AUTOCHTHONY AND VIOLENCE AGAINST KASAIANS

Most studies of the conflict between Katangese and Kasaians focus on xenophobic practices and discourses in the early 1990s. These studies analyse the conflict between Katangan natives and non-natives of Kasai, either explicitly (Dibwe dia Mwembu Reference Dibwe dia Mwembu1999; Reference Dibwe dia Mwembu, Dibwe dia Mwembu and Mutombo2005a; Pourtier Reference Pourtier1998) or implicitly within the analytical framework of autochthony. When they do not explicitly use the concept of autochthony, scholars define the xenophobic practices and discourses against Kasaians as ‘ethnic violence’ or ‘ethnic conflict’ (Bakajika Banjikila Reference Bakajika Banjikila1997; Gorus Reference Gorus and Goyvaerts2000), ‘Katangan nationalism’ (Gorus Reference Gorus and Goyvaerts2000; Dibwe dia Mwembu Reference Dibwe dia Mwembu1999; Reference Dibwe dia Mwembu, Dibwe dia Mwembu and Mutombo2005a), ‘regionalism’ (Kalulambi Pongo Reference Kalulambi Pongo2001), ‘regionalist feeling’ (Bakajika Banjikila Reference Bakajika Banjikila1997) or ‘tribalist drift of the democratisation process’Footnote ⁷ (Bakajika Banjikila Reference Bakajika Banjikila1997: 121).

Autochthony (as defined by Bayart et al. Reference Bayart, Geschiere and Nyamnjoh2001) is a useful framework of analysis within which to understand the xenophobic practices and discourses against Kasaians in the early 1990s. Indeed, these were a product of the formation and the territorial division of the state during the colonial period. Before Congo's independence in 1960, the country's territorial organization had been altered six times, leading to changes in regional identity. For example, between 1923 and 1930, on average 91 per cent of the African workers recruited by the mining company UMHK (Union Minière du Haut-KatangaFootnote ⁸) came from five territories in the Lomani district (Kanda-Kanda, Kabinda, Mpania Mutombo, Kisengwa and Tshofa) (Kabemba Nsuya Muteba quoted in Dibwe dia Mwembu Reference Dibwe dia Mwembu, Jewsiewicki and N'Sanda Buleli2005c: 11). By 1923, these territories were part of the Katanga province, and following the 1933 territorial reform, they became territories of the Kasai province. Their populations then became Kasaians; this included people born in these territories but who already worked in the mining centres of South Katanga and their children born in the Katanga province.

Katangese and Kasaian identities were assimilated and shaped as antagonistic in the urban and industrial context of the workers' compounds built by the UMHK. In the early years of colonization, the local population of South Katanga refused to work in the mining industry or to settle in the compounds. For this reason, and because of the low population density in South Katanga (between 1.9 and 2.0 inhabitants per square kilometre) (Bakajika Banjikila Reference Bakajika Banjikila1997: 58), Belgian colonial authorities recruited a labour force in the neighbouring areas of Belgian Congo (Kasai, North Katanga, Eastern province and Ruanda-Urundi) and in Northern Rhodesia. Another factor could explain these recruitment campaigns outside South Katanga: to the colonial authorities, it seemed more attractive to import migrant labour to the Katangan mines, since they would be less bothered by the burden of their extended families. In December 1927, the UMHK set up a policy of African labour stabilization. This policy was adopted for two main reasons: on the one hand, in order to prevent a high death rate among African workers – 53 per cent in 1926 (Dibwe dia Mwembu Reference Dibwe dia Mwembu2004: 101) – and their subsequent desertion; on the other, to increase their skills level. The migrant workers were settled in workers' compounds, where they were provided with family housing, medical care, food supplies and education for their children. These compounds were built away from the cité indigène, where the local population lived. The aim of the colonial authorities was to separate the migrant workers from the local people, who were seen as ‘undisciplined’ (Dibwe dia Mwembu et al. Reference Dibwe dia Mwembu, Kahola, Sapato, Kasandji and Dibwe dia Mwembu2002: 97, 100–1). As they formed the majority of the migrant workers,Footnote ⁹ Kasaians benefited more than the other African workers from the social benefits provided by the UMHK. For example, the schooling of Kasaian children explains why most African workers hired in the mid-1940s to work in the colonial administrative services and in the administrative departments of colonial companies were Kasaians (M'Bokolo Reference M'Bokolo, Amselle and M'Bokolo1999: 203–4). Thus, in an urban and industrial environment, Kasaians ‘became a corporate group with its own collective identity’ (Gorus Reference Gorus and Goyvaerts2000: 108) and ‘the class par excellence of intermediaries’Footnote ¹⁰ (Kennes Reference Kennes2009: 540) between Belgian settlers and the African population.

During the colonial period, socio-cultural associations (associations socio-culturelles) played a major part in the emergence of the antagonism between Kasaians and Katangese. These associations were created in the 1920s in the compounds of the UMHK. At first they were responsible for integrating migrant workers, coordinating forms of social protection for co-ethnics, retaining ethnic or village traditions in the mining centres, and passing them on to generations born in the compounds of South Katanga. By the mid-1950s, since political parties were banned, some of these socio-cultural associations became political organizations. The socio-cultural association of the Luba-Kasai, the Fegebaceka (Fédération générale des Baluba-Central Kasaï), lobbied for the group's interests, an activity that aroused the fear of Kasaian domination. The Conakat (Confédération des associations tribales du Katanga), a grouping of South Katangese socio-cultural associations, was created in October 1958 to prevent Kasaian politicalFootnote ¹¹ and economic domination and to protect the interests of the ‘authentic Katangese’ (‘les Katangais authentiques’) (M'Bokolo Reference M'Bokolo, Amselle and M'Bokolo1999: 205–20; Dibwe dia Mwembu Reference Dibwe dia Mwembun.d.: 11–18). Kasaians and Baluba of North KatangaFootnote ¹² endured violence during the Katanga secession (1960–63), led by the Katanga provincial government, which was dominated by the Conakat.

During the Second Republic (1965–90), President Mobutu, with the support of the MPR (Mouvement Populaire de la Révolution) party state and the ideology of authenticity, promoted national unity and the end of ethnicity and tribalism. This policy was symbolized by the motto ‘region yes, regionalism no; tribe yes, tribalism no’. Consequently, ‘Mobutu's regime facilitated not only a large-scale migration of Kasaians to Katanga, but also a strong integration of these natives of Kasai in the management of the Katangese res publica’Footnote ¹³ (Dibwe dia Mwembu Reference Dibwe dia Mwembu, Dibwe dia Mwembu and Mutombo2005a: 47). Many interviewees described the Second Republic as a time when Katangese and Kasaians ‘lived in harmony’Footnote ¹⁴ and people did not care about ethno-regional backgrounds. For example:

The violence of the 1990s occurred in the context of the democratization of authoritarian regimes in sub-Saharan Africa. President Mobutu was forced to launch a process of democratization, and, on 24 April 1990, he had to accept a multiparty system. He held onto power by dividing the political opposition and the population by using regional and ethnic identities.Footnote ¹⁶ It was to this end that he established a new policy entitled ‘territoriale des originaires’ on 14 November 1991. This policy reserved the management of provincial public administrations for ‘natives’. In Katanga, supported by the Katangese leaders of the UFERI, Mobutu deflected the criticisms directed towards his regime onto the Kasaians, using them as scapegoats. This strategy succeeded because of the economic crisis, the subsequent competition for access to economic resources (jobs, mining resources, etc.), and Kasaians' objective socio-economic domination. At that time, Kasaians indeed occupied the majority of positions in middle and upper management. For example, in June 1992, 44.9 per cent of the Gécamines' executives were Kasaians and 38.5 per cent were Katangese (Dibwe dia Mwembu Reference Dibwe dia Mwembu, Jewsiewicki and N'Sanda Buleli2005c: 22). They were also in the predominant position in administration and local trade.

SILENCE AND AVOIDANCE AS AN INTERACTIONAL NORM OF PEACEFUL COEXISTENCE

The mass flight of Kasaians and their return in the following months or years caused a spatial reorganization in Likasi and Kolwezi, and marked the end of spatial diversity. Thus, in Likasi, the Dac area, which is where most of the Kasaians who stayed in the city during the time of violence or came back in the months following their flight had settled, is a predominantly Kasaian area – in fact, it is called ‘the Kasaians’ area’. Similarly, in Kolwezi, Kasaians are in the majority in the Dilungu area in the district of Dilala,Footnote ¹⁷ where they took refuge during the violence and where the few Kasaians who stayed in Kolwezi settled. In other areas, the population is predominantly Katangese. For example, Katangese are in the majority in areas where the violence was most intense, such as in Toyota and Kitabataba in the district of Likasi, and in Kanona, Kaponona and Nkolomoni in the district of Kikula in the city of Likasi. The end of spatial diversity does not imply a social distance. Katangese and Kasaians attend the same schools and the same churches, they share a drink together, and so on. However, the current social mix is different from what it was before the 1990s violence; it now takes the shape of a coexistence based on silence and avoidance.

Since the violence, and to the present day, Kasaians and Katangese have tended to eschew topics relating to violence in everyday interactions. The interviewees frequently associated silence about the past violence with forgetting. For example, when I asked a Kasaian woman whether Kasaians and Katangese talked, together or within their community, about violence, she said: ‘We don't talk about that any more … Nobody thinks of that … it's forgotten.’Footnote ¹⁸ Another Kasaian, who was the only one to link forgiveness with silence and forgetting, said:

For some Katangese, public references to violence made by Kasaians are a means of stigmatizing them. The following quote, from a Muluba of North Katanga, shows how referring to the violence and indicating one's intention to resist future outbreaks are perceived by him as a way to categorize Katangese as criminals:

Pollak's work on female concentration camp survivors shows that ‘silence can be easily, but wrongly, equated with forgetting’Footnote ²¹ (Pollak Reference Pollak1986: 30) and that, if we are to understand the meaning of silence, we have to look at ‘the structural constraints that are behind the silence and the functions that it performs’Footnote ²² (Pollak and Heinich Reference Pollak and Heinich1986: 12).

In Katanga, politicians and state actors have preferred to silence the past, thereby creating a strong structural constraint at the macro level. Since Kasaians returned to Katanga from 1993,Footnote ²³ and above all after Mobutu's overthrow by the AFDL (Alliance des Forces démocratiques pour la libération du Congo/Zaïre) and the political takeover by Laurent-Désiré Kabila in May 1997, terms such as ‘natives’ and ‘non-natives’, as well as references to the violence, have tended to be taboo in political speeches and local media. Under the presidencies of Laurent-Désiré Kabila (May 1997 to January 2001) and Joseph Kabila (from January 2001), most Katangan politicians and local authorities have tended to espouse the rhetoric of the national discourse that promotes national unity and the reconciliation of the Congolese people. However, in specific political or socio-economic contexts that are open to an ethnic reading, some Katangan leaders use the terms ‘natives’ and ‘non-natives’ and make explicit references to the violence against Kasaians in public speeches. For example, as leader of the UNAFEC (Union des Nationalistes Fédéralistes Congolais), the party set up in 2001 by former leaders of the UFERI, Gabriel Kyungu wa Kumwanza (a supporter of the outgoing president Joseph Kabila) gave several xenophobic speeches targeting Kasaians before the election campaign. In a speech in Kolwezi on 25 May 2011, he ordered Kasaians to ‘go back home’ in case of Kabila's defeat:

Since the 1990s violence, in their face-to-face interactions, Katangese and Kasaians also avoid political topics, especially those that may be interpreted in light of the conflict between the two groups:

This extract from an interview conducted with a Muluba of Eastern Kasai highlights two collective representations. Firstly, when I asked him if there are topics that are to be avoided in interactions with Katangese, he mentioned directly political topics. In interviews and informal conversations, the conflict between Katangese and Kasaians was very often described as ‘a political issue’, and local political leaders were seen as the cause of this political issue and its persistence. Secondly, this extract draws attention to the justifications given for silence and self-censorship in face-to-face interactions. If, in their everyday interactions, Katangese and Kasaians use practices of coexistence that are based on silence and self-censorship, it is because these routine practices facilitate expectations about how the interactions will proceed. They bring stability to interaction situations in which people have sometimes experienced a sense of insecurity since the violence of the 1990s. Thus Kasaians justify the use of silence and self-censorship by saying that it enables them to maintain their safety. On the one hand, this relates to their physical safety, as the following excerpt from the interview with the same Muluba of Eastern Kasai illustrates:

On the other hand, it involves their social safety; they want to keep their jobs in a context of economic instability, especially since the autumn of 2008, when the global economic crisis affected the Katangan economy and increased what Miriam Di Paola calls ‘the sense of precariousness’ (Di Paola Reference Di Paola2013) among both Kasaians and Katangese:

Silence on the violence of the 1990s and avoidance of political topics have thus become a norm of peaceful coexistence. Most Katangese and Kasaians think that non-compliance with this norm is likely to ‘cause incidents’Footnote ³⁰ or ‘clashes’Footnote ³¹ or ‘reawaken the conflict’Footnote ³² between Katangese and Kasaians.

DEALING WITH THE MEMORY OF VIOLENCE IN THE NOVEMBER 2011 ELECTION PERIOD

While silence and avoidance have prevailed since the mid-1990s, many Katangese and Kasaians did not comply with this interactional norm in the context of the presidential and legislative elections of November 2011. Threats by Katangese to their Kasaian neighbours or colleagues were made regularly, with warnings such as ‘If Tshisekedi wins the election, we will drive you out again’ or ‘This time, you will go back home by foot’ or ‘If Tshisekedi wins the election, we will beat all the Kasaians and take their belongings.’ These employed exactly the same kind of wording (of forceful eviction and expulsion from Katanga) that Katangese had used to threaten Kasaians in the early 1990s. For example, during the first field trip, in February and March 2009, a Kasaian woman, the widow of a Katangan worker, said that after the appointment of Etienne Tshisekedi as prime minister by the Sovereign National Conference on 15 August 1992, her Katangan neighbours said every day: ‘This time, the Kasaians will go back home by foot, because they have voted for Tshisekedi.’Footnote ³³ In Kolwezi, a Katangese employee of the Gécamines told me that a fellow Katangese, who was both his co-worker and a neighbour, had sung songs that members of the UFERI militia had sung during the violence; this had happened several nights before the announcement of the 2011 presidential election returns, between 9 p.m. and 1 a.m., in a predominantly Kasaian area.Footnote ³⁴ Therefore while the political context was very different, the structural conditions informing daily interactions remained strongly connected to national politics and their perception as a game of ethnic domination. Interestingly, the threats pointed to a contestation of national politics at the local level and to the possible acceptance of Kasaians, provided they made their allegiance to the Katangese candidate explicit.

Some Katangese used other phrases that were sometimes less directly linked to violence, but that were interpreted in this way by the Kasaians who were targeted by them. In the early 1990s, because of violence, some Kasaians had deserted their plots of land; others had sold theirs at a low price, before leaving Likasi or Kolwezi. Since 2007, following the collapse of the MIBA (Société minière de Bakwanga) – a state-owned diamond company and the former main state employer in Eastern Kasai – and with the mining boom in South Katanga since the early 2000s, many Kasaians have returned to the mining cities in South Katanga, particularly Kolwezi, where most of the mining sector re-launch has taken place. These massive returns led to a crisis situation in Kolwezi between 2007 and 2009; this was linked to competition for jobs in the industrial and artisanal mining sectors and Kasaians' claims for restitution of their houses and plots, which were occupied by Katangese. In such a context, many Katangese expressed a sense of a new invasion:

On 21 October 2007, Gabriel Kyungu wa Kumwanza, the former governor of Katanga and the current president of the Katanga provincial assembly, used this feeling in a speech in Kolwezi:

During the November 2011 election period, the Kasaians' plots and houses again became an issue for some Katangese. Several of them pointed to Kasaians' houses and said aloud, ‘It will be my house,’Footnote ³⁹ or they enumerated the Kasaians' houses in an area: ‘You will have this house, you will have this one, you will have this one…’Footnote ⁴⁰

Expressions such as ‘If Tshisekedi wins the election, Katanga will secede’ or ‘If Kabila does not win the election, then it will be secession’ were also very common. As M'Bokolo noted: ‘The recurrence of what is known as “Katangese separatism” seems indisputably one of the major permanent features of Zairean political life since the mid-1950s, that is to say since the time when modern political competition was introduced in what was then the Belgian Congo’Footnote ⁴¹ (M'Bokolo Reference M'Bokolo, Amselle and M'Bokolo1999: 185). Katangese separatism and the memory of the Katangese secession (1960–63) have been recurrent themes in the speeches of many Katangese political leaders, such as those of Kyungu wa Kumwanza during the violence against Kasaians (see Kennes Reference Kennes, Jewsiewicki and N'Sanda Buleli2005: 204–5). Katangese leaders have tended to raise the spectre of Katangese separatism when relations between Katangese authorities and the central state are strained. Thus, ‘the actual function of the memory of secession [is] to be an instrument in negotiations with the central power’Footnote ⁴² (Kennes Reference Kennes, Jewsiewicki and N'Sanda Buleli2005: 205). However, as Kennes has shown, the memory of the Katangese secession is also linked to the exclusion of non-natives, since these are the two components of Katangese identity: ‘The Katangese secession and the use of the memory of the secession are straight away linked to the exclusion of “non-natives”. During the secession as under Kyungu Wa Kumwanza, the Katangese identity was first constructed against “Kasaians”, thus playing two ambiguous provincial identities one against the other’Footnote ⁴³ (Kennes Reference Kennes, Jewsiewicki and N'Sanda Buleli2005: 205). It was therefore not surprising that, during the November 2011 election period, Katangese used the memory of both the past violence against Kasaians and the secession in their face-to-face interactions with Kasaians. Another important factor is the decentralization reform; this was adopted in January 2008 but has not yet been implemented in Katanga. Discussions on decentralization have revived the view that natives do not profit from Katanga's resources, because those resources are exploited for the benefit of non-natives – either Kasaians, according to Katangese in general, or the Katangese native to North Katanga (mainly Baluba), according to the members of the South Katanga ethnic groups:

In addition to this sense of deprivation to the benefit of non-natives, the central state is also perceived as being exploitative:

The metaphor of the kitchen and the restaurant, borrowing from the language of the ‘politics of the belly’ (Bayart Reference Bayart1989), shows that the legitimacy of the central government (‘Kinshasa’) is challenged (‘We have to secede’) owing to the lack of wealth redistribution (‘In Kinshasa, they eat. They forget the cook’). The interviewee also expressed the idea, shared by many Katangese, that the wealth of Congo is mainly provided by the mining resources produced in Katanga (‘the kitchen’ or ‘the cook’).Footnote ⁴⁷

In all the interaction situations – reported by the interviewees or observed – where Katangese made clear reference to the 1990s violence in front of members of the other community, Kasaians again used practices based on silence and avoidance. They pretended either not to hear what Katangese said or that they were not the target of these threats. A Kasaian worker explained that he even fled such interaction situations:

Katangese were also the target of threats referring to the violence; they reacted similarly by using silence and avoidance. During the November 2011 election period, some Kasaians warned their Katangese neighbours or colleagues that they would respond if they were attacked: ‘This time, you will not drive us out. We will fight’ or ‘You drove our parents out. We are going to fight.’Footnote ⁴⁹ During the first field trip conducted in February and March 2009, only one interviewee told me an anecdote about young Kasaians evoking overtly the past violence in front of Katangese, which he viewed as a ‘provocation that could cause incidents’.Footnote ⁵⁰ In the context of the 2011 elections, such sentences were common and, if Katangese and Kasaians still viewed them as provocations, they also interpreted them as ‘self-defence’. In an informal conversation between a Muluba man of Eastern Kasai, his wife and his cousin, the Muluba man recalled that in 1992 he had fled Likasi, leaving all his belongings behind. However, in reference to 2011, he indicated that he had ‘sharpened the machete’ in the event that Katangese attacked him: ‘In 1992, I left. Now, I won't leave. I have my house. I have my comfort. If they come to drive me out, it will be as if they destroy my house. I will defend myself.’Footnote ⁵¹

Most of the rumours spread during the election period were linked to violence. One rumour had it that in Kitabataba, one of the areas most affected by the violence in Likasi, Katangese had drafted lists of Kasaian plot owners, as they had done in the early 1990s. On 6 December 2011, the day when the preliminary results of the presidential election should have been announced,Footnote ⁵² another rumour spread in LikasiFootnote ⁵³ that, in Kamina,Footnote ⁵⁴ Kasaians had ‘dressed a dog up as Kabila’Footnote ⁵⁵ or ‘tied a photo of Kabila around the neck of a dog, which they walked around the city’.Footnote ⁵⁶ This echoed a provocation by Kasaians in Lubumbashi, after the appointment of Etienne Tshisekedi as prime minister on 15 August 1992: they had marched through the streets with two dogs wearing neckties to symbolize the previous prime minister, Nguz a Karl-I-Bond, and Governor Kyungu wa Kumwanza, the two Katangan leaders of the UFERI.

Similarly, Katangese and Kasaians tended to interpret any incident in light of the past violence. An almost 50 per cent increase in the price of palm oil within a week was interpreted in the following way: ‘It starts like that.’Footnote ⁵⁷ Another example, in mid-December 2011, was the cutting off of the water supply, an issue that is usually problematic in Likasi. In the Mission area, there is a well next to a mosque, which was being built at that time; the businessman who funded the construction of the mosque allowed people in the neighbourhood to draw water from the well, under the supervision of the watchman. For two days, there was a queue in front of the well. On the third day, the businessman ordered the watchman not to allow people to draw water, presumably to prevent the well drying up. A Kasaian woman, who was not able to fill her cans with water, explained the decision of the businessman in the following way: ‘The owner turned off the taps, because Katangese [in the queue] were insulting Kasaians.’Footnote ⁵⁸

Finally, the memory of violence was also noticeable in some practices of the activists of the UNAFEC. On 3 August 2011, the day before Tshisekedi was to hold a meeting, fifty or so men wearing red fatigues marched through Likasi.Footnote ⁵⁹ This colour recalled the violence against Kasaians, as members of the UFERI militia had worn red headbands.Footnote ⁶⁰ This march was interpreted as a strategy implemented by UNAFEC activists to intimidate the supporters of the UDPS and therefore all Kasaians, since the UDPS is seen by many Katangese as ‘the Kasaians’ party’.

SIMPLIFICATION AND POLARIZATION OF IDENTITIES IN A TIME OF CRISIS

The November 2011 election period was a crisis situation that led to a process of oversimplification of ethno-regional identities, because of the competition for the presidential election between Joseph Kabila and Etienne Tshisekedi and the consequent fear of an outbreak of mass violence against Kasaians in the event of Tshisekedi's victory.

This fear, which was shared by almost all the Kasaians and Katangese interviewed, regardless of their social status or age, was particularly intense between the election day, on 28 November 2011, and the announcement of the presidential election returns, on 9 December 2011. During this time and in the days that followed, this fear was fuelled by information and speculation about the situation of Kasaians in Kamina and of supporters of Tshisekedi in Kinshasa, and by the numerous rumours about the alleged worsening relations between Joseph Kabila and the Katangese political leaders who supported his candidacy. The most frequent rumours related to the assassination or attempted assassination, ordered by Joseph Kabila, of Katangese leaders. For example, from 25 December 2011 until the end of my fieldwork (on 14 January 2012), almost every day I heard rumours about an attempted shooting of Kyungu wa Kumwanza or his assassination by poison. These rumours were fuelled by Kyungu's absence from the local media and the fact that in a reportage programme on Kyungu, a local television station had broadcast archive images.Footnote ⁶¹

In some areas, where they felt threatened, some Kasaians fledFootnote ⁶² ‘as a precautionary measure’.Footnote ⁶³ After Katangese miners had threatened them, Kasaian artisanal diggers fled the Kamoto quarry in Kolwezi.Footnote ⁶⁴ Likewise, in the anecdote mentioned above, the songs of the UFERI militia, sung every night by the Katangese employee of the Gécamines, led young Kasaians who lived in the same area of Kolwezi to flee.Footnote ⁶⁵ Another example of this fear was that, in Likasi, some Kasaian children did not go to school on 6 December 2011 – the day when the announcement of the election returns was planned – or on 10 December, because they or their parents were ‘afraid’Footnote ⁶⁶ and ‘in case there [was] trouble’.Footnote ⁶⁷

Katangese, too, feared an outbreak of xenophobic violence. The following anecdote shows this mutual fear: four Kasaian families suddenly left their houses in Kikula, a predominantly Katangese district in Likasi, and settled in the Dac area in the district of Likasi.Footnote ⁶⁸ Their Katangese neighbours in Kikula became worried about this sudden move. They interpreted it as follows: ‘They start to flee. It means that we are now the target in the neighbourhood. They leave because their brothers will come and attack us.’Footnote ⁶⁹

During the election period, another factor worried Katangese: the phenomenon of manseba. Since 2008, many young Kasaians have arrived from Eastern Kasai and Western Kasai and have set up motorbike transport businesses, first around the copper and cobalt quarries in South Katanga, and then in the cities. In the context of the global economic crisis, which affected Katanga in the autumn of 2008, these young Kasaians had a higher standard of living than some natives, who were unemployed. Indeed, following the collapse of copper and cobalt prices at the end of 2008, about sixty mining companies closed down and about 300,000 diggers were unemployed. This led to tensions between the Kasaian riders and some Katangese: ‘And as they are numerous in quarries, they are here, everywhere, they are here. They have even set up small income-generating businesses, and so on. Now the Katangese population find that “No, these people have come back again to dwarf us.”’Footnote ⁷⁰ Katangese call Kasaian motorcyclists manseba (‘maternal uncle’ in Tshiluba, the Kasaians' native tongue), a term that Kasaian bikers find pejorative. After the candidacy of Etienne Tshisekedi was announced on 18 August 2010, many natives suspected Kasaian riders of ‘having come [to Katanga] to sabotage the electorate of the outgoing president’,Footnote ⁷¹ Joseph Kabila. This collective representation that Kasaian motorbike riders came to Katanga ‘to sabotage the electorate’ of Kabila reflected an ethnic reading of the elections and a conflation between ethnic and provincial origins and the membership of a political party: many Katangese see the UDPS as ‘the Kasaians' political party’ and Tshisekedi as ‘the Kasaians' leader’, and they assume that each Kasaian is a UDPS supporter. According to this reading, Kasaian riders came to Katanga prior to the elections with the aim of increasing Tshisekedi's performance in Kabila's electoral stronghold. The following extract of an interview conducted with a Muluba of North Katanga, after the announcement of the legislative election returns, illustrates this interpretation of the displacement of the Kasaian riders from Kasai to the cities in South Katanga:

Katangese also criticized them for ‘talking in their native tongue’:Footnote ⁷³

During the election period, not understanding what Kasaians said was perceived as a threat by Katangese. Talking in Tshiluba in public was also interpreted as a sign that Kasaians do not try to integrate themselves into Katangese society; this is one of the main stereotypes of Kasaians.Footnote ⁷⁶

It is important to note that, although the socio-economic situation of the Kasaian riders aroused the feeling among some Katangese that they were ‘dwarfed again’, the current economic crisis affects both Katangese and Kasaians equally, and its effects are not comparable with those of the economic crisis of the early 1990s. At that time, the collapse of the mining parastatal Gécamines led to harsh competition for jobs. In that economic context, Katangese were sensitive to the exclusionary discourses of the UFERI leaders, which suggested a solution to the job issue: the deportation of Kasaians from Katanga and their replacement by Katangese in parastatals, private companies and local administration. In those discourses, Katangese also found an explanation for being socio-economically marginalized: the Kasaians' objective socio-economic domination and their tribalism – another of the main stereotypes of Kasaians. However, a reading in terms of competition between two social classes – the native unskilled workers versus the Kasaian migrants, executives or traders – is irrelevant to an understanding of the process of oversimplification of ethno-regional identities that occurred during the November 2011 elections. Indeed, since the 1990s violence, the Kasaians' socio-economic position is no longer dominant in South Katanga as many top and middle managers are ‘natives’.Footnote ⁷⁷ There are two main reasons for this: firstly, after Kasaians fled Katanga following the 1990s violence, the key positions in parastatals, private companies and local administration were occupied by Katangese, mainly Baluba of North Katanga. Hence, anti-North Katangan Baluba feelings increased among the South Katangan ethnic groups. The latter considered themselves to be the ‘true natives’ of the area and stigmatized the North Katangan Baluba as being ‘too greedy and expansionist’Footnote ⁷⁸ (Dibwe dia Mwembu Reference Dibwe dia Mwembu, Jewsiewicki and N'Sanda Buleli2005c: 42). Since 2008, because of the decentralization reform that, if implemented, would result in the division of Katanga into four provinces, the competition between the North Katangan Baluba elites and the elites from the South Katangan ethnic groups has re-emerged. South Katanga elites are encouraged to claim a prominent position in the South Katanga area. For example, in Likasi in January 2009, the traditional chief of the Basanga sent a letter to President Joseph Kabila to protest against the recent appointment of two North Katangan Baluba as mayor and deputy mayor and the replacement of two Basanga with North Katangan Baluba to key positions in the university centre of Likasi. He asked Kabila to put an end to discrimination against the ‘autochthons’ – i.e. the Basanga – and threatened Baluba of North Katanga with reprisals.Footnote ⁷⁹ The Basanga elites lobbied successfully: in 2011, Charles Mwanangwa Ntalasha Mungutana, a Musanga, was appointed mayor, and almost all the municipal authorities appointed at that time were also Basanga. Secondly, as Martin Kalulambi Pongo noted (Reference Kalulambi Pongo2001: 171):

Most of the Kasaians who came back or who moved for the first time to Katanga since 2007 belong to this second social category: they left Eastern Kasai after having lost their jobs because of the collapse of the MIBA. Since then, many of them have worked as artisanal miners in copper and cobalt quarries.

The belief in an outbreak of mass violence in the event of Tshisekedi's victory explains why, after the CENI (Commission électorale nationale indépendante) had announced Kabila's victory with 48.95 per cent of the recorded votes (against 32.33 per cent for Tshisekedi) on 9 December 2011, many Kasaians resigned themselves to the result, although many were convinced that Kabila ‘had stolen’ Tshisekedi's victory by ‘cheating’. The National Episcopal Conference of Congo also believed that the election results had been rigged – it issued official statements condemning the results of the presidential and legislative elections as unreliable – as did international observers, such as the Carter Center.Footnote ⁸¹ Almost all Kasaians interviewed during my fieldwork, regardless of their social status or age, were convinced that Tshisekedi had won the election and that Kabila had stolen it by massive election rigging. In interviews and informal conversations, this belief was generally matched with the opinion, which existed before the election, that Kabila was not Congolese but Rwandan. The following two quotations show this feeling of both disappointment and relief:

Some local political leaders also used these statements about election fraud and Kabila's nationality in their speeches. For example, in Likasi, the lyrics ‘Kabila, Rwandan, go back home’ appeared in a propaganda song for a UDPS member standing for the parliamentary elections.

The November 2011 election period was a crisis situation because of the strong belief that a victory for Tshisekedi would result in mass violence.Footnote ⁸⁴ Since the 1990s violence, ‘the past is deliberately set aside’ (Mehta and Chatterji Reference Mehta, Chatterji, Das, Kleinman, Lock, Ramphele and Reynolds2001: 238) in daily interactions between Katangese and Kasaians, but the candidacy of Tshisekedi brought back memories of this violence, and hence the fear of further violence. Dominant in Katanga was an ethnic reading of the presidential election as an opposition between a Muluba of North Katanga – Joseph Kabila, the outgoing president and leader of the PPRD (Parti du Peuple pour la Reconstruction et la Démocratie) – and a Muluba of Eastern Kasai – Etienne Tshisekedi, the leader of the UDPS. Thus, in Katanga, the competition between Kabila's supporters – i.e. the PPRD supporters, and the UNAFEC supporters, too, since Kyungu wa Kumwanza supported Kabila's candidacy – and Tshisekedi's supporters was seen as opposition between Katangese and Kasaians. More importantly, the resurrection of memories of the violence occurred because, following Tshisekedi's appointment as prime minister on 15 August 1992 to replace the Katangese leader Nguz a Karl-I-Bond, violence had escalated in Katanga and had started in Likasi and Kolwezi. During the November 2011 election period, it was therefore impossible to set aside memories of the violence in interaction situations.

This crisis situation led to the type of oversimplification and polarization of collective identities that Claudine Vidal (Reference Vidal1991: 11) defines as a ‘temporary passion’ (passion conjoncturelle):

In Likasi and Kolwezi, the mutual fear related to the electoral context led to an oversimplification of ethno-regional identities: the friend, neighbour or colleague was viewed only as a Kasaian or a Katangese. In Epuration Ethnique en Afrique, Thomas Bakajika Banjikila (Reference Bakajika Banjikila1997: 101) quotes the testimony of a Kasaian, which shows such a process of oversimplification of identities in the context of the Katangese secession and how the secession contributed to the assimilation of provincial identities, in this case that of Kasaians:

During the November 2011 election period, friends belonging to the other community also tended to be seen only on the basis of their Kasaian or Katangan identity. Several interviewees said that, during this time, they did not meet their friends belonging to the other community. For example:

This also altered the perception of matrimonial relationships. While in 2009 interviewees emphasized ‘mixed marriages’ (mariages mixtes) as an example of improving relations between the two communities, those unions were regarded as unthinkable and undesirable by Katangese and Kasaians alike during the 2011 election period.

As a consequence of the crisis situation, the expectations about face-to-face interaction situations with members of the other community were made more difficult, and the routine practices of coexistence based on self-censorship and avoidance tended to disappear in daily interactions. Because of the simplification and polarization of the Katangan and Kasaian identities – another consequence of the crisis situation – people considered their interactions with members of the other community in the light of various stakes, usually contained. In this specific political context, these stakes were the spectre of political and socio-economic domination by Kasaians and their claims for restitution of their houses – and the frustrations associated with this.

After the November 2011 election period, silence and avoidance again became the norm in the interactions between Katangese and Kasaians, and references to the 1990s violence returned to being occasional.