Case Study:

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 E - Memories

Filtered through the prism of ethnicity, collective memories only bear a distant relationship to the facts. The experience of traumatic events creates its own universe of discourse, where the “other” is seen as belonging to a sub-human category. This is also true of individual memories, and it applies to both Tutsi and Hutu. But given that the loss of Hutu lives was vastly superior to the Tutsi’s, it is easy to see why Hutu memories have been particularly prone to Manichean representations.

The phenomenon is nowhere more vividly captured than in Liisa Malkki’s discussion of “the mythico-history of atrocity”, based on open-ended interviews with Hutu refugees in Tanzania (Malkki, 1995: 91 ff). She shows how memories of atrocity mutate into a sickening, ghoulish depiction of the tortures inflicted by Tutsi: “There was a manner of cutting the stomach (of a pregnant woman). Everything that was found in the interior was lifted out… The cadaver of the mama, the cadaver of the baby of the future, they rotted on the road. Not even a burial. The mother was obliged to eat the finger of her baby… The Tutsi girls were given bamboos. They were made to kill by pushing the bamboo from below [from the vagina] to the mouth” (Ibid. 91). The aim here is the demonization of all Tutsi; in the minds of her interviewees the thread of evil goes way back, from the history of Tutsi penetration into the country to the present time: “The dehumanization of the Tutsi at this level acted as a culmination of earlier assertions in the mythico-history that the Tutsi did not belong to the ‘nation’ in its pure, ‘natural’ state” (Ibid, 93). Stripped of their hype, Malkki’s interviews capture a recurrent theme in the discourse of Hutu extremists: the innate perversity of the Tutsi “race”. While the past is instrumentalized to demonstrate the evil dispositions of the Tutsi “race”, the present is re-interpreted in a way that confirms the fundamental goodness of the Hutu: there is no reference to the challenge posed by the Hutu insurrection, let alone to the acts of courage displayed by Tutsi to protect their Hutu neighbors. Much of this, along with a lengthy reconstruction of Burundi’s pre-colonial past as a story of good guys vs. bad guys, is articulated in what later became the manifesto of Hutu extremists, an undated document by the late Rémi Gahutu titled “Persecution of the Hutu of Burundi” (Gahutu, n.d.). Insofar as they grossly amplify an all too tragic reality, Hutu memories bring into sharp focus the traumatic psychological impact of the experience of mass violence.

For some Hutu analysts the so-called rebellion is yet another irrefutable proof of Tutsi perfidy. Not only did the government fail to take any action to nip the insurrection in the bud – despite its awareness that it was being planned – but in fact did everything it could to facilitate the explosion, the better to justify the ensuing genocidal bloodbath. What happened in last days of April was the tragic outcome of a government-inspired manipulation, aimed at justifying the next step – the mass eradication of Hutu populations. Such, in brief, is the argument set forth by the historian Augustin Nsanze (Nsanze, 2003, 214-218), which to this day forms a key leitmotiv in the imaginings of Hutu extremists.

Where Hutu memories frequently elude references to the Hutu insurrection, Tutsi memories, on the other hand, give pride of place to the mortal threat posed to their community by Hutu rebels. Genocidal intent is the key presumption. As if to strengthen the force of the argument, the number of Tutsi casualties is deliberately inflated, and so, also, the number of rebels, with the figure of 25,000 sometimes cited as fact (Shibura, 1973: 96). To mobilize so many people requires “a lot of time and colossal resources”, writes Albert Shibura, a key participant in the repression (Ibid.) The unstated assumption is that a large number of people killed is irrefutable proof of genocide. Another is that it has happened before. Thus the massacre of hundreds of Tutsi (here again there are no reliable estimates) by the authors of the abortive 1965 coup are described by Shibura as “the genocide of October 19, 1965”, abetted by outside actors, including the CIA (Ibid. 58). Allegations of a Hutu-inspired plot in 1969 are again portrayed as involving “an attempted genocide” of Tutsi (Ibid. 76). Every instance of Hutu violence is thus cited as proof of a genocidal thread running from 1965 to 1972. Furthermore, despite “the barbaric conspiracy of some 25,000 nationals and foreigners”, to quote from the Burundi ambassador to Brussels, Laurent Nzeyimana, “there is no ethnic or tribal problem in Burundi”. His argument is straightforward: if the externally abetted plot has in no way diminished the cohesion of Hutu and Tutsi, this is because inter-ethnic harmony is inherent in Burundi society, and because the majority of the people know that the prophylactic measures taken by the government were only directed at those elements involved in the conspiracy.

With the passage of time, many of these outrageous claims are receding from public and private memories. Furthermore, beginning with the Arusha conference and the opening of the political arena to opposition groups, a genuine transformation has taken place in the country’s political climate. Most importantly, ethnicity has ceased to operate as the central axis of Burundi politics. All of which, along with the promise of a Truth and Reconciliation Commission, raises hopes that accusations based on invective and twisted evidence may in time yield to a more dispassionate exchange.

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