Report N° 20
MINORITY RIGHTS GROUP
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____________________________________________________________________________
SELECTIVE GENOCIDE
IN
BURUNDI
By
Professor René Lemarchand and David Martin
CONTENTS
Historical
Note 3
Map
4
Part One: by Prof. René Lemarchand
5
Footnotes to Part One
23
Appendix
1
26
Appendix
Il
27
Part Two: by David
Martin 29
Footnotes to Part
Two 33
Bibliography
35
List of Films
36
___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
- 2 -
From the Universal
Declaration Article 1
of Human
Rights,
All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and
rights.
adopted by the General
Assembly They are endowed with
reason and conscience and should act
towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.
of the United Nations
on 10th December
1948:
Article 2
Everyone is entitled to all the rights and
freedoms set forth in
this Declaration, without distinction of any kind, such as race,
colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion,
national or social origin, property, birth or other status.
Furthermore, no distinction shall be made on the basis of
the
political, jurisdictional or international status of the country or
territory to which a person belongs, whether it be independent
trust, non‑self governing or under any other limitation of
sovereignty.
Article 10
Everyone is entitled in full equality to a
fair and public hearing
by an independent and impartial tribunal, in the determination
of his rights and obligations and of any criminal charge against
him.
Article 19
Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion
and expression;
this right includes freedom to hold opinions without inter
ference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas
through any media and regardless of frontiers.
Article 20
(l ) Everyone has the right to freedom of
peaceful assembly
and association.
(2) No one may be compelled to belong to an association.
_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
- 3 -
_________________________________________________________________________________________________________
HISTORICAL NOTE
_________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Rwanda Urundi (1899 1962)______________________________
Burundi and Rwanda became part of German East Africa in 1899, at the zenith
of colonial expansion in Africa. In 1916, during World War I, Belgian forces
from the former Belgian Congo defeated the Germans and occupied Burundi and
Rwanda. In 1923, Burundi and Rwanda became the Belgian mandated territories
known as Rwanda-Urundi and were administered as a single unit. In 1946, the
territories came under the United Nations Trusteeship Council, with Belgian
administration. Limited self government was initiated, which culminated in
the attainment of full independence for Urundi in 1962 as the Kingdom of
Burundi, under King Mwambutsa IV. Between 1963 and 1964, during a succession
of short lived governments, the monetary customs union with 'twin sister'
Rwanda was dissolved, and Rwanda gained her independence from Belgium.
Rwanda and Burundi had been closely bound economically and otherwise to the
Belgian Congo (now Zaïre), and each was managed and administered during the
colonial period by Belgian officials. Events in one country never failed to
have serious repercussions in the other. In each country, there has been a
long standing history of violent rivalry between the Hutus and the Tutsis.
In Rwanda between 1955 and 1958, Tutsi extremists, viewing Belgian political
reforms as a threat, repressed the Hutu movement; in fact, they murdered
several Hutu leaders. In 1959, however, the Hutus struck back and in a
bloody revolt overthrew the Tutsi minority. Indeed, Tutsis suffered heavy
casualties; it is reported that approximately 120,000 fled to Burundi and
other neighbouring countries.
In 1960, leaders of the Hutu Emancipation Movement (PARMEHUTU) established a
provisional government. In 1961, Belgium recognized the PARMEHUTU regime,
but the United Nations, hoping to preserve the ethnic economic union of
Burundi and Rwanda after independence, ruled it unlawful and ordered free
elections. These elections resulted in an overwhelming PARMEHUTU victory,
and in 1962 a United Nations resolution ended the Belgian trusteeship and
granted Rwanda full independence.
In Rwanda in 1962, the Hutus expelled the Tutsi minority in a successful
coup. In Burundi, however, the dominant Tutsi minority has been able to stay
in power in spite of attempted coups by the Hutus by controlling the police,
the military, and other vital organizations of the government.
In 1963, there was an abortive Tutsi invasion in Rwanda, which originated
from Burundi with the collaboration of some Rwanda Tutsis. The result was
disastrous for the Tutsis. In the massacre that followed, as many as 12,000
Tutsis in Rwanda were killed. A renewed and intensified Tutsi exodus from
Rwanda began, and the relationship between Burundi and Rwanda deteriorated
accordingly.
It should be repeated that one can understand the factors contributing to
hostilities within each country and also between the countries when one
bears in mind that each country is controlled by the rival tribal ethnic
group Rwanda by the Hutus, and Burundi, despite the fact that the population
is about 85 per cent Hutu, by the Tutsis.
[ __William J. Butler and George Obiozor, 'The Burundi Affair 1972', IDOC
N. America, 1973 ]
___________________________________________________________________________________________
- 4 -
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
- 5 -
SELECTIVE GENOCIDE IN BURUNDI
______________________________________________________________________________________________
PART ONE: BY PROF. RENE LEMARCHAND
______________________________________________________________________________________________
There are few parallels to the human holocaust that took place in Burundi
in 1972 in the wake of a tortuous competitive struggle between the country's
two major ethnic groups, the Hutu and the Tutsi . Scarcely noticed (let
alone understood) by public opinion anywhere, the killings are
conservatively estimated to have caused between 80,000 and 100,000 deaths.
Approximately 3.5 per cent of the country's total population (3.5 million)
were physically wiped out in a period of a few weeks. In comparative terms
this is as if England had suffered a loss of 2 million or the United States
about 8 million people. To speak of "selective genocide"*' to describe the
outcome of such large‑scale political violence seems scarcely an
exaggeration.
What the long‑term consequences will be for Burundi society as a whole is
impossible to determine. That the country has undergone something of a
metamorphosis as a result of these events is nonetheless undeniable. It has
become the only state in independent black Africa to claim the appurtenances
of a genuine caste society; a country in which power is the monopoly of a
dominant ethnic minority (Tutsi) representing less than 15 per cent of the
total population. On the basis of cultural and regional criteria alone, this
percentage might drop to less than 4 per cent. Racial
differences aside, the nearest parallel to this situation is provided by
South Africa, Rhodesia and the Portuguese territories of Angola and
Mozambique. The pattern of dominance extends to virtually all sectors of
life, restricting access to material wealth, education , status and power to
representatives of the dominant minority. For anyone even remotely familiar
with the relatively open and flexible system of stratification that once
characterized Burundi society the
transformation is little short of astonishing.
The full story of what is now piously referred to in Bujumbura as "
les évènements" will probably never be known. The chain of
events leading to the crisis is as complex as the motives which prompted
each community to decimate the other. Sorting out truth from rumour is made
more difficult still by the intensity of feelings displayed by participants
and observers alike over the atrocities committed by each side, the mixture
of fact and fiction conveyed through official statements, and the reluctance
of eyewitnesses to report what they saw. Nonetheless, there is enough
evidence available to produce a reasonably accurate account of the
circumstances that led to the massacre, and in so doing to dispel some of
the more prevalent misconceptions about Burundi society and the roots of
its recent agony.
The Setting: The Country and its People
______________________________________________________________________________________________
Situated in the Central African rift valley, in the very heart of the
continent, Burundi is roughly the size of Belgium (11,000 sq. miles). Along
with Rwanda, its neighbour to the north, it has one of Africa's highest
population densities (185 per square mile in 1955). The growing pressure of
over‑population on the land, together with the general scarcity of natural
resources, lie at the root of the country's economic and social problems.
What mineral resources exist, aside from small deposits of cassiterite, have
yet to be exploited, and much of the economy consists of subsistence
agriculture. With the recent discovery of substantial nickel deposits in the
southeast the economic picture may change drastically in years ahead; so
far, however, no concrete steps have been taken to tap this otherwise
promising industrial potential. Coffee is the main cash crop, generating
approximately 80 per cent of the country's foreign exchange (the equivalent
of about $14 million annually), to which must be added such marginal crops
as tea, cotton and rice. Agricultural output is as yet incapable of meeting
the demands of Burundi's fast‑growing population, let alone of yielding the
surplus production required for rapid economic growth.
Economic scarcity is of course as much of a reality to‑day as it was in
precolonial and colonial times, when Burundi was just one of several
traditional kingdoms spread throughout the interlacustrine zone.
_____________________________
*
For footnotes to Part One see pages
23,24,25
_____________________________________________________________________________________________
- 6 -
To day, however,
perceptions of economic scarcity are increasingly filtered through the prism
of regionalism and ethnicity, thus adding a radically different dimension to
the political environment. To appreciate the significance of this
transformation, at least passing reference must be made to Burundi's
traditional system of social stratification, one of the most complex and
least understood in the whole of Africa.
The standard image of Burundi society conveyed by much of the colonial
literature is that of an ethnic pyramid in which the cattle herding Tutsi,
representing 14 per cent of the population, held the commanding heights of
power and influence; next in rank came the Hutu agriculturalists, forming
the bulk of the population (85 per cent); at the bottom of the heap stood
the pygmoid Twa, a group of relatively little significance numerically (1
per cent) and otherwise. Presumably reinforcing this hierarchy of rank and
privilege were the physical characteristics commonly attributed to each
group: Proverbially tall and wiry, the Tutsi have been said to "possess the
same graceful indolence in gait which is peculiar to Oriental people"(2);
the Hutu, on the other hand, were seen as "a medium sized type of people,
whose ungainly figures betoken hard toil, and who patiently bow themselves
in abject bondage to the later arrived yet ruling race. the Tutsi".(3)
However satisfying to most European observers, such simplicities can only
convey a highly distorted view of Burundi's traditional social system. Not
only do they conceal the existence of major differences within each group,
but they also tend to exaggerate the depth of cultural discontinuities among
them. These distortions are closely connected. Neglect of intra ethnic
cleavages is liable to obscure the basis for cross ethnic links among each
group at the same time that it reduces their respective physical and
cultural characteristics to a parody of reality.
Attention must be drawn, first, to the existence of two separate categories
of Tutsi the 'lower caste' Tutsi Hima group, and the 'higher caste' Tutsi
Banyaruguru, literally, "those who came from the north". Note, however that
the term ruguru has other connotations, meaning "from above", and hence from
regions of high altitude or, figuratively, from high ranking status, i.e.
"close to the Court". Outside observers have unduly emphasized the
geographical derivation of the term, to the point: *of equating all
Banyaruguru with northern Tutsi, which is far from being the case; the
Banyaruguru are found in both northern and southern provinces, and this is
also true of the Hima. At the time of writing (1974) the present Governor of
the Ruyigi province is a de frocked Anglican deacon named John Wilson
Makokwe, a Hima from Buhiga, a northern locality. To assume that the Hima
are inevitably from the south and the Banyaruguru from the north, as many
observers have been prone to do, would be a gross exaggeration. The former
are said to have migrated into the country from the eastern borderlands in
the 17th or 18th century, about two or three centuries later than the
Banyaruguru, who generally hold them in deep contempt, supposedly because of
their 'upstart' attitudes and innate resourcefulness. Nevertheless it is the
'lower caste' Tutsi Hima from the south who are politically dominant, "The
Himas" writes Father Rodegem, "seem gifted for leadership and direct
action",(4) a statement wholly consonant with the emergent pattern of
leadership in contemporary Burundi: a substantial number of civilian and
military elites are recruited from the Hima stratum, and the President of
the Republic (Michel Micombero) is himself of Hima origins. The Banyaruguru,
by contrast, though represented in the government are virtually powerless.
Cutting across this and other cleavages are different social rankings
attached to the various patrilineages (imiryango) within each group, Tutsi,
Hutu and Twa. The usual distinctions are between the 'very good' families,
the 'good' families, those that are neither good nor bad and bad. No less
than forty three different patrilineages thus enter into the Tutsi
Banyaruguru segment, each in turn falling into a specific ranking of social
prestige. In this fashion lineage affiliations could substantially rectify
the formal rank ordering established through ethnic divisions. The degrees
of social distance within the Tutsi stratum, for example, were at times far
more perceptible and socially significant than ethnic differences between
Hutu and Tutsi. This multiplicity of reference group identifications within
the same broad ethnic stratum has created the basis for potential conflicts
among clans, families and lineages; yet the sheer fluidity of such
identifications is also the source of considerable ambiguity as to how one
ought to be defined in terms of clan or family affiliations. This very
ambiguity in turn may help to mitigate intra group conflict. A case in point
is the so called Basapfu 'clan'. This is how Father Rodegem explains the
origins of the Basapfu:
__________________________________________________________________________________________
-7-
Tutsi
of high ranking status. They initially came from Hima Clan. But for some
reason tradition has failed to ascertain, the King one day decided that they
should all be exterminated. He entrusted this task to the Abongera clan, who
made a clean sweep of the Abasapfu cattle, plundered their crops, set fire
to their kraals and killed whoever stood in their way. One of the survivors
was a small boy, who had found refuge behind a reed screen (sapfu) After the
raiders had left, he was discovered by some passers by who decided to take
him to King Ntare. The latter kept him at his court under his protection and
called him Musapfu to commemorate his adventure.(5)
Whether the Basapfu are actually of Hima origin is open to doubt. The
historical evidence suggests that they may have been of Banyaruguru origin.
The significant point is that today the Basapfu identify themselves, and are
often identified by others, as being neither Hima nor Banyaruguru. They are
just referred to as Basapfu, as if they formed yet another reference group
within the Tutsi stratum. This, and the fact that they are more or less
evenly spread throughout the country, is what later enabled some of their
representatives to act as the arbiters of regional conflict, and indeed of
Hima Banyaruguru conflict. For if the incumbent elites are largely drawn
from the Bururi based Hima led faction, within this faction some Basapfu
hold key positions within the government and the army.(6)
A final point to note is that neither Hutu nor Tutsi hold traditional claims
to authority. The real holders of power in the traditional society were the
princes of the blood, or ganwa. Because of the special eminence conferred
upon them by the accidents of history, they became identified as a separate
ethnic group, whose power and prestige ranked far above that of ordinary
Tutsi. They formed the core of the political elites and as such held most of
the chiefly positions available under the monarchy. Despite or because of
this, they never stood as a very cohesive group. Intra ganwa rivalries are
indeed a recurrent theme of Burundi's pre colonial history. Out of the
competing claims of rival dynasties bitter feuds periodically broke out
among the representatives of different 'Houses', culminating in the middle
of the 19 th century in a major struggle between the sons of Mwami (King)
Mwezi Kisabo (1852 1908) and the descendants of the previous incumbent,
Mwami Ntare Rugaamba (1795 1852). Temporarily held in check but by no means
dissipated by the spread of the colonial pax, the late fifties saw a sudden
resurgence of these antagonisms. Even at this late date political conflict
did not express itself in ethnic terms, but in the form of factionalism
between representatives of opposed unilineal descent groups.
What gave a measure of unity and cohesiveness to this otherwise highly
fragmented social order is that below the ganwa stratum no single line of
cleavage could be said to govern the allocation of social status, wealth or
power. Ethnic divisions were largely irrelevant to the distribution of
social prestige, and of only marginal significance with regard to wealth.
And although power was in theory the monopoly of the princes, the record
shows that subchiefs and palace officials were sometimes recruited from
among Hutu and Tutsi. What is more, the competitive relationships which
developed among the princes made it imperative for them to seek the support
of both Hutu and Tutsi hence substantiating Simmel's observation that "conflict
may also bring persons and groups together which otherwise have nothing to
do with each other". In this case, however, Hutu and Tutsi were not nearly
as compartimentalized as the foregoing might suggest. Through the
institution of clientship (bugabire) Hutu and Tutsi were caught in a web of
interlocking relationships extending from the very top of the social pyramid
to its lowest echelons, with the Mwami acting as the supreme Patron which in
turn underscores the unifying role of the monarchy, both as a symbol and an
institution. Through the use of specific symbols, ceremonies and rituals the
monarchy imposed itself as a major focus for popular loyalties. No other
source of legitimacy was as compelling as the Royal Drum (Karyenda) in
holding society together.
The point of this discussion is that although the traditional society
contained a great many potential sources of conflict, in practice conflict
was seldom if ever activated along ethnic lines. To view the recent
holocaust as "an extreme case of the old African problem of tribalism”8 is
indeed difficult to square with the realities of traditional Burundi
society. If the term "tribalism" has any meaning in this context it is a
very recent phenomenon, traceable to the social transformations introduced
under the aegis of the colonial state and the consequent disintegration of
those very structures and mechanisms that once gave cohesiveness to society
as a whole.
______________________________________________________________________________________
- 8 -
Dimensions of
Conflict
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________
In its most acute and devastating manifestations the Hutu Tutsi conflict was
the last in a series that spread over a period of at least twelve years,
covering almost as wide a range of potential oppositions as the traditional
society had to offer. Grafted onto this were the tensions arising from the
introduction of new forms of political self expression, i.e., parties, trade
unions and parliamentary institutions. Out of this combi nation of
traditional and modern types of opposition developed an extraordinary hybrid
and complex polity.
The introduction of the vote in 1956, six years before independence,
initiated a process of political mobilization which gradually reached every
sector of society, activating one group after another, pitting princes
against princes, monarchists against republicans, army men against civilians,
north against south,Hutu against Tutsi . At first, traditional cleavages
tended to act as so many breakwaters, allowing the political mobilization of
one group at a time. In contrast to what happened in Rwanda, where the
mobilization of the Hutu masses was greatly facilitated and accelerated by
the existence of a sharp, vertical split between the Tutsi aristocracy and
the Hutu masses, in Burundi the mobilization of the population along ethnic
lines was significantly delayed by the complexity of the traditional social
system, and by the fact that the monarchy was relatively free from ethnic
bias. Even when ethnic loyalties were stirred into action, this did not
eliminate the play of narrower loyalties. One of the most
striking aspects of the country's recent political evolution is the extent
to which ethnic self perceptions have tended to coexist with, and at times
to become subordinate to, residual attachments to the region or to the clan.
As environmental threats shifted from the ethnic to the regional or clanic
level, corres¬ponding shifts of identification occurred among political
actors.
This said, it is only fair to recognize that the seeds of ethnic conflict
were planted long before the occurrence of violence. Tempting though it may
be to emphasize the traditional dimensions of the recent slaughter, the
evidence on this score is very scanty. Meyer's statement that "as long as
the Batussi [sic] are masters in the country, spiritual and cultural
progress is impossible for the Barundi people, for it is only the present
low position of the Bahutu, kept in seclusion for centuries, that ensures
the Batutsi their dominance"(9) does not seem too convincing as an argument,
confusing as it does political and social (or economic) dominance while
failing to distinguish between a potential basis for conflict and conflict
itself. As we already stressed, although the traditional society offered a
potential basis for ethnic conflict, it never experienced such conflict on a
scale even remotely approaching what happened after independence.
Of far greater relevance is the process of social transformation set in
motion during and after the colonial interlude. The external dimensions of
this phenomenon are especially important to bear in mind, in at least two
senses. The Rwanda revolution, for one thing, had a decisive psychological
impact on ethnic self perceptions in Burundi. The coming to power of Hutu
politicians in Rwanda led many of their kinsmen in Burundi to share their
political objectives, in turn intensifying fears of ethnic domination among
the Tutsi of Burundi. Thus by giving the Burundi situation a false
definition to begin with, a definition patterned on the Rwanda situation,
Hutu politicians evoked a new behaviour both among themselves and the Tutsi
which made their originally false imputations true. Ethnic conflict thus
took on the quality of a "self fulfilling prophecy".(10)
The next point is in the nature of a qualification to the foregoing: in some
respects the Burundi situation had already been defined by the Belgian
colonizer as one approximating to Rwanda, with the result that something of
a caste structure had already begun to emerge during the colonial period.
Long before aspiring Hutu politicians sought to emulate the goals and
strategies of their ethnic brothers across the border, Belgian policies in
Rwanda served as a model for colonial administrators in Burundi. It was both
simpler and more efficient to view Burundi as consisting of a Tutsi
aristocracy and a Hutu peasantry and pursue a policy of indirect rule that
would maintain the dominance of one over the other. Few efforts were made
during the colonial period to extend educational facilities to the Hutu
masses, or for that matter to provide them with what few opportunities were
available for a political apprenticeship. Student enrolment at the Ecole
des Frères de la Charité (better known as the "Groupé Scolaire "
of Astrida ) between 1946 and 1954 shows a clear predominance of Tutsi over
Hutu a disproportion which becomes even more striking of course in the case
of Rwanda (see table over).
__________________________________________________________________________________________
- 9 -
Table 1
Ethnic Distribution of Student Enrolment at the Groupe Scolaire (1946-54)
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Year*
Tutsi
Hutu
Rwanda
Burundi
Congolese
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1946
44
1
8
1947
42
2
10
1948
85
2
11
2
1949
85
5
9
1953
68
3
16
1954
63
3
16
3
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
*Enrolment figures for 1950 52 unavailable; the data above is drawn from the
enrolment records of the Groupe Scolaire at Astrida (now Butare).
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Likewise, the conciliar organs set up in 1962 at the countrywide and
district (or territoire) levels, known respectively as the Conseil
Supérieur du Pays (CSP) and the Conseils de Territoire (CT), were
largely dominated by Tutsi or ganwa elements. A study published in
1959 gives the following ethnic breakdown for each set of institutions:
Table 2
Ethnic Distribution of Seats in CSP and CT: Burundi and Rwanda (1959)
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Representative Institution*
Ethnic Distribution
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Tutsi (or ganwa) Hutu
Total
CSP
Rwanda
31
2
32
Burundi
30
3
33
CT
Rwanda
125
30
155
Burundi
112
26
138
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
*CSP: Conseil Supérieur du Pays; CT: Conseils de Territoire. Source: Aloys
Munyangaju, L'Actualité Politique du Ruanda-Urundi (Bruxelles:
1959), p.20.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The result is that on the eve of independence relatively few Hutu could
claim the status of a modern élite, and those who did were all the more
anxious to translate their egalitarian commitments into reality. Yet
precisely because of the nature of their commitments, their access to
positions of authority could only be viewed with the greatest suspicion by
the Tutsi minority. Extension of the vote, on a per capita basis,
evoked similar apprehensions. Just as social equality spelled the end of
Tutsi supremacy, majority rule for many Tutsi was seen as synonymous with
Hutu rule.
Even in its most restrictive sense (implying equal representation of ethnic
interests in key governmental and bureaucratic posts) equality never became
a reality of post independence politics. A mere glance at the ethnic
distribution of top civil service positions in 1965 shows the extent of
Tutsi predominance in the political system (see Table 3 following).
_________________________________________________________________________________________
- 10 -
Table 3
Ethnic Distribution of Top Ranking Civil Service Positions, July 1965
Ministries and Directions* Ethnic
Distribution
Ministries and Directions Ethnic Distribution
Ganwa Tutsi Hutu Other
Ganwa Tutsi Hutu Other
Prime Ministership
Justice (Secretariat)
Director General (DG)
1
DG
1
Directors (D)
2
D
3
Deputy Directors (DD)
1 1
DD
4 1
Total
3 2
Total
7 2
Finance
Information
DG
2
DG
1
D
1 2
DD
1
DD
3
Total
3 5
Total
2
Economic Affairs
Social Affairs
DG
1
DG
2
D
2 1
D
2 2
DD
1
DD
2 1
Total
4 1
Total
4 5
Agriculture
Foreign Affairs
DG
3
DG
1
D
4 1
D
3 1 1
DD
2 1
DD
2 1
Total
9 2
Total
6 2 1
Public Works
Sûreté (Special Branch)
DG
1
D
1 1
D
1
DD
1
Total
2 1
Total
1 1
Public Health
Communications
DG
1
D
4 2
D
1
DD
2
DD
2
Total
4 4
Total
1 3
National Education
Transport
DG
1
DG
1
D
4 1
D
3
DD
2 3
DD
1
Total
7 4
Total
4 1
Interior
Special Appointments
(Fonctionnaires Détachés)
DG
1
DG
2
D
3 4
3
D
1
DD
18 5
2
DD
2
Total
3 22
9 2
Total
5
Gendarmerie
Grand Total
(Secretariat)
1
DG
12 7
D
3 36 14 1
DD
35 22 3
*The nearest equivalent in UK would be the Secretariats attached to each
Ministry; in the listing above the term secretariat refers to those sectors
of government that were brought directly under the jurisidiction of the
Crown, in 1963.
__________________________________________________________________________________________
- 11-
As the figures above suggest, the years that followed independence ( 196 2)
saw a widening of the gap between the level of aspiration of Hutu élites and
their actual share of political responsibilities. Their sense of frustration
stemmed from being denied the share of power to which they considered
themselves entitled, and from their perception of a vast disproportion
between their numerical importance as a group and their very limited access
to material rewards. But it also expressed their repeated failures to tip
the scales of power to their advantage, and the severe penalties they
suffered as a consequence of their abortive efforts. As long as the policies
of the Crown aimed at excluding both Hutu and Tutsi from the decisions of
the Court (as happened to be the case in the years immediately following
independence) Hutu grievances could be kept within manageable bounds. What
brought their grievances to the point of exasperation were the repressive
measures to which they exposed themselves time and again in their efforts to
alter the status quo, and their ultimate realization that through
their own political ineptitude, they unwittingly played into the hands of
their opponents. To grasp fully the significance of this historical
dimension, let us turn briefly to a consideration of the main sequence of
events leading up to the crisis.
The Stages of the Crisis
__________________________________________________________
For purposes of
analysis at least four distinctive phases may be distinguished in the recent
history of Burundi, each corresponding to a different line up of political
forces:
Phase I (1957 1961): Bezi vs. Batare - The years preceding
independence (1962) can best be seen as a continuation of precolonial
rivalries in the guise of nominally modern political parties. The main
protagonists at this stage were the Parti de l'Unité et du Progrès
National ( Uprona) and the Parti Démocrate Chrétien (PDC)
each dominated by a specific group of ganwa personalities, the former
by the Bezi and the latter by the Batare family. Led by Mwami Mwambutsa's
eldest son, Prince Rwagasore, the Uprona rapidly asserted itself as
the more dynamic of the two, scoring a decisive victory in the legislative
elections of September 1961. With 58 seats in the National Assembly out of a
total of 64, as Prime Minister designate Rwagasore could presumably turn to
the task of nation building free from major opposition. Fate, however,
decided otherwise. With the death of Rwagasore, in October 1961, the party
lost both leadership and dynamism. His assassination at the hands of a Greek
gunman in the pay of the Batare family sealed the fate of the PDC and its
leaders (the latter were publicly hanged in
Gitega on January 14, 1962); but it also had major consequences on the
destinies of the Uprona. Not only did it constitute an irreparable
loss of leadership for his party but it also destroyed whatever measure of
unity the Uprona leader had managed to achieve during his brief
apotheosis as prince and politician.
Phase II (1961 1965): Crown vs. Party - With the passing of Rwagasore
Burundi politics moved into the next phase, one in which power began to
gravitate more and more into the hands of the king and his courtiers,
converting the Uprona into an appendage of the Court. From a
constitutional monarchy the political system transformed itself into an
absolute rulership. Although the trend was strenuously resisted by the
Uprona leadership, at times internal splits within the party seemed more
paralyzing than the opposition between itself and the Crown. As the bases of
conflict shifted along ethnic lines, creating similar tensions within
parliament and the civil service, an ideal situation emerged for the Crown
to move into the breach and further consolidate its hold on the political
system. Consistently playing one group (Hutu) off against the other (Tutsi)
the palace soon asserted itself as the only significant source of power. If
there were any doubts as to where power really lay, these were rapidly
dispelled by the events following the legislative elections of May 1965.
Although the Hutu emerged in the National Assembly with 23 seats out of a
total of 31, they soon discovered what many already suspected - that
parliament was little more than a rubber stamp. News of the appointment of a
famous ganwa (Leopold Biha) as Prime Minister on 13 September 1965,
made clear Mwambutsa's intention to refuse, in his own words, "to subscribe
to a subterfuge of language that would deprive [him] of all control, of all
authority, and of all possibilities to extend [to his people] the benefit of
[his] protection".(11)
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Phase III (1965 -
1966): Crown vs. Army - The next phase began with a coup, and ended
with another. The first, on 18 October 1965, is better described as a coup
manqué.Triggered by a mutiny of Hutu army and gendarmerie officers,
it led to the physical liquidation of every Hutu leader of some consequence
- and to the near collapse of the government machinery built around the
palace. The panicstricken Mwami Mwambutsa fled to Europe, never to return.
Mwarnbutsa, however, refused to abdicate. In these circumstances
responsibilities for the tasks of day-to-day administration fell into the
hands of a mixed assemblage of civil servants, army men and jeunesses,
(12) most of them of Tutsi origins. In the classic tradition of ganwa
politics, they began to seek to use Prince Charles Ndizeye, Mwambutsa's
youngest son, hoping that if the succession crisis were settled in his
favour they might secure a fresh entree into the political arena. This is
precisely what happened. The seemingly endless manoeuverings ushered by the
abortive, Hutu-led coup of 1965 culminated on 8 July 1966 with the
proclamation of a new Head of State: on that day Prince Charles told his
people that in order "to bring to an end four years of chaos and anarchy" he
had decided to take over the destinies of the kingdom.(13) The next day he
called upon Captain Micombero to form a new government, and on 12 July,
Prime Minister Micombero presented the members of his cabinet to the man who
was soon to become king. On 1 September, 1966 Charles allowed himself to be
formally proclaimed Mwami of Burundi under the dynastic name of Ntare. His
reign proved short-lived. The following months saw a rapid deterioration of
the relationships between the new king and the king-makers. On 28 November
1966, while attending the first anniversary celebrations of Mobutu's
military take-over, in Kinshasa, Ntare learned over the radio that the army
had deposed him and proclaimed the Republic by way of a coup similar to that
which he happened to be celebrating! Thus ended the last and briefest
interregnum ever recorded in the annals of the kingdom.
Phase IV (1966 1972): The Road to Violence-Even though the coup that
brought the army to power appears to have been instigated by Hima elements,
it did not transform the army or the bureaucracy into Tutsi-or even
Hima-dominated institutions. The new government formed by Micombero on 12
December, 1966, gave the Hutu five ministerial chairs out of a total of
thirteen, the remaining eight almost evenly divided among Hima-Tutsi and
Banyaruguru-Tutsi. Although the Presidency of the Republic was assumed by
Micombero, only two ministries went to army officers. Regional affiliations
were equally diversified, yet at least four of the incumbents came from the
Bururi province.
Regional ties were to play an increasingly important role, however, in
shaping group loyalties, so much so that by 1971 new self-perceptions had
emerged within the Tutsi stratum, some being identified as Banyabururi (the
people from Bururi) and others as Banyaruguru (the people from the north).
Unlike the latter term, "Banyabururi" is a very recent and somewhat
artificial label. It has no precise ethnic or historical referent, and is
primarily used to designate those Tutsi elements who claim Bururi as their
province of origin. Among the Banyabururi are Hima elements (like Micombero),
yet to argue that all Banyabururi are by definition Hima, as is
sometimes claimed by outside observers, would be grossly inaccurate. Besides
the fact that a great many Hutu could qualify as Banyabururi, so could a
number of Tutsi elements of non Hima origin. The essential point to grasp is
that as a result of this regional self -consciousness a new basis of
solidarity was created among the Tutsi of Bururi which also served as a
basis of conflict in relation to those Tutsi who came from different regions,
and more specifically from the northern provinces, the so called Banyaruguru.
Nonetheless, regional allegiances never developed to the point of
dissipating clan loyalties, let alone ethnic loyalties. In this situation
the interplay of clique and factionalism emerged once again as the moving
force of Burundi politics, with Micombero seeking to maintain his hold on
the system by constantly playing one group off against the other.
Two major types of political conflict developed during this period-first, an
intra-Tutsi conflict, involving a complex mixture of ideological and
intra-mural rivalries, with the latter increasingly focussed on clan and
regional differences; secondly, an ethnic conflict between Hutu and Tutsi.
Until the holocaust of 1972, clan, regional and ethnic loyalties have
constantly tended to interact with each other, causing the bases of conflict
to shift back and forth from one level to another depending on the
circumstances. The greater the prominence of Hutu threats, the lesser the
impact and visibility of intra-Tutsi differences; the more salient these
latter differences were, the more tempting it became for Hutu elements to
turn the situation to their advantage by playing one group of Tutsi off
against the other.
____________________________________________________________________________________________
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In this
extraordinarily fluid and complex environment, a distinctive group of Tutsi
politicians emerged whose policies were to have a decisive impact on the
political destinies of the country. Consisting of a mere handful of
individuals (most of them of Basapfu origins), the leading personalities in
this group were Albert Shibura, Arthémon Simbaniye and André Yanda. By early
1971 they controlled several key positions in the government and the army -
the first as Minister of Interior and Justice (as well as the highest -
ranking officer in the Burundi armed forces); the second as Minister of
Foreign Affairs, Co -operation and Planning; the third as Minister of
Information and Secretary General of the Uprona. They owed part of
their success to their wide range of potential identifications and their
ability to redefine their 'identity' in the manner best suited to meet the
exigencies of the moment: not only were they of Basapfu origins, but they
all came from Bururi and could thus pose as members of the Bururi lobby;
moreover, their distant connections with the Hima also enabled them to pose
as bona fide Hima against the Banyaruguru; above all, they were Tutsi
and hence could crystallize ethnic solidarities against Hutu elements
whenever this proved to their advantage. But they also owed their rapid rise
to power to their adeptness at spreading false rumours with a view to
casting discredit upon their opponents. The aim, in essence, was to conjure
up threats designed to enlist the support of one group against another -Banyabururi
against Banyaruguru, and ultimately Tutsi against Hutu.
Their success becomes all the more remarkable when one considers that less
than a year after the seizure of power by Micombero they had all been
eliminated from governmental positions. Following what Micombero described
as a "foolish attempt of a small group of irresponsible personalities to
seize control of the Republic".(14) the leading lights of the Basapfu clan
were either dismissed from office or incarcerated. Having failed in their
initial attempt to use the party and the jeunesses as a source of
leverage against the army, they proceeded to transform the army into a court
of ultimate appeal to enforce their hegemony upon both Hutu and Banyaruguru.
But first the army had to be purged of all 'deviant' elements. Their first
move was to get rid of all Belgian military advisers in order to evade
whatever control they previously exercised on the recruitment of officers.
This was carried into effect in July 1968, when eight Belgian officers
acting as technical assistants were suddenly thanked for their services and
sent back to Belgium, presumably because of their unwarranted interference
with 'normal' recruiting procedures. The second step was to eliminate as
many Hutu from both the army and the government as was politically feasible.
This was done by bringing trumped-up charges against Hutu elements in the
government and the army so as to justify ethnic purges in both. The third
step was to turn against the Banyaruguru, again through the time honoured
technique of fabricating false accusations against specific figures in the
army and government.
Disclosure of a plan for a Hutu led coup for the night of 16-17 September
1969, was the pretext invoked to 'deal' with the Hutu problem. It led to the
arrest of some thirty Hutu personalities, most of them in army and
government, followed by the imprisonment and subsequent execution of scores
of Hutu soldiers. Among those arrested and subsequently executed were
Charles Karolero, a second-lieutenant and member of the General Staff;
Barnabé Kanyaruguru, the Minister of Planning and Economy; Jean Chrysostome
Mbandabonya (executed in 1972), formerly the Minister of Social Affairs in
the first Micombero government; Cyprien Henehene, a former Minister of
Health (said to have died "under questioning"); and Joseph Cimpaye the
director of personnel of Sabena Airlines in Bujumbura (executed in 1972).
All were brought to trial on charges of conspiring against the security of
the State. On 18 December, twenty of those arrested were condemned to death
and executed two days later. Some say that a total of about 100 executions
took place in December. Although there were still a few Hutu left in
positions of responsibility within and outside the government, the trend
toward Tutsi supremacy was clear: seven out of twelve cabinet ministers,
including those in charge of foreign affairs, defence and security, and the
interior were of Tutsi extraction, and six of eight provincial governors
were Tutsi. What still remained unclear was whether this trend would lead to
Banyabururi on Banyaruguru supremacy.
By 1971 the Basapfu clique had gained enough ascendency over Micombero to
force the issue in favour of the Banyabururi, with whom they now began to
identify themselves. In July 1971, acting in co- operation with the Chief of
Staff of the Burundi army, Thomas Ndabemeye, they decided to bring charges
of conspiracy against a number of civilian and military personalities of
Banyaruguru origins- three of who had at one time or another served as
Minister of Foreign Affairs, Lazare Ntawurishira, Libère Ndabakwaje and Marc
Manirakiza. All three were subsequently tried and condemned to death. The
scenario adopted in 1969 to eliminate the core of the Hutu opposition was
now replicated with
__________________________________________________________________________________________
- 14 -
a
view to eliminating all Banyaruguru elements of any standing in the army
and government. Now as before the court proceedings turned out to be a
parody of justice. On 14 January, 1972, the military tribunal set up for
this purpose issued nine death sentences and seven life sentences. Upon
hearing the verdict of the tribunal, the Procureur Général, Nduwayo,
though himself of Basapfu origins, decided to resign as the evidence
obviously did not justify so harsh a sentence. On 4 February however, under
the combined pressure of national and international opinion the death
sentences were commuted to life imprisonment, and five of the defendants
previously sentenced to serve prison terms were set free. Meanwhile, on 20
October, 1971 faced with an unmanageable situation within his own
government, Micombero set up a Conseil Suprême de la Révolution
(CSR), an advisory body made up of 27 army officers.
Besides bringing into the open the enormous tensions that had been building
up over time between Banyabururi and Banyaruguru, the immediate
consequence of the political trial was to create an atmosphere of pervasive
fear throughout the country. The proceedings were given full publicity from
start to finish; the radio and the press carried word‑by‑word accounts of
pleas and counterpleas. Never before had public opinion been so deeply
sensitized to the issues involved; never previously either had such divisive
issues been aired in public. The consequences were almost immediately felt
on the hills. Rival factions sprang up over night in a number of localities.
It was in this climate of obsessional fear, saturated by tensions of all
kinds, that on 29 April, 1972 Micombero suddenly decided to dismiss all
members of his cabinet. A few hours later the Hutu rebellion started, and
was soon to be followed by a ruthless repression.
Was the Hutu rebellion an attempt on the part of the few remaining Hutu
leaders to exploit intra‑Tutsi differences to their own advantage? Could it
be attributed to a tactical alliance between Hutu and Banyaruguru, designed
to evict all Hima or Banyabururi from the seats of power? Or was it the
result of a calculated provocation on the part of the Bururi elites? The
answers are anybody's guess. The most one can do, given the state of our
ignorance, is to speculate about the most likely of these explanations. But
first let us take a closer look at the patterns of violence brought to light
by the insurgency.
The
Anatomy
of
Violence______________________________________________________
The attacks began between 8.00 and 9.00 pm on 29 April, and were carried out
nearly simultaneously in Bujumbura and in the southern provinces of Rumonge,
Nyanza‑Lac and Bururi. In these provinces the assailants consisted of
Hutu
and “Mulelists”(15) operating
in small bands of 10 to 30 people. In Bururi alone the so‑called Mulelists
numbered between 1,000 and 1,500. It is worth mentioning in this connection
that approximately 25,000 Zaïrian refugees, most of them Babembe, lived in
southern
Burundi at the time of the initial risings; though culturally distinct from
the local Hutu populations, they nonetheless shared many of their grievances
against the "Bururi Group'' and were therefore highly receptive to the
incitements of the rebel leadership.(16) The hard core of the rebel forces,
however,reportedly came from bases located in Tanzania near the Burundi
border. Armed with small automatic weapons, machetes and spears.they
proceeded to kill and multilate every Tutsi in sight, including women and
children as well as those few Hutu who refused to join them. All in all it
is estimated that about 10,000 rebels, both Hutu and Mulelists,
(17) took
part in the initial risings. They quickly overran the provincial capitals of
Nyanza‑Lac and Rumonge. According to official reports they even organized
a "people's republic" in the Bururi region, and held on to the "liberated"
enclave for two weeks before being routed out. Among the victims of the
slaughter in Bururi were Micombero's brother‑in‑law, the provincial
governor, and some 4O provincial administrators. In Bujumbura, meanwhile,
some 100 rebels launched co‑ordinated attacks against the radio station and
the military camp, but were almost immediately repulsed. In its initial
stage the rebellion is said to have cost at least 2,000 lives, with Bururi
claiming by far the heaviest losses.
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- 15 -
The early pattern of
violence bore striking similarities with what was observed in Zaïre during
the 1964 rebellion. In Burundi as in Zaïre rebel tactics showed a heavy
reliance on the use of drugs and magic; in each case the attacks were
conducted in the most indiscriminate fashion, and were accompanied by
senseless cruelties; and in each case violence took place within a very
rudimentary organi¬sational framework. Like the simbas in Zaire, many
of the Burundi rebels sought sustenance in hemp
smoking, and invulnerability to bullets through resort to magic. Some were
identified as "wearing white saucepans stained with blood as helmets, their
bodies tattoed with magic signs as immunity against attacks."(18) If we are
to believe Micombero’s testimony "witch doctors played an important role ...
Mulelist trainers would shoot blank bullets at a man to show his immunity
and then shoot a dog or a cat with real bullets to show that the animal had
died because it did not cry out the words that conferred protection."(19)
Here again the parallel with the Zaïrian rebellion is striking, as were the
deliberate cruelties inflicted on the victims. In each case the rebellion
owed its initial success to the receptivity of the milieu within which it
developed rather than to the solidity of its organisational apparatus.
By contrast the pattern of counter-violence initiated by the government and
the army was more systematic and hence more ‘efficient' in terms of human
destructiveness. The counterattacks began on 30 April, On that day the army
and the jeunesses began to co-ordinate their efforts to exterminate
all individuals suspected to have taken part in n the rebellion. Martial law
was proclaimed throughout the country, and a dawn-to-dusk curfew enforced.
Meanwhile Micombero approached the Zaïrian
authorities with a view to securing troop reinforcements and air support,
both of which arrived on 3 May. With Zaïrian paratroopers in charge of
defending the airport the Burundi army moved in force into th e countryside.
What followed was not so much a repression as a hideous slaughter of Hutu
populations . According to Martin Howe of the New York Times, "the
revolutionary youth brigades (JRR) took the lead in what is widely described
as arbitrary arrests and killings. These were aggravated by personal acts of
revenge with people being denounced as plotters because of disputes over
land or a cow. "(20) In Bururi the army attacked all Hutu more or less
indiscriminately. In Bujumbura, Gitega and Ngozi all 'cadres' of Hutu
origins-including not only local administrators but chauffeurs,clerks and
skilled workers - were systematically rounded up, taken to jail and either
shot or beaten to death with rifle butts or clubs. In Bujumbura alone an
estimated 4,000 Hutu were loaded up on
trucks and taken to their graves. According to one Tutsi witness "they
picked up almost all the Hutu intellectuals above the secondary level",(21)
and many more, one might add, below that level.
Some of the most gruesome scenes took place on the premises of the
Université Officielle in Bujumbura, and in secondary and technical schools.
Scores of Hutu students were physically assaulted by their Tutsi
confrères; many were beaten to death. Meanwhile groups of soldiers and
jeunesses would suddenly appear in classrooms, call the Hutu students by
name and take them away. Few ever returned. At the Université Officielle
about one third (120) disappeared in these circumstances. The Ecole Normale
of Ngagara, near Bujumbura, lost more than 100 students out of a total of
314; of the 415 students enrolled at the Ecole Technique de Kamenge
Bujumbura, 60 are believed to have been killed, while another 110 fled; out
of 700 students enrolled at the Athénée (secondary school) of Bujumbura, at
least 300 have since disappeared, some killed and others fleeing to avoid
being killed; at the Athénée of Gitega some 40 students were killed, raising
the total of missing students to 148; at the Institut Technique Agricole,
also in Gitega, 40 students out of a total of 79 are currently missing, of
who 26 are said to have been executed. The Ecole Normale Supérieure, and the
Ecole Nationale d' Administration also suffered heavy losses. The list also
extends to confessional schools, both Catholic and Protestant. Not only the
Hutu elites but nearly all potential elites were thus physically liquidated
(See Appendix II).
Nor was the Church spared. According to Howe, " 12 Hutu priests are said to
have been killed, and thousands of protestant pastors, school directors and
teachers. In the Bujumbura hospital six doctors and eight nurses were
arrested and are believed to be dead".(22) No sector of society was left
untouched. The repression took on the qualities of a "selective genocide"
directed at all the educated or semi-educated strata of Hutu society.
What kind of explanation can one give for such massive violence? Before
turning to this question several preliminary observations must be made.
Attention has already been drawn to the prominent role played by Mulelists
in the early stages of the rebellion, and to the remarkable similarity
between their tactics and those employed by the Zaïrian rebels in 1964. Just
as the instigators of the attacks
___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
- 16 -
in the south were of
mixed origins, so were the victims of the repression. But what needs to be
emphasized here is that the victims were not only Hutu and Mulelists but
Tutsi as well. Moreover, it is not unreasonable to assume that among the
Tutsi killled during the reprisals some were refugees from Rwanda. We shall
return to this point in a moment.Suffice to note that about 100 Tutsi were
executed in the provincial capital of Gitega on 6 May. On that day,
according to Jeremy Greenland, "war councils met in the provincial centres
and the guilty were executed the same evening. A Congolese driver, working
in Burundi for an Italian firm was ordered out that night to excavate two
large holes outside Gitega. He dumped 100 fresh corpses in them and swears
that the victims were mainly Tutsi".This, adds Greenland, "is unique
evidence of Tutsi being killed in the repression".(23)
Yet another element to bear in mind has to do with the circumstances
surrounding the return of ex-king Ntare to Burundi, in March 1972, and his
subsequent execution in Gitega, on 29 April. The return of the ex king Ntare
to Burundi was negotiated between President Idi Amin of Uganda and Micombero
shortly after his arrival in Kampala on 21 March. On the strength of the
verbal and written guarantees of safe conduct given by Micombero, Amin
allowed Ntare (who was now once again known as Charles Ndizeye) to return to
Bujumbura on 30 March. “Just like you”5 wrote Micombero in his letter of 28
March to Amin "I deeply believe in God ... Your Excellency can be assured
that as soon as Mr.Charles Ndizeye urns back to my country will be
considered as an ordinary citizen and that as such his life and security
will be assured".(24) No sooner had the ex-king landed in Bujumbura, however,
than he was immediately taken to Gitega under military escort and placed
under house arrest. The news of his death reached Bujumbura via an official
radio broadcast announcing that the ex-king had been killed in the course of
rebel attacks against his residence. Later, however, Micombero admitted that
he had been tried for plotting against the government and executed on the
night of the attacks, on 29 April. Official allegations were that Ntare
tried to invade the country with the aid of foreign mercenaries.
The official position of the Burundi authorities is that two different sets
of actors were plotting against the gouvernement On the one hand there was
ex king Ntare, who, according to Micombero, “ tried to trap him", (25)
presumably with the complicity of foreign mercenaries; on the other hand
there was a Hutu plot, involving top-ranking personalities in the army and
government. The first plot was quickly nipped in the bud, and turned out to
be of relatively little consequence, except of course for Ntare himself. The
Hutu plot, however, was a much more serious one. Indeed the entire rebellion
is officially described as the outcome of a gigantic conspiracy aiming at
the physical liquidation of all Tutsi.
Phrased in these terms neither explanation is entirely satisfactory. Can one
imagine for a moment that Ntare could single-handedly prepare the ground for
an invasion of foreign mercenaries, or indeed that he himself thought he
could do so? Or can one really believe that on the strength of his own
limited charisma he could spontaneously rally the Hutu masses around himself
and promote peasant uprisings throughout the land-all this in the name of a
monarchy that had long ceased to exist?
The notion of a master plot concocted by Hutu officials, though far more
plausible, also leaves a number of questions unanswered. If it is true
that-according to the official version given by the Burundi authorities- a
number of Hutu officials had given financial aid to the rebels, that
thousands of machetes were discovered at the home of the Hutu Minister of
Public Works, that a map showing areas of Tutsi concentration had been found
at the home of the Hutu Minister for Post and Telecommunications, why has no
evidence been produced to substantiate these charges?(26) If there is any
truth to the allegations that two million Burundi francs, along with
quantities of arms and ammunition, were seized at the home of 2nd Lieut.
Ndayahoze, and that Ndayahoze himself was intended to become President of a
Hutu Republic, where is the evidence? Again, where is the proof that lists
of Hutu conspirators were found in possession of some rebels? What is the
explanation for the abrupt dismissal of the cabinet by Micombero on 29 April?
Moreover, since the Hutu leadership had been reduced to a skeleton of its
former self as a result of previous purges, can one really believe that a
mere handful of Hutu officials would be bold enough to organise a major
rebellion against an army largely dominated by Tutsi officers? It is not
impossible to imagine that a few Hutu officers and non commissioned officers
were in fact plotting against the government: what is impossible to imagine
is that the plot involved as many individuals in the government and the army
as was subsequently claimed by the Burundi authorities.
________________________________________________________________________________________
- 17 -
Two other
alternatives need to be considered: either the rebellion was the result of a
deliberate provocation by the Bururi 'lobby', intended to provide a "final
solution" to the Hutu problem and a provisional one to the Banyaruguru
problem; or else it was the outcome of a tactical alliance between
Banyaruguru and Hutu elements. The first of these alternatives seems rather
implausible, if only because of the enormous risks it entailed. Moreover,
one is led to wonder whether the few hours that elapsed between the
dismissal of Micombero's cabinet and the outbreak of the rebellion were
sufficient to allow some of the dismissed cabinet members to organise such a
rebellion. One must also note that the area most hard hit by the rebellion,
and where the initial uprisings were most devastating, was in fact the
stronghold of the Bururi 'lobby'. That some of the dismissed cabinet members
should have deliberately instigated a rebellion in the area where their
position was most vulnerable is difficult to conceive. A more reasonable
interpretation, suggested by Jeremy Greenland,"(27) is that Micombero must
have had some advance knowledge of a Hutu plot, and that he dismissed his
ministers in order to have a free hand to deal with the uprising when it
came. The strongest evidence in support of this explanation, which also
shows how little awareness Micombero and his advisers had of exactly when or
how the blow might fall, is that on 29 April the whole Tutsi administration
of the Bururi province accepted an invitation to a party at Rumonge-only to
discover that the invitation was in fact a ruse to assassinate them. All the
guests were killed, except Shibura and Yanda.
If the idea of a plot has any plausibility in this context it did not
involve a tactical alliance between Hutu and Banyaruguru as much as a
precarious coalition of interests between Hutu and Mulelists on the one
hand, and possibly between some Banyaruguru and Rwanda refugees on the other.
What, exactly, relationships were between each group is difficult to
ascertain. The Mulelists, as noted earlier, were heavily concentrated in the
southern provinces; the Rwanda refugees, at least until 1965, were found
primarily in the north, where the Banyaruguru were the most numerous. In
spite of fundamental ethnic and cultural differences between them, each
group of refugees shared somewhat similar experiences. They both fought side
by side during the Zaïrian rebellion, in 1964-65; they both shared specific
grievances against the Micombero regime, the Mulelists for being denied the
support they needed to continue their struggle against the Zaïrian
authorities, and the Rwandese for having been denied the opportunity to
fight their way back into Rwanda. Of Tutsi origins for the most part, the
Rwanda refugees (also known as inyenzi) made their way into Burundi
from Zaire, in 1965, after fighting at the side of the Mulelists and being
pushed back by the counter-offensive of the Zaïrian army. Although they came
into the country at the request of certain Tutsi personalities in government
as a 'guarantee' against a possible Hutu uprising, they were subsequently
disarmed by the joint efforts of the Burundi and Zaïrian armies. Yet, no
matter how real their grievances against the Micombero 'clique', their
grievances against Hutu elements were greater still. In these conditions the
idea of a tactical alliance of Mulelists and inyenzi seems far
fetched; even more far fetched the idea of a parallel alliance between
Banyaruguru and Hutu. What seems to have developed is more in the nature of
a temporary concurrence of interest between each group of refugees and those
domestic factions with whom they had most in common culturally and
politically, the Mulelists with the Hutu and the inyenzi with the
Tutsi. Rather than each group of refugees working hand in hand with the
other, each group became a tributary to its domestic ally. In view of the
ethnic context within which the initial uprisings occurred, one can see why
at first neither the inyenzi nor the Banyaruguru had any inclination
to jump into the fray, preferring for the time being to let the Banyabururu
and the Hutu (and Mulelists) destroy each other. That these were included
among the motives attributed to the Banyaruguru by the Bururi authorities
finds partial confirmation in the killings of Tutsi elements in Gitega on 6
May, 1972. This, as Greenland noted, was unique evidence of Tutsi killing
Tutsi.
It may be that in the minds of some Banyaruguru the Hutu uprisings would in
time be deflected from their original target through the propitious
intervention of Ntare-with the rebellion then transforming itself into a
"carrier movement" destined to restore both the monarchy and Banyaruguru
hegemony. In the absence of solid evidence, however, this can only be
presented as a very hypothetical proposition.
Regardless of who the plotters were, involvement in violence clearly stemmed
from very different motives. For the Mulelists the rebellion expressed more
than just an accumulation of grievances against the Bururi lobby; it also
expressed a displacement of aggression from one target (the Zaïrian
authorities) to another (the Tutsi authorities) -their victims in effect
serving as a “substitute target”for their Zaïrian enemies. Not only
culturally and ethnically but in terms of their behaviour and motiva-
_______________________________________________________________________________________
- 18 -
tions the Mulelists
formed a radically different group from the locally recruited Hutu
insurgents. Among the latter some joined the rebellion out of fear, others
out of opportunism, others still because of their genuine hatred of all
Tutsi regardless of clan or region. Between the rural activists and the
Bujumbura "plotters" the contrast is equally striking. Assuming that
something in the nature of a plot was hatched by Hutu officials in the army
and the government, their modus operandi and ultimate goals had
relatively little in common with those of the local insurgents, Hutu and
Mulelists. The aim of the rebellion in Bujumbura was not to kill every Tutsi
in sight but to gain control of the radio station and military camp as a
preliminary step towards a formal seizure of power. Again, assuming that the
Banyaruguru had hoped to seal a tactical alliance with Ntare possibly to use
him as a symbol of legitimacy to "recuperate" the rebellion, this was
evidently for motives quite different from those actuating Hutu insurgents
in Bujumbura and Bururi.
Behind the orgy of counter violence triggered by the repression one can also
detect a variety of motives. Fear of an impending slaughter of all Tutsi men,
women and children-reminiscent of what happened in Rwanda in 1959-1962, and
again in 1964( 28)certainly played a crucial part in carrying the repression
to the extremities noted earlier. Personal animosities, individual hatreds
of local Hutu elites, and the anticipation of the material gains that might
be derived from seizure of the victims' property, (his cows, his land, his
bicycle, his hut, or even his bank account, as the case may be) also fed
into anti Hutu violence. But none of these factors are sufficient to account
for the systematic , purges that followed the uprisings. Indeed the most
astonishing feature of the repression is the rapidity with which it
transformed itself into a genocidal type operation aiming at the physical
liquidation of nearly every educated or semi educated Hutu This is how
Jeremy Greenland(29) describes the logistics of the operation:
Local Tutsi, sometimes soldiers, sometimes civil servants, arrived and
motioned Hutu teachers, churchleaders, nurses, traders, civil servants into
Landrovers with their guns. Bands of Tutsi combed the suburbs of Bujumbura
and carted away Hutu by the lorryload. Throughout May and half June 1972,
the excavators were busy every night in Gitega and Bujumbura burying the
dead in mass graves. In secondary schools teachers stood helpless as many of
their Hutu pupils were removed .... Those arrested were usually dead the
same night, stripped and practically clubbed to death in covered lorries on
the way to prison, then finished off there with clubs at nightfall. Using
bullets would have been wasteful.
"Prophylactic violence" thus became a major element in the strategy of
counter-insurgency adopted by Tutsi authorities to deal with the Hutu
problem. The aim was to decapitate not only the rebellion but Hutu society
as well, and in the process lay the foundation of an entirely new social
order.
From the drastic surgery performed during the repression a new society has
in fact emerged, in which only Tutsi elements are qualified to gain access
to power, influence and wealth; what is left of Hutu society is now
systematically excluded from the army, the civil service, the university and
secondary schools. The four Hutu holding ministerial positions are virtually
impotent, their sole function being to mask the fact of Tutsi domination.
Tasks formerly performed by Hutu are now the privilege of the Tutsi, as are
virtually all other positions in the modern economic sector. (The
reimposition of school fees in September 1973 has had the effect of further
reducing the number of fatherless and other Hutu children in primary and
secondary schools; as one missionary put it "having dealt with the 'elite'
fathers, the potentially 'elite' children are now excluded from education").
Hutu status has become synonymous with an inferior category of beings; only
Tutsi are fit to rule, and among them none are presumably better qualified
than the Banyabururi.
________________________________________________________________________________________
- 19 -
What Next?
______________________________________________________________________________________________________
The annihilation of the Hutu elites has effectively eliminated all potential
threats to Tutsi hegemony from the Hutu, at least for the next generation;
but it has by no means eliminated all sources of conflict. One of the
unintended consequences of the slaughter has been to create the conditions
for further conflict within the dominant stratum. Now that Hutu threats are
no longer perceived as significant by the Tutsi minority, the focus of
inter-group conflict is likely to move back once again to intra-Tutsi
divisions, pitting north against south, Banyabururi against Banyaruguru,
radicals against moderates. So far the Bururi ‘lobby' has proved remarkably
adept at exploiting the Hutu-Tutsi conflict to its own advantage, using
violence as a resource to consolidate its position vis-à-vis both Hutu and
Banyaruguru; but the latter (unlike the Hutu living in Burundi) are
unwilling to give up their claims to power.In these conditions the continued
exclusion of Banyaruguru elements from positions of responsibility within
the army and the government may well become a source of increasing tension
in years ahead within the Tutsi stratum, possibly leading to new
confrontations. Another source of tension lies in the mutual hatreds
generated among Tutsi as a result of the excesses committed during the
repression. Conscious as most Tutsi were of the threats posed to their
collective interest, indeed to their survival, by an impending Hutu takeover,
many have since come to realise the enormous disporportion between the
nature of the threat on the one hand, and the scale and arbitrariness of the
repression on the other.Many are the Tutsi who lost Hutu friends, domestic
servants and clients at the hands of the army and the jeunesses knowing full
well they were innocent. This forceful and unnecessary severance of the few
remaining bonds of personal friendship and loyalty between themselves and
their Hutu neighbours is what a great many Tutsi in the rural areas are as
yet unable to comprehend or forgive. Nor are they likely to forget the share
of responsibility borne by the Bururi elites in this and other matters. Thus
it would be grossly misleading to conceive of the dominant minority as being
all one politically and otherwise. Beneath the monolithic surface of Tutsi
hegemony one can discern a variety of potential sources of conflict-some
rooted in cultural and regional antagonisms, others in basic disagreements
over the scale of the brutalities committed during the repression, others
still in the frustrations experienced by specific groups of individuals as a
result of their differential access to the rewards of office.
Whether intra-Tutsi tensions can be effectively mitigated by their awareness
of future Hutu threats to their security is difficult to say. Internally,
the ruling elites have no reason to anticipate further challenges from the
Hutu community: lacking all potential sources of leadership, decimated and
deeply traumatized by the terrible vengeance visited upon them, the Hutu
living in Burundi are neither willing nor able to instigate further revolts.
Entirely different, however, is the attitude of the Hutu refugee community
in exile. The slaughter of 1972 has generated a massive involuntary
migration of Hutu populations into Rwanda, Zaïre and Tanzania (approximately
150,000 ) creating in each state a kind of "privileged sanctuary" for the
launching of refugee led guerilla operations against the Burundi government.
This situation is made all the more explosive by the occasional 'spill-over'
of anti-Hutu raids into neighbouring territories-and the possibility that
the raids might miss their intended targets, killing civilian populations.
Judging by the extreme seriousness of the diplomatic incident triggered by
the mistaken strafing of a Tanzanian village by helicopters of the Burundi
National Army in the spring of 1973,(30) one can see why these retaliatory
moves might lead to unintended hostilities between Burundi and any of its
neighbours. Yet another element of uncertainty concerns the attitude of the
Rwanda government vis-à-vis both the Hutu refugees from Burundi and the
Burundi government: can the Rwanda government exercise effective control
over the refugees and prevent both guerilla attacks and retaliatory raids?
Can it prevent a tactical alliance between the Hutu refugees from Burundi
and the Hutu opposition-an alliance presumably designed to create border
conflicts which each partner might then seek to exploit to its advantage,
the refugees to fight their way back into Burundi and the domestic Hutu
opposition to recapture power? There are no precise answers to these
questions. What does seem reasonably clear is that the capacity of the
Bururi 'lobby' to maintain itself in power will depend to a large extent on
its ability to cope with the conditions of chronic instability arising from
the spread of anti regime (i.e. Hutu) forces into neighbouring political
arenas. (See following pages).
Even more fundamental in the long run are the amounts and kinds of
assistance which the Micombero regime can expect from foreign powers within
and outside Africa. Burundi's strongest allies, for the time being, are
Zaïre and France, each for very different reasons. In the light of the
ominous threats faced by the Zaïrian autorities during the 1964 rebellion it
is easy to see why the Mulelist component
________________________________________________________________________________________
- 20 -
of the Hutu
rebellion should have produced a quick and positive response from
Kinshasa-in the form of military assistance. The rapprochement brought to
light during the crisis is more than a conjunctural phenomenon. A crucial
element militating in favour of continued close relationships between
Kinshasa and Bujumbura is the presence of a substantial number of Tutsi
elements (most of them refugees from Rwanda) in specific sectors of Zaïrian
civil service-primarily in Agriculture and Education as well as in top
decision making positions. The second most powerful figure in Kinshasa is
none other than a former Tutsi refugee from Rwanda. In a way ethnicity is
part of the social cement that makes for potentially close relationships
between the two states, above and beyond the convergence of short-term
interests.
The case of France is more difficult to explain, involving as it does a
mixture of ignorance and opportunism, and a fetish like attachment to the
presumed virtues of francophonie. That 100,000 francophones, or
potential francophones, happen to be massacred in the name of Tutsi
supremacy makes little difference as long as France's brand of
francophonie-meaning in effect the promotion of French, as distinct from
Belgian, cultural values-stands to profit. Nor does it matter if in this
case Tutsi supremacy should contradict the fundamental principles of 1789.
What matters ultimately is the expansion of France's sphere of influence in
black Africa, culturally and politically. And since the Tutsi as a group are
being viewed as having a greater nimbleness of mind and greater expressional
skills than the Hutu and on the whole more willing to do business with the
French, they are generally viewed as a better "investment" by French
diplomats.(31) These considerations are essential to an understanding of the
supporting role played by French military assistants during and after the
rebellion. As one knowledgeable observer put it: "French military assistants
flew and are still flying the regime's helicopters. This airborne was
crucial in routing out the rebels in the south ... Frenchmen were holding
the helicopters steady while Burundi soldiers were machine gunning Hutu
rebels out of the side windows, and Frenchmen were at the wheel of the same
helicopters in the incursions into Tanzania, in the course of which numerous
Tanzanians were killed".(32) Under the cover of a Société de
Transports Aériens du Burundi (whose initials, STAB, convey a more
realistic appraisal of its role) French pilots and helicopters supply the
Micombero regime with minimum guarantees of security against further rebel
attacks.
The prominence of the French presence in Burundi, not only at the military
level but in cultural, educational and technical spheres, has meant a
corresponding loss of influence for Belgium, thus removing all credibility
from the threats of economic sanctions raised in Brussels during the 1972
events. While Belgium was making a last-ditch effort to make sure that the
educational component of its aid programme would not be used for
discriminatory purposes, the French promptly offered to make up for whatever
aid Belgium might withdraw! Such being the case one wonders whether there is
any point in laying blame on the United States for its failure to act in any
decisive way during the crisis. In a recent sponsored report by the Carnegie
Endowment the suggestion is made that since the US buys approximately 80 per
cent of Burundi's coffee (representing 60 per cent of its foreign earnings),
the State Department possessed sufficient economic leverage to induce a
basic change of attitude on the part of the Tutsi authorities.(33) This is
extremely dubious, however. When ethnic hatreds reached the point where
people slaughter each other by the thousands, how much do they really care
about the long range implications of a reduction of coffee exports? Nor is
it a foregone conclusion that this form of economic sanctions would in the
long run produce the expected results. The Hutu masses would probably suffer
just as much as the Tutsi elites from the consequences of this policy. But
perhaps the basic flaw in the argument advanced by the authors of the
Carnegie report is that it assumes that the United States enjoys a position
of economic omnipotence in Burundi. It would be very surprising indeed if,
in the event of an American decision to bar coffee imports from Burundi,
alternative buyers did not materialise.
To bring effective pressure to bear upon the Burundi authorities would have
required a concerted action on the part of all Western powers accredited in
Bujumbura. Only in these conditions and through pressures involving not only
moral persuasion but continued threats of economic sanctions, was there a
chance of limiting the scale of the massacre, and perhaps initiate a more
liberal trend in the sphere of Hutu-Tutsi relations. At the time of the
crisis, however, there was little agreement among Western diplomats as to
what should or could be done. In fact some of the key figures in the Western
diplomatic corps were not even on speaking terms with each other. The rift
was even more conspicuous in the case of Communist powers. Whereas North
Korea and China were the only powers outside Africa to officially support
the regime, the Soviets showed no compunctions about signing the Western
note of protest,
________________________________________________________________________________________
- 21 -
in part because
differences of opinion among Western diplomats made the note sound
platitudinous, if not downright hypocritical. With the exception of Belgium,
the dominant impression one gains of Western diplomacy during the crisis is
one of almost total indifference in the face of an unrelieved tragedy.
Just as astonishing is the silence of the UN and the OAU and the total
inability, or unwillingness, of either organization to register any kind of
effective protest. In the case of the OAU this passivity is sometimes
justified by the argument that since the Burundi crisis was a purely
domestic matter (which it most emphatically was not), it was clearly outside
the jurisdication of the OAU. Perhaps a more realistic explanation is that
most African states are, to a greater or lesser extent, potential Burundis.
No African state wishes to establish a precedent that might prevent it from
dealing with such crises by means of its own choosing. Even so, the wording
of the resolution adopted at the OAU Summit in Rabat in late June strikes
one as little short of astounding, amounting in effect to a message of
support for Micombero: "The Council of Minister is convinced that, thanks to
your saving action, peace will be rapidly re established, national unity
consolidated and territorial integrity preserved".(34)
These considerations are equally relevant to an understanding of the
striking indecision displayed by the UN. According to the Carnegie report,
Washington had apparently banked on UN observers constituting what one
official described as 'a foreign presence that would be likely to halt the
massive killings'. But when the two missions (sent by the UN) were limited
to only five persons, that expectation evaporated. "We had no illusions
about what the UN could accomplish", admitted a high US official later.(35)
The fact which emerges with striking clarity from the record of UN
involvement, or non-involvement in Burundi is that the latter ranked far too
low in the scale of international priorities to justify anything more than a
pro forma intervention. To put the matter crudely: as long as the
killings involved only Hutu and Tutsi the crisis could be regarded as lying
essentially within the domestic jurisdiction of the state of Burundi; only
inasmuch as Hutu and Tutsi could be identified as being respectively pro
Western and pro Communist (which was no longer the case in 1972), could the
matter conceivably be viewed as a "threat to peace" by Western powers. Only
then could a rationale be established for intervention, and a criterion made
available for discriminating between 'friend' and 'foe'. In the spring of
1972 the UN clearly lacked a rationale for intervention; yet, judging from
the use made by the Burundi authorities of UNICEF trucks during the
repression, the field agencies of the UN were by no means at a loss for
identifying 'friends' and 'foes'. As Greenland tersely puts it, "the UN said
little, even when their own vehicles were requisitioned and used to take
Hutu to their deaths. It was ironic to see Landrovers marked UNICEF being
used for this purpose . . "(34) This is perhaps the reason why, until his
death in Geneva earlier this year, the Head of the UN Development Programme
in Bujumbura, Marcel Latour, was one of the two most highly regarded Western
officials in Bujumbura, the other being his long time friend, war comrade
and compatriot, Henri Bernard, the French Ambassador.
Reflecting on the appalling events of 1972 one journalist was prompted to
ask: does an international conscience exist?(37) The answer given by a
Western diplomat sums up the dilemma: "Nobody wants to start up another fuss
in a faraway country if personal interests are not involved".(38) Insofar as
it can be detected at all, what goes by the name of an "international
conscience" is the expression of convergent national interests, not of a
global commitment to moral values. How else is one to explain the blissful
indifference of world opinion to what must be regarded as one of the most
brutal massacres in the history of any single state? How can one otherwise
explain the commotion produced in Africa and Europe (and particularly in
England) by the alleged massacre of 400 Africans in Mozambique by Portuguese
security forces, and the fact that the far larger killings in Burundi went
almost unnoticed? The sad truth is that Burundi is too "far away", too "exotic",
too small, in short too marginal in terms of the priorities set by
international diplomacy to elicit concern or compassion among Westerners.
Thus the death of scores of Africans at the hands of the Portuguese
colonialists is viewed as an intolerable. scandal by white liberals (as it
should); the Burundi killings, by contrast, are seen as a mere statistic.
The crux of the dilemma concerning Burundi's future is whether further
periodic massacres can be instituted without triggering conflicting moves on
the part of its neighbours, Rwanda, Tanzania and Zaire. The latter two in
particular, by virtue of their geographical position and political weight,
have a vital role to play, not only in influencing President Micombero
towards more moderate policies, but in preventing the occurrence of a
'client war' in which Rwanda would side with Tanzania and Zaïre
________________________________________________________________________________________
- 22 -
with Burundi. The
most one can hope for the time being is for the three states that once made
up Belgian Africa to evolve a common framework of co operative relations
with a view to maximizing their chances of economic viability while at the
same time reducing the risks of confrontation and hostility at the domestic
and international levels. If neither the UN nor the OA were able to
influence the course of events in 1972, one would hope that they might at
least try to mobilize world opinion in suport of initiatives aiming at
preventing the recurrence of these events in the foreseable future.
_______________________________________________________________________________________
- 23 -
FOOTNOTES TO PART
ONE
_____________________________
(1)The phrase is borrowed from an Intelligence Memorandum circulated within
the US State Department, quoted in a Special Report of the Carnegie
Endowment for International Peace, Passing by.. The United States and
Genocide in Burundi, 19 72 (hereafter quoted as Passing by), p.6
(2) A. F. Duke of Mecklemburg, In the Heart of Africa (London, 1910)
p.44.
(3) Ibid., p.47.
(4) F. Rodegem, "Burundi: La Face Cachée de la Rébellion'', Intermédiaire
15 June, 1973, p.15.
(5) F. Rodegem, Onomastique Rundi (Bujumbura, 1965; mimeo.) p. 155.
(6) The prominence of Hima elements in government is shown by the recent
reshuffling of cabinet posts (March 12, 1974): the Ministries of Justice,
Finance and Public Works have been entrusted, respectively, to Philippe
Minani, Major Samuel Nduwingoma, and Major Edouard Nzambimana, all three of
Hima origins. Meanwhile the influence of the Basapfu appears to be receding:
Major Albert Shibura, once the leading figure of the Basapfu "clan" is
currently serving as Ambassador to Peking; André Yanda, who once held the
post of Secretary General of the Jeunesses Révolutionnaires Rwagasore
(of which more later) before acting as chargé d'affaires in Peking (from
February to September 1973), is currently Ambassador to Tanzania; Longin
Kanuma, ex-Governor of Bururi Province and subsequently Minister of Public
Works, was dismissed from this post on 12 March, 1974; Prime Minister
Nyongabo, at one time Directeur de Cabinet in the Prime Minister's Office,
lost his job in March 1971. Among the Basapfu who still retain influence in
government are Gilles Bizamubute, Minister of Education, Pie Kanyoni, Mayor
of Bujumbura, and possibly Artémon Simbananiye, Minister of Foreign Affairs
(the latter is sometimes said to belong to the Banyakarama rather than to
the Basapfu clan).
(7) G. Simmel, Conflict, trans. by Kurt Wolff (Glencoe, 1955), p.98.
(8) Roger M. Williams, "Slaughter in Burundi", World, 21 November,
1972, p.20.
(9) H. Meyer, Die Barundi (Leipzig, 1916), cited by Jeremy Greenland
in "Black Racism in Burundi", New Blackfriars, October, 1973,
p.444.
(10) For further elaboration on this point see, R. Lemarchand, Rwanda and
Burundi (London, 1970), p.344.
(11) Ibid., p.414.
(12) Officially known since 1967 as the Jeunesses Révolutionaires
Rwagasore (JRR), and until then as the Jeunesses Nationalistes
Rwagasore (JNR), the movement was created in Lubumbashi (then known as
Elizabethville) by Prime Nyangabo and Gilles Bizamubute, both of whom were
at the time attending the Université Officielle du Congo. As the youth wing
of the Uprona party, the JNR emerged as the most powerful pressure
group in Burundi politics. In fact the worst abuses commited during the 1972
slaughter have been attributed to JRR militants. For further details on the
early history of the movement, see my Rwanda and Burundi (London &
New York, 1970), p.347 ff.
(13) Lemarchand, op. cit. p.428.
(14) Ibid., p.453.
(15) This is the generic term commonly used to designate the rebel forces
operating in the Congo (now Zaïre) in 1964-65, after the late Pierre Mulele,
key organizer of the rebellion in his home province of Kwilu in western
Zaïre. In this context, however, the term is a misnomer. The Kwilu maquis
was located hundreds of miles away from the Burundi border and few if any of
Mulele's followers became involved in the eastern rebellion. In this case
the so called “mulelistes” were in fact followers of Gaston Soumialot, the
man primarily responsible for organizing the insurrection in eastern Zaïre.
Most of them were drawn from the remnants of Soumialot's rebel army, the
so-called Armée Populaire de Libération (APL).
_______________________________________________________________________________________
- 24 -
(16) Given the
predominance of Babembe elements among the refugees it is significant to
note that a substantial proportion of Soumialot's Armée Populaire de
Libération (APL) happened to be recruited among the Babembe populations
of Fizi and Albertville, in eastern Zaïre (whereas most leadership positions
within the APL were entrusted to Tetela-Jusu elements). The Babembe formed
the shock troops of the APL during the capture of Kasongo and Kindu in July
1964, and they also participated in the capture of Kisangani. Their courage
became proverbial, and since at first many of the witch doctors employed by
the APL were of Babembe origins their military prowess was generally
attributed to the quality of their magic (dawa) and the efficacy of
their initiation rites. It is easy to see, in these conditions, why the
presence of Babembe elements in Burundi should have acted as a major
contributory factor to the spread of rebel activities. For further details
on the role of the Babembe during the 1964 Congo rebellion, see Benoit
Verhaegen, Rébellions au Congo, Vol. 2 (Brussels, 1969), passim.
(17) Interestingly, among the Mulelists who took part in the Burundi risings
was a certain Martin Kasongo, in Charge of Information, Press, Security and
Justice in the rebel government set up in Albertville in the summer of 1964,
and widely known for his unpredictable and volatile dispositions. Verhaegen
does not hesitate to refer to him as a "clown" (Rébellions au Congo,
Vol. 2, p.454), He ended up being the object of considerable distrust on the
part of Soumialot who, utterly exasperated by Kasongo's shenanigans, decided
to send him "on mission" to Burundi in early August 1964. On his return to
Burundi a few weeks later Kasongo was charged with embezzlement; in
September 1964 he was arrested in Stanleyville at the request of Soumialot
and brought back to Kindu under military escort. By 1966 he was reported to
be living in Kigoma (Tanzania), a few miles away from the Burundi border.
The foregoing lends substance to Micombero's statement, in an interview with
Marvine Howe of the New York Times, that "Kasongo had stolen 4
million Burundi francs at Nyanza Lac and had disappeared". "I want his head",
added Micombero, "declaring that Mr. Kasongo deserved the death sentence for
having organized the massacre".See The New York Times, 11 June, 1972;
for further details on the role played by Kasongo during the Congo Rebellion,
see Benoit Verhaegen, Rébellions au Congo, Vol. 2, pp. 453
459.
(18)Martin Howe, "Slaughter in Burundi: How Ethnic Conflict Erupted", New
York Times, 11 June, 1972. The use of drugs and magic by Mulelists has
been acknowledged by the number of eye witnesses mostly missionaries; for
further evidence see Father Antonio Falaguasta, "Burundi: Lotta per la
Sopravvivenza", Da Nigrizia, 1 June, 1973, p. 16.
(19) Ibid.
(20) Ibid.
(21)Ibid.
(22) Ibid.; according to Greenland "the Protestant Churches appear to
have suffered proprotionally more severe losses than the Roman Catholic
Church. The Anglicans lost 15 of their 35 ordained men. Of 138 Catholic
Abbes, 18 were killed. As a Catholic spokesman has pointed out, more Burundi
priests were killed during the summer of 1972 than have died of natural
causes since the first ordination in 1925 .... Over recent months every
single Hutu candidate to the priesthood at the Grand Seminary has fled the
country because their bishop, a Tutsi, would not guarantee to protect them
if a new wave of persecution broke out. There will be an almost tribal
priesthood to match a tribal army". Greenland, op. cit. pp. 447 8.
(23) Greenland, op. cit., p.445.
(24) Uganda Argus, 5 April, 1972
(25)Martin Howe, op. cit.
(26) Greenland, op. cit.
(27) In a personal communication to this writer; see also Jeremy Greenland,
"Black Racism in Burundi", New Blackfriars (Oxford), October 1973,
p.446.
(28)In November 1959 Rwanda became the scene of widespread rural violence,
instigated by Hutu elements against Tutsi, ultimately prompting the Belgian
administration and the local Catholic clergy to throw their weight behind
the insurgents. Thousands of Tutsi were massacred between 1959 and 1962,
their property looted or confiscated. Two years after independence, in 1964,
an abortive raid of Tutsi refugees from Burundi triggered a massive killing
of Tutsi elements still living in Rwanda. For further information, see my
Rwanda and Burundi, op. cit.
(29) Greenland op. cit., p.447.
______________________________________________________________________________________
- 25 -
(30)For further details, see Tanzania Daily News, 26 and 30
March, 1973.
(31)As one French
diplomat confided to this writer, in the summer of 1973, « si
nous devions nous appuyer sur les Hutus, nous aurions devant nous une
kyrielle de Bokassas; de cela nous ne voulons pas ».
("If we were to seek the support of the
Hutus we'd be confronted with a whole batch of Bokassas; we don't want
that".) This tendency to attribute innate behavioural characteristics to
ethnic groups has a long pedigree in the colonial histories of Rwanda and
Burundi. Just as the Belgians saw in the presumed astuteness and
intelligence of the Tutsi further justification for a policy of indirect
rule, much the same kind of prejudice colours the official attitude of the
French in contemporary Burundi.
(32)Jeremy Greenland, in a personal communication.
(33) Passing by, op.
cit., pp. 13‑17.
Despite the reservations one may have about the prescriptive side of the
Carnegie report, and indeed the accuracy of its descriptive sections, one
must nonetheless congratulate the authors for bringing within the
consciousness of the American public the dimensions of the Burundi tragedy,
and the scale of American indifference in the face of this tragedy.
Especially revealing in this respect is the content of the exchange between
Robert Yost, a career officer nominated to succeed Ambassador Melady in
Bujumbura, and Senator Fulbright, Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations
Committee, on 23 June, 1972, Ibid., pp.35‑37.
As the authors point out, "the transcript of that hearing, against a
background of enormous human suffering, might be required reading for all
those concerned with the failure of the (American) Congress to meet its
responsibilities in foreign affairs". The hearing, too long to be reproduced
here, sounds like the captions of a comic‑strip.
(34)Quoted in Passing By, op. cit. p.9.
(35)Ibid. p. 11 .
(36)Jeremy Greenland, "Black Racism in Burundi", op. cit.,
p.450.
(37)Frederic Hunter, "Burundi and World Conscience", Christian Science
Monitor, 11 April, 1973.
(38) Ibid.
*
* *
Professor Lemarchand would particularly like to thank Jeremy Greenland and
Professor J. P. Chrétien for commenting on the draft of his report.
- 26 -
APPENDIX 1
Political Benchmarks in the Recent History of Burundi
October 13, 1961:
Assassination of Crown Prince Louis Rwagasore, Prime Minister Designate and
leader of Parti de l'Union et du Progrès National (Uprona).
July 1, 1962: Burundi becomes independent as a separate entity from Rwanda;
the administrative unit born of the amalgamation of Rwanda and Burundi (the
United Nations Trust Territory of Rwanda Urundi) is formally dissolved.
January 15, 1965: Prime Minister Pierre Ngendandumwe (Hutu) assassinated by
Tutsi refugee from Rwanda; succeeded by Joseph Bamina (Hutu).
May 10, 1965: First post-independence elections to National Assembly
resulting in Hutu majority.
September 13, 1965: Léopold Biha (ganwa) is appointed Prime Minister by the
Court, in defiance of the Hutu majority in the National Assembly.
October 19, 1965: Putsch by Hutu military personnel thwarted by army
loyalists under Captain Michel Micombero; Prime Minister Biha seriously
wounded by putchists; reprisals against Hutu follow.
November 2, 1965: Mwami (King) Mwambutsa leaves for Europe, never to return.
March 24, 1966: Mwami confers substantial powers on his son, Crown Prince
Charles Ndizeye.
July 8, 1966: Crown Prince deposes his absent father, dismisses the Biha
government and suspends the constitution.
July 11, 1966: Defense Minister Micombero forms government.
September 1, 1966: Crown Prince installed as Mwami Ntare V.
November 28, 1966: Micombero deposes Mwami, proclaims the Republic.
September 17, 1969: Disclosure of a plan for a Hutu led coup result in the
arrest of about thirty Hutu leaders, all of whom are subsequently executed.
July 12, 1971: Disclosure of an alleged plot of Banyaruguru elements (of
Tutsi origins) against the government, leading to the arrest and trial of
several leading Tutsi personalities in the army and the government.
October 20, 1971: President Micombero sets up the "Supreme Council of the
Republic" (Conseil Suprême de la République), consisting of 27 officers; the
functions of this junta-type organization of 27 officers; the functions of
this junta-type organization are to "counter all tendencies likely to
endanger national unity and peace ... to give its opinion on the selection,
maintenance in office or replacement of persons responsible for the
stewardship of public affairs and to insure discipline in all State organs".
January 12, 1972: Nine of the personalities brought to trial in connection
with the anti-government plot of July 1971 are condemned to death; seven
others receive life sentences.
March 30, 1972: Ex-King Ntare returns to Bujumbura. He is immediately
arrested and sent to Gitega.
April 29, 1972: Micombero dismisses all members of his cabinet. A few hours
later, between 8.00 and 9.00 pm, co-ordinated attacks by Hutu and Mulelists
are reported in Bujumbura, Gitega, Bururi and Nyanza-Lac. Thousands of Tutsi
are exterminated. In order to forestall a monarchist coup ex-King Ntare is
executed in Gitega during the night of April 29 30.
May 3, 1972: Zaïrian troops arrive in Bujumbura. The Burundi army, assisted
by jeunesses groups, moves into the countryside to conduct the
repression.
May 6, 1972: 'War councils' meet in provincial centers to organize the
repression. According to one observer, “throughout May and June the
excavators were busy every night in Gitega and Bujumbura burying the dead in
mass graves”. An estimated 80,000 Hutu lost their lives during the
repression.
- 27 -
APPENDIX II
Estimated Losses of Hutu Students in
Secondary Schools and University, as of 2
July, 1972:
Total Enrolment
Institution
Students Killed Total Losses*
before losses
1.State
Schools and UOB
Université Officielle de
Bujumbura (UOB)
60 120 350
Ecole Normale (Ngagara)
8 140 314
Ecole Normale Supérieure
(Bujumbura)
20 55 135
Ecole Technique (Kamenge‑Bujumbura)
60 170 415
Athénée (Bumumbura)
Unknown 300 700
Athénée (Gitega)
ca. 40 148 380
Institut Technique Agricole de
Gitega (ITAG)
26 40 79
2.Private Schools (Catholic and Protestant)
Collège du St.
Esprit
4 4 Unknown
Ecole Technique Moyenne (ETM) of
Gihanga
27 27
Unknown
Ecole Normale (Gitega)
8 8 Unknown
Collège de
Gitega
7
Unknown
Unknown
Ecole
Moyenne Pédagogique (EMP) of Musenyi
33
Unknown Unknown
Collège de
Ngozi
26
Unknown Unknown
Ecole Médico‑Sociale (Gitega)
10 Unknown
Unknown
Collège de Matana
32 40 212
Ecole Normale
of Kiremba ca.
100 ca. 125
335
EMP (Kivoga)
44 60 Unknown
EMP (Kibimba)
6
Unknown
Unknown
EMP (Buhiga)
30 Unknown
Total
ca. 511 ca. 1,277
Note: Excluded from this appendix are several
institutions about which no figure whatsoever could be obtained.
Furthermore, in a number of cases the only figures available were for
students killed, thus leaving out those students reported to have fled the
country or gone into hiding. Hence the totals listed must be viewed as
highly conservative. According to some school authorities a total of at
least 650 students were killed during the repression; a minimum of 1,450 are
said to have disappeared (i.e. killed or in flight). The higher forms
(enseignement du cycle
supérieur) were the
hardest hit by the repression, with one student out of every 5 or 6 reported
to
have been killed.
(*)
Includes the number of students killed and those reported to have left the
country.
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
-28 -
__________________________________________________________________________________________
- 29 -
PART TWO: BY DAVID
MARTIN____________________________________________________________
Any attempt to assess Burundi's future must be measured against events in
that country and neighbouring Rwanda during the past 15 years, and even
then there is no glib or ready prediction which can be made with absolute
safety. Like the minorities of Southern Africa today, the ruling Tutsi of
Burundi feel threatened. In Rwanda they have witnessed their fellows
displaced and slaughtered. At home they have survived several attempts to
overthrow their domination and on 29 April 1972, they came perilously close
to the downfall they had long feared. These threats from the Hutu have been
ruthlessly crushed but this has only served to deepen ethnic hatred and
exacerbate the Tutsis' own fears about the fate that they will one day face.
Even after the Hutu attempt to seize power in 1972 and the vicious reprisals
of the ruling Tutsi not many people in the world were aware of the
realities of the situation in Burundi. Press interest in the West has been
minimal and 1 was the only British reporter to go to Burundi at that time
when upwards of 80,000 Hutu were being systematically slaughtered. It is
perhaps hard to understand the mute and seemingly complacent indifference
with which the world viewed ‑ or ignored – events in Burundi during those
weeks. The country was of no strategic importance and at that time of little
economic consequence. It was not English‑speaking, nor a member of the
Commonwealth and was very remote geographically and emotionally from
Europe.
Even Burundi's neighbours like Tanzania and Zaïre at that point did not
understand what was happening. President Michel Micombero struck the right
chord with Zaïre's President Mobutu Sese Seko when he claimed that he was
fighting a Mulelist invasion, and the Zaïre leader sent him troops and
planes to help. Tanzania's President Julius Nyerere sent at least 17 tons
of small arms and ammunition, and so unwittingly aiding the repression of
the Hutu. Today international awareness of the realities of Burundi is
greater ‑ but so too is the potential for further large‑scale violence in
the future.
It
is useful to try to understand the scene in Bujumbura and the surrounding
countryside late in May of 1972 in order to understand the feelings at that
point of the Tutsi. With two American correspondents at the home of the
United States Chargé d'Affaires I spent over two hours interviewing
President Micombero about what was occurring in his country. Carefully he
followed the official Government statements that there had been a joint
Mulelist‑Hutu attempt to overthrow his Government in which at least 50,000
Tutsi had been slaughtered.(1) The only consequential deviation from the
official line was his admission that King Ntare had been executed at Gitega
and not killed by the "invading" force as the Government had hitherto
claimed. To anyone who had not known what in fact had occurred and what was
still then occurring, it would have been an impressive and generally
convincing performance. He concluded by agreeing to lend us his helicopter
on the following day to tour parts of the country to see for ourselves what
had happened.
From about 30 kilometres south of Bujumbura through Rumonge and onwards to
the Tanzanian frontier, we found village after village was deserted. Huts
had been burned and amidst the ruins lay the blackened cooking pots and
other items which had survived the flames. Along the lake edge near Rumonge
lay the bleaching and swollen bodies of people who we presumed had tried to
escape the carnage and had been hunted down in the thick reeds between the
town and lake. Our pilot (a Tutsi Colonel) insisted that all the bodies
were Tutsi, but there was no way of telling whether this was true. Some had
obviously been lying there for over three weeks and we were left with the
feeling that the Tutsi needed to show us this macabre public exhibition in
order to relive the nightmare they had survived and psychologically to
justify their own vengeance. Flying inland towards the west the picture was
the same: deserted, burnt out villages, and fields and livestock untended.
Back at Bujumbura bulldozer tracks could clearly be seen from the air near
the main airport where victims had been buried in mass graves and open
trenches were waiting for more bodies. To be educated ‑ albeit only to
primary level ‑ or to have a job, was a death sentence for a Hutu. Diplomats
were hiding their cooks and gardeners at their official residences. The
banks in the capital said they had lost
__________________________
*
For footnotes to Part Two see pages 33,34
_________________________________________________________________________________________
- 30 -
over 100 Hutu employees from clerks upwards, all of whom were believed to be
dead. At the cable office, where before the uprising and repression
twenty-five Hutu had worked, only two were left. One large Belgian company
said that every single Hutu employee had disappeared and almost all of them
were thought to be dead. One of the few surviving Hutu employees I spoke to
in Bujumbura said that he had tried to escape but had been stopped at a road
block, beaten up and told to go back. He had not been involved in the
uprising so could not understand why they should do anything to him. He knew
may of his friends who had also not been involved but had been killed.
Subsequently I learned he too had disappeared.
Statistics as to the number who died are at best approximations and in some
cases wild guesses. It is safer to err on the side of conservatism and I
personally believe that the figures compiled by the churches seem most
likely to be near the mark. In the wake of the uprising and repression the
churches were putting the figure of Tutsi dead in the first phase at about
1,500, and the Hutu dead in the reprisals at over 80,000. "Double genocide"
was the description of one missionary and this is very apt, for there can be
little doubt that the Hutu initially slaughtered the Tutsi men, women and
children whom they found-although it should not be forgotten that they also
killed some Hutu; and that in the repressive phase the Hutu were the
indiscriminate targets of Tutsi revenge, although the brunt of this fell on
the employed and educated with the clear intention of leaving the Hutu as
leaderless serfs. European teachers watched helplessly as Hutu children were
taken from their classes and killed; in the army the Hutu met a similar fate
and at the University Tutsi students beat up their Hutu class mates.
One could continue ad infinitum describing the details of what
occurred but this serves little purpose in terms of understanding Burundi's
agony or trying to prevent a repetition in the future. The United States in
particular has been singled out for criticism for not bringing economic
pressure to bear in order to prevent the slaughter, but in my view it was
the United States which was largely responsible for the all too little
publicity at the time. Given the mood of Tutsi in the wake of the Hutu
uprising it is highly questionable whether any international weapon short of
actual intervention could have dissuaded them from the revenge they took.
Burundi's export earnings depend largely on coffee, of which the United
States is the largest purchaser and in 1972 this was the only real area
where economic pressure could be applied. At that time Burundi's
international quota was 17,000 tons and President Micombero's Government was
living on credit, having already used up all but 7,000 tons of the coming
season's quota through sales from the previous year's crop and having sold
only 1,000 tons on the non-quota market to the Soviet Union at approximately
half the quota market price. The Burundi Government intended to ask the
International Coffee Authority to increase the quota in 1972 because of the
country's need to reconstruct as a result of the devastation which followed
the April 29 uprising. Here in fact was a potentially important pressure
point which could be used by the international coffee producers and
purchasers.(2)
Although views are divided on the response this sort of pressure might have
received it is in my view highly problematic whether, given the Tutsi fears
at that time, it would have worked. It has been argued that to block the
sales of Burundi coffee would have hit the Hutu peasant growers hardest, but
this is a thesis of dubious merit if one considers the amount that the
grower receives compared to the amount that go into the coffers of the
almost exclusively Tutsi establishment. It is undoubtedly true that the
grower would be affected but he would not starve. The Government on the
other hand would have been deprived of its main source of income, yet even
so one cannot assume that this would have drawn the required response. It is
even possible the end result would have been counter productive, eroding
what little influence those involved were able to bring to bear; and if at
that point Burundi had severed relations with the United States and its
Embassy in Bujumbura had closed, the main source of news of what was
happening in the country would have been ended.
If the United States must shoulder any of the blame for the silence which
cloaked the slaughter, then the Organisation of African Unity which met in
Rabat during May 1972 and which totally ignored the killing must be adjudged
even more guilty by default. The Organisation continuously insists African
problems must be solved by Africans but in the case of Burundi, as well as
Uganda, it remained silent and in both cases has made little or no effort to
intervene diplomatically. On the contrary the former OAU administrative
secretary-general, Mr Diallo Telli of Guinea passed through Bujumbura on his
way north from Zaïre during the slaughter and not only accepted the official
and untrue Burundi Government version of events but went on to voice it as a
fact.
_______________________________________________________________________________________-
- 31-
The questions of
Uganda and Burundi raise disturbing moral issues. One of the former
Ministers of Uganda's President Amin wrote from exile in a memorandum to
African leaders that whereas Africa annually marked the Sharpeville massacre
when white South African police shot dead Africans, they ignored the much
more massive killings in Uganda. Was genocide, he asked, an internal matter
or a matter for all mankind? African nations by speaking out about what was
occurring in Burundi and Uganda could have brought much more pressure to
bear than white Western nations whose statements would tend to be dismissed
as "imperialist propaganda". A greater sense of responsibility in the future
on a continent which talks of brotherhood and unity could be an important
pressure point. The question of the sale of arms to Colonel Micombero's
Government and the military training of Burundi personnel raises complex
issues. The cynicism of countries such as France over arms sales is well
established in both independent and white dominated Africa. Although France
has officially denied it, there can be little doubt that a French pilot flew
one of the two helicopters which attacked villages several miles inside
Tanzania in 1973 when a number of people were killed, huts burnt and crops
destroyed.(3) Many of the dead were Hutu refugees who had fled the
repression, and Burundi was finally forced to admit responsibility for these
attacks and agree to pay compensation. It is a question of morality whether
arms should continue to be sold to President Micombero's Government and
military training given to his exclusively Tutsi army. It can be argued that
the Tutsi must be given the means to defend themselves against continuous
Hutu threats to depose and slaughter them. But equally the weapons and
training they are given are directed against the Hutu, innocent and guilty
alike.
The need to de-fuse the situation on Burundi's borders by removing the
thousands of Hutu refugees is argued by the United Nations High Commission
for Refugees.(4) Just how many Hutu refugees are living in neighbouring
countries is uncertain but the official figures are about 40,000 in both
Tanzania and Zaïre and a further 20,000 in Rwanda. But it must be stressed
these are official figures and only include those people moved some distance
away from Burundi's frontier-in the case of Tanzania, to camps near Tabora.
There are undoubtedly many thousands more still living in the frontier areas
particularly along Tanzania's remote and mountainous border with Burundi,
and as long as they remain there they pose a continuing threat to bi-lateral
relations as well as increase the likelihood of incursions across the
frontier which could lead to more bloody repression. With the Hutu living on
either side of the Burundi Tanzania frontier, it is easy for the refugees to
move in with relatives and friends in Tanzania and to integrate into society
as Tanzanians. There is no doubt that some of the people who took part in
the 1973 attacks on southern Burundi when Nyanza Lac was overrun did cross
from northern Tanzania and the bulk of these people are still in the
frontier area. It is not that Tanzania is not aware of the problem and not
prepared to do anything about it. On the contrary. But the problem lies
partially in the remoteness of the area and rounding up those refugees who
do not register, partly in the limitations of Tanzania's resources to re-settle
them away from the frontier, and finally in the fact that with a liberation
war going on on her southern border with Mozambique, and with uncertainty on
her north west border with Uganda, the Tanzanian army is already at full
stretch.
What can the international community do to help here?(5) Insofar as the
border control and removal of the refugees from the frontier is concerned
there is probably very little that can be done. But largescale international
assistance to a Burundi refugee re-settlement programme well away from the
frontier would remove some of the present financial burden from Tanzania,
and in turn act as an incentive for the refugees to move to better
conditions as well as for the Tanzanians to make them do so. Refugees are
already involved in tobacco schemes near Tabora, and a positive programme
for re-settlement publicised among the refugees in the frontier area could
act as a magnet to draw them away and thus help to reduce future potential
trouble.
One major problem however that remains and seems likely to give fuel to
future uprisings is that during the 1973 attack on Nyanza Lac the Hutu are
believed to have captured over 220 rifles and several thousand rounds of
ammunition. Reports from southern Burundi today, where much of the
countryside is now deserted, say that a guerrilla training camp has been set
up with some 250 men, and leaders of this group have been known to have
crossed into Tanzania where some local officials and missionaries are far
from unsympathetic towards them. One of these leaders did approach an
Embassy in Dar es Salaam for support, which the Embassy says was refused,
and a Western diplomat met the same man in a hotel on the shores of the
Tanzanian Lake Victoria town of Bukoba. Some of the White Father
Missionaries on the Tanzanian side of the frontier make little pretence
about their sympathy for the Hutu and appear to have advance knowledge of
their plans. On the part of some of the missionaries there seems to be
little attempt to discourage further incursions which can only lead to
increased bloodshed.
________________________________________________________________________________________
- 32 -
Those giving aid to Burundi today must take considerable care that they are
not just aiding the Tutsi.(6) Where educational institutions are almost
exclusively Tutsi, should teachers be seconded from overseas?(7) Where
agricultural, irrigation or health schemes are aimed almost exclusively at
the Tutsi should foreign donors go ahead? This same question should be
posed insofar as all future aid to Burundi is concerned, for the way to
ultimate ethnic harmony does not lie in cementing the position of a
minority. Rather in the long term this is only likely to exacerbate ethnic
conflict.
But pressure on the Tutsi must be subtle. The Government of Colonel
Micombero can today have no credibility among the Hutu; and yet it is hard
to imagine how it can be changed short of further blood‑letting or another
military coup d'état by those who feel that he has still not been
tough enough in dealing with the Hutu in order to preserve Tutsi
dominance.
In
the final analysis there is no single means to deal with the problem of
Burundi. Rather the answer must lie in a related series of approaches aimed
at removing the immediate threat of further uprisings and repression while
endeavouring to create a different climate within Burundi.
In
the first place efforts must be made to keep the international press
informed about the situation in Burundi. A continuous barrage of hostile
publicity will not help, for this will only have the effect of making the
ruling Tutsi more withdrawn. But if a further crisis occurs, immediate,
wide and informed press reporting would act as vital pressure. It is my
belief that when the media finally got round to drawing attention to what
was occurring in May and June 1972 this did to some extent act as a
deterrent force on the Burundi Government. But tragically by then it was
too late for tens of thousands of people. Thus a small group of concerned ‑
but not hostile ‑ people keeping continuously in touch with events in
Burundi, able to brief European and North American editors, leader‑writers
and political correspondents (as well as politicians) would be very
important. In my view, except in the case of further large‑scale bloodshed,
this should be done as confidentially as possible with church, diplomatic
and other contacts established in Burundi and neighbouring countries where
off‑the‑record information and sources would be protected.
Recent important discoveries of minerals in Burundi(8) could well mean the
first large‑scale outside investment and development, and here again efforts
must be made to dissuade investors from employing only Tutsi in senior jobs
or having no staff higher training schemes or scholarships for the Hutu.
This may not be easy, but pressure can be brought to bear in Europe and
North America at least through reports in the press of the countries
concerned.
In
many ways the single most important man in terms of bringing pressure to
bear on Colonel Micombero is President Nyerere, for landlocked Burundi
relies almost exclusively on Tanzania for her trade routes to the Indian
Ocean via Lake Tanganyika, Kigoma and on to Dar es Salaam. The effect of
this somewhat blunt weapon was amply demonstrated in 1973 after Burundi
troops had attacked Tanzania for the second time but denied responsibility.
Dock workers at Dar es Salaam and Kigoma, with clear backing if not active
encouragement, from the Tanzanian Government, boycotted Burundi goods.
Colonel Micombero was finally forced to attend a meeting in Tanzania with
President Nyerere and President Mobutu acting as mediator where the
Burundi leader has to admit responsibility and agree to compensation before
the boycott was called off. Although President Nyerere early in May 1972
was unaware of the realities of Burundi he is under no illusions today and
can be expected to be responsive to any quiet initiatives to resolve future
immediate or long term problems.
International bodies such as the United Nations(9) or the Organisation of
African Unity are notoriously unresponsive to attempts to bring matters like
the Burundi repression before them, and because of so many skeletons in so
many cupboards are inclined to fall back on the well‑worn argument of not
interfering in the internal affairs of other states. A further problem is
that it is usually many months (and even years) before a report such as this
can be submitted and some members may feel little purpose is served by a
diplomatic crisis over something which is, so to speak, dead and buried.
However if informed lobbying groups can be created in various countries
these could bring pressure on their Governments to support any necessary
action, in an effort to prevent a repetition of this tragedy.
_________________________________________________________________________________________
- 33 -
FOOTNOTES TO PART
TWO
__________________
(1)"Despite overwhelming evidence that the killing proceeded along ethnic
lines and was aimed mainly at the Hutus, the government denied that there
was any ethnic basis to the conflict. In what amounted to an incredible
inconsistency, the June 6, 1972 official government white paper from the New
York office of the Burundi U.N. mission spoke of 'Hutu-attempted genocide
against the Tutsi ethnos.' In attacking the press for emphasizing tribalism
in explaining the Burundi crisis, the white paper asserted:
If tribalism is to be mentioned, think of the one you have dissipated into
our society. You craftily took advantage of the naivete or cupidity of
certain of our citizens. In a few years you destroyed the secular product of
our ancestors. You distinguish between the Burundese citizens, labeling them
as Hutu and Tutsi You did not stop there. You convinced Hutu of the
necessity of massacring Tutsi. All this with the best interests in mind, in
the name of democracy! Oh! Democracy, how many crimes have been committed in
your name; but providence is not democratic, nor is the massacre of the
Tutsi minority by the Hutu majority which failed in 1960 1961, in 1965 and
in 1969, and finally again in 1972.
From the above, one cannot help but conclude that the government has
completed a full circle, from its first denying the ethnic origins of the
conflict to its confirming its significant role in the 1972 upheaval in
Burundi."
--William J. Butler and George Obiozor, "The Burundi Affair 1972", IDOC
N. America, 1973.
(2) For a full analysis of "the coffee question" see Morris, R., Passing
By: The United States and Genocide in Burundi 1972, Carnegie
Endowment for International Peace, Washington DC, 1973.
(3) Burundi's tiny civilian airline, STAB, seems recently to have been
disbanded. The aircraft, a few DC 3s, formerly maintained and piloted by
French civilian personnel, have been taken over by the Burundi army and are
now maintained and piloted by French "military" personnel. As a reward for
these services rendered, it is believed that Air France will shortly
commence direct flights to Bujumbura.
(4) Aid to refugees from Burundi in Tanzania in 1974 will have to be
increased by nearly one million dollars as a result of the sudden expansion
of the population of the Katumba settlement early in 1974 from 10,000 to
nearly 40,000 people.
(5) "The international community has an obligation to some of these new
states, which in most cases it helped to create. It is probable that the
tendency of the governments of the new states to become authoritarian is
caused not by hatred of democracy or democratic principles. For in most
cases, there is neither an economic base nor a democratic tradition. Most or
all of the new states were products of colonial administrations which were
anything but democratic, in fact, and whose preference for one ethnic group
over the other depended upon to whom they could "safely" hand over power
upon independence. If the Belgians had established a democracy in Burundi,
perhaps the Hutu majority might have been in power; at the very least, it
might have been represented in the government and consequently represented
in the nation's armed forces in proportion to its numbers."
- Butler and Obiozor, op. cit.
(6) It must be noted that the Burundi régime does not consider wives and
children of Hutu killed in the 1972 events to be "victims of oppression". In
official parlance the thousands of Hutu killed were "rebels" whose guilt was
"proved" when their names were found on "lists of plotters". All the
personal property of these "rebels" (bank accounts, cars, clothes and even
furniture in some cases) was legitimate booty for those who killed them, and
very little has ever been restituted.
The International League of Red Cross Societies made several efforts to
ensure that its humanitarian aid went to both Hutu and Tutsi victims but
withdrew from Burundi when the regime made this impossible (see [Red Cross]
Final Report 28 March 1973). The Red Cross also declined to serve as a
channel for UN aid when requested to do so.
For a full analysis of the voluntary agencies and aid, see Weinstein W.
Humanitarian Aid and Civil Strife: Politics versus Relief in
Burundi, paper presented to the Annual Meeting of the African Studies
Association, November 1973.
(7) The people need education for citizenship, education for technical
skills. For example, the illiteracy rate in Burundi is 90 per cent; life
expectancy is 39 years.
__________________________________________________________________________________________
- 34 -
(8) Vast nickel deposits were recently discovered in Burundi. The US
embassy pressed the State Department to restore normal relations with the
Burundi régime on the grounds that such normalisation would provide
"opportunities for American corporations that are interested in exploiting
the major new mineral discovery". (US State Dept. memorandum, quoted by
Anderson, J. "Nickel Politics" New York Post 13 March 1974)
Such normalisation would also preclude comment on and publicity of
Burundi's internal affairs. According to Meisler (Los Angeles Times
8 April 1973) the US embassy in Burundi demanded that its
counterpart in Kenya stop briefing the American press on the atrocities.
See also Morris, R. "The Triumph on Money and Power" New York
Times 3 March 1974.
(9) The U.N. has been involved in Burundi since 1946, when it
inherited it from the League mandate administered by Belgium, to its full
independence in 1962. The U.N. has provided substantial amounts for
relief purposes in several of Burundi's uprisings ‑through the office of
the High Commissioner for Refugees in 1965. The U.N. also sent
observer teams to Burundi during the 1972 upheaval to investigate
cases of genocide, relief problems, and so forth.
___________________________________________________________________________________________
- 35 -
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________
BIBLIOGRAPHY
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________
Butler, William J. and Obiozor, George, "The Burundi Affair 1972", IDOC-N.
America, April 1973.
Cart, Henri-Philippe, "Etudiants et Construction Nationale au Burundi"
Les Cahiers du Cedaf (Bruxelles), Nos. 2/3, 1973, 93 pp.
Chretién, Jean Pierre, "Une révolte au Burundi en 1934", Annales, No.
6 November-December 1970, pp. 1678-1718.
C.I.T.M. (Centre Information Tiers Monde), Dossier Burundi, March
1973, 72 pp.
Forscher, Romain, "Les Massacres du Burundi", Esprit (Paris),
July-August, 1972, pp. 123-131.
Greenland, Jeremy, "Black Racism in Burundi", New Black Friars
(Oxford October, 1973, pp. 443-451.
Greenland, Jeremy, "African bloodbath that most of the world ignored",
The Times (London), 4 January` 1974.
Greenland, Jeremy "The Reform of Education in Burundi: Enlightened Theory
faced with Political Reality", Comparative Education, No. 1, Vol. X,
March 1974, pp. 57-63.
Howe, Marvine, "Slaughter in Burundi: How Ethnic Conflict Erupted", The
New York Times, 11 June, 1972.
Lemarchand, René, Rwanda and Burundi (London & New York, 1970), 562
pp.
Lemarchand, René "The Passing of Mwamiship in Burundi", Africa Report
Vol. 12 No. 1 January 1967, pp. 14-24.
Lettre Pastorale des Evêques du Burundi ("La Justice est Possible et
La Paix Aussi"), Bujumbura, January 1973, 31 pp.
Livre Blanc sur les Evènements Survenus aux Mois d'Avril et Mai 1972
République de Burundi, Ministère de l'Information, Bujumbura, 1972.
Meyer, Hans Die Barundi (Leipzig, 1916).
Rodegem, F., "Burundi: La Face Cachée de la Rébellion", Intermediaire
June 12-15, 1973, pp. 15-19.
Trouwborst, Albert, "Le Burundi" in Les Anciens Royaumes de la Zone
Interlacustre Meridionale: R wanda, Burundi, Buha (Tervueren,
1962), pp. 117-165.
Trouwborst, Albert, "Kinship and Geographical Mobility in Burundi",
International Journal of Comparative Sociology, Vol. 4, No. 1
(March 1965), pp. 166-182.
Williams, Roger M., "Slaughter in Burundi: A First Hand Account", World,
21 November, 1972, pp. 20-24.
_____________________________________________________________________________________________
- 36 -
The following documentary films are also available:
Telco number
721648 "Ruanda Burundi." 30 minutes, colour.
Shows everyday life in these two states and
their growing dependence on oil.
Producer B.P.,
Britannic House, Moor Lane, London EC2. Mr. A. R. Turner, Films
Department.
722463 "Refugees From Burundi." 13 minutes 16 seconds,
colour.
Several thousand Hutus managed to escape the
Watutsi massacres in Burundi in
1972.
They fled to Tanzania and film shows aerial shots of Burundi, new refugees
arriving in
the port of Kigoma, interviews with nurses and refugees at Camp
Pangales, Tabora
Region, Tanzania. (English, French and Swahili
interviews.
International sound track
and English text available). Producer AVRO/Holland.
Distributor NOS, Postbus 10,
Hilversum, Holland. Telex 11320 Pohl.
734654 "Burundi:
Two Races, One People" (Burundi: Deux ethnies
pour un seul peuple.)
38 minutes,
colour.
J~
Film includes interviews with soldiers,
the President of Burundi, the education
minister
and foreign minister on the feud between the Tutsi and the Hutu and the
possibility
of co‑existence. Broadcast 25 October 1973 Swiss French TV in "Temps
présent''. 20 Quai Ecole de
Medecine, 1200 Geneva, Switzerland. Telex 27701.
724755 "What Happened in Burundi?" 17 minutes 22 seconds,
colour.
Claude van Engeland interviews two Belgian
technicians, one of whom will return to
Burundi,
the other who will not. Situation report by Production le 60. Broadcast 29
September 1972 RTB in
"9,000,009". Services de la Télévision, Cité de la la
Radio‑Télévision, Schaerbeek‑ Linthout,
Brussels 4, Belgium. Telex 21437.
Details of the above films supplied by Richard S. Clark, Television
Co‑ordination
Services,
North Orbital Road, Denham, Uxbridge UB9 5HE, Middlesex, U.K.
___________________________________________________________________________________________
Professor René
Lemarchand has travelled extensively in the former Belgian territories of
Central Africa, and is the author of R wanda and Burundi (London,
1970).
David Martin has
until recently been the Observer correspondent in Dar‑es‑Salaam. He
was in Burundi at the time of the 1972 killings.
Professor
Lemarchand writes:
"In view of the lavish hospitality I received from the Burundi authorities,
including President Micombero, during the summer of 1973, it may be that
this report will be seen as a shocking violation of the law of reciprocity,
of the time‑honoured custom of giving and returning the equivalence. To
those who might have expected this report to be a form of ingorore
(a gift offered as a token of gratitude), I wish to make it clear at the
outset that this is emphatically not the spirit in which it has been
written. The motives which impelled me to write it are perhaps better
expressed in the old kirundi proverb ‑ umugabo amira intore ntamira
ijambo, a man swallows his food but not his words ‑ or, more loosely
translated, gifts are not enough to buy a man's silence. Ultimately, my hope
is that in shedding light on the circumstances which lie in the background
of the tragic events of 1972 this report may make a small contribution
toward preventing the recurrence of similar tragedies in the future. Only in
this sense does it claim the quality of an ingorore.
"
The cover photograph is by Ms.
Sarah Errington. The map was drawn by Mr. Radovic
This report was
first published in July 1974
________________________________________________________________________________________________
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