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Constitution-Making in Situations of Extreme Crisis: the Case of Rwanda and Burundi

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2009

Filip Reyntjens
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The small East-Central African countries of Rwanda and Burundi have been in the news lately because of the extreme violence they have been and are experiencing. While many observers have interpreted these conflicts in strictly ethnic terms, pitting Hutu against Tutsi, they are in fact political: at stake is power, the control over the state as a principal means of accumulation and reproduction of a social class. This struggle in the context of profound destabilization has given rise to extraordinary forms of constitutional engineering, which have attempted to legitimize the assumption of power by small minorities.

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Articles
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Journal of African Law , Volume 40 , Issue 2: SPECIAL FORTIETH ANNIVERSARY NUMBER LIBER AMICORUM FOR PROFESSOR JAMES S. READ , Autumn 1996 , pp. 234 - 242
Copyright
Copyright © School of Oriental and African Studies 1996

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References

1 In both countries, the Hutu constitute over 80 per cent of the population and the Tutsi under 20 per cent; there is also a very small (less than 1 per cent) minority of pygmoïd Twa.

2 “Minority” does not refer to the minority ethnic group of Tutsi as such, but to a minority within it. Similarly, when the “Hutu majority” was said to be in power in Rwanda until the middle of 1994, those in power were a small minority within that majority.

3 On this see, for francophone Africa, Reyntjens, F., “The winds of change: political and constitutional evolution in francophone Africa, 1990–1991”, (1991) 35 J.A.L 44.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

4 It is Jim Read who introduced me to the concepts of revolutionary legality and autochthony in his Comparative Constitutional Law class at SOAS in 1978–79.

5 On consociationalism or “consensus democracy”, see Lijphart, A., Democracies: Patterns of Majoritarian and Consensus Government in Twenty-one Countries, London, 1984.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

6 Art. 9 of the RPF Declaration states that “by consensus in the Political Bureau of the RPF, Mr Pasteur Bizimugu becomes President of the Republic”, but it says nothing on the appointment of General Kagame as Vice-President.

7 On these elections, see Reyntjens, F., “The proof of the pudding is in the eating: the June 1993 elections in Burundi”, (1993) 31 Journal of Modern African Studies 563.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

8 For more details, see Reyntjens, F., Burundi: Breaking the Cycle of Violence, London, 1995, 16.Google Scholar

9 Mémorandum sur l’étal de la situation engendrée par le coup de force de quelques militaires contre le pouvoir en date du 20 au 21 octobre 1993, Bujumbura, 27 October, 1993.

10 However, on 4 March, 1996, the court declined to invalidate the election of Ntaryamira’s successor, President Sylvestre Ntibantunganya, but it did not rule on the merits of the claim, which was declared inadmissible for lack of standing of the plaintiffs.

11 Lewis, A., Politics in West Africa, London, 1963.Google Scholar