Burundi Language
Christal Rasband
Burundi,[b] officially the Republic of Burundi,[c] is a landlocked country in the Great Rift Valley at the junction between the African Great Lakes region and Southeast Africa. It is bordered by Rwanda to the north, Tanzania to the east and southeast, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo to the west; Lake Tanganyika lies along its southwestern border. The capital city is Gitega and the largest city is Bujumbura.[14]
One of the smallest countries in Africa, Burundi's land is used mostly for subsistence agriculture and grazing. Deforestation, soil erosion, and habitat loss are major ecological concerns.[20] As of 2005[update], the country was almost completely deforested. Less than 6% of its land was covered by trees, and over half of that being for commercial plantations.[21] Burundi is the poorest country in the world by nominal GDP per capita, and is one of the least developed countries. It faces widespread poverty, corruption, instability, authoritarianism, and illiteracy. The 2018 World Happiness Report ranked the country as the world's least happy with a rank of 156.[22] Burundi is a member of the African Union, Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa, United Nations, East African Community (EAC), and the Non-Aligned Movement.
Modern Burundi is named after the King of Urundi, who ruled the region starting in the 16th century. It derives its name from a word "Urundi" in Kirundi the local language, which means "Another one".[23] Later the Belgian mandate to Ruanda-Urundi region came to rename it and their former capital "Usumbura" of both kingdoms by adding the letter "B" in front of it.
Burundi is one of the few countries in Sub-Saharan Africa, along with its neighbour Rwanda among others (such as Botswana, Lesotho, and Eswatini), to be a direct territorial continuation of a pre-colonial era African state. The early history of Burundi, and especially the role and nature of the country's three dominant ethnic groups, the Twa, Hutu and Tutsi, is highly debated amongst academics.[24]
The first evidence of the Burundian state dates back to the late 16th century where it emerged on the eastern foothills. Over the following centuries it expanded, annexing smaller neighbours.The Kingdom of Burundi, or Urundi, in the Great Lakes region was a polity ruled by a traditional monarch with several princes beneath him; succession struggles were common.[6] The king, known as the mwami (translated as ruler) headed a princely aristocracy (ganwa) which owned most of the land and required a tribute, or tax, from local farmers (mainly Hutu) and herders (mainly Tutsi). The Kingdom of Burundi was characterised by a hierarchical political authority and tributary economic exchange.[25]
The classification of Hutu or Tutsi was not merely based on ethnic criteria alone. Hutu farmers that managed to acquire wealth and livestock were regularly granted the higher social status of Tutsi, some even made it to become close advisors of the Ganwa. On the other hand, there are also reports of Tutsi that lost all their cattle and subsequently lost their higher status and were called Hutu. Thus, the distinction between Hutu and Tutsi was also a socio-cultural concept, instead of a purely ethnic one.[27][28] There were also many reports of marriages between Hutu and Tutsi people.[29] In general, regional ties and power struggles played a far more determining role in Burundi's politics than ethnicity.[28]
From 1884, the German East Africa Company was active in the African Great Lakes region. As a result of heightened tensions and border disputes between the German East Africa Company, the British Empire and the Sultanate of Zanzibar, the German Empire was called upon to put down the Abushiri revolts and protect the empire's interests in the region. The German East Africa Company transferred its rights to the German Empire in 1891, in this way establishing the German colony of German East Africa, which included Burundi (Urundi), Rwanda (Ruanda), and the mainland part of Tanzania (formerly known as Tanganyika).[30] The German Empire stationed armed forces in Rwanda and Burundi during the late 1880s. The location of the present-day city of Gitega served as an administrative centre for the Ruanda-Urundi region.[31]
During the First World War, the East African Campaign greatly affected the African Great Lakes region. The Belgian and British colonial forces of the allied powers launched a coordinated attack on the German colony. The German army stationed in Burundi was forced to retreat by the numerical superiority of the Belgian army and by 17 June 1916, Burundi and Rwanda were occupied. The Force Publique and the British Lake Force then started a thrust to capture Tabora, an administrative centre of central German East Africa. After the war, as outlined in the Treaty of Versailles, Germany was forced to cede "control" of the Western section of the former German East Africa to Belgium.[32][33]
On 20 October 1924, Ruanda-Urundi, which consisted of modern-day Rwanda and Burundi, became a Belgian League of Nations mandate territory, with Usumbura as its capital. In practical terms it was considered part of the Belgian colonial empire. Burundi, as part of Ruanda-Urundi, continued its kingship dynasty despite the presence of European authorities.[16][34]
The Belgians, however, preserved many of the kingdom's institutions; the Burundian monarchy succeeded in surviving into the post-colonial period.[6] Following the Second World War, Ruanda-Urundi was classified as a United Nations Trust Territory under Belgian administrative authority.[16] During the 1940s, a series of policies caused divisions throughout the country. On 4 October 1943, powers were split in the legislative division of Burundi's government between chiefdoms and lower chiefdoms. Chiefdoms were in charge of land, and lower sub-chiefdoms were established. Native authorities also had powers.[34] In 1948, Belgium allowed the region to form political parties.[32] These factions contributed to Burundi gaining its independence from Belgium, on 1 July 1962.
On 20 January 1959, King Mwami Mwambutsa IV requested Burundi's independence from Belgium and dissolution of the Ruanda-Urundi union.[35] In the following months, Burundian political parties began to advocate for the end of Belgian colonial rule and the separation of Rwanda and Burundi.[35] The first and largest of these political parties was the Union for National Progress (UPRONA).
Burundi's push for independence was influenced by the Rwandan Revolution and the accompanying instability and ethnic conflict that occurred there. As a result of the Rwandan Revolution, many Rwandan Tutsi refugees arrived in Burundi from 1959 to 1961.[36][37][38]
Burundi's first elections took place on 8 September 1961 and UPRONA, a multi-ethnic unity party led by Prince Louis Rwagasore 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.[32][39]
The country claimed independence on 1 July 1962,[32] and legally changed its name from Ruanda-Urundi to Burundi.[40] Burundi became a constitutional monarchy with Mwami Mwambutsa IV, Prince Rwagasore's father, serving as the country's king.[37] On 18 September 1962 Burundi joined the United Nations.[41]
In 1963, King Mwambutsa appointed a Hutu prime minister, Pierre Ngendandumwe, but he was assassinated on 15 January 1965 by a Rwandan Tutsi employed by the US Embassy. The assassination occurred in the broader context of the Congo Crisis during which Western anti-communist countries were confronting the communist People's Republic of China as it attempted to make Burundi a logistics base for communist insurgents battling in Congo.[42] Parliamentary elections in May 1965 brought a majority of Hutu into the parliament, but when King Mwambutsa appointed a Tutsi prime minister, some Hutu felt this was unjust and ethnic tensions were further increased. In October 1965, an attempted coup d'tat led by the Hutu-dominated police was carried out but failed. The Tutsi dominated army, then led by Tutsi officer Captain Michel Micombero[37] purged Hutu from their ranks and carried out reprisal attacks which ultimately claimed the lives of up to 5,000 people in a precursor to the 1972 Burundian Genocide.[43]
King Mwambutsa, who had fled the country during the October coup of 1965, was deposed by a coup in July 1966 and his teenage son, Prince Ntare V, claimed the throne. In November that same year, the Tutsi Prime Minister, then-Captain Michel Micombero, carried out another coup, this time deposing Ntare, abolishing the monarchy and declaring the nation a republic, though his one-party government was effectively a military dictatorship.[32] 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 and sharply repressed Hutu militarism.
In late April 1972, two events led to the outbreak of the First Burundian Genocide. On 27 April 1972, a rebellion led by Hutu members of the gendarmerie broke out in the lakeside towns of Rumonge and Nyanza-Lac and the rebels declared the short-lived Martyazo Republic.[44][45] The rebels attacked both Tutsi and any Hutu who refused to join their rebellion.[46][47] During this initial Hutu outbreak, anywhere from 800 to 1200 people were killed.[48] At the same time, King Ntare V of Burundi returned from exile, heightening political tension in the country. On 29 April 1972, the 24-year-old Ntare V was murdered. In subsequent months, the Tutsi-dominated government of Michel Micombero used the army to combat Hutu rebels and commit genocide, murdering targeted members of the Hutu majority. The total number of casualties was never established, but contemporary estimates put the number of people killed between 80,000 and 210,000.[49][50] In addition, several hundred thousand Hutu were estimated to have fled the killings into Zare, Rwanda and Tanzania.[50][51]
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