Life after Violence: A People's Story of Burundi

by Peter Uvin, Alcinda Honwana, Alex de Waal, Richard Dowden, Stephanie Kitchen

Overview

Burundi has recently emerged from twelve years of devastating civil war. Its economy has been destroyed and hundreds and thousands of people have been killed. In this book, the voices of ordinary Burundians are heard for the first time.

Farmers, artisans, traders, mothers, soldiers and students talk about the past and the future, war and peace, their hopes for a better life and their relationships with each other and the state. Young men, in particular, often seen as the cause of violence and war, talk about the difficulties of living up to standards of masculinity in an impoverished and war-torn society.

Weaving a rich tapestry, Peter Uvin pitches the ideas and aspirations of people on the ground against the theory and assumptions often made by the international development and peace-building agencies and organisations. In doing this, he illuminates both shared goals and misunderstandings. This groundbreaking book on conflict and society in Africa will have profound repercussions for development across the world.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781848131804
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Academic
Publication date:	12/01/2008
Series:	African Arguments
Pages:	224
Product dimensions:	5.00(w) x 7.70(h) x 0.50(d)

About the Author

Peter Uvin is the Henry J. Leir Professor of International Humanitarian Studies and Academic Dean at the Fletcher School, Tufts University. In recent years, his research and practice has dealt with the intersection between development aid, human rights, and conflict, mostly in the African Great Lakes region. His previous books include Human Rights and Development (2004) and Aiding Violence: The Development Enterprise in Rwanda (1989) which received the African Studies Association's Herskowits award for the most outstanding book on Africa in 1998. He spends a large amount of his time working for various agencies in the Great Lakes region.
Peter Uvin is the Henry J. Leir Professor of International Humanitarian Studies and Academic Dean at the Fletcher School, Tufts University. In recent years, his research and practice has dealt with the intersection between development aid, human rights, and conflict, mostly in the African Great Lakes region. His previous books include Human Rights and Development (2004) and Aiding Violence: The Development Enterprise in Rwanda (1989) which received the African Studies Association's Herskowits award for the most outstanding book on Africa in 1998. He spends a large amount of his time working for various agencies in the Great Lakes region.

Read an Excerpt

Life after Violence

A People's Story of Burundi

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By Peter Uvin

Zed Books Ltd

Copyright © 2009 Peter Uvin
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-84813-180-4

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CHAPTER 1

A brief political history of Burundi

The pre-colonial period

Before the arrival of the colonizer, Burundi was a kingdom with a fine socio-political hierarchy. At the top, the king (Mwami) was surrounded by an aristocratic/princely class (Ganwa), which was in competition for the next kingship. The king was neither Hutu nor Tutsi – he embodied the nation. In the middle, various levels of Tutsi existed – first those at the royal court in Muramvya, the Tutsi-Banyaruguru; below them the ordinary pastoralist Tutsi, mainly Tutsi-Hima. Below, there were the large masses of Hutu. All these groups were divided and united by lineage and clan and by the changing vagaries of closeness to the court. The Twa, few in number, were ill considered by all. Hutu chiefs existed at different levels, and some Hutu played major roles in the royal administration. Finally, there were the Bashingantahe – wise men, appointed by local communities themselves, acting as local mediators and judges. Many of them were Hutu. This is very similar to neighboring Rwanda, but Burundi's pre-colonial set-up was more inclusive, more stable, than Rwanda's.

What is similar to Rwanda is that there is in Burundi a lot of debate about the nature of key historical trends and concepts as well, starting with the very basic ones: are Hutu, Tutsi and Twa different races? Different ethnic groups, with different historical origins? Or simply different castes, socio-professional organizations that are rather closed off and hereditary but leave some measure of flexibility? Could people change from Hutu to Tutsi and vice versa? Was the king originally Hutu? And the Ganwa?

There were no wars or conflicts between Hutu and Tutsi during these years: this does not mean that equality prevailed or that stereotypes were absent – traditional proverbs clearly show that not to be the case – but that the system displayed a fair degree of legitimacy and was capable of addressing social conflicts.

The colonial period

Germany, briefly, and then Belgium, for four decades, controlled Burundi through indirect rule. The king and his court and administrators continued to run the country, with the colonial authority simply an extra layer on top. Serious reforms of the system were, however, undertaken by Belgium from 1926 to 1933. The Ganwas and Tutsis were seen by the colonial power as the ruling group while the Hutus were naturally destined to obey, and all Hutu authorities were dismissed. As a result, while formally the old political structure of the country remained intact, colonization profoundly altered its nature. Political, social, and economic relations became more rigid, unequal, and biased against Hutu. The power and wealth of the Ganwa particularly, as well as some Tutsi, increased (Prunier 1994). Higher education was rarely extended to the population, and the few who had access to it were, again, powerful Ganwa and Tutsi.

At the same time, the state intervened more heavily in people's lives. New taxes were introduced, as was mandatory cropping and occasional forced labor for the maintenance of streets and buildings. Some of these measures were ostensibly for the people's benefit – mandatory manioc cropping, for example, to reduce the risk of famine, or ditch digging to combat water-induced erosion. Others were needed by the colonial state to pay for its upkeep - mandatory coffee production to pay for taxes, for example. A deeply interventionist but low-capacity state that would turn independent on 1 July 1962 was created.

The first few years of independence

In 1958, a nationalist party, UPRONA (Union pour le Progrès National), had been founded by Prince Louis Rwagasore – a popular, modern, pro-independence son of a deposed king, with good links to the Hutu community. In a countermove, the Belgian administration helped create the PDC (Parti Démocrate Chrétien), which was led by chiefs close to Belgium. The Ganwa split between the two parties. UPRONA dominated the 1961 legislative elections, gaining 58 of the 64 seats. The party was truly multi-ethnic: of those elected, 25 were Tutsi, 22 Hutu, 7 Ganwa, and 4 of mixed parentage. Prince Rwagasore was assassinated by agents of the PDC on 13 October 1961. The historic significance of Rwagasore's murder is enormous: it is truly a day on which doors were closed for Burundi. Note that all this took place against the backdrop of Rwanda's 'social revolution' (1959–62), in which the monarchy was overthrown, thousands of Tutsi lost their lives, and tens of thousands fled the country – including to Burundi. From now on, increasingly, the Rwandan term for demokarasi, referring to ethnic majority politics, would sound appealing to some Burundian Hutu and scary to most Tutsi (Chrétien 2000).

During the next four years, Burundian politics was extremely unstable and gridlocked. The main parties became divided internally, the Hutu-Tutsi division became much more important, government after government fell, extremist positions increased. A failed 1965 Hutu gendarmerie coup d'état led to exemplary retribution, with thousands dead – a pattern that would repeat itself many more times over the next decades. The Tutsi military officer in charge of repressing that operation, Major Michel Micombero, was soon offered a ministerial position in the government. A few months later, in a bloodless coup d'état, he took over the government and declared the First Republic, with himself as president.

This was the start of almost three decades of military rule by a small group of Tutsi-Hima from Bururi province: Michel Micombero (1966–76), Jean-Baptiste Bagaza (1976–87), and Pierre Buyoya (1987–93). Their rule constituted the creation of a low-caste Tutsi dictatorship.

Burundi was dominated by one party – UPRONA. With the party's women's and youth movement, all Burundians were theoretically members. There was little separation of power between executive, legislature, judiciary, the single party, and the army. The central clique derived its power from control over the higher echelons of the army, the key levers of the state (and, consequently, aid flows) and party, as well as the small business sector. Dissent was crushed increasingly violently.

The events of 1972 had a profound impact on Burundi's politics. After an uprising by Hutu and Congolese rebels, during which Tutsi were killed, the army went on a two-month pogrom, systematically killing all educated Hutu throughout the country. At the very least 80,000 were killed (but some estimates are much higher); many more fled the country. Hutu thereafter lived in fear of a repetition of what Lemarchand (1996) has called a 'selective genocide.'

In the following decades, Burundi developed a system of almost total exclusion of Hutu. By 1985, there were only 4 Hutu cabinet ministers (out of 20), 17 Hutu MPs (out of 65), and 2 Hutu members of UPRONA's Central Committee (out of 52). Only 1 out of 22 ambassadors was Hutu, and only 2 provincial governors out of 15. Hutu amounted only to 10 percent of the teachers and 20 percent of the students at the National University; 89 percent of public corporation managers were Tutsi. All 37 highest command positions within the army were Tutsi (of which 27 were from Bururi province) (Nkurunziza and Ngaruko 2002). Jackson (2000) notes that just one commune of Bururi province, Mugamba, accounted for 15 percent of the 6,000 students of the University of Burundi, and that in the late 1980s the government allocated about 60 percent of donor aid to education for Bururi. Given that the formal labor market is dominated by public employment and that access depends on education, these government policies meant that the large majority of the population was structurally excluded from advancing. Yet Burundi's form of apartheid went undiscussed in aid circles or international liberation politics.

The state became further centralized, imposing its controls in all domains of the country's social, political, and economic life. A plethora of state enterprises was created, allowing for clientelism in job distribution and graft of the proceeds. Corruption became widespread. Resources were drained; land was confiscated through various extralegal means; enormous profits were made by the use of monopolies with import and sales licenses. The state became primarily 'a milking cow' for the elites that controlled it (Gasana 2002; Nkurunziza and Ngaruko 2002).

This inefficient and unjust system came increasingly under attack. As the economy stalled and debts mounted, structural adjustment was imposed. Even though only partly implemented, it upset the system and increased political and economic competition among elites and aspiring elites. Internally, in late 1988, Hutu mobs, organized by the Parti pour la Libération du Peuple Hutu (PALIPEHUTU), a clandestine radical movement born in the Tanzanian refugee camps in 1972 and with bases in Rwanda, attacked local Tutsi in the northern communes of Ntega-Marangara (close to where I did my research). Hundreds of Tutsi were killed. The army answered with the usual indiscriminate massive reprisals. At about the same time, the international community – including, importantly, the French, who had provided the main international support for the regime – began talking seriously about democratization.

1993 elections and the beginning of the crisis

In the wake of this crisis, and recognizing the growing international and internal pressures, President Buyoya began a series of important reforms. He assigned twelve Hutu and twelve Tutsi to the National Commission to Study the Question of National Unity. A Charter of National Unity was subsequently ratified. He also created parity in government by assigning many Hutu to senior positions, including that of prime minister (to make sure, however, Buyoya retained the functions of president of the country and of the party as well as minister of defense; the key ministries of the interior, justice, and the police also remained under Tutsi control, and the entire army top brass remained mono-ethnically Tutsi, with devastating consequences). The atmosphere of inclusion led to the creation in 1992 of the country's first NGOs, two human rights organizations (SONERA, closely connected to the Tutsi cause, and League ITEKA, which came to be seen as associated with the Hutu cause). A new, multiparty constitution was drafted, with provisions that all parties should be multi-ethnic. The new system of cooptation seemed to be working.

Yet the 1993 elections took place in a climate of growing ethnic antagonism and radicalization. Prunier (1994) suggests that the events in Ntega-Marangara were deliberately provoked by hardliners in the government and the army who wanted to undermine Buyoya's 'liberalizing intentions.' PALIPEHUTU, in turn, was only too glad to oblige, for it too feared it would lose its clout if successful change took place. PALIPEHUTU infiltrations and tracts spread; scary rumors of failed coups, killing plans, and militia were a daily affair. At the same time, the FPR was recruiting people throughout the region, including in Burundi; it invaded Rwanda and started a brutal civil war there. The then Rwandan president Habyarimana, in turn, supported PALIPEHUTU. According to some, PALIPEHUTU cadres infiltrated the Front pour la Démocratie au Burundi (FRODEBU, a semi-clandestine organization that originated in 1990) at the local level, and they are responsible for the organized murder of thousands of Tutsi throughout the country after the failed coup d'état of October 1993.

The elections eventually mainly pitted Uprona against FRODEBU, with both parties clearly identified along ethnic lines, even though they were theoretically bi-ethnic (Reyntjens 1995). The 1 June 1993 presidential elections were won by Melchior Ndadaye, the FRODEBU candidate, who received 64.75 percent of the vote, while Buyoya received 32.39 percent. The FRODEBU victory in parliament was even greater. In ethnic terms parliament comprised 85 percent Hutu and 15 percent Tutsi representatives, closely paralleling the supposed ethnic make-up of the country.

Ndadaye took the same cooperative line as Buyoya, appointing several Tutsi to cabinet positions, including as prime minister. Forty percent of the ministers in the new government came from other parties. At lower levels, however, FRODEBU held more posts: all the governors were replaced, with fourteen out of the new sixteen being from FRODEBU. This tendency also existed at communal levels.

After 100 days in power, President Ndadaye, as well as the president and vice-president of the National Assembly (i.e. the full constitutionally described succession), were killed in a coup d'état. It is generally believed that this coup was the counter-reaction to the rapid 'FRODEBU-ization' of the middle and lower levels of the state (many Tutsi and UPRONA loyalists lost their jobs in these weeks), and the fear that the army, the prime tool of protection of the Tutsi, would soon follow. The coup itself formally failed a few days later, after an international outcry, bolstered by freezes of aid. Yet the dynamics it had set in motion remained: a constitutional crisis that was to last for years, mass violence throughout the country, and further confirmation for both sides that the other was not to be trusted.

Thousands of Tutsi were killed in the hills in the days after the coup. Prunier writes that

the first violent acts appear to have been spontaneous and to have been triggered by the news of President Ndadaye's arrest and death. But quickly FRODEBU local cadres 'organized the resistance,' an ambiguous term since in the first days nobody attacked them. In fact, they organized the indiscriminate massacre of ordinary Tutsi peasants who were collectively scapegoated for the murder of the President. Pro-UPRONA Hutu were also massacred along with Tutsi as they were considered 'accomplices' of the 'UPRONA coup.' Two days later, when the Army moved to stop these killings, it immediately started its own indiscriminate killings of Hutu.

Another specialist, Reyntjens (1995: 16), disagrees, seeing the killings of Tutsi as partly spontaneous popular anger and partly the act of some local FRODEBU politicians. He concludes that 'there is no evidence that a genocidal plan ever existed, and the allegations that it did were part of a strategy to exonerate the army and to implicate Frodebu.'

For thirty years, political competition in Burundi had become increasingly violent and ethnic in nature: now, the floodgates were open, and civil war had begun. As no side managed to acquire the upper hand, a decade of violence began. The civil war and ensuing genocide in neighboring Rwanda deepened the ethnic dimension. The year 1993 was the defining moment for many Tutsi, who feel that they were victims of a genocide that was only stopped by the (belated) intervention of the army.

A political stalemate followed, which UPRONA, as well as a slew of one-person radical Tutsi parties, used to work their way (back) into government, eventually coming to control the government far beyond what the election results warranted; in Reyntjens' (ibid.: 16) words, this 'creeping coup' consisted of 'the imposition of a de facto constitutional order which in effect consolidated the achievements of the coup.' After long negotiations, a new president was chosen in January 1994 – Cyprien Ntyamira (FRODEBU, Hutu). He was killed a few months later in the same plane crash that killed Rwandan president Habyarimana and marked the start of the genocide there.

More arduous negotiations followed, leading to a new convention in October 1994 that gave as many ministerial posts to UPRONA as to FRODEBU. The new government was riddled by infighting and conflict, and incapable of ruling: each side totally distrusted the other and saw its main function as sabotaging any plan of the other side. The country descended into terror. The city of Bujumbura continued to be rocked by extreme violence by mainly Tutsi but also Hutu militias. The years up to 1996 were years of absolute terror for people living in Bujumbura: no urban person has forgotten those terrible days.

In the summer of 1994, Léonard Nyangoma, until recently a FRODEBU interior minister and leader of a militia that controlled Kamenge (a neighborhood in Bujumbura we did part of our research in), took up arms, claiming his party had ceded too much power to UPRONA. This was the birth of the second major armed rebel movement, the Conseil National pour la Défense de la Démocratie (CNDD), after the Front National de Libération (FNL), the armed wing of the PALIPEHUTU. The CNDD eventually repeatedly split. At the end, one wing was led by Nyangoma (which participated in the 2005 elections as CNDD-Nyangoma), the other by Peter Nkurunziza, who would become Burundi's president, his party known under the original acronym of CNDD/ FDD (Forces de Défense de la Démocratie). It is estimated that the FDD had about 18,000 soldiers and the FNL 5,000.

The war and the negotiations

A brief political history

Hutu rebel groups emerged, split, and launched attacks from Tanzania and the Democratic Republic of Congo. The political process was deadlocked. Presidents came and went. Chaos reigned. Violence prevailed. The city of Bujumbura became ethnically cleansed: Tutsis and Hutus lived in separate worlds, cut off from each other. Crossing into a zone of another ethnicity meant risking your life. Thousands fled their homes, either to safer havens around communal headquarters and military garrisons (mainly Tutsis, as they felt safer near the army and the police); or to the hills far from the army; or to neighboring countries, notably Tanzania. Tutsis were summarily executed by the FDD. Hutus were forcibly rounded up by the FAB (Forces Armées Burundaises) in 'camps de regroupement without food and safety. The FNL fired shells indiscriminately from the hills around Bujumbura. Around 300,000 people were killed in Burundi, over 500,000 refugees fled, and another 800,000 were displaced internally, often for many years.

(Continues...)

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Excerpted from Life after Violence by Peter Uvin. Copyright © 2009 Peter Uvin. Excerpted by permission of Zed Books Ltd.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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Table of Contents

Foreword
Introduction
Part I - Background
1. A Brief Political History of Burundi
2. Methodology & Location
Part II - The View from Below
3. Peace and War as Read in Burundi
4. 'If I Were in Charge Here': Burundians on Respect, Corruption and the State
5. Hard Work and Prostitution: The Capitalist Ethos in Crisis
6. 'I Want to Marry a Dynamic Girl': Changing Gender Expectations in Burundi
7. Justice, Silence and Social Capital
8. Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
Index

Editorial Reviews

Peter Uvin's book goes beyond the usual categorizations to reveal a much less romantic, more complex, more brutal and more hopeful image of society in Burundi. It presents a challenging local understanding of the different dimensions of the peacebuilding agenda, making it a thought-provoking must-read for anyone interested in the area” —Beatrice Pouligny, Georgetown University

“A unique and much-needed view from below. Peter Uvin gives a voice to Burundi's youth and offers refreshing and challenging new insights into conflict dynamics in the Great Lakes.” —Filip Reyntjens, University of Antwerp

“Life After Violence is a hopeful book, one that makes a strong case for what would seem an elementary notion: If you want to launch a long-term effort to improve a society, you ought to know something about it” —Washington Post

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