ABSTRACT
The chapter aims to underscore that the commonalities that emerge when people approach them through this set of analytical lenses reveals that the basis of conflict revolves around issues concerning the enormous challenge of creating a national citizenship when its very essence and meaning remains undefined. It shows how localised identity narratives under certain circumstances destroy as well as reformulate national identities and that insight from ethnographic work on autochthony issues can help us understand the contested space of 'civil society' in a broad range of African countries. Each and every one is a manifestation of a vernacular architecture of civil society. Similar controversies concerning citizenship and land rights issues like the one in Liberia and Eastern Congo are also at the centre stage of the Ivorian conflict. The province of North Kivu is located on the very boundary between the more centralised kingdoms of Rwanda and Uganda and the more fluid political systems of Central Africa's forest regions.
