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Burundi: Alternatives to Violence

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 August 2021

Warren Weinstein
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Extract

Burundi society has become polarized along ethnic lines. In 1972 a series of increasingly violent confrontations erupted into an ethnic civil war. The two ethnic coalitions which faced each other were the Tutsi and the Hutu. The Tutsi are the socio-politically dominant minority in control in Burundi.

Type
Research Article
Information
African Issues , Volume 5 , Issue 2 , Summer 1975 , pp. 17 - 23
Copyright
Copyright © African Studies Association 1975 

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References

Notes

1 Weinstein, Warren and Schrire, Robert, “Political Conflict and the Primacy of Ethnic Strategies: A Case Study.” Paper presented at the VIIIth World Congress of the International Sociological Association, Toronto, Canada, August 1974; and Weinstein, and Schrire, , “Burundi: The Politics of Survival,” International Journal of Sociology (forthcoming).Google Scholar

2 Nordlinger, Eric A., Conflict Regulation in Divided Societies (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, Occasional Papers in International Affairs, 1972).Google Scholar

For an application of choice to ethnic conflict in a different context, see Schrire, Robert and Weinstein, Warren, “South Africa: From Race to Ethnicity.” Paper read at the Annual Meeting of the African Studies Association, Chicago, October 1974.Google Scholar

3 See Greenland, Jeremy, “The Reform of Education in Burundi: Enlightened Theory Faced With Political Reality,” Comparative Education, 10 (March 1974). Diplomatic reporting has been mixed on this point. According to some well-placed sources a number of schools reopened with more Hutu students showing up than anticipated. However, other reports question whether Hutu will send their children to schools.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

4 See comments by Martin, David that an attempt to approach embassies in Dar es Salaam failed. Martin, D. and Lemarchand, R., Selective Genocide in Burundi. Report No. 20 (Minority Rights Group: London, 1974).Google Scholar

According to well-placed sources, the Chinese People’s Republic was approached but refused, and Chinese inside Burundi are said to have handed a Hutu to the authorities when he complained to them about the Tutsi. Within Belgian political circles there is a sharp division over policy toward Burundi, and some of the old hands have argued that Belgian policy should be more understanding of the Tutsi position. The United States has been sympathetic to Hutu demands but American interest in African politics is almost nil aside from a few “target” states, and Roger Morris has argued along with Jack Anderson that U.S. policy toward Burundi will be governed by pragmatic, economic considerations. See Roger Morris, “The Triumph of Money and Power,” The New York Times, 3 March 1974. Two articles by Jack Anderson appeared in the Washington Post about the same time.

5 See Roger Morris, op. cit.

6 Warren Weinstein, “Human Rights: Goal Deflection and Political Logrolling at the United Nations” (Manuscript prepared for the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, December 1974).

7 Melady, Thomas, the former American ambassador to Burundi, has been a harsh critic of the UN and of the OAU for these reasons. See his Burundi: The Tragic Years (Maryknoll, New York: Orbis, 1974).Google Scholar

8 See Africa Research Bulletin, Vol. 11, No. 8, p. 3326ab.

9 The call for a Cyprus solution may have had some merit before its inadequacies were made clear to statesmen during 1974. For a critical analysis of this solution (as called for in Thomas Melady’s book, op.cit.), see my review of the Melady book and of Wingert’s, Norman account. No Place to Stop Killing (Chicago: Moody Press, 1974) in Africa Today, Vol. 22, No. 1 (January-March, 1975), pp. 75-80.Google Scholar

10 For my discussion of the implications that the refugee problem has for regional stability, see my chapter “Rwanda-Burundi: An Aborted Putative Nation,” in Henderson, Gregory, Lebow, Richard N. and Stoessinger, John G., eds. Divided Nations in a Divided World (New York: David McKay Co., 1974), pp. 340–377 Google Scholar, and my study of ethnic conflict and elite policy choice written with Schrire, Robert, op. cit. See also my chapter “Burundi” in Davis, Morris, ed. Civil Wars and the Politics of International Relief (New York: Praeger, 1975).Google Scholar

11 See Kayondi, C., “Murunga: Colline du Burundi,” Les Cahiers d’Outre-Mer, Vol. 25, No. 98 (1972), pp. 182, 186 and passim. This point is raised in the study I did with Schrire, op. cit.Google Scholar

12 I have discussed this at length elsewhere. See my chapter in Henderson, Lebow and Stoessinger, op. cit.