Paper long abstract:

The conflicts that occurred in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) in the 1990s were the most deadly since the Second World War. Many of the conflicts that resulted in the estimated four million civilian deaths during that time took place in the Katanga province in the south east of the DRC. Current literature on conflicts in Katanga specifically, and the DRC more generally, has largely focused on using the Congolese state and resource wars to explain the prevalence of violence in Congo-Kinshasa. Whilst arguing that these factors remain important, this paper will seek to disclose other important ‘internal’ causes of violence in Katanga, such as religious violence. In order to understand these internal causative factors, local perspectives must be considered alongside national and international determinants. This paper will use Kongolo as a local case study to reveal that religious violence, amongst other internal dynamics, was as important a factor in explaining violence as the disputes over who had overall political control in Katanga. The 'Kongolo massacre,' which occurred in 1962 and resulted in the deaths of nineteen priests, highlights the fact that violence perpetrated against religious institutions and in religious spaces must form an integral part of explanations of violence in Katanga. However, discreet categories of violence must be conjoined as local violence committed in religious spaces often had political motives. The priests killed in 1962, for instance, died at the hands of Balubakat rebels who fought more against the politics of Moise Tshombe than Catholicism itself.