The Dynamics of Violence in Central Africa. Rene Lemarchand

How have even the small children learned such hate? What does this say about peace and reconciliation in our lifetime in Burundi?…The people in the neighborhood still relish talking about how the pregnant Tutsi woman married to a Hutu man living in this compound was burnt to death. They recount in gory detail how the flesh burnt until the foetus was visible.⁸

      Violence as Discourse

      If the symptoms of Burundi's “sickness” are easy to detect, the causes of the malady are more difficult to identify. To invoke ethnic hatreds does not carry us very far. Asking ourselves what impels people to kill each other brings to mind Paul Richard's analysis of violence in Sierra Leone as a form of discourse which, in the absence of alternative outlets, seeks expression in bloodshed. To quote:⁹

      War itself is a type of text—a violent attempt to tell a story or to ‘cut in on the conversation' of others from whose company the belligerents feel excluded. Understanding war as text and discourse is not an intellectual affectation but a vital necessity, because only when ‘war talk' is fully comprehended is it possible for conciliators to outline more pacific options in softer tones.

      David Apter makes a somewhat similar argument: “Violence,” he writes, “is itself a mode of interpretation, with interpretation leading to violent events: protest, insurrection, terrorism.”¹⁰

      Looked at from this perspective, a certain logic begins to emerge in what otherwise could be dismissed as a case of tribal insanity. It is a logic that challenges some of the myths discussed earlier (e.g., the myth of Hutu as global genocidaires or the myth of Ndadaye's assassination as a preemptive strike made necessary to save the Tutsi from an impending genocide); by the same token, however, the violence through which this “text” expresses itself, in turn becomes the source of an “interpretation,” which generates further violence.

      Let us return for a moment to Burundi and take a closer look at the outburst of anti-Tutsi violence triggered by the news of Ndadaye's death in 1993: inscribed in the unspeakable atrocities¹¹ committed by Hutu against Tutsi was a very clear interpretation of Ndadaye's assassination as the harbinger of a replay of the 1972 carnage. In the words of one Hutu, shortly after the news of Ndadaye's death had reached his commune, “back in 1972 they got us, but this time they won't!” (en 1972 ils nous ont eus; ils ne nous auront plus!). Again: “since 1972 it is our blood that's being spilled! Now we hear that President Ndadaye has been killed. If they did that, that means we are next.”¹² What all this adds up to is an unshakable conviction that the 1972 scenario was about to repeat itself.

      From the vantage point of extremist elements within the Tutsi community, such an interpretation carries little or no conviction. The Tutsi “text” conveys a very different scenario, which might be summed up as follows: the wanton killing of innocent Tutsi families by their Hutu neighbors is traceable to a carefully planned attempt to annihilate the Tutsi community; the brains behind this dastardly plot are the Frodebu leaders; the most dangerous of the Frodebistes are those elements who joined Leonard Nyangoma's National Council for the Defense of Democracy (CNDD) and its armed wing, the FDD; only by physically eliminating the genocidaires within and outside the Frodebu can the Tutsi minority protect itself against genocide. Thus, with the Rwanda scenario held up as an omen of what the future holds in store, anticipation of genocide becomes justification for killing the potential génocidaires. There can be little question about the fear of the Tutsi minority that, if given the opportunity, the Hutu would not hesitate a moment to wipe them out, as happened in Rwanda. Meanwhile, as the number of Hutu officials killed increases, the threat of retaliation rises in proportion.¹³

      By imputing genocidal motives to many key Frodebu leaders, by using scare tactics and assassination to exclude them from positions of responsibility in the National Assembly and the government, and by consistently denying them the status of legitimate interlocutors in the ongoing search for a negotiated solution; their accusers in effect gave them no other choice than to have recourse to violence and indeed genocide: a case in point is the horrendous killing of over 300 innocent Tutsi in Bugendana, on July 20, 1996, by bands of Hutu terrorists; such gratuitous carnage cannot be described otherwise than as a genocidal massacre.¹⁴

      With the growing polarization of ethnic feelings, extremists at both ends of the spectrum are redoubling their efforts to make their voices heard, most of the time violently. On the Hutu side, Leonard Nyan-goma's CNDD insists that peace and reconciliation are contingent upon a return to the status quo ante, that is to the pre-1993 coup situation, when the Frodebu held a majority of the seats in parliament, in government, and in the provincial administration. Any suggestion that power sharing is the quickest path to reconciliation is rejected out of hand as unacceptable. Not only is the 1993 coup seen as a flagrant breach of constitutional legality; so, also, are the subsequent powersharing arrangements worked out by party representatives. Buyoya's coup of July 1996 merely prolongs the state of illegality created by the 1993 putsch. To paraphrase Richards, cutting in on the conversation of others (i.e., mainly Frodebistes and Upronistes) from whose company he feels excluded, Nyangoma's position can be reduced to the following propositions: (a) one does not negotiate with assassins; (b) the men responsible for Ndadaye's assassination must be brought to justice; and (c) nothing short of a return to the pre-coup legality can bring peace to the country.

      Tutsi extremists, likewise, reject any thought of power sharing, but for different reasons. Nyangoma's mantra that one does not negotiate with criminals finds an echo in the Tutsi militia's insistence that one does not negotiate with génocidaires, a position also endorsed by the extremist wing of the predominantly Tutsi Union pour le Progrès National (Uprona). Because the label is now used to designate almost every Frodebu politician, as well as the CNDD/FDD leadership, it is difficult to see how a negotiated solution can be arrived at when virtually every Hutu of any standing is excluded from the negotiation by virtue of his participation in an alleged genocide.

      The notion of collective guilt is the principal obstacle to national reconciliation. To hold all Tutsi collectively responsible for human rights violations is hardly more convincing than to assume that the hundreds of thousands of Hutu refugees in eastern Congo were all involved in the 1994 genocide. Nothing is more specious than the argument that after the destruction of the refugee camps in November 1996 and the return of perhaps as many as half a million refugees to Rwanda, the only Hutu left behind were the génocidaires and therefore, that it was entirely legitimate for the Rwandan army to kill them to prevent them from doing further harm. And yet this is precisely the subliminal “text” that underlies the “cleansing” operations of the Rwandan military in eastern Congo. In healing, dealing, and coming to terms with the crises in Burundi and Rwanda, two different strategies are being tested: one focuses on the concept of healing and draws its inspiration from South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), chaired by Archbishop Desmond Tutu; the other puts the emphasis on the pursuit of negotiations aimed at a power-sharing formula. Though by no means mutually exclusive, neither strategy has yet given proper attention to the different versions of the “truth” about genocide, which may be the reason why the results, so far, have been somewhat less than impressive.

      The limitations of power sharing as a way of promoting overarching cooperation at the elite level are nowhere more cruelly evident than in the disastrous outcome of the so-called Government Convention of September 1994. After endless rounds of negotiations it was finally agreed that 55 percent of cabinet posts and civil service positions would go to the Hutu-dominated Forces du Changement Démocratique (FCD)—of which the Frodebu was the key component—and 45 percent to the Tutsi-controlled Coalition des Partis Politiques de l'Opposition (CPPO)—led by the Uprona—while vesting all decision-making powers in a National Security Council (NSC) made up of a majority of CPPO elements. That the convention turned out to be a less than ideal solution is not surprising if one considers that the net result was to rob the Frodebu of its electoral victory while reducing the constitution to a mere scrap of paper. As Filip Reyntjens correctly noted, “the Government Convention is the institutional translation of the October 1993 coup: the constitution has been shelved and the outcome of both the presidential and parliamentary elections swept aside as the president and parliament are placed under the tutelage of an unconstitutional body.”¹⁵ It is one thing to share power and quite another to surrender power under the pressure of