11:30 - 13:00
Oral session
Room: Aston Webb – Lecture Theatre WG5
Stream: Gender and Sexuality
Soldiers, Sacred Waters and Landscapes: Zimbabwean Soldiers in the Democratic Republic of Congo War (1998-2002)
Godfrey Maringira
University of the Western Cape, Cape Town

The dominant understanding of soldiers deployed in the trenches of war, patrolling the landscape and
rivers is that they dominate and do violence on it. Soldiers deployed in war are generally known to be men,
masculine in their tactics and use guns to do violence on the landscapes on which they are deployed. However,
this paper reveals the ways in which local civilians in the Democratic Republic of Congo ‘made’ Zimbabwean
soldiers to believe in the sacredness of the landscape and river water of the war in which they operated in. The
findings on which this paper is based reveal that Zimbabwean soldiers conformed to the cultural beliefs of the
existence of mermaids in Congolese rivers and swamps and importantly, on community snakes and ghosts which
were believed to be spiritual. In a way soldiers masculine identities were challenged by the local Congolese
spirits. The central belief conveyed by local civilians was about living in harmony with the sacred river waters
and landscapes and with all the animals which lived in it. The ‘scary’ waters and landscapes became ‘friendly
forces’. This was forged through fear. However, some soldiers resisted to believe in these ideas about waters and
landscapes. The soldiers feared death, and misfortunes in war. Their mighty guns and military tactics were defied
by the fear induced by beliefs about the landscapes in which soldiers were deployed. Hence the central analytical
argument of this paper is that war is not only fought through an understanding of weapons and military tactics,
but also that certain landscape and river water beliefs function to provide a vantage point in which we can begin
to think of wartime local spiritualities as functional and powerful.


Reference:
Tu-A17 Gender 1-P-003
Presenter/s:
Godfrey Maringira
Presentation type:
Panel
Room:
Aston Webb – Lecture Theatre WG5
Date:
Tuesday, 11 September
Time:
12:00 - 12:15
Session times:
11:30 - 13:00