China Science

This paper argues that warlord or ‘non-state’ politics have not brought about as fundamental a political transformation as recent discourses about violent ’state collapse’ in Africa seem to suggest. In the context of the territorial break-up of the central state in the DR Congo, it examines the reconfiguration of political power in North Kivu in the extreme weakness of formal state structures and looks at the strategies of local actors to deal with the violent transformation of the state. It demonstrates that the strategies of the ruling rebels and other strongmen reveal significant continuities with regard to the Mobutu era as the marketing of minerals provides the resources for the revisiting of time-tested political strategies such as the construction of patronage-based clientelistic networks. Similarly, the limited ambitions of ‘non-hegemonic rule’ provide current rulers with powerful incentives to exercise power by drawing on the support of intermediary actors such as traditional authorities. Far from indicating the ‘end of politics’, these strategies mimic President Mobutu’s political set up and thus contribute to the reproduction of the postcolonial state despite its institutional erosion.

Denis M. Tull