Ethnicity and Power in Burundi and Rwanda: Different Paths to Mass Violence

Rwanda and Burundi are two small neighboring countries in East-Central Africa that share the same ethnic composition: approximately 85-90 percent Hutu, 10-14 percent Tutsi, and 1 percent Twa. Their climate, topography, population density (the highest and the second highest in Africa, respectively), predominantly agrarian economy, religion, language, and history are also very similar. Most significant, they both have been theaters of massive violence between their main ethnic groups, the Hutu and the Tutsi. Given these similarities, it is no surprise that most analysts approach mass violence in both countries in an almost identical manner. Kuper describes Rwanda and Burundi separately but treats them as examples of the same processes of polarization based on overlapping inequalities. Comparative political scientists almost always lump Rwanda and Burundi together. Gurr treats them both as ethnoclass conflicts; Harff categorizes them both as politicides against politically active communal groups; and Stavenhagen treats them as resulting from the overlap of both socioeconomic and ethnic divisions.' However, the dynamics that led to massive violence in Burundi and Rwanda are textbook cases of entirely different processes. Burundi presents a typical example of how discrimination and unequal access to scarce resources lead to violence. As the discrimination took place largely along ethnic lines, the violence and counterviolence became ethnic too. Burundi is a case of superimposition of cleavages, with fault lines in political power, economic wealth, and ethnicity reinforcing each other.2 In Rwanda the dividing line between the haves and the have-nots was regional and social, not ethnic. Popular discontent was therefore largely an intra-Hutu, regional matter. However, the affirmation of Hutu (anti-Tutsi) ethnicity and its institutionalization in public policy were key components of the ruling elite's strategy of legitimization and control over the state. Whenever this elite was threatened, it exacerbated ethnic divisions to thwart democratization and power sharing. Rwanda provides an almost perfect example of the dynamics that have been discussed by scholars of genocides: the existence of long-standing, widespread, and institutionalized prejudice; the radicalization of animosity and routinization of violence; the moral exclusion of a category of people, allowing first their social death and then their physical death.3