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The Structural Roots of the DRC's Current Disasters: Deep Dilemmas

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 October 2013

Michael G. Schatzberg
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Extract

The staggering dilemmas facing the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) today have their structural roots in both the near and distant past. The purpose of this brief reflection is to consider the nature of these disasters and to deflect discussion away from those hardy perennials that somehow, usually incorrectly, pass as explanations of the Congo's problems. Ethnic tensions, corruption, and the absence of democracy all contribute in harmful ways to the current situation, but they do not tap into the deeper structural roots of the disasters besetting the DRC More specifically, by “structural roots” I mean those features of the Congolese political landscape that seem to recur, albeit in slightly different form, across time and therefore across different political regimes as well.

Type
ASR Forum: The Congo (DRC) Fifty Years After Independence
Information
African Studies Review , Volume 55 , Issue 1 , April 2012 , pp. 117 - 121
Copyright
Copyright © African Studies Association 2012

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