Indirect rule: armed groups and customary chiefs in eastern DRC

The enduring authority and legitimacy of customary authority and customary chiefs is the result of several factors, from the power conferred on them by their status as custodians of the land in neo-customary land tenure regimes to the enduring recognition of lineage-based forms of power, to the spiritual dimensions of their power and their mythical role in contexts of acute societal crises resulti. [...] This was the case for the Bashi elite networks in Bukavu and the territory of Walungu, in South Kivu, or the Batembo authorities in Bunyakiri: in order to quell the Mayi-Mayi insurgency in the Batembo heartland, the RCD addressed the longstanding grievances of the Batembo by creating the territory of Bunyakiri (Hoffmann 2021). [...] We look at seven dimensions of governance: (1) the extraction of resources (taxation and tribute), (2) the mobilisation of labour, (3) legitimisation/sensibilisation,15 (4) the administration of the village/entity, (5) the allocation of political power, (6) the provision of public services, and (7) the regulation of economic activity. [...] Table 4.2, Panel B, uses specification 2 to regress the main index of the difference of direct–indirect rule on indicators for coethnicity of the chief and the village, of the group and the chief, and of the group and the villagers. [...] Having a chief that is coethnic with the villagers drastically decreases the likelihood of direct rule compared to indirect rule, and the effect is the largest when the group and the chief are of different ethnic groups (hence when the chief’s relative advantage is the largest).