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.