Saving Burundi Requires That Africans Take the First Step

Burundi is teetering on the brink of self-inflicted genocide and possible nation-state extinction--and a solution may be as near as the central African country’s neighbors.

Hundreds of Hutu and Tutsi Burundians have been killed in a wave of retaliatory violence. The nationals of Belgium, Germany, France and the United States have been advised to leave the capital city of Bujumbura. Thousands of refugees have fled to Tanzania and others are expected to seek safety in Zaire.

The U.N. Security Council has asked its five permanent members to commit manpower and money to keep the peace, to little avail. For a successful intervention in Burundi to take place, the United Nations would have to: stabilize the violence with a military presence; disarm the belligerents; impose a police structure with some level of indigenous participation; coordinate relief efforts and resettle refugees, and rebuild or build anew institutions for the delivery of basic human services. Any intervention would require a protracted presence in and around Burundi. Clearly, there is little motivation and political will in the West for such an undertaking, especially after the experience in Somalia.

Yet, the crisis in Burundi has virtually nothing to do with outsiders. At its core is interethnic conflict: one group of black Africans fighting another, similar group of black Africans for no reason other than they come from a different tribe. Complicating this scenario is that Hutus and Tutsi are intermingled from village to village, from street to street.

Since land is not contested, it would seem that the basic issue--the ethnic composition of the army and the government--could be resolved without genocide. But the most poignant aspect of Burundi’s conflict, as in Rwanda, is its cycle of retaliatory violence, which only Burundians themselves can stop.

In an effort to address the challenges that a conflict like Burundi presents, some of the more progressive Pan-Africanists are exploring African-based solutions. Ali Mazrui, the preeminent African scholar, sees the problem in Burundi/Rwanda as an outgrowth of a dual society in which “ethnic duality, population density, geographic intermingling and colonial relationships all have contributed to the tragedies.” He places a large share of the responsibility on Africans themselves, urging them to transcend colonial legacies of violence.

Mazrui posits the once-unthinkable notion that Africa’s borders might have to be redrawn to allow conflicting ethnic groups control over their own territories. After all, Africa’s nation-states and borders were established rather arbitrarily by the victors of World War I, which proceeded to carve up the continent pursuant to their own economic and political interests.

This new thinking includes the idea of a single African country intervening in the affairs of another, with the blessing of a regional organization. Another approach would involve a neighboring power, such as Tanzania in Burundi’s case, moving in to restore order. Third, and perhaps most controversial, is the suggestion that troubled nations should be colonized or annexed by more stable, African states to forestall future dislocations. Throughout, there is a presumption that a stronger, better-financed Organization of African Unity would be called on to play a major role. The organization has just established a conflict prevention and resolution mechanism that could allow it to assume a greater influence in interethnic conflicts, especially those with regional and global implications.

There is also the more familiar principle of trusteeship. Under such a system, a consortium of stable African countries, backed by the OAU, would administer the affairs of, say, a Burundi or a Rwanda until a lasting rapprochement could be achieved. Such an approach would not be without precedent in African affairs.

The usual reasons advanced for the current failure of Africans to resolve their own conflicts--Europeans exploited, oppressed and drove wedges among African ethnic groups for much of the last two centuries, and the Cold War only put the consequences of this legacy on temporary hold--are no longer sufficient. Comparatively speaking, a similar, though less oppressive, colonial legacy in Latin America and parts of Asia did not result in the same level of violent dysfunctionalism now being played out in Africa.

Because Europe brutally colonized and underdeveloped Africa, it always requires a balancing act to criticize repressive African regimes or the internecine violence that plagues many regions in Africa. Invariably, charges of racism, or blaming the victim for circumstances beyond their control, will be raised. But such a response is now demonstrably outdated. The record is replete with regimes in Africa engaged in the repression of their own citizens, and there are power-grabs fueled by ethnicity that are devoid of colonial influences.

Given the existing demands on the United Nations, and an emerging view that Africa is on the margins of the world economy, it is clear that the West is no longer prepared to save Africa from itself until Africans take the lead by helping themselves.