The majority of the deported Congolese were originally from two of the coun-try’s eleven provinces: Bandundu and Western Kasai. These provinces are in the south of the country and border Angola’s Lunda Norte region. In contrast to other provinces in the DRC, in which violent conflict has taken place, such as North Kivu and South Kivu in the east, or wealthier areas of mineral extraction such as Katanga, the southern provinces generally receive little attention. Never-theless, the border areas of these provinces exhibit the characteristics of state fra-gility and have an infrastructure and environment that make it almost impossible for the majority of people to sustain viable livelihood strategies without resorting to either external assistance or migration.
The border areas of Western Kasai are among the most impoverished of the DRC. Food security is a particular problem, and the two Kasais, Western and Eastern, are “the most malnourished region of the DRC,” according to govern-ment health statistics, with up to 50,000 deaths per year in Western Kasai as a result of malnutrition and 44 percent of children under age five suffering from chronic malnutrition and 16 percent from acute malnutrition (Butoke 2009).
Low life expectancy means that 90 percent of women over fifty are widows. Low levels of agricultural production are exacerbated by poorly functioning trans-portation, which means that there is no organized interprovince food market to supplement local food production.
The economy of the border area of Western Kasai is divided between two ter-ritories. Luiza is mainly agro-pastoralist but has limited access to seeds and low crop productivity based on maize, beans, peanuts, soybeans, and cassava. Tshi-kapa has almost no agricultural land and its economy is based on diamond min-ing, but it has no organized extraction and the sources of diamonds accessible to
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artisanal extractors are virtually exhausted (Africa Inland Mission Canada and Butoke 2008). The population in both areas depends on external humanitarian assistance for basic levels of food security: FAO provides food support, UNICEF contributes to water and sanitation, and the local NGO, Butoke, offers a range of projects to facilitate increased food productivity. Butoke commented on the situ-ation in Western Kasai: “The chronic malnutrition is not of a temporary nature, and is due rather to societal structural reasons, such as lack of child spacing, family instability, major dependence on diamond mining, roads that are impracticable for trucks, dysfunction of the market for produce, deforestation, difficult access to arable land, the depressed state of agricultural production” (Butoke 2009).
The border areas of Bandundu present similar challenges. As in Western Kasai, there is chronic food insecurity. The border area around the town of Kahemba is a mining zone in which artisanal diamond mining offers the main source of livelihood, albeit one that is gradually being exhausted. The area traditionally hosted large numbers of Angolan refugees and has low levels of agricultural pro-duction due to inefficient techniques, a lack of nutritional training, and poor land quality. Manioc is the only crop that can be grown indigenously without external intervention, and its production is far from self-sufficient, particularly since 80 percent of it is exported from Kahemba. A UN interagency mission to the area highlighted a range of problems: a lack of medical facilities, poor sani-tation, acute malnutrition among 21 percent of the population, high levels of infant mortality, and the absence of functioning markets. Parents are often forced to leave their children with relatives in order to seek economic opportunity else-where, by either crossing into Angola or traveling within the DRC. 1
Given these circumstances, it is unsurprising that many people cross the bor-der to Angola in search of livelihood opportunities. The economy of the southern provinces depends almost entirely on transborder mobility. In the words of one MSF doctor who has worked in the region: “They have nothing; it’s a survival strategy; they earn less than ten dollars a month. The motive [for moving] is hope and despair.” 2 The overwhelming majority of the migrants were men who moved to Lunda Norte, either individually or with their families, to work in the dia-mond mining sector as artisanal diggers ( garimpeiros ). A smaller number of men were former soldiers who had fought with the rebel group UNITA. Among the minority of women who traveled independently, many were traders who often migrated long distances from other parts of the DRC to sell fried fish, clothes, or consumer products. Because prostitution is significant in the border area, re-inforced by the diamond activity, there were also high numbers of prostitutes, both professional and occasional. 3 Aside from the female traders, who sometimes traveled from farther afield, the overwhelming majority of migrants were from the border areas of Western Kasai and Bandundu.
This type of cross-border movement is not new. As a UN report noted, “The populations on the two sides of the border are generally the same and exchanges have always taken place between the two neighbouring countries” (Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs 2007). The border area between Lunda Norte and the DRC was a part of old trading routes in both the colonial and precolonial eras. The Imbangala in Angola and the Pende in the Congo would regularly interact in order to trade cloth, slaves, and guns. It was only later, after Angolan independence in 1975, that the economic links became increasingly based on the development of a large-scale illicit diamond trade, connecting dig-gers, intermediaries, and sellers across the border.
Between 1975 and 1992, Angola had a socialist government that enabled rela-tively open access to the diamond mining areas for artisanal miners. However, civil war between the socialist MPLA and FNLA (National Liberation Front of Angola) and the Western-backed UNITA hampered investment in the mining industry. In 1992, a ceasefire was brokered between UNITA and the MPLA, leading to Angola’s first national elections. With MPLA’s victory in the elections, UNITA reverted to civil war, seizing de facto control of the diamond mining areas in Lunda Norte and Lunda Sul, effectively partitioning the country and its natural resources.
During this period, up until UNITA leader Jonas Savimbi’s death in 2002, UNITA dominated the diamond mining areas of the Lundas, often drawing on Congolese labor to support its activities. As Filip de Boeck (2001, 554) shows,
“UNITA’s labour forces thus consisted primarily of Congolese.” The Congolese were able to buy a permit issued by UNITA to cross the border into Angola, and camps were organized by UNITA for Congolese workers.
However, with UNITA’s defeat and surrender in 2002, the MPLA government was able to assert authority over the diamond mining areas of the Lundas. It recognized that as the world’s third-largest producer of diamonds, Angola had a significant opportunity for national development, and government elites had many opportunities for personal enrichment. The government immediately im-plemented the national diamond legislation that had been in existence since 1994 but was not implemented until 2002. The “Diamond Law” granted the “exclu-sive right to prospect, research, reconnoitre, exploit, handle and commercialize diamonds in all of Angola’s national territory” to Endiama (the Empresa Nacio-nal de Diamantes de Angola), giving a single natioNacio-nal company control over the mines and the right to establish joint ventures with multinational companies to invest in extraction in certain areas as concessionaires. Endiama has brought in a range of international investors, including SPE of Portugal, De Beers, and Odebrecht of Brazil.
The territory of the Lundas became subject to increasingly strict rules gov-erning freedom of movement, residency, and economic activity. Even for
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tionals, conditions were difficult, and many people were displaced, deprived of their livelihoods, or subjected to human rights violations as space was cleared to ensure exclusivity of access to Endiama and its foreign partners. The military, the police, and the private security companies employed by many of the for-eign firms began to implement stricter controls. 4 Human rights activist Rafael Marques (2011; Marques and Falcão de Campos 2005) has documented many of the consequences of these controls for the rights of Angolan nationals. As part of this effort, the government sought to remove Congolese migrant workers from the Lundas.