Zaire has been equally significant in shaping Kivu's volatile social context. Traditional patron-client ties, personalised connections, and state-sponsored extortion were mechanisms that ejected peasant families from their land into an economic void; this, apart from some mining activities, provided few livelihood opportunities for a growing population.
The paper aims to present an argument that brings forward those endogenous elements by way of a historic narrative: a reconstruction of the effects that the evolution of Congo's political economy had on Kivu's institutional framework. Considering that capital (economic as well as social) is an emanation of social relations, this paper's argument marks out the reproduction of inequalities through the trajectory of changes in capital (composition and volume) over time. Specifically, the focus will be on land as the integrative factor of Kivu's institutional framework. The commoditisation of land continued the historic process of land alienation inaugurated by the colonial state to serve the interests of rural capitalists: how did it contribute to a process of local struggle embedded in traditions of peasant uprising?
Land & social structure
A land tenure system consists of a set of institutions that structure the social organisation of space. In Kivu, as in many other places in Africa, its evolution is characterised by three elements. First, land is held in common by a group circumscribed by the boundaries of ethnicity, clan, or lineage. Second, no property rights can be assigned beyond a simple use right (usus), thereby disabling the alienation of parts of the collective domain, even in cases where a family farmed a plot of land for generations. Third, land relations are the means to realise a system of dependent integration: land relations and social hierarchy mirror each other. To achieve the construction of social hierarchy and hence power relations, use rights (usus) do not entail full benefit rights (fructus) because of the appropriation of land rents as tribute. Tributes are redistributed upwards in an elaborate system of dependency that configures the collective management of economic uncertainty. In this worldview, clan or ethnic boundaries are ‘soft’: immigrants can obtain access to land as long as they also acquire the status of client which is tantamount to assimilation. Land is therefore a common good: actors cannot be excluded yet it is rival in use; a household cannot cultivate a plot already used by another. To understand the particularities in Kivu better, necessitates a closer look at the economic and political dimensions of the concept of kalinzi. I will then investigate the nature of social capital tied up in this particular system.
The best way to describe the contract of kalinzi is as a ‘structuring structure’ (Mugangu, 1997). Rather than a contract that legally establishes a property relation between an individual and a parcel of land, it is an institution that legitimises the whole social organisation by absorbing all persons within a given area into a network of dependent relations. This implies a tight social pyramid; at the top is the Mwami (plural: Bami) or king, followed in hierarchical order by the Barhambo(which could be described as lords), the Bashamuka (landed powers with responsibility for a hill), the Bagula (wise ‘pater familias' with property), and the Bashizi (subjects without any political authority (Muheme, 1996).2 In economic terms, the securing of a kalinzi requires an initial payment (called muganda) and an annual rent to be paid to the particular patron, in products (called isoko) as well as labour (burhabale). Table 1 gives an indication of the distribution of annual tenure rents in a specific locale in 1994 over the different levels of the customary hierarchy.
| Hierarchy | In | Out | Difference | % |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mwami | 12 | 0 | 12 | 9.16 |
| Noblemen | 63 | 12 | 51 | 38.93 |
| Underlords | 87 | 63 | 24 | 18.32 |
| Intermediary | 110 | 87 | 23 | 17.56 |
| Large farmers | 131 | 110 | 21 | 16.03 |
| Peasants | 0 | 131 | −131 | – |
Source:Tsongo, 1994:100
Annual payments may run as high as one fourth of the initial payment; however, several decades ago when land was abundant in highland Kivu, the kalinzi was free (Munzihirwa, 1978; Fairhead, 1991). This is consistent with the treatment of tribute as an economic rent that reflects the value of the land. With sufficient land for open access, there will be no rent or tribute.
Specific to the system of kalinzi, rents are paid as tribute by those working the land and recycled through the system (cf. Table 1). The basic principle is to avoid accumulation at the producer's level beyond the needs for simple reproduction, but rather to redistribute the surplus to sustain the network of dependent relations. The result is a complex structure of rights where nobody has complete property rights, but few – if any – have no rights at all. For a peasant family, the system trades social integration and hence security for loyalty and tribute to the mwami who receives power in exchange for granting non-alienable use rights over the customary domain. Nevertheless, the system was not feudal in the sense of social immobility; it allowed social mobility in return for the expansion of the collective domain. By clearing virgin land or forest, a man could extend the collective domain while gaining use rights to the cleared land. To the extent that use right were further divisible, they allowed him to exact tribute, propelling him higher into the hierarchy as the head of a new lineage (mugula). Also, immigrants could obtain access to land as long as they also acquired the status of client. This underscores the basic nature of land as a common good; no social actor can be refused the right to access and use land, as long as they respect the principle that ensures social integration.
Since land is the integrative focus of social relations, this aspect of non-excludability also defines the social capital set in these patrimonial relations. Social capital can be described as the level of generalised trust and adherence to norms of reciprocity, embedded in the way institutions shape and constrain social interaction. Anyone can become a client, and therefore anyone can benefit from the patterns of reciprocity locked in these patrimonial networks: tribute and expansion of the collective domain versus integration, security, and social mobility. How much tribute and security to give or receive depends on the position in the hierarchy. On the other hand, the reciprocity embedded in the kalinzi is non-rival. Security, which can mean many different things such as freedom from physical attack and sorcery, access to the royal food stocks in case of famine and other measures to cope with adversity,3 a fair hearing in a customary court etc., can be extended to many social actors simultaneously. In general therefore, the social capital embedded in the system could be defined as a public good.
In Table 2, all elements have been pulled together in a summary using the terminology developed by Ostrom (1994). Collective-choice rules determine three sets of rules: boundary rules that define which social actors have access; authority rules that define the conditions of access (where and when, using which tools, to extract what and how much of it); enforcement rules that define how compliance shall be monitored and enforced. These rules govern the distribution of land use rights The table presents the situation before as well as after 1973, a watershed year.
| Situation before 1973 | Situation after 1973 | |
|---|---|---|
| Boundary | Access for all via kalinzi | Access increasingly ethnically defined |
| Authority: assignment | Hereditary use rights on specific plot; free pasture and use rights on ‘commons proper’ | Kalinzifor hereditary use rights renegotiated (tribute) or withdrawn for sale of land; free pasture rights replaced by bwasa |
| Authority: technology | Actors free to choose | Actors free to choose |
| Authority: appropriation | No limits set | No limits set |
| Enforcement | Customary structures and court | Legitimacy conflict:continuity of customary set-up not sanctioned by principle defined by land law of 1973 |
Source: Ostrom, 1994.
‘Enclosure’ & the rival nature of land
The traditional system hinged on the premise that land reserves were sufficient to extend the collective domain in step with population growth. A number of factors undercut this customary logic.
Population growth & migration
The rival nature of the common resource became more pronounced with population growth. The Kivu held a unique position regarding population growth: looking westward, its highlands were among the most densely populated parts of Congo/ Zaire; looking east they constituted the less populated part of a region where population pressure habitually exceeds 450 persons/km2 (Adisa, 1996). On top of an already high natural growth rate of 3.1 per cent in the Kivu itself, this occasioned the influx of large numbers of Rwandan and Burundian immigrants (World Bank, 1994). During the colonial era, the immigration flux was actively encouraged by policy measures. The independence of Congo did not put a stop to it. Large numbers of Rwandans and Burundians continued to migrate to Congo (Zaire), either to escape the economic conditions of their homelands, or to escape the many waves of political violence and persecution. The effects were pronounced: in the late 1980s in the DRC as a whole, 13.4 per cent of the population lived in areas with a density higher than 100 inhabitants/km2, as against 49 per cent in the Kivu provinces (De Saint-Moulin, 1995). The latter figure certainly underestimates the actual population density in the highlands: it includes the sparsely populated western lowland parts of Kivu, and large uninhabited areas in highland Kivu (national parks and forest reserves).4 To wit, in 1983 the ‘collectivity’ of Kabare in South Kivu had a population density of 535 persons/km2. Within it the ‘groupement’ of Ikonde, with a stunning 600 persons/ km2, had the highest density of (then) Zaire (Dupriez, 1987).5
Politics & the commons
Limiting the accessibility of land took place in two distinct steps. In a first instance, the Belgian colonial administration established limits and pushed back the extent of customary land. It confiscated land to establish national parks and anti-erosion forests. It also introduced a system of land registration and private ownership to establish a diversified plantation agriculture that was basically cash crop and export-oriented. To achieve this, it introduced a dual system of property rights by declaring all vacant land, that is all land not actually occupied on a customary basis, property of the colonial state. This particular system recognised, within bounds, the legitimacy of the locally evolved land tenure system, but also defined a limit to the further expansion of customary lands through ‘declarations of vacancy’. It therefore subverted the very principle of the social cohesion in place, the customary right to land; non-occupied land was not simply vacant but rather the basis for collective security and social mobility. Essentially, this colonial intervention introduced a normative duality in the social meaning of land: in the villages, land possession defined a social relation; on plantations, land possession ascribed alienable property rights. The ‘Comite National du Kivu’, a chartered company created in 1928 to convert ‘vacant lands’ into protected parks and plantations, was a necessary tool for implementing the white settlement scheme. By 1935 more than 200,000 ha had beenexpropriated and turned into state domain, frequently on the basis of false statements of vacancy by customary chiefs (Fairhead, 1989). To add insult to injury, the colonial authorities proceeded to carve out autonomous chefferies for transplanted Banyarwanda chiefs in areas normally under Hunde jurisdiction, such as Masisi and Rutshuru (Lemarchand, 1998).
A new land law soon superseded these events. In 1973, Mobutu introduced a law which declared all land property of the state, whether vacant or occupied, no matter the type of occupation. Under this law, land could only be extracted from state possession through an administrative procedure that involved registration and cadastration. The 1973 law provided a powerful instrument to transform Kivu's social structure. It discarded customary law in land transactions as a legitimate source of land rights, without according any legal status to lands thus occupied. Hence, it institutionalised uncertainty by throwing out the notion of diffuse property rights, and introduced the conditions for the formation of a class of landless people. Also, the law created the possibility to turn economic assets into political ones that could be used to reward loyal clients of the state, and vice versa – to transform social connections into economic assets.
The customary lands could now be expropriated by administrative procedure, as well as the de facto nationalised concessions previously awarded by the colonial authorities to colonial planters. In terms of rent, the ‘enclosure’ limited the dissipation of rents by limiting open access to ‘frontier land’. This helped proteges to shield their capital reserves from Zaire's long-winding economic downturn and galloping hyperinflation; land in highland Kivu appeared as an attractive investment with a potential for later speculation (Tsongo, 1994). Also, when there was a promise of democratic elections in the late 1980s, politicians awoke to the need to establish a rural presence in order to rally voters.
The emergence of a new economic class
The liberalisation of gold mining in 1982 in Kivu's hinterlands had a definite effect on the social structure; it created a class of people that depended on the market for their subsistence needs. Numerous youngsters were prepared to test their luck, so that a migrant commerce developed between mining areas and the border towns where gold and other goods transited to international markets. The population of Uvira in South Kivu for example had one of the highest growth rates of Zaire: 124 per cent between 1970 and 1984 as against 19 per cent for neighbouring Bukavu in the same period (Bruneau, 1995). The proximity of Kivu to densely populated urban centres in Rwanda and Burundi emphasised these effects. Commodity markets were no novelty in 1982. Yet, the expansion of a market for food crops, besides the one for cash crops (coffee, tea), improved the terms of trade of the peasants. Products commanded higher prices, while the subsistence nature of the inputs (family labour, simple technology, absence of capital) kept the production costs low. From 1994 to 1996, the Rwandan refugee camps created a similar effect.6 In essence, the difference reflected the increasing premium (factor price) of land.
Emergence & capture of quasi-rents
The effect of quasi-rents contributed to the momentum driving the dispossession of Kivu's peasants. A change in opportunity costs induces a short-term scarcity in the supply of an inelastic production factor, such as land which in turn creates quasirents which are only available in the short term. Any extra gain will eventually be bid away by the market since the total quantity of land would still be supplied whatever the price. Quasi-rents are comparable to a ‘bubble’ in a modern market, e.g. Japan's real estate market in the early nineties. In Kivu, the interest of new social actors to grow crops for the urban and export markets created quasi-rents. Peasants aim to minimise uncertainty rather than maximise yields; this means maximising labour rather than land productivity, and sustaining food security rather than maximising income.
The opportunity costs mirrored the income differential which a given unit of land could have yielded in an alternative farming system, the difference between ‘subsistence’ and ‘modern’ farming systems. The value of a piece of land would reflect a productivity differential per unit of land as measured by income, between ‘modern’ cultivation and ‘customary’ occupation, assuming that the producers of the land under customary occupation engage in subsistence. Or else the opportunity costs mirrored the income differential which a given unit of land could have yielded in an alternative use within a given farming system – market vs. food crops; for example, the potential income lost cultivating a bulky slow-maturing crop with low added value such as cassava close to a rapidly expanding urban market, instead of a fast-maturing product with high added value such as green leaf vegetables. Shifting land from the customary to the modern domain created the opportunity to appropriate these quasi-rents.
All three factors (social, political, and economic) strengthened a particular train of events: the rival nature of land became more pronounced and its value increased due to the increasing population density, the enclosure of ‘frontier land’, and the emergence of new markets for cash and food crops. To maintain the customary fiscal logic of social redistribution, tributes (rents) increased to reflect the higher intrinsic value of land. This necessitated the re-negotiation of customary contracts; new and old social actors appropriated the full value of these rents using the 1973 land law.
The new situation was characterised on the demand side by a land-hungry modern class looking to exploit market opportunities, protect their wealth from inflation, or satisfy political needs; on the supply side, by an existing pool of land largely under customary occupation. In principle, all rural land was public and could be privatised by an administrative procedure. In practice, all land was either in the customary domain under hereditary social contracts, or assigned under colonial law as a plantation or forest reserve. These modes heavily limited the benefit and transaction rights associated to them.
In implementing the 1973 law, it was more practical to revoke the legitimacy of former colonial allocations by nationalising the plantations, than it was to refute the socially embedded legitimacy of customary allocations. North pointed out that informal norms have a high degree of continuity: antecedent institutions operate to reduce uncertainty in a period of transition (North, 1990). However, the interplay that ‘funneled’ land informally from the customary to the ‘modern’ domain and then endorsed the transfer by state administrative procedures (e.g. registration), allowed interested actors to obtain land freed from customary encumbrances. The process also allowed the appropriation of quasi-rents. At the centre of these dynamics werethe chiefs; they combined their role as traditional custodians of the customary domain with important positions in the administration and party hierarchy and could use both grounds to claim authority and secure compliance.
The dynamics of alienation of land
Social capital & the transformation of social structure
In a context where the markets for labour and capital were far from perfect and the transformation of the property structure could not be powered from private domestic savings or rural credit, the introduction of the new land law created an inefficient but necessary structure. Formerly, peasants and platation labourers were unable to accumulate a surplus nor was rural credit available; also, foreign investments could not fill the gap created by Zaire's history of opportunist nationalisations. The introduction of the new land law created a necessary but insufficient condition to create a factor market for land, in a context where the factor markets for labour and capital were far from perfect. The transformation of the property structure could not be powered from private domestic savings or rural credit. The social system had inhibited peasants and plantation labourers to accumulate a surplus, and rural credit was not available. Foreign investments were not going to fill the gap created by Zaire's history of opportunist nationalisations. Hence, the dynamics of a factor market for land could only be simulated by converting social capital directly or indirectly into property rights.7 Kivu's institutional transformation mediated access to land directly in function of non-capitalist social relations, and indirectly by creating unequal opportunities to exercise market power.
To analyse these dynamics, I will rely on Bourdieu's appreciation of the forms of capital and his concerns with the mechanisms of accumulation, conversion, and reproduction of inequalities (Bourdieu, 1986). The central idea of social capital theory is that the nature and quality of social relations have a definite effect on economic perspectives. Coleman defines social capital as ‘… any aspect of informal social organization that constitutes a productive resource for one or more actors’ (Coleman, 1994); social capital can function at the micro-level (individual or household) as a productive asset in a particular income function, and at an aggregate level as a social resource with an independent impact on all incomes.
This vision recognises the features of social structure, and the potential of agency to navigate that structure. Bourdieu was among the first to analyse the importance of social connections as a crucial and separate influence on individual incomes. Contacts in social networks allowed mobilising resources, information, and solidarity transfers. This can be portrayed as the involvement in networks throughout which access to assets and opportunities is spread out. Social capital consists of all actual or potential resources linked to possession of a durable network of more or less institutionalised relationships of mutual acquaintance or recognition. It is a personal asset that provides tangible benefits to those better connected. For Bourdieu, in a fast-developing dynamic, the power over classificatory schemes and systems is at stake in the struggle over the meaning of the social world; they are the basis of the representation of groups and therefore of their mobilisation and demobilisation (Bourdieu, 1984). I have argued that these classificatory schemes in Kivu were the ‘structuring structure’ of the kalinzi, and the modern land law which enables alienation of all land through state-sanctioned administrative procedures.
Given that the institutional set-up determines the utility of the various forms of capital, previously amassed social capital endowments determine the social outcome. The normative shift under the 1973 law disqualified the patron-client type reciprocity of the customary networks. Rather, it introduced a new principle of stratification and elite-formation that stressed alliances of state patronage. The land market was to be established by administrative procedures of registration and cadastration of public land; hence, gaining access to land required access to the state and its administrative procedures. Closeness to the state, a fortiori closeness to president Mobutu, created the conditions that allowed economic prominence.
Social capital: public or club good?
The various networks described can be considered as ‘exclusive clubs’, and the norms of reciprocity or social capital embedded in them as a club good.8 The characteristics of a club good are its non-rival nature and the possibility of exclusion. The mutual favours (reciprocity) extended over the network of state patronage are generally non-rival. An army commander can extend selective protection, a judge can ensure the favourable outcome of litigation, or an extension worker can impose forced labour on villagers to cultivate the fields of a friend. Rendering these services to one person does not subtract from the consumption opportunities of another. However, some favours extended may be rival: a piece of land sold to one party cannot be sold to another.
An exclusive club is a voluntary but restricted group that derives mutual benefits from sharing goods characterised by excludable benefits. The logic of the whole system revolved around the exclusion and plundering of the peasants, to whose detriment the new land law was used to simulate the conditions of a factor market for land. If tolerated to hang on to their land, they were only just allowed the necessary means for bare reproduction. As Dupriez writes:
the example of customary feudalism … has been emulated by state institutions, entrepreneurs and agro-commercial firms and certain churches. Anyone who holds the least bit of power seizes the right to demand free labor and impose taxes, penalties, and tribute … The state administrators are the worst (and) any state representative in the rural areas plays the role of ‘bad cop’… Of all this, nothing returns to the peasants (and) the whole system that weighs on him follows the logic of plunder (Dupriez, 1987).
Two ‘Clubs’: the large & small Acquereurs
The analysis distinguishes between two types of exclusive clubs: a predatory politico-commercial class and a ‘sub-bourgeoisie’. The boundaries between these and the degree of exclusiveness are sharply drawn by the competence of authorities to decide on land registration requests. Above 100 ha, the (political) decision required authorisation by the president or competent minister. Inclusion into this ‘club’ required access to the inner circle of state power. This group benefited from the distribution of nationalised plantations, and from politically influenced procedures of reclassification of forest reserves and other types of state land. Under 100 ha, which concerned mostly cases of registration of village land, the procedure remained in the hands of the local administration (Mugangu, 1997). To this ‘club’ belonged an amalgam of new Congolese entrepreneurs, administrators and state employees of all kinds, and the traditional chiefs, with the power to call forth the repressive power of the state as a criterion for inclusion. Social capital built up in these broader circles of state patronage was used to acquire positions that allowed influencing the decision process on land allocations, or accumulating the necessary cash to purchase land. Who were the ‘players’ in these clubs?
The large ‘Acquéreurs’
The ‘exclusive’ type of club revolved around the pinnacle of the Zairean state. The term best used to describe its ‘members’ would be acquéreur (literally, acquirer). Initially, it was an administrative term for a politically connected individual who acquired ownership of a foreign business in the nationalisation process of 1973. Public usage rapidly transformed acquéreur into a synonym for a member of the ruling clique and degenerated into a soubriquet children yelled whenever a Mercedes drove by. In Young's words, ‘in the metamorphosis from évolué to acquéreur, social respect was transformed into class conflict’ (Young & Turner, 1985). From the very beginning, Mobutu based his political strategy on a network of patronage maintained by a high rate of pay-outs. The zairization and the land law of 1973 show that he managed to do so by constantly converting economic assets into a stock of political resources for distribution against political loyalty.
In North Kivu, migrants of Rwandan descent that obtained the Zairian nationality under the 1972 law on nationality (later repealed) were Mobutu's staunchest political allies at the time. These Banyarwanda consequently became the main political beneficiaries of the zairization. In North Kivu's fertile highland areas of Masisi and Rutshuru, they acquired more than 90 per cent of the colonial plantations and some of the biggest ranches. The biggest of all, the Osso ranch, went to Bisengimana Rwema, Mobutu's chief of staff at that time (Mararo, 1997). Clearly, these circumstances created the necessary momentum to foment the intense ethnic conflicts of 1993 in Masisi and Rutshuru, well before the Rwandan genocide.
Overall, this process of direct state patronage contained the seeds of its own undoing: clients had to be regularly stripped of their privileges to prevent their political ascendance from culminating in a direct leadership challenge, while new ones filled the void. This costly ‘recycling’ of the patronage network presented a conundrum: how to continue asserting authority amidst declining resources. For example, from 1958–1993 the population of Zaire soared from 15 to 42 million inhabitants, while the production per capita shrank 65 per cent from $377 in 1957 to $117 in 1993. Estimates are that between 1988 and 1993, the GIP per capita contracted by 11.7 per cent annually (Devey, 1997).
The new local bourgeosie
Obviously, access to these high spheres of patronage was hard to come by. In addition, the number of nationalised plantations to hand out was evidently finite. Finally, these lands had been out of the customary realm since colonial times. Hence, the more important process for this analysis is the one in which communally held land was steadily privatised. The beneficiaries were not members of the predatory politico-commercial class, but of a new economic class unconnected to the high political authorities, relatively uneducated, consisting of lower-level civil servants, military, and traders who amassed capital through commercial activities. Far from the capital, in Kivu for instance, this class was sometimes strong enough to replace the state as the provider of infrastructure. In the case of Kivu, they maintained strong connections with the much closer capitals of Congo's eastern neighbours.
From a survey of Luhoto (North Kivu) in the early nineties, the state administration were awarding an average concession of 12 ha whereas concessions that were pried loose via the customary authorities averaged a mere 1.88 ha (Tsongo, 1994). The dynamics of this process necessitated close cooperation between modern administrative and customary authorities. The administrative authority sanctioned to deal with the land allocations under the provisions of the 1973 laws was clearly defined, but in practice powerless; it was limited to a few city-based upper echelons9 and needed the intervention of other administrative authorities with a wider reach. Specifically the paramount role and reach of the customary land custodians – the chief or Mwami – needs to be highlighted.
The mwami was in a unique position to mediate interaction over the boundaries of the normative duality introduced in 1973, occupying a cardinal role in both networks of customary and state patronage. Mobutu underlined this paramount importance of the chiefs by allowing judicial, administrative, and political power to be united in their persons. The colonial system gave the Bami the authority of president of the customary courts; Mobutu integrated these positions in the judicial set-up of the modern Zairian state.10 As chef de collectivite, the chiefs became an official element in the administrative chain of command from the capital to the rural areas; they also became presidents of Mobutu's single party in these very collectives. As administrative heads of the collectives they could officially declare vacant any village land they pleased, then preside over the hearings on ensuing land allocation disputes in the customary courts.
As mentioned, land is the most important exception to the non-rival nature of goods and services traded in the ‘clubs’. Land is a ‘positional’ good; to acquire it, queues of interested purchasers will form. All of these interested purchasers will be forced to invest social ‘currency’ for lobbying (e.g. currying favour with the Bami); ultimately, this will not affect the outcome but simply their rank in the queue. Being so solicited and centrally placed, the Bami were in an excellent position to capture the lion's share of rents.
Transition & the utility of social capital: The role of the Bami
To create opportunities for administrative authorities to establish titles on customary land, the Bami had to uproot the integrity of the customary land allocation system. This meant weakening the customary land use rights of farmers in general, and privatising marshlands and forests that resorted under the customary authorities.
Weakening of the customary land use rights of farmers implied either offering more uncertain land contracts to new applications for land use, or disputing former appropriations and invoking a ‘right of return’ (droit de reprise). The chiefs could achieve the latter in different ways, all of which could bring the user to stand accused of illegal occupation of the land under article 207 of the 1973 land law. First, by questioning the initial amount paid for the kalinzi: the right to land use under a contract of kalinzi is established in the presence of a number of traditional witnesses (Baganda). Given the hereditary nature of this right, quite often the witnesses to this initial transaction – especially in long-established areas which are also often the most productive – are deceased. In case the repeal of a kalinzi is brought to court in the absence of these witnesses, the judge may act on the basis of what could be called ‘deep conviction’ (intime conviction).11 A second way of disputing former appropriations is to cast doubt on the allegiance of the particular user by questioning the regularity or amount of rents paid. Any failure to pay the isoko or burhabale would amount to ‘customary treason’, allowing the customary authorities to seize the land.
Finally, the chef could use his authority to deliver (false) statements of vacancy. In these cases the population was unaware of any administrative steps, until the end of a 2-year expiration period when the title would be legally ‘unassailable’ in court.12 Land could be declared vacant and registered without the knowledge of the occupants, and nothing would happen until two years later when the new owners would move to occupy their ‘property’. The conflict that took place in Katana (Kabare, South Kivu) in 1989 is but one example of the pattern of interaction of different agents and practices (Mapatano, 1995). The Mwami-Kazi (wife of the defunct Mwami) registered under her name several hectares of land belonging to villagers, denying them the contract of kalinzi awarded in the past, simply acting as if their lands were vacant. The Youth Mutuality of Kabaguzi opposed these practices, only to see its members imprisoned with the complicity of the Zonal Commissioner of Kabare (the highest administrative officer in the Zone). These lands were then sold to different planters, who were finally unable to exploit the land because of the threat of violence from the villagers.
A second way to uproot the integrity of the customary land allocation system consisted of privatising marshland and gallery forests. On these lands (forested hillsides, swampy valley-bottoms) tradition barred establishment of hereditary use rights. These ‘commons proper’ fulfilled special functions: specific rights such as pasture or firewood collection were traditionally attached to the attribution of a kalinzi on the top of a hill. Also, at the discretion of the chief these lands could be given to villagers under a customary contract of Obuhashe. This is a kind of public service in which marshland is made available at no cost for the duration of a single season. Obuhashe could be used to temporarily accommodate newcomers or villagers who had suffered a particular spell of bad fortune. The pressure to take these areas out of the commons increased in step with their potential market value, itself basically determined by the extent of improvement or drainage.
To realise the fiscal potential of these areas depended on the successful dissociation of the customary use rights from the contract of kalinzi, to attribute them preferably by a contract of bwasa or sell them. Bwasa is a short term contract of land rent, usually for the time of one particular season that comes unattached with any of the patriarchal strings typical for a kalinzi arrangement. Payment is based on the assumed fertility of the soil, topped up by a share of the surplus (ntumulo) (Masson, 1966; Muheme, 1996). Given its short-term nature, the rents levied could follow much more closely the market value of the land. The method used by the chef to initialise the privatisation was simply to declare these lands vacant. Here an example from South Kivu may convey the essence of the institutional shift: farmers voluntarily drained 100 ha of marshland in N'kombo (collectivity of Kaziba, zone of Kabare, South Kivu), which took three years (1986–1989). After the lapse of the expiration period of two years, during which the farmers had started exploiting the land, it turned out that the Mwami Na'kaziba had sold the lands to the multinational Pharmakina to grow tobacco (Mapatano, 1995).
Predictably, the result of all this was a transformed landscape of rural production relations. The rents inherent in a system that separates use rights from benefit rights no longer lubricated the cohesion of the system of dependent integration; rather, rents were extracted and appropriated by divesting the peasants. New social actors came on the scene: a newly created class of Congolese rural capitalists besides the agricultural multinationals, the traditional landlords (Barhambo and Bashamuka), and the peasants. Table 3 presents these effects on the basis of a sample survey in North Kivu. Certainly, it is but a snapshot of one particular small location, and hence does not allow jumping to general conclusions. In the absence of data given Zaire's notoriously bad (or absent) statistics, it does however provide an illustration of the dynamics occasioned by the introduction of the new land law.
| Land controlled (ha) | Land used (ha) | |
|---|---|---|
| Mwami | 52.60 | 0.00 |
| Landlords | 54.75 | 33.57 |
| Peasants | 7.40 | 70.89 |
| State administrators & military officers | 48.00 | 23.60 |
| Entrepreneurs | 1.79 | 30.00 |
| Employees of large companies | 9.10 | 16.58 |
| Total | 173.64 | 173.64 |
Source: Based on Tsongo (1984), tables 31 & 32.
The table shows how in this particular location, 66 per cent of the land (114.7 ha) remained under the control of ‘traditional holders’, while the rest came under control of the ‘new’ social actors. A relatively small amount of land (1.8 ha) came into the hands of what could be considered ‘modern capitalist entrepreneurs’, compared to the 48 ha (27 per cent) acquired by various state personnel. Overall, in the traditional sector (mwami, landlords, peasants) the land controlled exceeds land used by approximately 10 ha. This matches the shortfall of 10 ha of ‘land controlled’ vs. ‘land used’ in the modern sector. So a triple dynamics appears: (1) the traditional sector divests land (59 ha) in favour of the modern sector, particularly state administrators (48 ha); (2) within the modern sector patterns of inequality, dependency, and patronage have been replicated between ‘owners’ and ‘users’, notably state administrators and small-scale entrepreneurs; and (3) the ‘surplus’ of land in the traditional sector plugs the shortfall of the land needed in the modern sector; given the previously described mechanisms, this can only be a measure of the degree of further pauperisation of peasants.
The effects on social structure
I have argued that changing patterns of inequality and the dispossession of rural producers are a function of the commodification of land; i.e. the introduction of a factor market for land, and with it the emergence of new participants in Kivu's local economy. Certainly, besides suffering land losses, the universal predatory nature of the state visibly impoverished small rural producers and contributed to the increasing inequality. In Mobutu's Zaire, resources were earmarked first for the urban population. Rural infrastructure deteriorated to an unprecedented extent. The road network was so bad that in many areas crops were left to rot at collection depots. The breakdown in state services did not mean a corresponding decrease in state exactions. Economic policies depressed the price of foodstuffs as well as cash crops, burdening rural producers and favouring urban populations, middlemen, and state marketing organs. Coercion was applied through hectarage quotas for specified crops, taxation of rural producers either directly, through fines, or through the many illegal extortions imposed by government agents.
To enable the factor market for land and new actors associated with it to emerge, access to state resources was a prerequisite to deconstruct the use rights granted to peasants in the customary collective domain. I will now link these elements to a number of effects that conditioned the eruption of conflicts. The analysis looks separately at the effects on land, risk management and the labour market, and the effects on social capital. A new, or rather latent, element emerged: ethnicity.
Effects of land, risk management & the labour market
Tracts of underutilised and extensively used land in the ‘modern’ agricultural sector existed alongside a subsistence agricultural sector under duress. The stress indicators were the degradation of food security and the expansion of a labour pool that could not be integrated economically into the agricultural sector, or socially into customary society.
The movement from subsistence to a ‘modern’ entrepreneurial agriculture free from customary encumbrances apparently signaled an intensification of agriculture, with farming systems that employ yield-enhancing inputs and technologies and profit from scale economies of production. The same intensification could be expected with subsistence agriculture as the population density increased. However the picture is mixed: Mobutu cronies transformed many of the declassified forest reserves into ranches. In North Kivu for example, the Hunde customary authorities (with the complicity of the Provincial Land Services) sold the vast forest reserves of Rwamikeri and Nyarunaba to Banyarwanda, who converted them into ranches (Mararo, 1997:528). In addition, plantation areas remained underused. A land use study surveyed 10,273 ha of plantation land in highland Bushi (a part of South Kivu) in 1984: only 7,813 ha were used for plantation purposes. The unused area was partly reserved for the labourers to cultivate their own crops. Hence, while labourers no longer had to pay tribute, most labourers, especially women and children were hardly paid at all; the tribute was merely displaced in the form of labour produced on the plantation proper.13 In this sense, the new corporate actors maintained the customary separation of use and benefit rights; consequently, they failed to create the conditions for an effective factor market for labour, and with it the seeds for struggle and emancipation of a workers class.
Also, the institutional transition – in combination with the population growth – induced structural changes in the traditional agricultural system. The land pressure reduced and fragmented holdings and pushed cultivation into marshes and steep slopes; these were previously held in pasture and woodland and were often used on the basis of short term contracts such as bwasa. Historically, farmers in the Kivu highlands settled along the upper contours of hillsides where soils were more fertile and cultivation was simpler than on the steeper slopes and marshy valleys. These changes eroded traditional coping mechanisms, such as crop diversification according to agro-climatic zones and the integration of livestock husbandry and agriculture. Land with the most secure tenure status, close to the homestead, was increasingly reserved for cash crops (mostly bananas). Food crops were relegated to the farther fields with a more uncertain status. This evolution contributed to a shift in cropping patterns from nutritious leguminae to the protein-deficient cassava that was easier to cultivate and market. Food security was increasingly at risk in the late eighties. The crisis of the rural areas reached new thresholds, with an outright famine in 1989. Pottier documented how increased vulnerability during such severe shocks further enhanced inequality and the concentration of land and other assets in North Kivu (Pottier & Fairhead, 1991).
The increasing land pressure added damage to the customary arrangements that entitled every male heir to a part of the kalinzi or lineage land. Access to land was the means to social integration, so failure to gain access to land constituted more than just that. It signified failure to become a fully integrated member of society. At the level of the family, there are reports that the intensified economic strife led to strong intergenerational competition within the same household. There have been some instances – for example in Walungu – in which sons tried to poison their fathers to gain access to land (Van Acker & Vlassenroot, 2001).
Considering the deficient factor market for agricultural labour, options for the new class of landless young men (baginzi) were limited: cultivate marketable food crops on bwasa land, or ‘vote with the feet’ and sell their labour elsewhere. The increased mobility of young men was an answer to a distorted social situation. A whole economy developed around this migration of young men, which allowed them to gain access to some token symbols of modernity. One option was for them to work as migrant agricultural labourers. Quite a few worked in the lowland plantations of Walikale. They were paid in kind, and traded these goods along the route on their way back to highland Kivu (Van Acker, 1999). The other option was Zaire's large grey economy of gold digging, smuggling, and poaching.14 Vwakyanakazi documented the formation of villages of illicit gold miners in Kivu that had their own authority structure independent of the government. With the liberalisation of gold mining in 1982 in Kivu's hinterlands and the great number that tested their luck, a migrant commerce developed between these areas and the border towns. This trade dealt with the marketing of gold and necessary inputs in the remote digging areas (food, implements), but also with the symbols necessary to become a zappeur – a successful modern young man wearing trendy clothes and lacqué shoes, stylish haircuts, drink and prostitutes.
The effects on social capital
The benefits of the 1973 land law relative to the costs of managing the type of exclusion it engineered, proved too unfavorable for society. To forestall potential conflict along the newly emerging lines of ‘haves’ and ‘have-nots’, politicians skillfully managed ethnic identity as a rallying point. The end product was a situation in which mutual assurance was ethnically defined. The social capital embedded in the traditional customary networks gradually evolved from a public good into a club good, non-rival but exclusive.
The failure to integrate in the system of kalinzi must be put in broader terms. Traditionally, also immigrants could obtain land and be socially integrated. The increasing sharpness of the processes that led to the rival nature of land use, hardened the social boundaries: ethnicity became a criterion to judge previous land allocations. The explosiveness of social conditions was especially acute in those areas where the disparities were ethnically tainted. Ethnic conflict first erupted in 1993 in the zone of Masisi (North Kivu), where 512 families (of which 503 of Rwandan descent) controlled 58 per cent of the land (Laurent & Tsongo, 1996). The timing of this first conflict was not haphazard. With the promise of the first multi-party elections since the early sixties, politicians and traditional chiefs alike skilfully manipulated the factor of ethnic identity, and mobilised the popular vote on the issue of land and nationality. In the Ruzizi plains (South Kivu) for example, the struggle for control over land had evolved into an intensive conflict between the ethnic Tutsi population (Banyamulenge), which migrated from Rwanda a century before, and the local Babember. The Zairian Speaker of Parliament (Anzuluni Bembe), a Babembe, also faced elections. He rallied his constituency by linking the local conflict to the national dispute over the nationality of migrants. With the backing of the district commissioner, he mobilised the Babembe to start an armed campaign. An increasing number of young Banyamulenge, looking for support to Kigali, received military and political training from the RPA, and became the initial thrust of the anti-Mobutu rebellion.
The traditional chiefs rallied to the same cause; an ethnic vote on land and nationality would reinforce their position at the centre of customary networks that were now more rigidly defined. The breakdown of the traditional framework and its replacement by something much more unstable had pronounced effects: on social and economic exchange, and on the capacities to sustain the credible commitment to solve collective action problems. In terms of assurance (the security of expectations about one another's intentions and actions that lies at the centre of strategies of cooperation), the effect was not only to anchor that security much more tightly to an ethnic scaffold. The rapid folding of traditional values and networks affected the cost and effectiveness of enforcement of the newly emerging opportunities for market-exchange. It undermined the very prospect for more complex economic transactions to materialise. State sanction and collusion eroded internalised traditional norms. The state was itself totally unwilling and at any rate, even had it wanted to, utterly incompetent to enforce the new rules of exchange it promulgated. Various economic actors had to take recourse to self-styled coercion, which opened further the potential niche for unemployed youth as undertakers and handymen of violence. People engaging in illicit mining for example, protected themselves and their operations with private militias against government soldiers and officials.
The outcome is known. By the end of 2000, according to one study in North Kivu, the majority of the people lived on the equivalent of $0.20 a day (Asrames, 2001). An estimated 1 million people are currently displaced in the Kivu provinces. Collective consciousness fashioned as ethnic nationalism, supplanted what might otherwise have gained currency as the political emancipation of a dispossessed peasant class. Unemployed young men found their way into armed ethnic peasant militia, initially organised by politicians tapping into the local history of Mai Mai and Simba resistance, and ethnic retributions followed. With similar political evolutions taking place at the same time in Rwanda and Burundi, the region-wide conflict that erupted gave a chance for the diverse local antagonisms to be attached to wider economic interests. At that point, it becomes impossible to disentangle the endogenous and exogenous elements that shape Kivu's social conflict. The chiefs went in hiding or exile out of fear of foreign (or foreign-sponsored) armies and militias that are only too aware of the pivotal role of customary leadership in mobilising the rural population. Game parks and other types of land and forest reserves are being converted to farmland to accommodate the land hunger of the population (Gorilla Conservation News, 1997). The customary fiscal logic has been replaced by looting: marauding armies or militia confiscate not only the rents of peasants but also their assets, pushing them in a downward spiral of poverty. The private ownership of land has become meaningless, since it depends on the recognition of a larger legitimising order that is now completely absent.
Conclusion
A land-hungry colonial regime initiated a factor market for land. Its logic was pursued to the outer limits by the Mobutist elite: a scarce commodity was allocated amongst various claimants leading to the unequal exercise of market power.
The traditional system was on the threshold of profound change. Market transition would have implied a push in the direction of a fuller set of property rights on customary lands, certainly in the sense of a larger share of the benefit rights. To enable peasants to add capital would have signified a decreasing ratio of tribute over income per unit of land, to allow more private appropriation of the surplus to facilitate savings and investments. This is counter to the customary logic of social appropriation of the peasants’ surplus and its redistribution. It is interesting to note that a market-based transformation was indeed nascent in Kivu in the late 1960s.15
Unfortunately, alternative scenarios never had a chance to emerge. The impoverishment of the peasants fed the rest of the social system that depended on the redistribution of their rents. The customary leaders, themselves acquiring wealth in the process, became a pivotal group in supplying land to the state agents, military officers, and businesspeople that were institutionally armed by the 1973 land law. The institutional transition nullified the utility of the social capital that peasants built up in the customary patrimonial system, affecting the amount of social ‘currency’ they had to trade for land. Whether those groups that profiteered from the gradual dispossession of peasants were themselves able to hang on to their wealth in the turmoil of the last decade, is another question altogether.16
Amid increasing social tensions, blatantly ignoring the rights of their own subjects, the customary leadership clung to their positions by joining the political bandwagon and mobilising their clientele on an ethnic platform, conveniently using the issue of nationality. ‘Foreigners’, especially the Banyarwanda were accused of the unrightful appropriation of customary land and subversion of the customary order. This was correct to the extent that some immigrants had acquired land directly via social relations that involved the pinnacle of the Zairian state, the exclusive ‘club’ ofacquereurs, allowing them to thumb their noses at the clientelist subordination of the customary system. The accusation was false insofar as the chiefs sold land to immigrants themselves.
The Zairian state failed to endorse social mobility via the market. To allow a wisp of social mobility that left the roots of the crisis intact, it became an opportunist organiser of violence. The exogenous elements of conflict were so readily ‘importable’ and applicable, because of a long history of social deterioration squarely situated in the crisis of the Zairian state.