History of Burundi


originated in the 16th century as a small kingdom in the African Great Lakes region. After European contact, it was united with the Kingdom of Rwanda, becoming the colony of Ruanda-Urundi - first colonised by Germany and then by Belgium. The colony gained independence in 1962, and split once again into Rwanda and Burundi. It is one of the few countries in Africa to be a direct territorial continuation of a pre-colonial era African state.

Kingdom of Burundi (1680–1966)

The origins of Burundi are known from a mix of oral history and archaeology. There are two main founding legends for Burundi. Both suggest that the nation was founded by a man named Cambarantama. The other version, more common in pre-colonial Burundi says that Cambarantama came from the southern state of Buha.
The first evidence of the Burundian state is from 16th century where it emerged on the eastern foothills. Over the following centuries it expanded, annexing smaller neighbours and competing with Rwanda. Its greatest growth occurred under Ntare IV Rutaganzwa Rugamba, who ruled the country from about 1796 to 1850 and saw the kingdom double in size.
The Kingdom of Burundi was characterized by a hierarchical political authority and tributary economic exchange. The king, known as the mwami headed a princely aristocracy which owned most of the land and required a tribute, or tax, from local farmers and herders. In the mid-18th century, this Tutsi royalty consolidated authority over land, production, and distribution with the development of the ubugabire—a patron-client relationship in which the populace received royal protection in exchange for tribute and land tenure.

European contact (1856)

European explorers and missionaries made brief visits to the area as early as 1856, and they compared the organization of the kingdom of Burundi with that of the old Greek empire. It was not until 1899 that Burundi became a part of German East Africa. Unlike the Rwandan monarchy, which decided to accept the German advances, the Burundian king Mwezi IV Gisabo opposed all European influence, refusing to wear European clothing and resisting the advance of European missionaries or administrators.

German East Africa (1899–1916)

The Germans used armed force and succeeded in doing great damage, but did not destroy the king's power. Eventually they backed one of the king's sons-in-law Maconco in a revolt against Gisabo. Gisabo was eventually forced to concede and agreed to German suzerainty. The Germans then helped him suppress Maconco's revolt. The smaller kingdoms along the western shore of Lake Victoria were also attached to Burundi.
Even after this the foreign presence was minimal and the kings continued to rule much as before. The Europeans did, however, bring devastating diseases affecting both people and animals. Affecting the entire region, Burundi was especially hard hit. A great famine hit in 1905, with others striking the entire Great Lakes region in 1914, 1923 and 1944. Between 1905 and 1914 half the population of the western plains region died.

Belgian and United Nations governance (1916–1962)

In 1916 Belgian troops conquered the area during the First World War. In 1923, the League of Nations mandated to Belgium the territory of Ruanda-Urundi, encompassing modern-day Rwanda and Burundi, the western kingdoms being assigned to Tanganyika. The Belgians administered the territory through indirect rule, building on the Tutsi-dominated aristocratic hierarchy.
Following the Second World War, Ruanda-Urundi became a United Nations Trust Territory under Belgian administrative authority. The trust territory guidelines required that the trust territories be prepared for independence and majority rule but it wasn't until 10 November 1959 that Belgium committed itself to political reform and legalised the emergence of competing political parties.
On 20 January 1959, Burundi's ruler Mwami Mwambutsa IV requested Burundi's independence from Belgium and dissolution of the Ruanda-Urundi union. In the following months, Burundian political parties began to advocate for the end of Belgian colonial rule and the separation of Rwanda and Burundi. The first and largest of these political parties was the Union for National Progress. UPRONA was a multi-ethnic party led by Tutsi Prince Louis Rwagasore while the Christian Democratic Party was supported by Belgium, which was being ruled by the Christian Social Party, whose party leader, August de Schryver, was Minister of the Belgian Congo and Ruanda-Urundi from 1959 until 1960.
Burundi's first elections took place on 8 September 1961 and UPRONA won just over 80% of the electorate's votes. In the wake of the elections, on 13 October, the 29-year-old Prince Rwagasore was assassinated, robbing Burundi of its most popular and well-known nationalist. Historians have speculated over Belgium's role in Rwagasore's death and the two highest ranking Belgian colonial officials in Burundi were accused of involvement by Rwagasore's convicted murderer. The day after Kageorgis' execution Burundi was granted independence.
Ethnic group192919331937194519671987199319972000a2000bEnd-2001
Tutsi221518287172%32%38%89%100%47%
Hutu206201828%68%62%11%0%53%

Independence (1962)

Full independence was achieved on July 1, 1962. In the context of weak democratic institutions at independence, Tutsi King Mwambutsa IV Bangiriceng established a constitutional monarchy comprising equal numbers of Hutus and Tutsis. The 15 January 1965 assassination of the Hutu prime minister Pierre Ngendandumwe set in motion a series of destabilizing Hutu revolts and subsequent governmental repression.
These were in part in reaction to Rwanda's "Social Revolution" of 1959–1961, where Rwandan Tutsi were subject to mass murder by the new government of Hutu Grégoire Kayibanda. In Burundi the Tutsi became committed to ensuring they would not meet the same fate and much of the country's military and police forces became controlled by Tutsis. Unlike Rwanda, which allied itself with the United States in the Cold War, Burundi after independence became affiliated with China.
The monarchy refused to recognize gains by Hutu candidates in the first legislative elections held by Burundi as an independent country on 10 May 1965. In response, a group of Hutu carried out a failed coup attempt against the monarchy on 18 October 1965, which in turn prompted the killing of scores of Hutu politicians and intellectuals. On 8 July 1966, King Mwambutsa IV was deposed by his son, Prince Ntare V, who himself was deposed by his prime minister Capt. Michel Micombero on 28 November 1966. Micombero abolished the monarchy and declared a republic. A de facto military regime emerged and civil unrest continued throughout the late 1960s and early 1970s. Micombero headed a clique of ruling Hima, the Tutsi subgroup located in southern Burundi. Similar to 1965, rumors of an impending Hutu coup in 1969 prompted the arrest and execution of scores of prominent political and military figures.
In June 1971, a group of Banyaruguru, the socially "higher up" subgroup of Tutsi located in the north of the country, were accused of conspiracy by the ruling Hima clique. On 14 January 1972, a military tribunal sentenced four Banyaruguru officers and five civilians to death, and seven to life imprisonment. To the Hima concerns about a Hutu uprising or Banyaruguru-led coup was added the return of Ntare V from exile, a potential rallying point for the Hutu majority.

1972 genocide

On April 29, there was an outbreak of violence in the south of the country, also the base of the Hima, where bands of roving Hutu committed atrocities against Tutsi civilians. All civilian and military authorities in the city of Bururi were killed and the insurgents then seized the armories in the towns of Rumonge and Nyanza-Lac. They then attempted to kill every Tutsi they could, as well as some Hutu who refused to participate in the rebellion, before retreating to Vyanda, near Bururi, and proclaiming a "Republic of Martyazo." Somewhere from 800 to 1200 people were killed.
A week after the insurgent proclamation of a republic, government troops moved in. Meanwhile, President Micombero declared martial law on May 30 and asked Zairean President Mobutu Sese Seko for assistance. Congolese paratroopers were deployed to secure the airport while the Burundi army moved into the countryside. Africanist René Lemarchand notes, "What followed was not so much a repression as a hideous slaughter of Hutu civilians. The carnage went on unabated through the month of August. By then virtually every educated Hutu element, down to secondary school students, was either dead or in flight."
Because the perpetrators, composed of government troops and the Jeunesses Révolutionnaires Rwagasore, the youth wing of the Union for National Progress ruling party, targeted primarily civil servants, educated males and university students, solely because of their "Hutuness" and irrespective of whether they posed a threat, Lemarchand terms the eradication a "partial genocide." One of the first to be killed was deposed monarch Ntare V, in Gitega.
As president, Micombero became an advocate of African socialism and received support from the People's Republic of China. He imposed a staunch regime of law and order, sharply repressing Hutu militarism.
From late April to September 1972, an estimated 200,000 to 300,000 Hutu were killed. About 300,000 people became refugees, with most fleeing to Tanzania. In an effort to attract sympathy from the United States, the Tutsi-dominated government accused the Hutu rebels of having Communist leanings, although there is no credible evidence that this was actually the case. Lemarchand notes that, while crushing the rebellion was the first priority, the genocide was successful in a number of other objectives: ensuring the long-term stability of the Tutsi state by eliminating Hutu elites and potential elites; turning the army, police and gendarmerie into a Tutsi monopoly; denying the potential return of monarchy through the murder of Ntare V; and creating a new legitimacy for the Hima-dominated state as protector of the country, especially for the previously fractious Tutsi-Banyaruguru.