Burundi used to be among the countries that called themselves the Switzerland of Africa
(a title that was also claimed by neighbouring Rwanda).
While it has mountains, the country has known little peace in the last few
years.
The same ethnic tensions that resulted in one of the world’s most terrible
atrocities
in Rwanda in 1994 have been seething in Burundi for decades, and the
occasional
unrest and upheaval may yet escalate into a similar tragedy.
Until the situation changes, travelers would be well advised to go elsewhere.
(Unless you are a danger freak, in which case it is one of the top ten on your
list!)
Burundi’s two main ethnic groups, the Hutu and the Tutsi, have been struggling
for
power virtually since the country’s independence from Belgium in 1962, but it
is
the Tutsi, who make up about 15 percent of the population, who have wielded
control over the Hutu, who make up the rest of the population.
The first recorded inhabitants of Burundi, the once forest-dwelling Twa
Pygmies,
today constitute less than one percent of the population.
After an attempted Hutu takeover in 1972, widespread bloodshed ensued and
an estimated 100,000 to 150,000 Hutus were killed, setting the tone of
animosity
and retribution for the decades to come.
Subsequent Hutu attempts in 1988 and 1992 to gain control of the government
were
unsuccessful before democratic elections were held in 1993, and Burundi’s
first Hutu president, Melchior Ndadaye, was elected.
Shortly after the election, Ndadaye was assassinated, and only months later,
his appointed successor, Cyprien Ntaryamira, died in a suspicious plane crash
along with the president of neighbouring Rwanda.
Then, in mid 1996, former president Pierre Buyoya, who had relinquished his
office in
1993 after losing the election to Ndadaye, retook the presidency from interim
president Sylvestre Ntibantunganya in a bloodless coup.
Today, under the shadow of peace talks, the violence continues as Hutu rebels fight to topple the
military rule of Pierre Buyoya, a member of the Tutsi minority. With fighting becoming more desperate,
Hutus have begun attacking other Hutu groups it believes are Tutsi sympathisers.
Some 800,000 people, mostly Hutus, are living in Tutsi-controlled camps, with many young men
having been rounded up and taken in. Despite some ground being given on both sides - an international
embargo has been lifted, while five Tutsis have been prosecuted for the assassination of Hutu president
Ndadaye - the situation is still dire.
Fighting is at its worst in outlying areas, however gunfire is not uncommon on the streets of the capital, Bujumbura.
With the Burundi army also involved in the war in the Democratic Republic of Congo, and with over 80% of
hospital beds taken by AIDS patients, the tiny central African nation has plenty to worry about.
Wedged between the Democratic Republic of Congo (formerly Zaire) to its
west,
Rwanda to its north and Tanzania to its south and east,
Burundi sits on the western rim of the Great African
Rift Valley. Except for a large,
flat plain along Lake Tanganyika, the rest of the country consists of verdant,
rolling hills and moist valleys. Coffee, beans, rice, cassava and bananas are
grown widely.
For a more detailed map click here
These maps are big, so be
patient.
Parts of this text were borrowed from other sources.
