Historian Jean-Pierre Chrétien reflects on Burundi’s early years of independence, up to the 1972 crime during which tens of thousands of people were killed.
A prominent historian of the Great Lakes region and an honorary research director at the CNRS (French National Centre for Scientific Research), Jean-Pierre Chrétien, aged 88, is an acute observer of pre-colonial and contemporary Burundi and Rwanda. After ten years of media silence, he has granted a series of exclusive interviews to African Facts.
- The initial spark for Jean-Pierre Chrétien, pioneer of oral history research in the Great Lakes region
- “The old Burundi and Rwanda were no paradise”
- Where does the “Hamitic” ideology originate from?
- From colonisation to the emergence of an African far right
In this new interview, he discusses the post-independence years in Burundi and the crime committed by the former regime in 1972, during which tens of thousands of people were murdered.
African Facts: After speaking with you at length about Rwanda, we would now like to turn to the first decades of Burundi’s sovereignty. How did the transition to independence unfold?
Jean-Pierre Chrétien: Whereas in Rwanda, independence was preceded by the “Social Revolution” and the Hutu totalitarian model [see our interview From colonisation to the emergence of an African far right, Ed.], in Burundi it was achieved through the UPRONA [Union pour le progrès national, the party that ruled almost continuously until 2003, Ed.]. The UPRONA was founded by Prince Rwagasore [Louis, 1932–1961, who was appointed Prime Minister in September 1961 and assassinated the following month, Ed.]. As for his ideology, I refer you to all his speeches published by Christine Deslauriers1. He was a modern man who was also concerned about the economy, and on several occasions he made no secret of his concern about what was happening on the other side of the Kanyaru River, in Rwanda. He sensed and perceived that it could be contagious since there were also Tutsi and Hutu in Burundi.
But at the time, this issue did not really arise. We have proof of this, in a way. In 1959, a working group from the Ministry of Colonies visited Rwanda and Burundi. In Rwanda, everyone interviewed talked about “Tutsi privilege”, and so on. In Burundi, people talked about “Ganwa privileges”, referring to the princes who controlled everything and were rather old-fashioned [see our interview “The old Burundi and Rwanda were no paradise”, Ed.]. The dividing line and the demands did not concern the Hutu and Tutsi at all, but rather these princes. Jan Vansina [1929–2017, a Belgian historian and ethnographer, Ed.] also said that the situation in Burundi and Rwanda was like night and day when it came to this issue. It became contagious afterwards. Because some people wanted it to be that way. This brings us back to the 1965 crisis, the trap that the Tutsi leaders of Burundi fell into in 1972, and so on.
— That is precisely what we wanted to come to. In 1965, those hopes more or less faded away. The country quickly fell into another kind of regime…
— I can attest to the fear among the Tutsi of a “Rwandan-style” massacre because I was there. It emerged at that time. Even though it was very localised around Bukeye [in the far south-west of the country, about a dozen kilometres north of the Tanzanian border, Ed.], Mbuye [about sixty kilometres east of Bujumbura, Ed.] and the north-west. Especially since there was a very militant mayor who had been to Rwanda and had also travelled to the United States, and who moved in the circles of the Kigali regime. The Burundians told themselves, “That’s it. There are people who have decided to make us swallow the same potion”. This probably explains what happened next.
We are still a monarchy. In 1965, Mwambutsa [monarch of Burundi since 1915, Ed.] left. He was replaced by his son, Ntare. Then, in 1966, there was a military coup led by Colonel Micombero [Michel, 1940–1983, Prime Minister to King Ntare who established a military dictatorship that he would lead for 10 years and made UPRONA the country’s only political party, Ed.]. He likely represented a kind of response to these concerns about a potential Rwanda-style “Hutu threat”. In reality, however, it was the people of the north who were concerned, not those in the south. Burundi’s history is full of contradictions…
Then, in 1972, a rebellion broke out in the south of the country that did not originate in Rwanda. Organised from Tanzania, it was based on the leftist [sic] ideals of the Tricontinental [an internationalist and Third Worldist network of Marxist-Leninist influence that takes its name from an eponymous conference held in Havana in 1966, Ed.]. The Burundian authorities fell right into the trap there. In other words, there were no longer any respected institutions. People were being massacred on a massive scale.
— You have co-authored a book in french on the subject2. Could you tell us a little about it? What happened in Burundi in 1972?
— There was an attack by “Mulelist” rebels [named after Pierre Mulele, who led a socialist-inspired secessionist rebellion in neighbouring Congo from 1963 to 1965, Ed.] in the south of the country. We have testimonies from oral surveys that we conducted on site, as well as from French people who were in Nyanza-Lac [in the south-west of the country, Ed.] at the time. They described how people came from Tanzania and then left again. The surveys showed that people from Imbo, the plain bordering the lake, took part in the movement. Some of them went up to Vugizo [a few dozen kilometres north of the Tanzanian border], where there is a kind of mountainous area. So there were massacres in the south.
And what did Micombero do? Well, strange things were happening. He had just dissolved his government to form a new one. What kind of government? Was it a military government? In short… There is no government. Micombero, the president, and Artémon Simbananiye, an extremist Tutsi politician from the south who is the Minister of Foreign Affairs, were the only ones in charge. The two of them were running the country at the time.
Then, the massacres [targeting civilians identified as Hutu, Ed.] were not organised as systematically as those in Rwanda in 1994. It varied from location to another. Those responsible for the massacres could be soldiers, governors, judicial authorities or local administrators. In other places, however, the local administrator would save people. A kind of genocide wave spread across the country, but in an extremely uneven and fragmented manner. Ultimately, under international and domestic pressure, it stopped in June-July. But the damage had already been done.
— What do you mean?
— The damage was done because many Hutu families had lost relatives. This largely explains what happened next in Ntega and Marangara in 1988 [after a spontaneous pogrom that cost the lives of several hundred Tutsi, the Burundian army at the time murdered thousands of Hutu and triggered a major exodus, Ed]. Philibert Nkurunziza’s recent thesis3 on the subject is absolutely remarkable. It is clear that 1972 continues to shape attitudes there in addition, of course, to all the local, circumstantial interests, and so on.
But this time, there was a responsible government — that of Buyoya [Pierre, 1949–2020, President of Burundi from 1987 to 1993 and again from 1996 to 2003, Ed.] — which was aware of the catastrophe threatening the country. They immediately tackled the problem head-on, deciding to let us — Joseph Gahama, Gabriel Lejeune and myself — investigate. We accepted because we wanted to go.
This was quickly followed by the establishment of a Commission for National Unity with the aim of addressing the issue of national unity, i.e. the Hutu–Tutsi problem, which had been partly resolved. However, the issue resurfaced during the election in 1993, resulting in the assassination of Ndadaye [Melchior, 1953–1993, a progressive, social-democratic and anti-ethnicist politician who was democratically elected president in July 1993 and assassinated in October of the same year, Ed.]. This was followed by the massacre of many Tutsis. Burundi had put its hand in the cauldron, from which it has never truly emerged from.
— Even today, one can regularly hear, here and there, within the Burundian diaspora and among former Rwandan refugees, the claim that Tutsi were merely defending themselves in 1972. Was this “self-defence”?
— That’s ideology! It may have been true in the south. The south had been subverted. People were being massacred. So the army intervened. Any government would have done that. But to arrest pupils or students here and there according to lists, imprison them and execute them without investigation? I’m sorry, but that’s unacceptable. It’s more a matter of revenge or pre-emptive killing than justice or self-defence. In fact, I know many Burundians from that era who would agree. It was catastrophic.
