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'We all want to live together, but it's impossible. Impossible. They
just don't want it,' said Therese Minani, stretching out her muddy legs
at the entrance to her twig and grass hillside hovel.
Therese, a Hutu, had been to Kigani refugee camp in southern Rwanda
before. In 1972, when thousands of Hutus from Burundi fled tribal
massacres perpetrated by Tutsis and the Tutsi-dominated army, she
escaped with her family to this same smoke- and mist-draped valley.
The Hutus responded by launching a rebellion which led, in May 1972, to
Burundi's borders being shut to allow the killing to go on without
outside witnesses. Observers later said that 150,000 people were
slaughtered.
Therese Minani later returned to her home at Ntega in northern Burundi.
In 1988 she fled back to Kigani. With memories of the 1972 massacres
still fresh, Hutus dragged logs across the roads to prevent soldiers
stopping Hutu attacks on Tutsis. But in a week civilians and troops
slaughtered more than 20,000 Hutus.
Burundi's first post-independence government was mixed between the two
tribes until the massacres in 1972, by which time Tutsi power over the
5.4 million population was absolute and 240,000 Hutu refugees had become
a permanent presence in neighbourin g east African countries.
But by last October Burundi appeared to have made the radical political
strides needed to break this pattern of fragile peace followed by
massacres which has led to 400,000 Burundians fleeing across borders and
left up to 250,000 dead.
The delicate tribal balance, in which Tutsis, who form 15 per cent of
the population, hold sway over the Hutus, comprising 85 per cent,
appeared to have been tipped to allow a more equitable sharing of power,
after the return of a Hutu president, Melchior Ndadaye, in a landslide
election victory last June.
'There's never been any ethnic conflict between the groups on the level
of the village. There was no ethnic war before independence. It's the
politicians who transfer their political conflicts on to the hillsides.
If the leaders say nothing then the killings don't happen,' said Major
Pierre Buyoya, the Tutsi who ruled Burundi from 1987 until last year's
elections, in a rare interview last week.
Maj Buyoya, who came to power in a bloodless coup, introduced reforms in
1991 banning discrimination along tribal lines. In March 1992
single-party rule was scrapped, and last June Mr Ndadaye, a former
banker, defeated Maj Buyoya.
His election marked the end of Tutsi domination. The following month
Tutsis mounted a failed coup. In October the president and four senior
government officials were bayoneted to death in another, successful, one.
Hutu revenge for Ndadaye's death was swift. But the Tutsi-dominated army
sided with Tutsi civilians in the ensuing slaughter and 100,000 people
were killed.
'The events in October in Burundi were created by ethnic extremists on
both sides, who want exclusive power,' said Maj Buyoya, who keeps track
of the situation from his modest villa on the edge of the capital
Bujumbura. His own role in launching the democratic process, which led
to his electoral defeat, has earned him the opprobrium of extremists
within his own Tutsi tribe.
'But the thing which really led to the conflict was the violence in
Rwanda - the massacre of the Tutsis. The Hutus chased them and
exterminated them. The Hutu saw power there as their natural right, and
this led to all the subsequent violence. Ever since, power has been
ethnicised. It's exactly the same in Rwanda as in Burundi.'
Before German colonialists arrived in Rwanda and Burundi in 1899, both
were ruled by Tutsi absolute monarchs.
The Belgians, when the United Nations handed over the former German
colonies to the first world war victors, continued the German practice
of ruling through the monarchs rather than having their own
administrations.
Tutsi domination of the ruling class allowed them to benefit in both
countries from Belgian preferment, and become the first to be educated.
But pressure for independence during the 1950s resulted in their
histories diverging radically, and creating the current diaspora for the
dispossessed in both.
While the two tribes mixed in Burundi until the 1972 massacres brought
an end to Hutu aspirations, Hutus in Rwanda , encouraged by the
Belgians, rose up against the Tutsi monarchists in 1959.
So callous were the Belgians in their efforts to isolate the Tutsis that
the colonialists successfully spread the view that their system of
forced labour on the plantations was actually a Tutsi initiative.
Such inflammatory Belgian statements encouraged Burundi's Hutu majority
in their uprising, and the inevitable independence saw them seize power
from the Tutsi chieftans.
By 1961 the Hutus had brought in ethnic cleansing which forced up to
260,000 Tutsis to flee to Burundi and 300,000 to Uganda. In this way the
majority Hutus in Rwanda came to power after years of repression,
blaming the Tutsis rather than the appalling Belgian colonialists for
their pre-independence plight.
THIRTY years of such turmoil and thousands of deaths heightened
expectations of multi-party democracy in both countries when pressure
for political change became unstoppable in 1991. But the continued
tension between the Hutu and the Tutsi has led to the hopes virtually
disintegrating.
Members of Burundi's government who survived last October's coup, which
fizzled out though not before the massacres had taken their course, last
week appointed a new Hutu president - Cyprien Ntaryamira - to replace
the murdered Ndadaye.
In Rwanda , efforts to form an interim government incorporating all
political parties are deadlocked. This stems from attempts by President
Juvenal Habyarimana to assure himself of a cabinet majority by forcing
allied parties to appoint ministers who will support his presidency.
In both countries the test now is whether ethnic divisions can be
channelled into political rivalries contested within a durable structure
capable of diluting the anger which leads to bloodshed. Maj Buyoya
believes this will take 10 years.
'Ethnic identity is much stronger than democratic party identity. But
over time this will change,' Maj Buyoya said. 'It's necessary to
integrate the ethnic reality into the democratic system, because
ethnicity is the reality, though over time people will be looking for
allies cross-tribally, as differences of belief emerge.'
'Democracy has aggravated tension, because it leads to everybody trying
to form their own groups,' said Charles Ntampaka, a law professor at
Kigali university and one of Rwanda 's leading human rights activists.
'The only way to change things is if politics is based on the majority
of ideas rather than the ethnic majority,' he said.
'The minority is always frustrated, and while they are frustrated
there's always the risk of war. It's true that there's a definite ethnic
problem. But the ethnic problem only arises when there's a change of
power. The bigger problem is economic - rich against poor, and the rich
encouraging the poor to fight,' he said.
Blaming leaders for using ethnic tension as a political tool is as
widespread in Rwanda as in Burundi, while historically the role of
colonialists must be incorporated into the explanation. Hopes of a
solution to tension continue to lie in overhauling the dictatorial
systems which have been the dispassionate overseers of the tribal
slaughter.
'The problem of Rwanda isn't Hutu versus Tutsi, its the problem of
dictatorship,' said Nkiko Nsengimana, head of Rwanda's co-operative
movement and a supporter of the formerly Hutu supremacist Republic
Democratic Movement (MDR) party, which is now the least radical of the
main parties vying for power.
'In Burundi there is no social movement, but in Rwanda there is. But
here in Rwanda one group is the social, economic and political elite.
They are all one. In other countries, bigger countries, there are
different elites - political, cultural, religious. There are 'contra
elites' on all levels . . . But here, for those outside the elite, there
is nothing but violence. There's no other voice but the massacres.
'Rivalry between the groups always comes from the elite. It never comes
from the population. The political class wants to completely polarise
political life. In this country the ethnic problems aren't as strong as
people say. It's real because it's there, and the person who is excluded
has no other voice except for the violent voice,' he said.
Among the thousands of refugees, many of whom were born to refugee
parents and have never been home, fear of the tribally-imbalanced armies
and the need for their reform dominates views.
'When there are both Hutus and Tutsis in the army I think things will
get better,' said David Nkurikiye, who fled the Burundi town of Bugabira
last October and now lives at Kagani camp in Rwanda.
Ethnic cleansing of Tutsis by Hutus in Rwanda between 1959-61 led the
exiled Tutsis to sporadic attempts at armed incursion. All attempts
failed until the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) was formed among refugees
in Uganda and invaded northern Rwanda in 1990.
The invasion pushed President Habyarimana into accelerating political
reforms which would allow the legalisation of opposition parties.
One of the greatest successes of democracy in Africa since its emergence
in 1990 has been the extent to which the promise of political change
brought a ceasefire in the war with the RPF last August, though not
until after the displacement of 100,000 Rwandans and thousands of deaths.
But this apparent success has allowed new conflicts to dominate Rwanda's political agenda.
'Habyarimana saw multi-partyism as a way of undermining the RPF. But
simultaneously this led to other groups - particularly southern Hutus -
wanting to exploit the situation in order to end the dominance of the
country by Habyarimana's northern Hutus. The Hutus from the south say
the question is not ethnic but regional,' said Major-General Paul
Kagame, chairman of the RPF's military high command.
The RPF invasion has split Rwanda's main political parties, all of
which except the MDR need coalition alliances to achieve influence. The
RPF has allied itself with factions in two parties, splitting the
parties largely along tribal lines at a time when multi-tribal parties
are essential. This factionalism has prompted a new breed of tribal
tension.
The tendency of both nationalities to look not only over one shoulder at
tribal rivals within their own countries, but over the other shoulder at
the rival tribe across the border appears to be far from over.
'The situation in Burundi has taken away illusions of faith people had
in Rwanda's own peace plan of power sharing, the tribal integration of
the army and the return of the refugees,' said Justin Mugenzi, head of
Rwanda's Liberal Party and leader of the party's strongly anti-Tutsi
faction. 'Now people are more suspicious. People are saying: be careful,
because the Tutsis may come with their guns.'
