Mai-Mai Yakutumba: Resistance and racketeering in Fizi, South Kivu

The territoire of Fizi, in the southern part of South Kivu, has seen a succession of rebel movements since the start of the post-colonial period. In 2007, yet another armed group emerged: the Mai-Mai of William Amuri Yakutumba (or Yakotumba), which is currently holding out against demobilization.

Insurgencies in Fizi have drawn on its strategic location on Lake Tanganyika and on the self-image of the Bembe, Fizi’s main ethnic group, as a people striving for self-determination against outside domination, whether by a distant government in Kinshasa or, more recently, by the neighbouring Banyamulenge community. The brutal legacy of the Congo Wars has sharply reinforced these identity-based tensions.

The long history of armed mobilization in Fizi has created a reservoir of experienced fighters who are easily remobilized. Many of the Yakutumba Mai-Mai are combatants who demobilized after the Second Congo War (1998–2003) but struggled to find alternative livelihoods, highlighting the challenge of demobilization in a context of widespread poverty.

But while some of the factors contributing to armed mobilization have remained constant, there are also important differences between the historical rebellions in Fizi and the current insurgency.

Over the past decade, new insurgencies have been increasingly triggered not by communal tensions but by political and military elites, who draw on these grievances for armed mobilization. This is well illustrated by the trajectory of Yakutumba’s group, which is the product of two trends that developed during the period of transitional government (2003–6): the failure to integrate armed groups into the national army, and the use of violence for political gain.

Yakutumba’s group was formed from a Mai-Mai faction that refused integration. This refusal has been exploited by political elites in Kinshasa and the Fizi diaspora, who have tried to harness the Mai-Mai to further their own agendas and ambitions. Successive peace processes in the DRC have done little to address this nexus of violence; they have even promoted it, allowing armed groups to be turned into instruments for gaining political power. At the start of 2013, William Amuri Yakutumba committed himself to integration into the national army and began, ostensibly, to regroup his combatants. However, in August of the same year, renewed fighting broke out between the FARDC and a group of Mai-Mai that had remained intact due to delays in the integration process. This demonstrates the danger of relying on rebel integration as the sole solution to ending armed group activity in the eastern DRC.