African Affairs Advance Access originally published online on November 2, 2006
African Affairs 2007 106(422):1-20; doi:10.1093/afraf/adl041
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Consociationalism and Power Sharing in Africa: Rwanda, Burundi, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo
René Lemarchand (renelemar{at}aol.com) is professor emeritus of Political Science at the University of Florida.
Although there are obvious merits to the consociational argument, including the need to recognize the claims of minorities through power-sharing arrangements, translating theory into practice has generally failed in much of Africa. The reasons for this are many and are by no means reducible to single-factor explanations. Looking at the recent experiments in power sharing in former Belgian Africa, this article offers a comparative assessment of the radically different trajectories followed by Rwanda, Burundi, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) in their efforts to regulate conflict through consociational formulas. Although Rwanda stands as a textbook example of failed power sharing, and the DRC as a less than successful experiment, Burundi, which comes nearest to institutionalizing the Lijphart model, offers grounds for cautious optimism about the merits of a consociational polity. On the strength of the evidence from Burundi, one might conceivably argue that the key to success lies in the extent to which the technicalities of power sharing tend to approximate the conditions spelled out by Lijphart, notably group autonomy, proportionality, and the minority veto. Closer scrutiny of the cases at hand suggests a somewhat different conclusion. Perhaps even more importantly than the mechanics of power sharing, the socio-political context is what spells the difference between success and failure.
He has written extensively on the Great Lakes region of Central Africa. This article is a much revised version of a paper presented in February 2006 at a conference on ‘Managing ethno-political conflicts in Africa’ jointly organized by the Solomon Ash Center for the Study of Ethno-Political Conflict at the University of Pennsylvania and the Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies of the University of Ibadan, Nigeria.
1. Arendt Lijphart, Democracy in Plural Societies: A comparative exploration (Yale University Press, New Haven, CT, 1977), and for a more succinct formulation, ‘The power-sharing approach’, in Joseph V. Montville (ed.), Conflict and Peace-Making in Multiethnic Societies (D.C. Heath, Lexington, KY, 1990), pp. 491–509.
2. Ian Spears, ‘Understanding inclusive peace agreements in Africa: the problems of sharing power’, Third World Quarterly 21, 1 (2000), pp. 105–18.
3. Lijphart, ‘The power-sharing approach’, p. 495.
4. Denis Tull and Andreas Mehler, ‘The hidden costs of power-sharing: reproducing insurgent violence in Africa’, African Affairs 104, 416 (2005), pp. 375–98.
5. It is worth noting that beginning in 1992, President Juvénal Habyarimana reluctantly accepted to share power with opposition parties. Included in the coalition were, in addition to the ruling MRNDD, representatives of the MDR, PSD, and PL. The experiment turned into a near disaster when bitter quarrels erupted within the MDR between the two rival leaders, Dismas Nsengyeremye and Faustin Twarigamungu, over who should be appointed the prime minister. With the assassination of two well-known moderate opposition personalities, Emmanuel Gapsiyi (MDR) and Félicien Gatabazi (PSD), in 1992 and 1993, the rift between moderates and radicals deepened. It is widely assumed, although not proven, that the RPF was behind the assassinations, in hopes that the crimes would be imputed to the CDR and thus drive another wedge within the ruling coalition. Another key MDR figure, Agathe Uwilingiyimana, served as the prime minister when the genocide got under way. She was one of the first victims of the carnage. For an excellent discussion, see James Gasana, Rwanda: Du parti-état à l’état garnison (L’Harmattan, Paris, 2002).
6. Spears, ‘Understanding inclusive peace agreements in Africa’, p. 110.
7. Colin Waugh, Paul Kagame and Rwanda: Power, genocide and the Rwanda Patriotic Front (McFarland and Co., London, 2005), p. 61.
8. See Lt. Abdul Joshua Ruzibiza’s devastating exposé of Kagame’s involvement in the shooting down of the presidential plane, Rwanda: l’histoire secrète (Editions du Panama, Paris, 2005).
10. Waugh, Paul Kagame and Rwanda, p. 61.
11. Filip Reyntjens, ‘Rwanda ten years on: from genocide to dictatorship’, African Affairs 103, 111 (2004), pp. 177–210.
12. Reyntjens (2005: 18) emphasizes the parallel between the months preceding the genocide and the 2000 crisis, quoting the words of Joseph Sebarenzi (a Tutsi): ‘The situation is becoming uncontrollable, there are deep divisions today particularly among Tutsi and these tendencies could lead to a catastrophe . . . There are many similarities with the period which preceded the 1994 genocide’. Contrary to a widespread belief, scores of Tutsi, once members of the RPF, have gone into exile, the most notorious being Abdul Ruzibiza, whose recent blockbuster (see footnote 8) got scathing reviews in Kigali. For a selective listing of RPF opponents who have gone into exile since its foundation, see International Crisis Group, Rwanda at the End of the Transition: A necessary political liberalization (International Crisis Group, Brussels and Nairobi, 2002).
13. Space limitations preclude more than a passing reference to the brief (1992–93) experiment in power sharing following the eruption of ethnic violence in the communes of Ntega and Marangara in 1988 — which I described elsewhere as ‘a limited form of consociational participation based on a belated (and reluctant) recognition of the importance of ethnic identity’. See René Lemarchand, Burundi: Ethnic conflict and genocide (Woodrow Wilson Center Press and Cambridge University Press, New York and Cambridge, 1995), p. 161. It led to the appointment of a National Commission in Charge of Studying the Problem of National Unity, consisting of 12 Hutu and 12 Tutsi, the proclamation of a National Unity Charter, and the adoption in 1992 of a constitution that explicitly ‘took into account the diverse components of the Burundi population’. The assassination of President Melchior Ndadaye on 21 October 1993 brought the experiment to a dramatic end. For a fuller treatment of consociationalism in Burundi, see Stef Vandeginste’s outstanding analysis, ‘Théorie consociative et partage du pouvoir en Afrique’, in F. Reyntjens and S. Marysse (eds), L’Afrique des Grands Lacs, Annuaire 2005–2006 (L’Harmattan, Paris, 2006).
14. Jan Van Eck, 8 July 2006, personal communication.
15. For a fuller discussion, see Filip Reyntjens, ‘Briefing: Burundi: a peaceful transition after a decade of civil war?’, African Affairs 105, 418 (2006), pp. 117–35.
17. As has been emphasized by Stef Vandeginste and Devon Curtis, the really important decisions regarding the transition were made after the signature of the Accords: the all-important Global Cease-fire Agreement was signed in Dar-es-Salam, on 16 November 2003; it includes the Pretoria protocol of 8 October 2003 on the sharing of power, the Pretoria protocol of 2 November 2003 on the questions left pending regarding power sharing among political and security forces, and the so-called Technical Forces Accord (TFA) on issues of demobilization and reinsertion of former rebel forces and the sharing of power within the Burundi army, renamed Forces de défense nationale (FDN). See Vandeginste, ‘Théorie consociative et partage du pouvoir en Afrique’, and Devon Curtis, ‘Transitional Governance in the DRC and Burundi’, in Karen Guttieri and Jessica Piombo, ‘Interim Governments: Institutional Bridges to Peace and Democracy?’ (Washington: United States Institute of Peace, 2007), forthcoming.
18. See Daniel Sullivan, ‘The missing pillars: a look at the failure of peace in Burundi through the lens of Arend Lijphart’s consociational theory’, The Journal of Modern African Studies 43, 1 (2005), pp. 75–95.
19. Curtis, Interim governments, p. 8.
21. As stipulated by the TFA, 60 percent of the officers’ corps will consist of former elements of the Burundi Armed Forces (BAF) and 40 percent of CNDD–FDD elements. For an excellent discussion of the constitutional and extra-constitutional aspects of power sharing in Burundi, including the role of the armed forces, see Vandeginste, ‘Théorie consociative et partage du pouvoir en Afrique’.
22. The South African contribution is well summed up by Devon Curtis: ‘It was Mandela who brokered the agreement on transitional leadership, and South African Deputy-President Zuma who negotiated an end to the deadlock over security sector reform and the ceasefires. When the transitional institutions were established, South Africa sent a protection force to encourage Burundian politicians to return from exile and take part in the transitional institutions. Without this force, it is unlikely that many of the politicians would have returned, thus retaining an incentive for continued conflict. Furthermore, South Africa provided the backbone of the AU peace-keeping force, when the UN did not want to get involved due to the lack of a comprehensive cease-fire’. Curtis, Interim governments, p. 10.
23. René Lemarchand, ‘The politics of turnaround in Burundi’, Paper prepared for the Low Income Countries Under Stress (LICUS) Initiative, The World Bank, 2 December 2004, p. 10. Unpublished manuscript.
25. An estimated 150 Congolese refugees, mostly of Banyamulenge origins, were slaughtered in the refugee camp of Gatumba, in Burundi, on 13 August 2004, by FNL elements, probably assisted by a mix of Mai-Mai and interahamwe militias. The victims had fled the revenge killings inspired by the short-lived seizure of Bukavu, by Laurent Nkunda, a Tutsi from North Kivu, and Mutsebutsi, a Munyamulenge from South Kivu, in May 2004, during which scores of ‘native’ Congolese had been killed, and their property looted.
26. Reyntjens, ‘Briefing: Burundi’.
27. The fragility of the present government, and indeed of the existing constitutional arrangement, is nowhere more painfully evident than in the crisis unleashed by rumours of an impending coup: scores of politicians, Hutu and Tutsi, including the former president of the transitional government, Domitien Ndayizeye, have been arrested, on what appears to be the flimsiest grounds. Meanwhile, the country’s second vice-president, Alice Nzomukunda, handed in her resignation in early September 2006, in protest against the unwarranted intervention of the ruling party’s chairman, Hussein Radjabu, in the political life of the country. Several human rights organizations, including Human Rights Watch, have accused the government of serious human rights violations. At stake here is not only the survival of the government but the survival of the power-sharing compromise that led to its election. For further details, see René Lemarchand, ‘Burundi’s endangered transition’ (Working Paper, Swiss Peace Foundation, Bern, Switzerland, 2006).
28. Hammered out after months of inconclusive discussions, better known as the Inter-Congolese Dialogue (ICD), the 2002 Agreement has its origins in the Lusaka accords of 1999, aimed at creating the conditions of a durable peace, i.e. an immediate ceasefire, the withdrawal of all foreign forces from the DRC, the disarmament and repatriation of all ‘negative forces’ (i.e. local militias, ex-FAR, and interahamwe), and the deployment of a UN peace-keeping force. It also called upon all key actors — the Kabila government, the unarmed opposition, armed groups, and the civil society — to engage in an ICD. This led to the Sun City (South Africa) talks in February 2002 and ultimately to the transitional power-sharing government headed by President Joseph Kabila. For an excellent discussion of what he calls, appropriately enough, ‘heurts et malheurs du dialogue intercongolais’, see Olivier Lanotte, République Démocratique du Congo: Guerres sans frontières (Editions du Groupe de Recherches et d’Information sur la Paix et la Securité [GRIP], Brussels, 2003), p. 154 ff.
29. Francois Grignon, ‘Economic agendas in the Congolese peace process’, in Michael Nest (ed.), Democratic Republic of the Congo: Economic dimensions of war and peace (Lynne Rienner, Boulder, CO, 2006), p 92, n. 34.
30. Tull and Mehler, ‘The hidden costs of power sharing’, p.1.
31. Grignon, ‘Economic agendas’, p. 92.
32. The Economist, ‘A giant step forward’, p. 39.
33. The phrase has been suggested by Filip Reyntjens.
34. A full discussion is beyond the scope of this discussion. For a brilliant, wide-ranging examination of the arguments set forth by advocates and critics of consociationalism, see Brendan O’Leary, ‘Debating consociational politics: normative and consociational arguments’, in Sidney Noel (ed.), From Power-Sharing to Democracy (McGill University Press, Montreal, 2005), pp. 3–43.
35. Sullivan, ‘The missing pillars’, p. 87.
36. Which is why during the ceasefire negotiations with the FNL in Dar-es-Salaam, in June 2006, the government categorically rejected the FNL delegation’s demand that the army be drastically restructured to accommodate a larger proportion of Hutu and Twa elements at all levels. The prospects of continued civil violence will most probably translate into further human rights violations by the security forces, thus making the government increasingly vulnerable to criticisms from the opposition, including the Frodebu, that the new army is just as violent and repressive as its predecessor, the Forces armées du Burundi (FAB).
37. Van Eck, personal communication.
38. Donald Horowitz, Ethnic Groups in Conflict (University of California Press, Berkeley and Los Angeles, CA, 1985), p. 574.
39. In recent times, the Frodebu has been increasingly vocal in its criticisms of the human rights record of the Nkurunziza government, focusing public attention on arbitrary arrests, imprisonment, and extra-judicial killings of persons suspected of collaborating with the FNL. That these accusations are not without substance is amply demonstrated in a recent Human Rights Watch report. See Lemarchand, ‘Burundi’s Endangered Transition’.
40. Horowitz, Ethnic Groups in Conflict, p. 572–3.
41. Tull and Mehler, ‘The hidden costs of power sharing’, p. 376, 392.
43. Renegade DRC general Laurent Nkunda, known to have close ties with Kigali, played a major role in the temporary capture of Bukavu in 2003. It is the same Nkunda who attacked loyalist Congolese troops in North Kivu in early February 2006, causing an estimated 37,000 civilians to flee their rural homelands, near Rutshuru. Nothing has been done so far to put into effect the international arrest warrant issued against Nkunda for war crimes and crimes against humanity.
44. See Stefaan Marysse, ‘Regress, war and fragile recovery: the case of the DR Congo’, in S. Marysse and F. Reyntjens (eds), The Political Economy of the Great Lakes Region in Africa (Palgrave, New York, 2005), pp. 125–51.
45. Tull and Mehler, ‘The hidden costs of power-sharing’, p. 392.
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