Burundi: Belgian colonial rule (1916 - 1962)

Updated April 2005

The Belgian invader force killed, raped, burned and pillaged wherever they went. Once resistance had been broken the Belgians set about cementing control and making the new territories pay.

To cement the loyalty of the Tutsis they entrenched the ethnic divisions created by the Germans by ensuring unequal access to educational opportunities, creating a class of literate, "westernised", aristocratic Tutsis to rule over the illiterate, "traditional", peasant Hutus (Kimber 1996). In 1933 the distinctions were formalised by the issue of ethnically based identity cards (Oketch & Polzer 1992).

They imposed poll taxes and forced labour obligations which were brutally extracted. They further used the German system of indirect rule to enforce the planting of cash crops, especially coffee.

Belgian rule was thus initially an intensification of what the Germans had done before them. Over time direct intervention became more frequent and wide reaching and the extraction of wealth more naked and violent. Not surprisingly there were peasant uprisings in the 1920s and 1930s (Kimber 1996).

As Belgium intensified extraction so it was forced to rule more directly through its own structures and administrators, which in turn undermined the power of the monarchy and traditional socio-political structures. Moreover, as they developed, the colonial structures were modelled on those on Belgium, leading to the import of practices such as universal suffrage, party based elections and the answerability of authorities to the electorate (Bayefsky.com 1992).

In reaction to demands for independence on the part of the Tutsi elite the Belgians attempted to win the support of the Hutus in their efforts to stay. The Belgians abolished the traditional feudal relations between Tutsi and Hutu and began to redistribute cattle, thus negating the basis of traditional caste distinctions between Hutu and Tsutsi (Institute for Security Studies 2005).

Elections, which had been conducted with open voting, were reformed to mandate secret ballot - so removing voting by Hutus from public (i.e. Tutsi) scrutiny and encouraging the growth of Hutu ethnic parties (Bayefsky.com 1992).

These measures were seen by Tutsis as a direct threat to their long-term rule over the majority of the population, and so also therefore to their wealth, power and physical security. This sense of vulnerability was underpinned by massacres of Tutsis in Rwanda and the tide of refugees southwards in their wake.

In preparation for independence elections were conducted in 1961. Prince Rwagasore's recently formed trans-ethnic Uprona Party won 80% of the vote and 58 of the 64 seats in the legislature, as well as control of most of the communes (Institute for Security Studies 2005).

Unnerved by this tide of popularism, the colonial authorities threw their weight behind the rival Christian Democratic Party (Parti démocratique chrétien - PDC), whose programme promised a more docile and Belgium-dependant government after independence. When PDC agents assassinated Prince Rwagasore later that year the Belgians were widely suspected of complicity (Mthembu-Salter 2002).

References

BAYEFSKY.COM 1992 "Core reports: Burundi", [www] http://www.bayefsky.com/core/hri_core_1_add_16_1992.php [opens new window] (accessed 22 Oct 2007).

INSTITUTE FOR SECURITY STUDIES 2005 "Burundi: Political System and history", [www] http://www.iss.co.za/AF/profiles/Burundi/Politics.html [opens new window] (accessed 22 Oct 2007).

KIMBER, C 1996 "Coming to terms with barbarism in Rwanda and Burundi" IN International Socialism 73, December, [www] http://pubs.socialistreviewindex.org.uk/isj73/kimber.htm [opens new window] (accessed 22 Oct 2007)

MTHEMBU-SALTER, G 2002 "Self-Determination Regional Conflict Profile: Burundi" IN Self determination in focus, Foreign Policy In Focus, [www] http://www.selfdetermine.org/conflicts/burundi_body.html [opens new window] (accessed 22 Oct 2007).

OKETCH, JS & POLZER, T 1992 "Conflict and Coffee in Burundi" IN Lind, J & Sturman, K (eds) Scarcity and Surfeit: The ecology of Africa's conflicts, Institute for Security Studies, [www] http://www.iss.co.za/pubs/Books/ScarcitySurfeit/Chapter3.pdf [PDF document, opens new window] (accessed 22 Oct 2007).