Burundi

By: Eric Young

Source:

 Africana: The Encyclopedia of the African and African American Experience, Second Edition

Burundi

Nineteenth-century European travelers described the kingdom of Burundi as “a land of almost ideal beauty.” Today, the national borders of Burundi, one of Africa’s most densely populated countries, remain virtually unchanged, but political turmoil has disfigured its idyllic landscape. Formerly ruled by traditional monarchies, Burundi was colonized by Germany in the late nineteenth century and remained under German and then Belgian administration until its independence in 1962. Just ten years after independence, an abortive coup d’état provoked brutal massacres, claiming the lives of more than 100,000 people. Tens of thousands more have since died, particularly in 1988 and 1993, in what is usually referred to as “ethnic conflict” between the country’s Hutu majority and the 15 percent Tutsi minority. This explanation for Burundi’s violence, however, overlooks the long history of cohabitation and intermarriage between these two groups. More fundamentally, it does not do justice to the extraordinarily complex social, economic, and political meanings of ethnic identity in Burundi.

Early Burundi Society

Burundi

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There are diverging theories on the origin of the hunter-gatherer Twa, or Pygmy, the first known inhabitants of present-day Burundi. Archaeological evidence indicates the Twa occupied the area beginning around 70,000 B.C.E., whereas linguistic evidence suggests that they migrated to the region from West Africa around 5,000 years ago. Further linguistic evidence reveals that Bantu-speaking cultivators from the lowlands of Central Africa migrated to the mountainous region between Lake Kivu, Lake Tanganyika, and Lake Victoria sometime during the eleventh century. These people took the name baHutu, or Hutu. Pastoralist Hima people (probably from present-day southern Ethiopia, though their exact origins are disputed) succeeded them in the mid-sixteenth century, becoming known as the baTutsi, or Tutsi. They established small hillside chiefdoms based on cattle-clientship, in which the Tutsi would give the Hutu cattle as payment for their agricultural labor or surplus crops. Elsewhere the two groups established commercial relationships, again exchanging livestock for food crops. The Tutsi adopted the Hutu language as well as many of their customs, including practices of worshiping ancestors and the belief in the existence of a spiritual life in all living things.

Unlike most other parts of Africa, the kingdom of Burundi developed a national character well before European colonial intervention. In the mid-seventeenth century a Tutsi chief, Ntare, began building this kingdom through conquest. It eventually took the form of several provinces, each ruled by a distinct royal clan: the Batare, Bezi, Batanga, and Bambutsa. Because of succession disputes, by the end of the eighteenth century the king, or mwami, Gisabo claimed control over only half the kingdom, which by then covered the approximate area of present-day Burundi. But the system of succession was not clear. In the 1860s the princes, who with their immediate descendants comprised the ganwa monarchy, rebelled against the current king, Ntare II.

Burundian society was feudal in character, and its hierarchies extraordinarily complex. The ganwa monarchy formed the landholding aristocracy, whose “ethnic” identity as Tutsi was primarily based on their royal status. Socially subordinate to the ganwa were the Banyaruguru Tutsi, literally the “people from above,” and below them the Hima Tutsi. As in many other parts of Central and East Africa, the pastoralists—in this case the Tutsi—came to dominate the cultivators—the Hutu—through their control of cattle, the primary measure of wealth, as well as through their tradition of warfare. In fact, in the common Kirundi language, Hutu has two meanings, one cultural and the other social, defined as “social subordinate” or “social son.” These identities, however, depended on social context: A Tutsi poor in cattle, for example, would be considered a client and a “Hutu” to a wealthier Tutsi patron. The social stratification was complicated by a patrilineal kinship system that divided families between “very good,” “good,” “rather good,” “neither good nor bad,” and “bad.” Inequality was a source of social cohesion; the poor and weak depended on protection and patronage from the rich and powerful, who in turn relied on clientage ties to legitimate and maintain their status. At the same time, precolonial Burundian society was exceptionally homogeneous culturally, and allowed for considerable social and economic mobility. By acquiring cattle, for example, a Hutu could “become” Tutsi. Intermarriage between cultural ethnic groups, sometimes for status, was common.

Although Burundian society was vertically stratified, the Tutsi were not the political masters of the Hutu. The two groups shared a conception of the Mwami as an absolute monarch whose authority was primarily spiritual, not political. It was the ganwa who ruled the provinces in the name of the Mwami. Meanwhile, the abanyarurimbi, or “those who can judge,” either Hutu or Tutsi but not ganwa, controlled the court system. Local disputes were arbitrated by the abashingantache, or “those of the small stick”—posts open to anyone, but typically held by elder Hutu men.

Colonialism in the Heart of Africa

In the mid-1800s many European explorers and missionaries, including John Hanning Speke, Richard Francis Burton, David Livingstone, and Henry Morton Stanley, traveled through the Burundi kingdom. In the late-nineteenth-century rush to colonize the continent, known as the Scramble for Africa, Belgium, Great Britain, and Germany contested possession of Ruanda-Urundi (present-day Rwanda and Burundi, respectively) because the territory lay at the intersection between their respective colonial possessions and at the headwaters of the Nile River. Although the BERLIN CONFERENCE OF 1884–1886 ceded control of Ruanda-Urundi to Germany, the exact boundaries of the colony remained in dispute until the 1910 Kivu-Mfumbiro Conference, attended by Belgium, Great Britain, and Germany. At the time Germany was represented in the area by forty soldiers, a handful of merchants and civil servants, and over 100 missionaries.

Colonization destroyed Burundi’s fragile social cohesion and emerging national identity. This occurred largely because European colonial administrators, with help from missionaries, interpreted existing social stratification in terms of rigid ethnic categories, and then allocated political power and material resources accordingly. Upon the defeat of Germany in World War I (1914–1918), the League of Nations transferred control of Ruanda-Urundi to Belgium as a mandate territory. Initially, the Belgian regime concentrated on developing export crop production, achieved through compulsory labor service and crop cultivation. But in 1929 it began to intervene in Burundian political structures, instituting a system of indirect rule by “ganwa-izing” the colonial civil service. The Belgians considered the ganwa not only the “traditional” and thereby most appropriate rulers, but also a “higher race.” This pitted the Batare and Bezi clans against each other while marginalizing southern Tutsi. The Belgians also promoted the Mwami Mwambutsa IV as a modernizing ruler, and Catholicism as a moral and religious extension of colonial rule. The colonial education system focused on training the children of the ganwa and Tutsi chiefs, although it also subsidized mission-run schools that focused on universal primary education.

The northern Tutsi’s privileged access to education and civil service employment translated into economic advancement at a time when colonial labor policies and taxation were subjecting most other Burundians to severe hardship. As social differentiation hardened into class stratification, tensions between the ganwa and other groups—both southern Tutsi and Hutu—increased. At the same time, generations-old rivalries between the Batare and the Bezi were aggravated by the Belgians’ strategy of switching their support from one to the other, depending upon which clan or individual appeared the most reliable and malleable ally. In the 1950s, as the Burundian elite began pushing for self-rule and ultimately for independence, the Belgians settled on supporting Batare Chief Baranyanka and his minor and Batare-dominated nationalist Parti Démocrate Chrétien (PDC) over the more popular and radical Bezi-dominated Union Pour le Progrès National (UPRONA). As the last Belgian resident, or governor, explains: “There was a certain connivance and even a direct complicity between our Authority and the PDC … The PDC quickly became the bulwark we hoped to use in order to stop the cancerous metastasis of UPRONA’s progress.” Not surprisingly, Belgian support for the PDC only further strengthened UPRONA, which was led by the eldest son of Mwami Mwambutsa, the popular Prince Louis Rwagasore, who identified with the Bezi.

Despite the social tensions fostered by colonialism, the nationalist movement had begun to forge a sense of Burundian unity by the late 1950s. This was shattered by the 1959 Rwandan revolution, in which the majority Hutu peasantry overthrew the Belgian-backed Tutsi aristocracy and took firm control of the nationalist movement, killing many Tutsi in the process. Although the societies in the two Belgian colonies differed significantly, the Rwandan revolution solidified ethnic identities in Burundi. Many Burundian Tutsi feared a similar nightmare, while the Hutu considered it a defining moment in their political aspirations. Adding to the heightened tensions, in October 1961 prime minister–designate Prince Rwagasore was assassinated in a plot approved by the Batare leadership, who feared that the prince and UPRONA would favor the interests of the rival Bezi clan. The simmering discord in Burundi did not prevent the Belgians from implementing a quick withdrawal from the territory.

The Cycles of Violence in Burundi

On July 1 1962, Burundi, as part of a short-lived economic federation with Rwanda, became an independent constitutional monarchy. Over the next few years, the new nation’s primary political divisions shifted rapidly from the long-standing rivalries between Tutsi clans to unprecedented hostilities between Tutsi and Hutu. Although many observers have blamed colonialism for creating these hostilities, political events of the 1960s were even more directly responsible. Between 1962 and 1965 Mwambi Mwambutsa IV appointed a succession of ineffective prime ministers and dispute-torn cabinets, while relative parity between Hutu and Tutsi prevailed in the National Assembly. Then, in January 1965, a Tutsi refugee assassinated the Hutu prime minister. In October, Hutu candidates won 70 percent of the new parliamentary seats, but the king appointed a Tutsi prime minister. Although the Hutu had not previously protested the Tutsi’s overall political domination, they interpreted this move as an unacceptable shift in the balance of power. It sparked an unsuccessful coup attempt by the few Hutu officers in the Tutsi-dominated army. The army in turn purged all its Hutu and executed approximately 2,000 Hutu politicians and intellectuals. Meanwhile the king fled, and in November 1966 the military officially abolished the monarchy and proclaimed a republic. Army Captain Michel Micombero, a Hima Tutsi from the southern Buriri province, became president.

President Micombero filled his government with southern Tutsi clan members, thereby undermining the power of the ganwa. Many of these supporters were ethnic hard-liners who vilified the Hutu masses in speeches and in the media. In response, Hutu soldiers organized a series of unsuccessful coup attempts, culminating in a 1972 uprising among Hutu groups ranging from refugees and guerrillas based in the Democratic Republic of the Congo to schoolteachers, students, and civil servants. As many as 20,000 Tutsi were killed. Micombero retaliated not only by executing the instigators, but also by sending the military and youth groups into the countryside to kill all Hutu “intellectuals,” meaning anyone with more than a grade-school education. More than 100,000 Hutu died between April and September 1972, and probably as many fled into neighboring countries. The international community, preoccupied with Vietnam and the reign of terror by Idi Amin in nearby Uganda, did not respond. The year of ikiza, or catastrophe, solidified the Hutu people’s collective identity as martyrs, historically oppressed and impoverished by an unscrupulous Tutsi elite.

In November 1976 Colonel Jean-Baptiste Bagaza, also a Tutsi Hima from Buriri, overthrew Micombero in a palace coup. Bagaza’s dictatorial government, composed almost exclusively of his fellow clan members, solidified Tutsi hegemony. Bagaza maintained tight control over the military, the single party (UPRONA), and the press. Hutu representation in all branches of the government declined precipitously. Over time, Bagaza’s dictatorial rule alienated the military as well as many Tutsi elite, leading to a bloodless coup in 1987 and the installation of Major Pierre Buyoya as president. Buyoya, also a Hima Tutsi from Buriri, came from a younger generation than his predecessor, and promised “profound change, in the sense of expanded social justice and of real democracy.” But the pro-Hutu Party for the Liberation of the Hutu People (PALIPEHUTU) continued to urge Hutu to rise up against the Tutsi, and in August 1988 Burundi again descended into chaos. A local conflict in the north got out of hand and the government responded violently, with the death toll ultimately reaching approximately 20,000.

The Simmering Conflict

Poverty and stiff competition for scarce resources have inevitably both contributed to and been aggravated by the ongoing violence. Burundi is one of the most densely populated countries in Africa, and the fact that the vast majority of its people depend on agriculture for their livelihoods has resulted in severe deforestation and land degradation. Income from the only significant export crop, coffee, fluctuates greatly with global market prices, but many farmers are afraid even to cultivate their fields. Sporadic famines have become common. Successive governments, preoccupied with maintaining control through funding the military, have neglected agricultural and infrastructure development projects. Burundi’s dilapidated industries, suffering from parts shortages, power outages, and high transportation costs, offer few employment opportunities to residents of Bujumbura, the capital and only major city.

Civil War in Burundi.  Mozambique soldiers disembark a plane at Bujumbura airport in Burundi as part of the ongoing peacekeeping efforts in the continuing civil war between the Tutsi and the Hutu, 2003.

(Aloys Niyoyita/AP Images )

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In the wake of the 1988 killings, President Buyoya, motivated by personal convictions as well as pressure from the international community, inaugurated a transition to democracy and national reconciliation. By the end of 1990, he had appointed Tutsi and Hutu in roughly equal numbers to UPRONA’s central committee. His government had a Hutu prime minister and a constitution guaranteeing basic human rights and multiparty democracy. The Hutu leaders subsequently founded the Front Démocratique du Burundi (FRODEBU), which called for economic justice for the Hutu as well as Hutu political representation proportional to their population majority. In 1993 elections, FRODEBU and its leader Melchior Ndadaye won convincingly and appointed a cabinet that included two-thirds Hutu and one-third Tutsi. Ndadaye also appointed former banker and political moderate Sylvie Kinigi as prime minister, one of the first women to hold that post in Africa. But in October that year, members of the still Tutsi-led army overtook the presidential mansion and killed Ndadaye, putting a bloody end to the reconciliation process. Probably 20,000 Tutsi and 30,000 Hutu lost their lives in the violence that followed in the north of the country.

International condemnation convinced the army to return to their barracks, and the coup leaders fled the country. In January 1994 a moderate Hutu FRODEBU member, Cyprien Ntaryamira, was sworn in as president. In April, Ntaryamira and his Rwandan counterpart Juvénal Habyarimana were en route from United Nations peace negotiations when their plane was shot down under suspicious circumstances, an event that unleashed the Rwandan genocide. Although Burundi itself remained calm, thousands of Burundian Hutu fled to Tanzania fearing Tutsi attacks. At the same time, Burundi’s political parties began to develop militias, in order to both protect their leaders and advance their interests. Ethnic-based parties, in other words, were further nurturing the conditions for civil war.

In September 1994 the moderate parties came to a power-sharing agreement, but extremists on both sides refused to recognize the agreement. Sporadic fighting and atrocities continued throughout the countryside and, increasingly, in the suburbs of Bujumbura. The Hutu hard-liners’ National Council for the Defense of Democracy (CNDD) waged a terror campaign against the government. In July 1996, as the politicians maneuvered for power in the capital, Buyoya overthrew the elected but ineffective president in a military coup and suspended the constitution. An economic embargo imposed by Burundi’s neighbors put pressure on the government and CNDD to negotiate, but the talks stalled.

In 1998 Buyoya and the National Assembly agreed upon a transitional constitution under which Buyoya was formally sworn in as president. In October 2001 the National Assembly adopted a new transitional constitution. This constitution calls for a three-year transitional government that shares power between Hutu and Tutsi parties. Under this scheme, Buyoya remained president for eighteen months with a Hutu vice president. On April 30 2003, a Hutu, Domitien Ndayizeye, took over as president with a Tutsi vice president, Alphonse Kadege. At the same time, membership in the legislature and the military was carefully balanced between Hutu and Tutsi.

In October 2003 the country’s main rebel group, the Forces for the Defense of Democracy, signed a peace treaty with the government. The agreement gave members of the group control of four state ministries as well as 40 percent of the staff and officer positions in the army. Yet despite the agreement, violence continued in parts of the country as a second rebel force, the Forces for National Liberation, continued to fight both the government and the Forces for the Defense of Democracy. In 2004 the United Nations entered the country and assumed a peacekeeping role, and at long last the fighting largely came to an end. A year later, the national constitution was ratified in open elections. Despite these gains, sporadic violence continued throughout the country—much of it at the hands of the opposition Forces for National Liberation—until 2008, when a ceasefire was at last negotiated.

See also ETHNICITY IN BURUNDI: AN INTERPRETATION; PASTORALISM.

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