Since April 26, 2015 and the designation of Pierre
Nkurunziza as the CNDD-FDD (1) party nominee in the July 2015 presidential
election, Burundi has been the scene of a conflict which, after a vibrant phase
of street protests, subsided, but is still alive. According to humanitarian
sources at the end of November, more than two hundred people (2) have been
killed since April . President Pierre Nkurunziza is confronted with those who
challenge the legality and legitimacy of the third presidential term which he
won in the July 21, 2015 election, by forcing the event. Yet, beyond his
decision to run for a new term, it is particularly how he is handling the
conflict which shows the most dangerous effects any struggle for power in
Burundi can still lead to, fifteen years after the Agreement for Peace and
Reconciliation in Burundi was signed in Arusha. Stifled truths and unhealed
wounds of Burundi and the Great Lakes Region troubled history have caused national
and international political actors to provide political and diplomatic
responses which are very often distorted and disproportionate to the on-going
events.
One night in 2006, in Bujumbura I went with my wife to
see my aging parents for an ordinary family visit. A group of people were
standing around a young girl in front of their entrance gate. She seemed to be
lost. She couldn’t tell us where or to whom she could be returned. Night had
fallen. When the gate was finally opened, we entered to greet my parents. They
had a guest, Berahino (pseudonym), who was around sixty years old. When we told
them that we were going back outside to learn more about the young girl, their
guest told us with a grave air:
"No matter how sorry you
feel for that young girl, don’t make the mistake of letting her in this house
or in your house. The 'assailants' (3) are getting more and more imaginative
when it comes to attacking our households. Nowadays, they use children, taking
advantage of the tenderness and innocence that they inspire. These children
pretend to be selling knick-knacks, asking for drinking water and the like. In
fact, they are spies sent by the 'assailants'. Open your door to them, you will
be opening it to assailants and to death."
We pretended to agree, but then we went out to see the
child in the street and we ended up by taking her to our home, disregarding the
visitor’s advice. She would not talk. She grudged us her name and age on the
second day: Chantal, seven. She seemed to be three years older than that. The
first two days, she was stubbornly silent. She sometimes muttered a few words
in Swahili. Chantal scraped her "R" like people from Bukavu (DRC). It
was the first clue, though a weak one, of her possible origins. If she doesn’t
want to talk, we said to ourselves, she is certainly scared and she must have
her own reasons. Therefore, we resolved neither to overwhelm her with our
attention nor make her anxious with our questions. We would patiently build up
her confidence, hoping that she would progressively open up and concede more
information about herself. After a few days, she did open up, talking and
laughing with the innocence and spontaneity of a child without fears. Little by
little, tricking her with silly games, chatting with her on seemingly random
matters, we finally managed to piece together segments of her story.
Some days later, we had collected enough pieces to trace
her origin: somewhere in Kamenge, in the northern part of Bujumbura, near the
dispensary named Buyengero, nearly four kilometres from where she had taken
off. That is where I took her back one morning, waiting for any sign of memory
awakening in her. After walking around for some time, I finally managed to find
the way to her aunt’s home. She was living close to the dispensary, the place
from which the girl had wandered off. When her aunt saw her, she was doing the
laundry, and she jumped up and burst into tears. She thought that her niece had
disappeared for ever, after a week long visit in Bujumbura, coming from ...
Bukavu.
This endless violence which
undermines our values
This episode of young Chantal’s history brings to light
the subtle variations of perception that a human being can undergo, when
subjected to a long immersion in a context of serious grave, mass and
unpunished violence. Berahino had given us friendly advice not to feel
concerned about a lost child. He was calmly speaking, and he articulated his
message with confidence. He had all external appearances of a man at peace. But
can he really be at peace when self-defence is his reaction to the presence of
an unknown young girl? He undoubtedly considered our decision to take the child
with us to be wrong, silently looking down on our “naiveté". For the case
of Chantal, Berahino took into account a legitimate interest -his security-
faced with a risk somehow real but certainly overestimated : an attack by
"rebels"/assailants through a child.
The happy end of Chantal’s mishap is one of those stories
which show us the small traumas with which, over time and continual trials, we
simply learn to live with, but they deform us. They imperceptibly metastisize,
change our behaviours, our reactions, and they foster other types of
prejudices. Berahino has no doubt that there have been children acting as
guides for thieves or killers. It may even be true. What is concerning is how
his behaviour is now uncompromisingly ruled by that risk. His obsessive sight
of a "rebel" rooted in every corner of his mind has moulded in him a
besieged mentality. In Burundi, this mentality leads to tragedies. It explains
excessive acts of violence, which are afterwards justified as acts of
self-defence. In August 1988, at Ntega and Marangara, two northern land-locked
and remote communes, some rumours of “imminent attacks” by members of a given
ethnic group against another were enough to spark deadly confrontation between
the two ethnic groups . The same tragedy - killings-repression - was launched
again, after sixteen years of calm. Result: between 5.000 to 50.000 people killed,
in just a few days!
The fact that Berahino didn’t feel any concern for
Chantal is one thing. We do the same every day. I admit, for one Chantal I
might help, every day of the week there are hundreds of other people in the
same circumstances who I do nothing for. But the fact that Berahino’s only
pressing concern when faced with Chantal’s distress was to discourage someone
from helping another fellow human is something else altogether. Decades of
violence have undermined the values of many Burundians. For the case of M.
Berahino, it is his distrust, almost pathological, which is considered as a
positive quality, as wisdom, as "cautiousness". Trust is considered
as a handicap, as weakness. According to Berahino-like people, the strongest
survive thanks to that "cautiousness" and people die due to
"naiveté". The descendants and survivors of those who die of
"naiveté" join the camp of "strong people". They become
strongly obsessed with plots and conspiracy. They are almost impervious to
mutual confidence and acceptance which, according to them, lead to the
grave.
Past suffering, wounded
memories, manipulation
In some respects, the current conflict echoes the
heaviness and deadly memories of a tragic and real past. The cowardly
assassination in October 1993 of Melchior Ndadaye, the first democratically
elected president in Burundi and the first Hutu President of the Republic of
Burundi, has left open wounds in people’s memories. He was the first serving
President of the Republic to be assassinated in Burundi, whereas all his
predecessors have only been toppled without bloodshed. Melchior Ndadaye is
presented by his companions in the struggle as the leader within his political
party and his government, of a moderate, conciliatory, dialogue-favourable
position, with a non-ethnic view of the cyclical conflicts in Burundi.
According to his followers, he advocated a measured progression toward
democracy, to allow due time for the dissipation of the ethnic resentments
which he acknowledged within his own political party, and within the
predominantly Tutsi opposition parties.
Twenty-two years after his death, the memory of Ndadaye’s
brutal death is cast indiscriminately on the events of 2015 with an outdated
understanding, bipolar and ethnic. Just as Berahino, ready to consider a
seven-year old lost girl as a disguised devil, President Nkurunziza supporters
today point out that the demonstrators of the tutsi-dominated neighbourhoods of
Musaga, Mutakura, Nyakabiga are the heirs to October 1993 people, mainly tutsi,
involved in the putsch, who reject a hutu power coming from elections. However,
most of the demonstrators who are targeted are young people who were not born
yet - or who were just born - when Melchior Ndadaye was assassinated. In their
overwhelming majority, they’ve only lived political pluralism. They’ve never
seen the naked face of the discrimination of Hutu of the 1970s and 1980s. They
can not even imagine or recreate the presumed feeling and "pleasures"
of the old order of past decades which the rulers claim that they are nostalgic
for. In Nyakabiga, during demonstrations, these young people warmly welcomed
Sylvestre Ntibantunganya, Léonce Ngendakumana, from the FRODEBU party, people
whom their fathers considered as devils in 1993. Today, many Pierre Nkurunziza
supporters spray the 2015 conflict with ethnic scents which stink of the 1993
conflict already twenty-two years ago. The hutu opponents of the third term are
at best pointed out as innocent victims of the ethnic minority’s deceitfulness
and at worst, they are seen as traitors to the cause of Ndadaye’s heirs, among
whom the CNDD-FDD sees itself as the unique champion.
In 2015 however, the political situation has greatly
changed. Fifteen years of implementation of the Arusha Peace Agreement has
provided this generation, all ethnic groups together, with the practice of
democracy oriented toward other fronts than the ethnic front. Arusha Peace
Agreement and the Constitution of the Republic of Burundi have introduced the
rule of elections through universal suffrage and the distribution of power
between hutu and tutsi within institutions according to proportions defined
beforehand (60/40 %). Knowing that with the rule of universal suffrage the
presidential seat almost automatically falls to a Hutu, political parties
considered to have majority tutsi members progressively became a minority,
mediating between two rival political forces with hutu predominance.
On the field, the ethnic understanding then dangerously
given to the Burundian conflict results in fierce and resentful repression and
reprisal. They are at the origin of a feeling of uneasiness within public,
civil and armed services. Fortunately, in those services, the bipolar and
Manichean understanding of the conflict, by some, is not shared by many and
doesn’t confirm the hutu-tutsi ethnic divide.
Since the official end of the armed conflict in December
2008, a lot of water has passed under the bridge. There are many managerial
staff and young Burundians, Hutu and Tutsi, who have undertaken for years to
get rid of the ethnic yoke through calm political and social cohabitation. But
those who held onto this understanding act ruthlessly, using the resources of
the State. The official communication and repressive operations reflect this.
Supporters of this dichotomous vision openly show it even on social networks,
Twitter and Facebook, where many violent and bitter memories are
recalled.
Very dangerously, this game brings about perverted
machinations within the opposition group. The years 1972, 1988 and 1993 echo in
the mind of many tutsi unspeakable violence repeatedly inflicted on parents and
friends, whose crime was nothing more than their ethnic identity. Recently on
October 29, some days before a disarmament operation announced in quarters
mainly inhabited by tutsi, the president of the Senate, a hutu, stirred up a
threat of razing some residential areas known to be predominantly inhabited by
Tutsis. His words have raised public outcry. In a very opportunistic way, he
was amplified by a parallel event between his words and those pronounced twenty
one years earlier by genocide actors in Rwanda. In view of a traumatic past in
Burundi, not acknowledging the sincere fear that the Senator’s words inspire in
victims would be offensive. To make fun of this fear is cynical and
disrespectful. However, capitalizing on this fear politically, with uncritical
acceptance, is also questionable, ethically speaking. Twenty-two years after
serious violence that Burundi and Rwanda have gone through, the national and
international context has visibly changed. In 2015, the composition of
Burundian security forces is not similar to either 1993 in Burundi or to 1994
in Rwanda. The international political and diplomatic environment has also
considerably changed. UN peace keeping forces more and more often operate with
the mandate to conduct offensive operations. International jurisdictions track,
prosecute and arrest notorious criminals throughout the world in active
cooperation with nations on every continent. Information and warnings may come
from any cell phone, which is rechargeable in any area in Burundi. That can’t
be said about the context of Ntega and Marangara massacres in 1988.
Even if the progress that the world has made in
preventing and responding to grave crimes has not prevented them in Syria, in
South Sudan and elsewhere, and though it may not completely eradicate them,
there is nonetheless a rein on the temptation to resort to unrestrained
sectarian violence in Burundi. But this restraint does not inevitably apply to
secret manoeuvring which is almost equally serious. In fact, even if the threat
of genocide is averted, whatever the government might do in secret, with the
same sectarian mindset to destroy the spirit and the letter of Arusha, is still
frightening. In this respect, initiating a census, as the Senate is currently
doing, which tracks the ethnicity of the members of the security forces in such
a poisonous context does not build confidence.
The current Burundian political conflict is clearly
burdened by the heavy history of Burundi. Today, Burundi is paying interest on
a debt of truth that has never been paid. The young people who are being
tortured and killed are hostages of a past that they didn’t live and for which
they can’t be held responsible. Human beings who die are not the only ones to
suffer. Values and systems which are being sacrificed to anger and resentment,
suffer as well. Yesterday’s "revolution" which toppled a monarchy but
which covered up unspeakable crimes became a "democracy", but one reduced
to its simplest and most caricatured form.
Berahino vs Thérence
One day, Thérence Ndabiyubare, a Tutsi, got an unexpected
visit from Nimenya, a Hutu, a man who, in October 1965, killed Marc, his cousin
with whom he had strong ties. Marc’s assassination remained a mystery. He was
suffering from a severe mental health problem and all the community knew it
very well. He was killed in the first ethnic killings of the post-Independence
era, in Muramvya (centre of Burundi). Nimenya had just served a five-year
sentence in prison. Thérence took control of his memories and welcomed Nimenya.
The latter was coming to ask for a small plot of land to cultivate. As custom
dictates, Thérence asked Nimenya to come back with a pitcher of traditional
beer around which he would gather his brothers and inform them of the decision.
Unsurprisingly, Thérence’s family unanimously recommended he refuses to give
land to the murderer, who, on the contrary, should be grateful to be allowed to
live. They made it clear granting land to this murderer would betray Marc’s
memory. However, Thérence decided on his own to give Nimenya, his cousin’s
murderer, the plot of land that he had asked for. He explained it this way:
"The sweet potatoes that he will harvest are not for him. Nimenya is too
old. They are for his children. What did they do to my cousin? Nothing. Why
should I take a decision that would affect them? They are innocent. Besides, if
these children have nothing to eat, they might be tempted to steal, including
from our property." Some years later, Charles, one of Thérence’s sons,
would be saved from the October 1993 massive killings by one of Nimenya’s sons
(4).
To save Burundi we must remember but also free ourselves,
of the anguishes and prejudices of the past, face the future, positively,
without sacrificing the fundamental rules and principles of democracy.
____________________________________________________
(1) CNDD-FDD : National Council for the Defence of
Democracy- Democracy Defence Forces
(2) Human Rights Watch, Burundi: President’s Speech
Instills Fear as Killings Increase, November 10, 2015
(3) Common term in Burundi to refer to armed rebellion
actors
(4) Berahino vs Thérence" is a true story. Thérence
Ndabiyubare, Marc and Charles are real name and first names. Like Berahino,
Nimenya is a pseudonym.
