Burundi: Building Democracy on an "Ethnically" Divided Society

Pre-colonial Burundi was a homogeneous society: Burundians shared the same language, culture, religion, history, etc. and lived harmoniously on the same hills. This population was made up of a multitude of clans and Hutu, Tutsi, Ganwa and Twa social components of very secondary social importance. Even the monarchy reflected the various segments of such a nation. It was this harmony that Belgian colonisation definitively ruined, with the policy of divide et impera. By claiming that the Ganwa and the Tutsi were the superior races and the Hutu and Twa the inferior ones, a whole process of political and administrative manipulation ended up constructing a highly polemical ethnic identity, which fuelled the bloody conflicts of 1965, 1972, 1988, 1993-2000, etc. It was to put an end to this cycle of ethno-political violence that the Arusha Accords signed in 2000 instituted consociational democracy (on which the 2005 and 2018 constitutions were based), with ethnic quotas: 60% Hutu and 40% Tutsi for institutions such as the Government, parity of 50% for the Senate and the Defence and Security Bodies (Army and Police), etc. After showing how Belgian colonisation constructed these 'ethnic identities' and how this ethnicisation of society actually underpinned fratricidal wars, this paper analyses how democracy built on an 'ethnically' divided society still has its work cut out for it. While it seems to ensure the hoped-for appeasement in normal times, the demon of ethnic violence is no less resurgent in times of political mobilisation.