Burundi is a country blanketed in lush green hills and, from the air, it looks like a virtual paradise, but on the ground one is confronted by its tortured soul. Like South Africa, Burundi has a dark history of a privileged minority sitting in domination over a repressed majority; the difference in South Africa was that the minority was white, and the discrimination was legislated.
In Burundi the minority are the Tutsis, which comprise 15 percent of the population, who ruled over the Hutu majority for 40 years since independence. The majority tended to be less educated and worked for the elite minority due to the colonial legacy of divide-and-rule which empowered the Tutsis.
In 1972, the Tutsis orchestrated what the UN deemed a genocide against the Hutu majority, resulting in an estimated 200 000 deaths. Many of the current Hutu leaders of Burundi today are the children of the 1972 genocide, many of whom can be reduced to tears by evoking the memories of that era.
It is easy to see why some would view Burundi through the prism of the apartheid experience – and imagine how the masses in South Africa would feel today if they believed the white minority wanted to again take power by force.
Add to the mix that, when the first Hutu president finally took power in 1993, he was assassinated by Tutsi military officers just four months after entering office. An estimated 300 000 Burundians died in the violence which ensued, and the UN deemed it a genocide of the Tutsis by the majority Hutu populace. There would have been unimaginable bloodshed had President Nelson Mandela been overthrown by white officers in July 1994.
Throughout its post-colonial history, Burundi has been caught up in a swirling cycle of violent revenge, that erupts into orgies of bloodletting practically every decade or so, in a seemingly never-ending war of “them and us”.
It is this vortex of revenge which psychologically needs to be addressed in Burundi. Otherwise, in another generation, the AU will be facing the very same challenges it was confronted with this week – a government set on revenge against its historic enemy, refusing to allow in troops to stop the violence, or monitors to observe it, and a minority which has either fled, is cowered by fear or has chosen to fight.
As I ventured into Burundi last week, I was determined to keep an open mind. It was disconcerting, however, to be going into a country knowing that practically all the local and international media had fled, not to mention the human rights activists.
It was also the week before the AU heads of state made a critical decision on whether to deploy troops to the country to protect the civilian population. I was warned that the sound of gunfire, grenades and mortar shells exploding was almost a daily occurrence, starting at 10pm.
The challenge was that truth had somehow got lost in the fog of war, with so many competing narratives about what exactly was going on in the country in the lead-up to the AU summit. Even before setting foot on Burundian soil, I knew I was entering a world characterised by the politics of obfuscation. A wise man once said that we must try to “reduce the range of permissible lies”, but the challenge was to determine what were lies and where the truth lay.
As a journalist, I was fortunate to have met a wide range of officialdom, from government ministers, to party leaders – of the government and opposition, the speaker and deputy speaker of parliament, and the president of the National Commission for Inter-Burundian Dialogue.
In order to provide balance to the official narratives, there were meetings with some of the few remaining local journalists in the country and the UN agencies. Prior to travelling to Burundi, I had also managed to meet with a number of Burundians who had fled the country – human rights activists, journalists and business people – residing in a neighbouring country, and fearing for their lives.
What became clear over time is that we are now witnessing a new cycle of revenge. But Burundi’s leaders have learnt from the past – the world cannot stomach the amount of bloodshed that engulfed Rwanda in those first few weeks of April in 1994. So revenge will be a slow trickling process – a cleansing of the Tutsi neighbourhoods over time and a neutering of the political opposition.
There will also be a dismantling of the Arusha Agreement.
By lobbying AU member states last week not to deploy troops in the country, the government of Burundi has bought itself time. But the deployment of forces to protect civilians and human rights monitors is extremely urgent.
As Burundi bleeds, all we can do is cry for what truly is a beloved country.