War and Violence in Africa

The Myth and the Reality

History of Wars in Africa

• Independence movements: mainly peaceful (protests, riots); armed conflict in some countries, mainly those with white settlers

• The “Cold” War (1945-1990): proxy wars in Angola, Mozambique, Somalia, Ethiopia; not nuclear weapons, but the AK-47

Rise of “Small Wars”• The use of the AK-47 or other low-

tech weapons (machetes)• Confusion who is fighting: the rise of

the “sobel” (both intent on living off civilians and capturing economic resources: e.g., diamond mines in Sierra Leone, elephant tusks in eastern Congo)

• High civilian casualties: sometimes the direct victim of an attack; more usually, death from displacement, difficulty getting resources: e.g., in Sierra Leone, 15,000 civilians killed and 40% displaced internally or outside the country (out of population of 4m).

Koidu Diamond Holdings, Kono, Sierra Leone

Thinking about violence and war anthropologically

Key insight #1:• War and violence express

social conflict; if we understand the local social order, we can understand violence as political actions

• What was Peter Uvin’s argument about why the genocide happened in Rwanda in 1994?

Kigali, Rwanda

Thinking about violence anthropologically

• Why did the RUF go to war against the state? Richards argues: “The crisis of patrimonialism”

• What does this mean?• How does this relate to big

men/big women• Why the focus on youth?• Why take over the diamond

mines?• “The movement is a creature of

the unresolved contradictions of the post-colonial state” (p. 553)

Child soldiers of RUF

Thinking about violence anthropologically

Key insight #2:• Brutality and dehumanization

occur through culturally symbolic actions

• Violence is performative, symbolically communicative

• “Civilized”/”barbaric” (or the current terms: “modern” or “developed”)

• Why cut off the arms of civilians in Sierra Leone?

• Brutal acts then become comprehensible

Father and child, displaced in Freetown

Thinking about violence anthropologically

• Rambo’s “First Blood” (1982) as a key myth for the RUF

• POA, p. 552• Note how global media

become re-signified and made meaningful locally

Thinking about violence anthropologically

Social harmony = personal healthCuring of personal illness = curing of social disorder

In the Rwandan genocide of 1994,

• Why so many checkpoints?• Why rape?• Why impaling?

Thinking about violence anthropologically

Key insight #3• Violence and war may not

create a new and different social order

• Rebellion may express and contain social change

• What is a ritual of rebellion, according to Max Gluckman?

Nomkubulwana, the goddess of rain, harvest, and fertility

Incwala ceremony, Swaziland