Conflict in Central Africa

Ethnic cleansing and genocide have occurred in recent years in several Central Africa countries.

Ethnic Cleansing & Genocide in Rwanda & Burundi

Rwanda and Burundi, tiny countries in central Africa, have suffered long-standing conflicts between the two countries’ two ethnic groups, the Hutus and Tutsis (Figure 7-62). The two ethnicities speak the same language, hold similar beliefs, practice similar social customs, and intermarriage has lessened the physical differences between the two ethnic groups. Yet Hutus and Tutsis have engaged in large-scale ethnic cleansing and genocide.

Rwanda and Burundi

The map shows ethnic cleansing in Rwanda and the flow of refugees out of the country in 1994.

Hutus were settled farmers, growing crops in the fertile hills and valleys of present-day Rwanda and Burundi, known as the Great Lakes region of central Africa. Tutsis were cattle herders who migrated to present-day Rwanda and Burundi from the Rift Valley of western Kenya beginning 400 years ago. Relations between settled farmers and herders are often uneasy; this is also an element of the ethnic cleansing in Darfur described above.

Hutus constituted a majority of the population of Rwanda and Burundi historically, but Tutsis controlled kingdoms there for several hundred years and turned the Hutus into their serfs. They became colonies of Germany during the 1880s and then of Belgium between 1924 and 1962. During the colonial period, the Tutsis retained leadership positions.

When Rwanda became an independent country in 1962, Hutus gained power and undertook ethnic cleansing and genocide against the Tutsis. Descendants of the ethnically cleansed Tutsis invaded Rwanda in 1990, launching a three-year civil war. Meanwhile in Burundi, where the Tutsis have remained in power, a civil war resulted in genocide committed by and against both Hutus and Tutsis.

An agreement to share power in Rwanda was signed in 1993, but genocide resumed after an airplane carrying the presidents of Rwanda and neighboring Burundi—both Hutus—was shot down by a surface-to-air missile in 1994. International intelligence groups and independent researchers have never been able to determine whether the attacker was a Hutu or a Tutsi presumably trying to scuttle the peace agreement. This attack followed an assassination a few months earlier of the previous president of Burundi, the first Hutu to be elected president of that country.

After the assassination of the two presidents in 1994, Hutus launched a genocide campaign, killing an estimated 800,000 Tutsis in Rwanda and 300,000 in Burundi (Figure 7-63). However, the Tutsis prevailed in both countries, and reprisals by Tutsis added to the total fatalities. Rwanda continues to be governed by Tutsis, but Burundi has been led since 2005 by democratically elected Hutus.

Ethnic Cleansing, Rwanda

Kigali Genocide Memorial Centre contains mass graves of victims of the 1994 genocide.

Pause & Reflect 7.4.5

Why might the European colonial powers have preferred to place members of minority ethnicities in leadership positions?

Ethnic Cleansing & Genocide in the Congo

The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) is the region’s largest and most populous country, with considerable mineral wealth. It is also one of the most multiethnic countries, estimated to be home to more than 200 distinct ethnicities. Most Congolese are classified as ethnic Bantus, but this encompasses a large number of specific ethnic groups.

Ethnicities In The Democratic Republic of Congo

The distribution of the very large number of ethnicities in the Congo is not easy to represent on a map.

The DRC is considered to have suffered from the world’s deadliest wars in the past 70 years. More than 5 million have died in the DRC’s ongoing civil wars, mostly from malaria, diarrhea, pneumonia, and malnutrition, aggravated by displacement and unsanitary and overcrowded living conditions. Tutsis were instrumental in the successful overthrow of the DRC’s longtime president Joseph Mobutu in 1997. Mobutu had amassed a several-billion-dollar personal fortune from the sale of minerals while impoverishing much of the country. After succeeding Mobutu as president, Laurent Kabila relied heavily on Tutsis and permitted them to kill some of the Hutus who had been responsible for atrocities against Tutsis in the early 1990s. But Kabila soon split with the Tutsis, and the Tutsis once again found themselves offering support to rebels seeking to overthrow DRC’s government.

Kabila turned for support to Hutus and other ethnic groups that also hated Tutsis. Armies from Angola, Namibia, Zimbabwe, and other neighboring countries came to Kabila’s aid. Kabila was assassinated in 2001 and succeeded by his son, who negotiated an accord with rebels the following year. Despite the accord, conflict among the country’s many ethnicities has continued, and casualties have mounted.

End Chapter