This chapter looks at English in Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, the Democratic Republic of Congo and South Sudan – at first sight countries at the periphery of World Englishes research and theory, given the size of their populations, their economic weight, and the impact their varieties and uses of English have had on others. It traces the histories and the present-day sociolinguistic situation of English in the five countries, of which only South Sudan and Uganda share a colonial past of British control. The current chapter also provides an outline of the similarities across and differences between their Englishes and discusses how continuing regional migration and influence from exogenous varieties of English have contributed to their shape and whether Uganda and Ugandan English play an epicentral role in the region.

This chapter investigates international commissions of inquiry (ICOI) as forms of memory intervention and attempts to breach public amnesia on violence, and how these interact with long-term conflict. The chapter specifically considers UN-sanctioned commissions and mapping exercises in Burundi and Rwanda in the 1990s. It shows that there are at least two ways in which international investigative reports have historically become participants in local conflict dynamics. The chapter shows that, first, by qualifying violence and conflict in particular ways, ICOIs can generate symbolic capital unequally benefiting the different sides to the conflict, and as such they participate in constructing hierarchies of blame and victimhood. Second, through the simultaneity of exposure (‘finding out’) and lack of official recognition, ICOIs can contribute to broader dynamics of impunity and public secrecy, with the risk of producing partial, socially disengaged and politically disempowered forms of revelation. The chapter urges us to construct investigative instruments that are better equipped to account for and address some of these unwanted effects.

This chapter reflects on the core contributions of the book to the study of memory, transitional justice and peacebuilding. First, it highlights conceptual contributions in rethinking the nature of public amnesia as an active form of labour. Following this, it notes the rich empirical findings on the diversity of ways in which the negation of and disengagement with the past operate, and the diverse ways in which this imprints into materiality, affecting sites of violence and those who encounter them. The chapter also highlights contributions to a dynamic understanding of amnesia and the comparative politics of transition, noting how diverse regimes of memory form based on the type of transition, and how these change over time. Finally, the chapter closes by highlighting the contributions to our understanding of the intersection between public amnesia and peacebuilding.

The introductory chapter lays out the core research questions and maps out persistent gaps in knowledge, particularly when it comes to: (1) comparative work on memory and public amnesia; (2) a dynamic understanding of how war-to-peace transitions shape memory regimes differently and over time; and (3) a regional approach to memory/amnesia. In other words, are there different ‘paths to forgetting’? And do memory regimes evolve in line with the changing nature of political regimes? To this effect, three cases are chosen for an in-depth exploration: a context of victor’s peace exemplified by Rwanda; a power-sharing deal exemplified here by Burundi; and finally a non-transition/ongoing confrontation exemplified by Kenya and the War on Terror in East Africa. From a comparative perspective, the book explores three distinct cases of both violence and transition: a genocide coupled with civil war and rebel victory in Rwanda, civil war and power-sharing in Burundi, and a transnational confrontation with a non-state actor in the context in Kenya. The chapter then outlines its methodology and offers a chapter-by-chapter overview of the book.

This chapter investigates the implications of a power-sharing deal for the memory regime, looking at the case study of Burundi. In Burundi, we witness a ‘clash of paradigms’ whereby power-sharing undermines meaningful attempts at transitional justice. The chapter shows that this translates to the realm of memory, producing a coalition of oblivion, and that this results in variegated forms of memory displacement and erasure. The chapter looks at three sites of violence in Burundi to explore the everyday struggles with rectification, the undignified treatment of remains, and threatened memory erasure. It also demonstrates that the memory regime changes alongside and in line with the changing political regime, and shows how an increase in the power of the dominant political party shifted the memory regime towards selective recognition.

Chapter 5 examines the ongoing rush for Burundi’s rare earths twenty-five years after the Arusha agreement that put an end to the violent conflict that tore the country apart from 1993. It argues that Burundi’s transition into an origination site leans on the legacy of colonial, post-independence and post-1993 rule of law reforms which together have fostered what Mamdani (1996) calls ‘decentralized despotism’. The conflicting position of lawyers as either representatives of authoritarian power or champions of the rule of law is embedded in a structural bifurcation of the Burundian legal field that enables corporate predation, like that of beer giants. According to their political and social resources, lawyers are positioned alternately as gatekeepers of the rent of exported commodities, or vulnerable to another type of extraversion, aid dependency. This bifurcation makes Burundi a Petri dish of the hyper violence generated by the hyperlegality of late capitalism.

This chapter provides additional evidence for the sorting theory in a broader set of contexts. In order to demonstrate that the findings from Chapter 5 generalize beyond Uganda – and can account for the empirical associations found in Chapter 4 – it conducts “shadow” case studies of three civil wars from the Strategic Displacement in Civil Conflict dataset that experienced forced relocation. The three case studies are Burundian Civil War (1991–2005), the Aceh conflict in Indonesia (1999–2005), and the Vietnam War (1960–1975). These cases were selected for both methodological and practical reasons. Using process-tracing of secondary sources, the chapter finds that in all three cases, perpetrators used forced relocation to overcome identification problems posed by guerrilla insurgencies, specifically by drawing inferences about the identities and allegiances of the local population based on civilian flight patterns and physical locations. State authorities also used relocation to extract economic and military resources, notably recruits, from the displaced, which in some instances helped fill critical resource gaps. The evidence suggests that the theory and its underlying mechanisms are generalizable beyond Uganda and travel to other diverse contexts.

In August of 2000, after the intervention of international mediators, the government of Burundi and seventeen political parties signed the Arusha Peace and Reconciliation Agreement for Burundi with a constitution finally being signed in 2005. Burundi’s iterative cycles of ethnic violence and the underlying mistrust between the minority Tutsi, which controlled the military, and the majority Hutu are the backdrop on which the constitutional process was set. The entire process, based on the Peace of Arusha, was plagued by anxiety and insecurity, and the country to this day has not managed to find stable footing. From the debates over parliamentary apportionment to more recent struggles of the CNDD-FDD party to erase or rewrite the agreements made at Arusha, questions remain over the constitution’s initial intentions as well as its future.

This chapter considers the interaction of the Security Council with other international organizations in relation to the use of force and the role that international organizations may play in implementing Council authorizations to use force. This is an area where the Security Council, the international organizations concerned, and member states have shown great flexibility, with the provisions of the UN Charter (both Chapter VII and Chapter VIII) and of the constituent instruments of the regional and other organizations being developed through extensive practice. A difficult question, however, arises where member states grant regional organizations the authority to carry out such interventions without the target state’s consent to the specific action and without Council authorization, in particualr in light of Article 4(h) of the Constitutive Act of the AU. The chapter concludes that it cannot be said that Article 4(h) of the AU Constitutive Act or similar provisions allow for the use of force without Security Council authorization. The Council remains the body vested by member states with the power to authorize ‘enforcement action’.

Rather than exploring peacekeeping as a largely external phenomenon, the chapter examines how it has become, in some African states, a core mechanism for the consolidation and maintenance of political power. Peacekeeping operations, often funded by international actors and linked to increased salaries, training and status, provide an opportunity for African governments to prefer or circulate elites, enhance and augment the discipline and capacity of security forces, and socialise the cost of an expanding security state. The authors examine a number of states, including Uganda and Burundi, where peacekeeping has become a semi-permanent element of – largely illiberal - statebuilding in recent decades. They also highlight the delicate balance African governments must strike in building peacekeeping into the management of domestic political and military actors without sowing the seeds of resentment and rebellion, examining the cases of Burkina Faso and Gambia in particular.

This chapter analyses the increasing trend of African post-conflict states contributing troops to multilateral peace operations. In particular, it focuses on the case studies of Burundi, Rwanda, Sierra Leone and the Democratic Republic of Congo. The authors argue that troop contribution can become a shortcut to reforming, restructuring as well as unifying post-conflict armies through international assistance and training linked to peace operations. This saves budget-constraint post-conflict governments from investing significant funds to the project of building a functional and professional army. In addition, for post-conflict states, which may have remaining domestic issues, sending troops abroad may ease tensions at home and thus facilitate governing. The authors also look into the identity dimension of post-conflict states who contribute troops to peace operations. The decision to contribute troops can assist states to transform their identities from that of post-conflict states to peacekeeping states. Such a transformation can have important consequences on relations with both internal actors and international partners.

Strategic use of international courts by weaker states becomes a mechanism by which African states have taken advantage of the ICC. This instrumental use of norms of international justice shows that the argument about justice cascade may not be as convincing as previously thought. The supposedly widespread adoption of norms of individual criminal accountability and prosecutions in the wake of massive violation of human rights may actually be symptomatic of an instrumental adoption. Chapter 7 analyzes other ICC situations (DRC, CAR, Mali, Sudan, Burundi, and the Philippines) and South Africa’s and The Gambia’s attempts to withdraw from the Court to highlight the ways in which these cases also support the arguments developed in this book’s analytical framework.