Burundi

Burundi A small state in central Africa, it was subjected and annexed to the German colony of German East Africa in 1890. After World War I it came under Belgian sovereignty, and was administered as a League of Nations Mandate and, from 1946, as a UN trust territory. The Belgians ruled through the traditional social structure, whereby power and privilege belonged to a minority consisting of the landowners, professionals, and government officials, the vast majority of whom were from the Tutsi tribe. By contrast, the underprivileged and often landless peasants belonged to the Hutu (Bantu) tribe, which made up 85 per cent of the population of Burundi. After independence in 1962 the tensions between the two tribes escalated and often erupted in violent massacres (1965, 1972, 1988, 1993, 1995–6). They were fuelled by events in neighbouring Rwanda, with its similar social structure, and the periodic influx of Rwandan refugees in times of crisis. This was compounded by a growing competition for scarce food resources. It is one of the poorest African countries, and yet has one of the highest population densities of the continent, with an average annual population growth of 3 per cent.

In 1966 the King, who had become a political pawn of the influential Tutsi aristocracy, was deposed and a military regime installed. A Hutu rebellion was brutally suppressed in 1972, and in 1976 a further coup brought to power a new military regime under J. – B. Bagaza, whose followers were again Tutsi. His proposed new constitution, establishing a one-party state, was approved in a referendum by 99 per cent in 1981. He was deposed in 1987 in a coup that brought to power Pierre Buyoya, a Tutsi. Free elections in June 1993 resulted in the victory of the Democratic Front of Burundi (FRODEBU), whose leader, Melchior Ndadaye, thus became the first Hutu President of Burundi. His murder in October 1993, in which Buyoya was implicated, marked the start of a civil war, which by 1996 had claimed some 150,000 lives and caused the migration of around 700,000 Hutu refugees, who fled from the largely Tutsi-dominated army. It also transformed large areas of the country in the north and west into virtual no-go areas. A fragile government coalition between the Hutu and the Tutsi parties in Parliament was unable to stop the violence, as Hutu militias continued to fight against the persistent predominance of Tutsis in state institutions and government offices. In 2000 Nelson Mandela brokered a peace deal, which led to the working out of a fragile political compromise even while the civil war continued unabated. Parliament would be composed of 60 per cent Hutus and 40 per cent Tutsi, while President Buyoya formed an interim government which after eighteen months handed over power to his Hutu deputy.