Competition over soil and subsoil: Land grabbing by local elites in Eastern DRC
(2014) Everyday Forms of Land Grabbing in the Great Lakes Region of Africa — submitted
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- Abstract
- Klara Claessens, Emery Mudinga and An Ansoms (‘Competition over soil and subsoil: Land grabbing by local elites in eastern DRC’) also discuss land struggles in eastern Congo. The cases discussed in this chapter again show how negotiations over access to and control over land are shaped by historical evolutions and larger societal events at the local, regional and national level. This chapter analyses competition over land between different ethnic groups, and frames how these struggles are rooted in a history of violence, cross-border migration, and regional instability. Moreover, contemporary land conflicts still have the potential to become a catalysing force in the regrouping of armed groups and renewed violence that may easily spill over. This chapter further illustrates how successful control over land rights depends upon actors’ capacity to mobilise support, requiring an ability to efficiently instrumentalise the legitimacy of a variety of institutions, ranging from the Congolese army, to state officials at various administrative levels, to customary authorities of different sorts. Although, such institutional confusion provides room for manoeuvre to less powerful actors and groups to contest the authority and role of local elites, the position of the latter is often ‘stronger’, not only in terms of financial capacity but also, and even more importantly, in terms of formal and informal institutional connectedness. This political economy dimension needs to be addressed when working towards a more equal level playing field.
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Claessens, K., Mushagalusa Mudinga, E., & Ansoms, A. (2014). Competition over soil and subsoil: Land grabbing by local elites in Eastern DRC. In Ansoms, An and Hilhorst, Thea (ed.), Everyday Forms of Land Grabbing in the Great Lakes Region of Africa. James Currey. https://hdl.handle.net/2078.5/22089