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- Convenors:
-
Edoardo Baldaro
(Université Libre de Bruxelles)
Alessio Iocchi (Università Orientale di Napoli Norwegian Institute of International Affairs)
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- Discussant:
-
Sara de Simone
(Università degli Studi di Trento)
- Format:
- Panel
- Streams:
- Politics and International Relations (x) Violence and Conflict Resolution (y)
- Location:
- Philosophikum, S54
- Sessions:
- Saturday 3 June, -
Time zone: Europe/Berlin
Short Abstract:
The panel aims at problematizing literature on authority, legitimacy, and territorial control in conflict-ridden hybrid political orders by exploring the role of traditional leaders, investigating how they co-participate in shaping and redefining security, governance, and political practices
Long Abstract:
During the last two decades, scholars have discussed the “resurrection of chieftaincies” in African politics, exploring how this presumed “return” of the tradition shapes practices of governance, control, and belonging, within and beyond the African state. In conflict studies, this move has intercepted the renewed interest dedicated to local and/or traditional ways of dealing with and managing violent conflicts. According to large part of the literature on “local peacebuilding”, chieftaincies are consequently seen as fundamental performers of mediating interventions and conflict-resolution, mainly because their legitimacy and authority are seen as independent from both the state and the dynamics of political disruption characterising conflict settings.
Engaging with and problematizing the academic and policy literature on authority, legitimacy, and territorial control in fragile and/or hybrid political orders characterized by high degrees of violence and the presence of external interveners, this panel aims at deconstructing the role of traditional leaders in conflict, investigating how they co-participate in shaping and redefining security, governance, and political practices. For this, we welcome theoretical and empirical contributions, coming from different disciplinary angles and focusing on different geographical settings, that aim at answering – among the others – to the following questions: What position do traditional leaders occupy between the State and non-state armed actors? How do they adapt to the changes occasioned by external security engagements and state-led security operations? What kind of strategies are chiefs more prone to adopt for maintaining their legitimacy and ruling capacities? Which kind of incentives would function to engage traditional authorities?
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Saturday 3 June, 2023, -Francesco Moze (University of Edinburgh)
Paper short abstract:
By examining how indigenous leaders navigated the demarcation of the Uganda-Congo boundary and the colonial securitisation of lake Katwe between 1894-1906, this paper explores the role of firearms and aesthetic objects in the production of authority along violent and unstable colonial frontiers.
Paper long abstract:
From 1885 to 1915, geographic errors delayed the delimitation and demarcation of the boundary between Uganda Protectorate and Congo Free State, transforming the colonial frontier into a locus of fierce competition between British, Leopoldian and indigenous actors. As imperial rivalries slowed diplomatic attempts at negotiating a new boundary, administrators in Africa turned to an array of strategies to securitise the frontier within and outwith. In the Semliki Valley, British and Congolese authorities increasingly restricted the circulation and use of firearms and ammunitions, which indigenous leaders had long employed prior to colonisation to compete for political authority over lake Katwe and its renewed salt deposits. Besides regulating and controlling the material access to weaponry, however, colonial securitisation also relied on aesthetic objects and practices, which European authorities widely employed not only to perform the boundary on the ground, but also in the context of political encounters and engagements with frontier societies. Drawing from British and Belgian archival data, this paper discusses the colonial securitisation of the Uganda-Congo frontier between 1894-1906, analysing the strategies adopted by European agents around lake Katwe and the tactics employed by local leaders in response to demarcation and securitisation. By showing how, in addition to firearms, indigenous leaders also resorted to flags and uniforms to play off colonial rivalries and seize control of Katwe, the paper explores the materialities associated with the production of indigenous authority along unstable and violent colonial frontiers.
Baudouin Mena (University of Antwerp)
Paper short abstract:
This paper examines the role of African chiefs in rural areas during conflicts. It contributes to the current scholarly debate on the active role of chiefs in conflict situations. The findings are based on ethnographic fieldwork in the Logo-Loliya chiefdom, DRC, between 2022 and 2023.
Paper long abstract:
This paper engages with the broader academic literature on land conflicts and chieftaincy in African rural areas. Authors, such as Rukuni et al. (2015) and Santschi (2014), often portrays customary authorities as necessary intermediaries in resolving land disputes, managing land allocations, and guardians over communal land. However, these authors tends to overemphasize chiefs’ pacifying role in conflict resolution, and peacebuilding, while underexposing their direct role in taking part, maintaining or even fueling conflicts. My research focuses on the latter and unpacks chiefs’ role in communal land disputes. The research is based on ethnographic fieldwork between 2022 and 2023 and focuses on Logo-Loliya chieftaincy, located in the northeastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). The chiefdom encountered many disputes with neighboring chieftaincies over the delimitation of its territory in 2022, leading to the killing of at least 7 people and displacement of over 1000 households. Despite the Congolese government's attempts to intervene in this conflict, relying on chiefs, my findings illustrate how chiefs also played an active role in the conflict. The delimitation dispute is placed in a long-term perspective and shows how, and why, it intensified or degraded over time. The findings have two parts: first, it shows how customary authorities and their entourage can instrumentalize a land conflict to enhance their local power. Second, it illustrates how chiefs look at internal, or external, factors to hinder or co-produce land conflicts in order to control land resources.
Sonwabile Mnwana (Rhodes University)
Paper short abstract:
In this paper, I detail the intense local struggles over the mineral-rich land and mining royalties in the villages that spread over the ‘platinum belt’ in the North West province. Conflict is characterised by resistance to local chiefs, violent protests, and exclusive group claims.
Paper long abstract:
The expansion of mining on ‘communal’ land in the former ‘homeland’ areas has produced new struggles in rural South Africa. In this paper, I detail the intense local struggles over the mineral-rich land and mining royalties in the villages that spread over the ‘platinum belt’ in the North West province. Conflict is characterised by resistance to local chiefs, violent protests, and exclusive group claims. Ordinary villagers also make strong demands for direct cash payments that are rooted on private group ‘ownership’ of land and mineral resources. Some of these claims end up in the courts of law. I argue that the failure of the post-apartheid policy mechanisms to facilitate equitable distribution of mining rents, and new forms of exclusion and elite accumulation at the local level are at the root of the prolonged conflict. The paper also contends that, a detailed sociological analysis of the character of ‘community’ – as social principle – could be a crucial intellectual intervention that might pave the way towards addressing the prevailing distributional impasse and conflict.
Mellisa Chipo Kaliofasi (Basel University)
Paper short abstract:
The paper shows how colonial inheritance laws undermined the power of chiefs and diviners, resulting in serious distortions of African traditional dispute resolution mechanisms.
Paper long abstract:
The paper uses the Mashonaland Central districts in Southern Rhodesia (Zimbabwe) at the start of white occupation in 1890s, to investigate the role of chiefs and diviners in mediating conflicts arising from the misappropriation of deceased estates. It demonstrates the importance of spirit beliefs in the practice of law, peace and security. Archival evidence in the form of “native civil cases” enables an examination of how chiefs and diviners participation in the colonial legal system created conflict, clashing with the emergent colonial system that was based on the Romano-Dutch practices. Disputes over the estate of the deceased—outstanding bride wealth payments, livestock, clothing and rights over children and the widows —were common. It further interrogates competing notions of what the wishes of the deceased meant and how this fed into competing discourses of what misappropriating a deceased person's estate meant. It examines perceived cultural/traditional methods of redressing the poor management of the deceased person’s estate—be they physical, spiritual based calamity and other means. As such these remedies locates the multiple agencies of the deceased (who may not have left a will) but supposedly had the power to influence the management of their estates. These methods were in conflict with colonial inheritance laws as encapsulated in the Estate Ordinance Acts legislated, which distorted both traditional inheritance laws and the power of these functionaries. The paper shows how colonial inheritance laws undermined the power of chiefs and diviners, resulting in serious distortions of African traditional dispute resolution mechanisms.
Keywords: Estate, Deceased, Inheritance, Disputes