Wartime Rape, Gender, and Militarism: The Bukavu People’s Conceptualisation of the Emergence of Wartime Rape in the 2004 Kivu Conflict in Contrast to the 1996 First Congo War
Date
2023-03-15
Authors
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Publisher
University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg
Abstract
For more than a decade, armed conflicts in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) have been characterised by widespread wartime rape against civilians. The purposeful utilisation of wartime rape as a weapon of war has owed to the country unflattering labels, such as the “rape capital of the world, the worst place to be a woman, or again the dark hole”. The armed unrest in the DRC is rooted in the Belgian colonisation’s land administration policies that shaped some groups as native (autochthones) while constructing others as foreigners. Following an anti-war feminist perspective, this PhD explores the Bukavu people’s conceptualisation of the emergence of wartime rape in the 2004 Kivu Conflict in contrast to the 1996 First Congo War. I used participatory research methods, as dictated by the Covid-19 pandemic, to collect the data through focus groups and in-depth individual interviews with ordinary community members, former military officers, members of the civil society and community leaders in Bukavu (South Kivu Province, eastern DRC). The collected data made it possible to firstly recognise the absence of wartime rape as a weapon of war in the 1996 First Congo War; and to show that wartime rape has not always been ubiquitous in the DRC but became a lexicon that the perpetrators utilised to place divergent claims related to their customary land, military, political power ambitions, gendered ethnic identity, and citizenship aspirations. Secondly, the data allowed for disaggregating wartime rape into three categories based on the perpetrators’ motivations and claims. The thesis maintains that the Hutu-dominated Interahamwe militia, also recognised as the main authors of the 1994 Rwandan genocide, resorted to rape in the eastern DRC for revenge and to (re)masculinise their troops while feminising the Congolese state. Next, this study demonstrates that the Rally for Congolese Democracy rebels, which claimed the Tutsi Congolese ethnicity, strategically resorted to wartime rape to claim customary land rights and citizenship recognition. Following, this thesis puts forward that the Mai-Mai militia, seen as native, erpetrated wartime rape to claim military respect and recognition while furthering the political agendas of their patrons. I maintain that patriarchy – as the shared norm between the perpetrators, the state and the victims (women, girls, men and boys) – makes it possible for wartime rape to be utilised as a lexicon and a destructive weapon against the victims’ sexual subjectivities and the whole community’s symbolic order. Hence, this study articulates a three-fold argument. This thesis firstly argues that the 2004 wartime rape is rooted in the Belgian colonisation and its lingering effects on forms of ethnicity, gender, land distribution and recognition of political rights in the present. Next, this thesis argues that wartime rape is a strategic weapon perpetrators utilise for revenge and to claim military recognition. Lastly, this study argues that the extreme violence of rape as an act of war aims to destroy the victims’ subjectivities and their community’s symbolic order. As such, this thesis weaves together three levels of analysis and examines wartime rape as multi-dimensional violence that interlaces into one act of wartime rape: the historical dimension (centring on land), the broader strategic considerations, and the destruction of victims’ subjectivities and the community’s symbolic order. At the same time, the combination of these dimensions varies considerably between the Hutu-dominated Interahamwe militia, the Rally for Congolese Democracy rebels, and the Mai-Mai militias – that is, the context even in one province within DRC produces variations in motive and form.
Description
Thesis submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for a Doctor of Philosophy degree in Sociology, School of Social Sciences, Faculty of Humanities, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, in 2023.
Keywords
Wartime rape, Gendered identity, Militarisation, Anti-war feminism, Patriarchy, Sexual subjectivity, Democratic Republic of the Congo, UCTD
Citation
Mushagalusa, Alice Karhikalembu. (2023). Wartime Rape, Gender, and Militarism: The Bukavu People’s Conceptualisation of the Emergence of Wartime Rape in the 2004 Kivu Conflict in Contrast to the 1996 First Congo War. [PhD thesis, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg]. WIReDSpace. https://hdl.handle.net/10539/38986