IN BURUNDI, THE TUTSI ARE NOT A MINORITY BUT AN ETHNIC
COMMUNITY AS SUCH
12/19/2004
A certain literature with neo-colonial relent forged (under the auspices
of the International Christian Democrat) for the needs for a cause the concept
voluntarily degrading of " tutsi minority of Burundi".
The term made fortune as from the moment when taken again, diffused and
amplified by the gutter press, it was in charge of emotional resonance and
negative connotation particularly in political period of crisis and tensions
inter-ethnic.
A stereotype had thus been born which was going to furnish the unconscious
collective and, to haunt the commun imaginary and to run of a part of our
populations as the Hutisante ideology was propagated.
Here is a stereotype moreover which was going to constitute the deforming
prism through which a great part of the international opinion, under the
blow of a misinformation campaign learnedly orchestrated by the IDC, apprehend
Burundian political reality and interprets. This stereotype is put today
to the honor by Tanzania, Uganda and South Africa each time there is an attempt
to solve the political crisis of Burundi.
This stereotype was incontestably the product of a racist reading of passed
from our country characteristic of colonial historiography making of Tutsi
an invader from Egypt or from Ethiopia to dominate the populations autochtones
primarily Hutu.
Whimsical assumption erroneous assertion if it is, since it is stripped
of any scientific base, the objective of this political operation (of the
International Christian Democrat) was the marginalisation of Tutsi and with
the need their physical elimination followed for an installation of an Hutu
capacity all the more submitted to its Master whom it will have been imposed
by him and all that under the fallacious preparing of the democracy. It is
the social revolution assisted by the IDC such as practised Gregoire Kayibanda
in Rwanda in 1959.
The refusal of this marginalisation by Tutsi will cause violent reactions
of the Hutu which will provide to the contemporary history of our country
its tragic screen and its bloody conflicts.
It is rightly that Tutsi refused this minorisation because they are not
a minority. Indeed the minority is not a statistical reality, but a historical
fact, cultural and political.
The Kurds are a minority in Iraq because they are in the periphery of the
history and the Iraqi culture.
The Hungarians are a minority in Romania because detached from the Empire
austro-Hungarian by the Treaty of Paris after the 1st world war they were
artificially grafted on Romania.
The White of South Africa are a minority because they are foreign with the
culture and indigenous civilization and that their intrusion in the political
history this country is too recent.
Nothing similar for Tutsi because they are a component of this historical
reality, cultural and policy which is Burundi exactly as oxygen is a component
of water.
Never with the periphery, but always in the mainstream, Tutsi were, are
and will be always major actors of the history and culture of our country,
political partners impossible to circumvent.
That one regards Burundi as a State-Nation i.e. a Republic of citizens or
State-Ethnos groups i.e. a Republic of ethnic communities, Tutsi are not
a minority.
In the 1st case, Burundi counts six million equal citizens in duties and
in rights and the term of minority does not have any direction.
In the 2nd case Tutsi belong to 1 ethnic community in a country which counts
2 of them, which communities have the same political rights and the concept
of minority is not setting. The difficulty of democratization in our country
comes from the fact that in the State-Ethnos groups which became Burundi,
one wants to observe political rules of plays conceived for a State-Nation
that it ceased being.
When it is admitted and that it is affirmed that the Hutu have the right
to refuse if necessary by force to be directed by a Tutsi leader whom they
did not elect, I reply that Tutsi have the same right and that they are perfectly
justified to refuse any Hutu leader that they did not choose. As opposed
to what affirm the Tanzanian, Ugandans and South-African authorities, Burundi
is not a country made up of an ethnic majority (the Hutu) which has the natural
right to control and of an ethnic minority (Tutsi) just good to be protected,
but a country where it is urgent to define a new type of relations socio-policies
between the two ethnic communities, relations ready to guarantee to the members
of each one of them physical survival and the political power (on a strictly
equal basis) to which they aspire all.
To claim that in Burundi Tutsi are a minority because they account for 20%
of the total is as inept and foolish to affirm as to say that oxygen is minority
in water (H2O) because it is enough to 1 only oxygen atom whereas one needs
2 of hydrogen of them to constitute a water molecule.
After one doesn’t speak if francophone minority in Switzerland. One
does not speak either about Walloon minority in Belgium.
Tutsi are not a minority because our country is not the BUHUTU but BURUNDI.
There is a nuance, it is important... very important...
