Empowering the Weak and Protecting the Powerful:
The Contradictory Nature of Christian Churches in Rwanda,
Burundi, and the Democratic Republic of Congo(1)
Timothy P. Longman
Vassar College
African Studies Review
Spring 1998
Academic analysis offers two very different images of Christian churches in Africa.
The established wisdom in scholarly circles for several decades has characterized
Christian churches as inherently conservative institutions that serve the interests
of the powerful by creating a docile population. Christian missionaries functioned as
the cultural wing of the colonial project, and in independent African states, the
missionary churches have represented continuing vestiges of Western imperialism.(2) Churches are closely allied with corrupt political leaders and work to preserve
the political and economic status quo. The involvement of the churches in the Rwandan
genocide is only the most recent and most extreme example of Christian complicity
with authoritarian regimes.(3) According to this perspective, if the downtrodden in African societies are to find
religious support for their empowerment, it will come from africanized and independent
churches and movements, not from the churches of European and American origin.(4)
Since 1990, a very different image of churches has developed. As in countries in
Latin America, Eastern Europe, and Asia that have experienced recent democratic transitions,(5) religious institutions in Africa -- and specifically Christian churches -- have played
an important role in pressuring governments to move from single-party to multi-party
systems, to allow expanded civil liberties, and to hold elections. Churches were
at the front-line of the anti-apartheid struggle in South Africa, and church leaders
have taken courageous stands opposing repressive regimes in Kenya, Malawi, and Zaire.
Catholic bishops have led national conferences in Benin, Congo, Gabon, and Zaire,
and church institutions and personnel have provided important logistical and ideological
support for democracy movements in a number of other countries.(6) Scholars who discuss the currently fashionable concept of civil society regularly
include churches along with human rights organizations, women's groups, labor unions,
and student movements as social groups that challenge authoritarian rule.(7)
Few scholars have confronted the apparent contradiction that the involvement of Christian
churches in supporting democracy movements and liberation struggles presents to the
accepted wisdom about the inherent conservatism of the churches. In this paper,
I propose that -- however contradictory -- both images of Christian churches in Africa
are simultaneously correct. Drawing on examples from Rwanda, Burundi, and the Democratic
Republic of Congo (formerly Zaire),(8) I attempt to demonstrate how churches both protect the interests of the powerful
and provide opportunities for the weak to challenge the status quo and improve their
social standing. The paradoxical nature of Christian churches arises, I contend,
from the loosely bounded nature of churches as organizations. While on paper churches may
be organized in a strictly hierarchical fashion, in practice the numerous groups,
institutions, and individuals that function under the auspices of each church operate
with a considerable degree of autonomy. As a result, the various manifestations of the
churches can be employed to serve a variety of interests. Factors such as the size
and resources of a church, its missionary legacy, the social, economic, and political
context, the theological teachings of the church, and the beliefs of church leaders
and members help to determine the degree to which a given church supports the powerful
or makes a "preferential option for the poor."(9)
The Organization of the Churches in the Great Lakes Region
Rwanda, Burundi, and the Democratic Republic of Congo are all former Belgian colonies
where Christian missionary efforts proved particularly successful. In all three
countries, the majority of the population today identifies itself as Catholic and
a substantial minority identifies as Protestant.(10) While many people continue to practice indigenous religious rites, such as the cults
of Nyabingi and Lyangombe, the percentage who claim indigenous religions as their
primary religious identity has dropped below ten percent. In Congo, several indigenous Christian churches have gained extensive followings, most notably the Kimbanguist
Church (formally called the Church of Jesus Christ on Earth by the Prophet Simon
Kimbangu), but such movements are insignificant in Rwanda and Burundi. In all three
countries, Muslims are a small but growing minority.(11)
Catholic and Protestant churches represent major forces in all spheres of public life
in Rwanda, Burundi, and Congo. The churches have access to extensive resources from
both international church partners and local sources (such as fees levied on church
members and profits from church enterprises). The churches not only address spiritual
needs, but also play an important role in providing health care, education, development
assistance, and emergency relief aid. The churches run newspapers and publishing houses, provide loans and savings facilities, maintain hostels, restaurants, and
grocery stores, and offer training in everything from literacy to small business
development. Because church membership is voluntary, bishops and other national
church leaders can claim to speak for substantial numbers of citizens in each country and are
widely considered politically influential.
The importance of churches within rural communities is particularly pronounced. Churches
serve as important social gathering places, and small residential and commercial
centers often arise around parishes (which is particularly significant in Rwanda
and Burundi, where people do not traditionally live in villages). Churches own substantial
properties and employ large numbers of people in areas of Rwanda, Burundi, and Eastern
Congo that suffer from serious land scarcity. Because government offices and industrial and mining enterprises are concentrated in urban areas, rural residents
have few possibilities other than churches for off-farm employment. As a result,
parish pastors and priests, school principals, hospital directors, and other church
employees generally constitute a large portion of the local elite in rural communities.
Because of their size and the diversity of their activities, the churches have a complex
organization. The ultimate authority within the Catholic church formally lies with
the Vatican, but since the reforms of the Second Vatican Council in the 1960s, the national churches have gained substantial autonomy. The Vatican now sets broad theological
principles and general guidelines for church operation, but on most issues the national
council of bishops or the individual bishops themselves are free to set policy and to interpret church teachings without interference. Each of the Protestant
churches also has international church ties, particularly to the European and American
churches that founded them (e.g., the Swedish Pentecostals, the American Baptists,
and the Dutch Reformed), but with the exception of the Anglicans, the Protestant churches
are formally autonomous.
In the Anglican and Catholic churches, most church policy is set at the regional level
in the diocese. Each bishop has considerable power to determine the activities of
the church within his diocese and to determine how the church's theological principles apply within the local context. The bishops oversee the ordination and placement
of pastors and control budget disbursements to the parishes. The bishops issue pastoral
letters on issues of public importance, providing the official moral teaching of
the church. Each diocese runs offices for theology, education, development, and health
care, which have considerable control over the placement of teachers, doctors, and
agronomists. The bishops and their assistants regularly visit the parishes in the
diocese to monitor church activities. In most Protestant churches, because of their smaller
size and regional concentration, the main authority for church policy lies with the
national office of the bishop or church president.(12)
Despite formal oversight from the offices of the regional and national church, the
local parish priests and pastors have considerable latitude over the quotidian operation
of the parishes, the location at which the vast majority of Christians have their
greatest contact with the institutional church. The clergymen (and a small but increasing
number of clergywomen) are the primary interpreters of church teachings for the membership.
The pastors and priests lead the weekly religious services that gather together the members of each church community, providing them with a regular platform
for presenting their understanding of how the church responds to issues ranging from
personal moral conduct (consumption of alcohol, adultery) to national politics (democratization, corruption). The clergy oversee catechism classes, in which new members
are taught the fundamental teachings of the church. While in some churches, there
is an official catechism, that is, an official version of the church's teaching,
in practice, the clergy have great latitude in determining what does and does not get emphasized.
The clergy oversee the numerous and diverse activities and organizations that exist
within each parish -- women's groups, prayer groups, student fellowships, development
cooperatives, the recording of births and deaths, marriages, grade schools and technical schools (high schools and health centers are usually under national or regional
jurisdiction), recruitment of new members, collection of offerings, and distribution
of assistance to the poor, to name merely a few examples. The clergy have considerable power to set local parish priorities, to determine what programs will be undertaken
and how funds are dispersed, to initiate new organizations and committees, and to
select personnel for both paid positions on church staff and unpaid positions, such
as on church committees and in the leadership of church organizations.
The hierarchical organization of clergy at the international (for the Catholic and
Anglican churches), national, regional, and parish levels represents only a portion
of the institutional church. A number of clergy serve in positions that do not fall
clearly into this hierarchical structure -- as the head of a development cooperative,
a newspaper editor, or a teacher, for example. While these clergy remain under the
oversight of the bishop or church president, their non-parish positions provide numerous
opportunities to act independently. The religious orders in the Catholic Church,
while expected to cooperate with the bishops, are officially based in Rome and may
act with considerable independence. International missionary orders such as the
White Fathers, the Jesuits, and the Xavieran Fathers often have considerable resources and influence
and have sometimes worked at odds with local church leaders. Foreign missionaries
in Protestant churches have operated with similar independence, formally cooperating with national church leaders but in practice often initiating their own programs
and sometimes challenging national leaders.
There are also many opportunities for laity to operate independently under church
auspices. Churches generally have a parish council and other committees where lay
members play a direct role in church operations. The parishes in all three countries
are divided into a number of sub-parish units (often more than 100), generally known as
Basic Christian Communities (BCCs), which bring together small groups of church members
for weekly or monthly prayer and Bible study meetings generally without the presence of clergy. The BCCs in many parishes oversee the distribution of charitable assistance
and play an important role in economic development. Formal lay movements, such as
the various groups in Catholic Action, operate under supervision of the clergy but
are not fully controlled by them. Other informal pietistic movements, such as the
evangelical Abarokore movement in the Protestant churches of Burundi and Rwanda or
the Jamaa charismatic movement in Congo and the expressions of faith around the apparitions of the Virgin Mary at Kibeho, operate without clergy oversight and sometimes in opposition
to official doctrine. A number of institutions and organizations at national, regional,
and local levels which were created under church initiatives, such as women's associations and farmers' cooperatives, operate independently of the churches but
remain closely associated with them.
The Two Faces of Christianity
Because of their economic assets, large membership, international connections, institutional
resources, and moral authority, churches are clearly powerful institutions in Rwanda,
Burundi, and Congo, by which I mean, they have substantial influence over the conduct of political, economic, and social life. The power of the churches, however,
is widely distributed in the diffuse institutions, organizations, and individuals
that act under church auspices. Although they are constrained by the institutional
structure of the churches and certain institutional imperatives (what might be called
a raison d'eglise
(13)), different individuals and organizations within the same church use church resources
and influence for a wide variety of purposes, some of which are contradictory. The
churches are thus contested terrain, sites in which various political alliances compete for support. Simultaneously serving the interests of the powerful and undermining
their power, the churches appear janus-faced.
Churches within the Power Structure
From the arrival of the first missionaries in the region during the colonial era,
both Catholic and Protestant church leaders have cooperated closely with political
authorities. In Rwanda, Burundi, and much of Congo, the Missionaries of Africa,
better known as the White Fathers, were the primary Catholic missionary group. The founder
of the order, Cardinal Lavigerie, adhered to what could be termed the Constantinian
model of Christian evangelization: convert the rulers first, and the masses will
follow. Catholic evangelistic efforts in the region thus focused on the elite, which in
Rwanda and Burundi meant members of the Tutsi group, whom the White Fathers regarded
as the natural rulers of these kingdoms.(14) In Congo, under indirect rule and customary law, the Belgian administrators identified
chiefs in each region whom the White Fathers (and other missionary groups) could
then target for conversion.(15)
The high value the founding missionaries placed on maintaining the support of political
authorities profoundly shaped the engagement of the Catholic Church within the Great
Lakes region. During the colonial period, the Catholic leadership developed a cooperative working relationship with both colonial administrators and the indigenous
elites in each colony. The Belgian administrators regarded the Catholic missionaries,
many of whom were themselves Belgian, as allies in the struggle to establish and
maintain control over the local populations. The colonial administration relied on the
churches to provide expensive public services such as education and health care.
In return for their support, the colonial administration gave the missionaries free
access to the population and cooperated with evangelistic efforts. From the perspective
of church leaders, this strategy worked, since church membership expanded rapidly,
particularly during the late colonial period.(16)
Protestant missionaries worked less closely with the colonial administration, in part
because of their disunity and in part because they came predominately from non-francophone
countries (the United Kingdom, United States, and Sweden) and therefore lacked the natural rapport with the administrative officers that the Catholic missionaries
enjoyed. Nevertheless, the public engagement of Protestant missionaries differed
little from that of the Catholics. In fact, most of the Protestant missionaries
envied the Catholic missionaries their privileged position vis-à-vis the colonial state and
sought to follow their example in seeking the support of both colonial administrators
and indigenous elite as a means of furthering their evangelistic efforts.(17)
Following independence, a working relationship developed in all three countries between
the new indigenous political elites and the national leadership of Catholic and Protestant
churches. At one level, the cooperative relationship served the interests of both church and state as institutions. The states, seeking to maximize their revenues,
found that church involvement in education, health care, and other programs conserved
state funds, while the churches found that involvement in these activities allowed them to increase their ability to attract new members. Churches helped to provide
symbolic legitimacy to the state, while the state facilitated church activities.
States rewarded the most cooperative churches with privileged access to the population
and actively hindered the operations of uncooperative churches.(18) Churches and states cooperated in extending control over the population, regulating
their behavior, and integrating them into the economy and the political realm. Churches
carried out official functions such as registering births, deaths, and marriages
and making public announcements for the government, which served to increase the importance
of churches as centers of public life.
At another level, the cooperative church-state relationship developed because of the
personal interests of leaders of each institution. In societies where most people
make their living in agriculture and where levels of poverty are extremely high,
employment in the churches or the state represents among the only paths to prosperity.
As a number of scholars have pointed out, economic power in Africa tends to be derived
from political power, rather than the reverse. Political officials have not only
enriched themselves but also built patrimonial networks of support by distributing the
largesse of the state and by placing clients in offices where they have access to
resources. The churches, with their extensive resources, also provide a means of
personal enrichment, and church leaders have often built their own patrimonial networks, parceling
out jobs and benefits to family members and other supporters in order to secure their
own power.
Rather than competing, the patrimonial networks in the churches and the state have
generally been linked. This has been facilitated by the close personal ties between
leaders of church and state. Because of the church policy of appeasing the state,
church leaders have typically been selected from the same region or ethnic group as the
head of state. In Burundi for the first several decades after independence, nearly
all of the Catholic bishops were, like the political leaders, Tutsi, and even in
the early 1990s, four of the seven Catholic bishops and all of the Anglican bishops were
Tutsi.(19) In Mobutu's Zaire, Bishop Bokeleale, head of the Church of Christ in Zaire, the
united Protestant group, was from Equateur, Mobutu's home region. In Rwanda, the
Catholic archbishop was a Hutu from the north, like President Habyarimana, while
the bishop of Byumba was an in-law of the president.(20)
Personal ties between church and state leaders usually go beyond common ethnic origins.
In many cases church and state leaders have studied together in the same schools,
and even when that is not the case, the leaders of the two institutions regularly
socialize together. In a number of cases, state officials immediately after independence
came out of a church background, most notably in the case of Rwanda, where President
Grégoire Kayibanda had been cultivated as a national leader by Catholic missionaries and had served as editor of a Catholic newspaper and executive of a Catholic consumers'
cooperative. Leaders of church and state, along with prominent people in the business
sector, form what in Gramscian terms is known as a "hegemonic bloc." The ties between elites are reciprocally beneficial. Leaders of both church and state have
personally benefited from the status quo, and they attempt to employ the institutions
of both church and state to preserve that status quo.
The importance of reciprocal ties prevails not only at the national level. At the
local level, church elites sometimes have access to greater resources than political
officials, employ more people, and have more direct contact with the population.
Local political leaders thus try to use the churches to legitimize their own authority
and to organize support. In many communities, the local chiefs, mayors, and other
officials serve on church councils. For their part, church employees have commonly
played important political roles. While priests and pastors generally do not take formal
leadership positions in political parties, they often offer symbolic support for
political leaders. Other prominent church employees, such as school principals,
frequently become local party officials. In my research in Rwanda, I found examples of business
ventures undertaken jointly by church, state, and business elites.
The practical implication of the numerous institutional and personal links between
church and state is that churches have become integrated into the existing structures
of power in the three countries. Those who enjoy wealth and influence under the
current system have generally worked to preserve the status quo, and since churches have
been one of the means through which people have gained power, people have also used
church institutions and resources to maintain their power. Elites in church, state
and private enterprise resist major social or political restructuring, because it could
undermine their power. National church leaders have provided support to the status
quo by appearing publicly with political officials, serving on national committees,
publishing letters condemning protests. In Rwanda, the Catholic archbishop served on
the central committee of the ruling party until he was forced to resign by the Vatican
in 1985. In Zaire, ECZ leader Bishop Bokeleale was a strong supporter of President
Mobutu. At the local level, church officials have distributed development money, school
scholarships, and relief assistance along patrimonial lines. Those who resist the
church leaders or fail to support their political positions may face a cut off of
church funds. Church officials at all levels have often emphasized theological principles
of obedience and the promise of rewards in the next life.
Despite the general cooperation between church and state elites, there have been occasional
conflicts between church and state in each of the countries. The institutional goals
of churches and states are not identical and officers in both sets of institutions are constrained by outside factors. States must consider, for example, their
relations with other states, while churches have certain basic theological principles
that frame their operation. Furthermore, just as leaders of church and state may
develop close social ties, they may also develop personal enmities that prevent their
cooperation. The efforts of elites to organize personal networks of support may
bring them into conflict.
In general, however, leaders of both church and state have sought to keep conflicts
out of the public eye and to resolve them quickly, sometimes with a simple acknowledgment
of disagreement. In Congo, during the 1970s President Mobutu sought to assert hegemonic control over all public life under the authority of the state and the single
party, the Popular Revolutionary Movement (MPR). The policies of authenticity which,
among things, required the replacement of Christian names with African names and
the elimination of Christian holidays, led to conflicts with the Catholic Church and the
temporary exile of the archbishop in the early 1970s. In 1974 the conflict came
to a head when Mobutu attempted to increase state power by nationalizing church schools,
but the state proved such an inefficient manager that schools were returned to church
control after only a few years, while the Catholic Church, for its part, tacitly
accepted the strictures of authenticity.(21)
In Burundi, President Bagaza, who took power in a 1976 coup, saw church work with
the Hutu masses as a potential threat to continued Tutsi hegemony, expelled hundreds
of foreign missionaries and placed strict limits on the operations of the churches,
outlawing nearly all activities except Sunday morning worship, including proselytizing
and Sunday school. This attack on the churches, while appealing to certain radical
sectors of the Tutsi population who viewed the churches as pro-Hutu, offended much
of the population and drew international condemnation, eventually undermining Bagaza's popular
support and serving as a major impetus for his deposition in 1987. When Pierre Buyoya
took over as president of Burundi, one of his early programs was to regularize relations with the churches.(22)
In Rwanda, the Catholic Church had a public disagreement with the government in the
early 1980s when the Habyarimana regime attempted to force the churches to administer
birth control in church hospitals, which violated the Catholic opposition to artificial contraception. After a few years of conflict, the two sides reached a compromise
in which the churches agreed to allow state family planning agents to work in their
hospitals while maintaining their official opposition to birth control. These conflicts in Congo, Burundi, and Rwanda reveal the degree to which confrontation is usually
avoided and minimized. Even when church and state are competing over authority or
where their actions are in direct contradiction, the tendency is for the two sets
of leaders to seek a rapid rapprochement. The fact that Bagaza could not do so in Burundi
contributed substantially to his downfall and served as a lesson to his successor.
The result of the integration of churches into the power structure is that the independence
of the churches is sacrificed. Church leaders are reluctant to criticize state officials,
because they share common interests and the church leaders do not want to undermine their own position. The 1994 genocide in Rwanda shows how this principle
of cooperation can be carried to an extreme. As I have argued elsewhere,(23) the genocide was an attempt by political leaders to preserve their power, which had
been eroded by a movement for democratic reform, by eliminating all those who threatened
their power. During the genocide, some clergy and many other church employees and lay leaders within the churches took important roles in organizing the genocide in
communities throughout the country. In some cases, priests, pastors, and catechists
used their familiarity with the population to help locate the homes of the Tutsi.
One woman I interviewed in Gikongoro prefecture was taken by her priest to be turned over
to the death squads but broke free from his grip and was able to escape into hiding.
In one community where I conducted research in Kibuye, a Protestant pastor oversaw
the organization of the nightly patrols that served as death squads. Like others involved
in the genocide, these people were fighting to preserve a system of power which they
believed was under threat, and the churches were a natural place to draw support, because they were so thoroughly linked to the existing system.
While unprecedented violence was sweeping Rwanda, both Protestant and Catholic leaders
remained silent, finally issuing a weak and unspecific joint letter calling for peace
in May, after the most extensive killing was completed. The population interpreted the silence of the church leadership, based on the past public pronouncements and
behavior of the leaders, as endorsement of the killings. In one Catholic parish
in Butare, the death squads came to the church to pray each morning before going
out to kill. According to some reports, people paused even during the frenzy of massacres in
church sanctuaries to cross themselves and pray in front of the altar. While the
churches had never actively endorsed killing Tutsi, many of the faithful interpreted
the well-know personal dislike for the Tutsi of many national and local church leaders
and the close association of church leaders with the leaders of the genocide as a
message that the genocide was consistent with church teachings.(24)
Churches Supporting Challenges to the Power Structures
If the history of church integration into the power structure dates back to the foundation
of the earliest missions, the history of church challenges to that power structure
dates back almost as long. It was Protestant missionaries who were primarily responsible for publicizing the atrocities of the "Red Rubber Regime" in King Leopold's
Congo, which led the Belgian government to assume direct control of what had previously
been the king's personal fiefdom.(25) In Rwanda, the White Fathers -- despite their policy of cooperation with local chiefs
-- actively lobbied the Belgian administration to depose King Yuhi V Musinga in 1930.(26) In a more fundamental challenge to the power structure, a number of Catholic missionaries
influenced by social democratic philosophies sought to promote the interests of
the Hutu majority in Rwanda in the 1950s, providing education, employment, and ideological support. Both Hutu and Tutsi in Rwanda credit the Catholic church as a major
force behind the 1959 peasant revolt that resulted in a transfer of political power
from Tutsi to Hutu.(27)
While churches have frequently defended the interests of the powerful, they have also
provided opportunity to those with little power -- the poor, women, ethnic minorities,
farmers. As voluntary organizations (unlike states), churches must be concerned
about attracting and retaining members. Clergy, catechists, and evangelists appeal
to people on the grounds of belief, but the churches also provide numerous services
in order to draw in new converts and to keep the old. Churches not only provide
education, health care, and development and relief assistance, but also serve as social centers.
Parishes commonly sponsor a large number of organizations -- such as basic Christian
communities, women's and student groups, prayer meetings, development cooperatives, literacy classes, and pietistic movements. While many of these groups are dominated
by the clergy or other members of the communities' elite, they nevertheless provide
opportunities for people outside the elite classes to meet, discuss their problems,
and design strategies for protecting their interests. For many poor people, church
groups are the only formal social organizations of which they are members, and they
turn to the churches for support in their everyday struggles to survive.
Furthermore, although churches may be centers of power, they are also defined as institutions
with a moral agenda. The relatively comfortable life that clerical work offers may
influence individual decisions to enter the ministry, but from interviews that I have conducted with numerous pastors and priests, I feel confident in saying that
nearly all clergy enter their profession primarily out of moral commitment. Based
on their interpretations of church teaching, clergy at all levels of the churches
will sometimes act contrary to their apparent class interests and stand up for the interests
of the weak against those of the powerful. In recent years, national church leaders
throughout Africa have increasingly felt a responsibility to speak out deliberately on important issues of both public and personal morality. Since Vatican II, pastoral
letters have emerged as an important means for national conferences of Catholic bishops
to present their ideas on how church teachings apply to specific social, political, and economic issues. In Rwanda and Burundi, these pastoral letters have generally
been fairly reserved, as the bishops tried to address the concerns of the population
without offending political leaders, but in Zaire, the bishops have issued a number
of quite blunt letters, sometimes laying out direct criticisms of government policies.
Individual bishops have also taken important public moral positions. In Burundi,
the archbishop of Gitega, who was himself a Tutsi, spoke out courageously against
human rights abuses by the Tutsi army against the Hutu population, and as a result
he was assassinated in September 1996. His successor as archbishop has taken up the mantle
and spoken out against human rights abuses as well. When violence against Tutsi
began in the North Kivu region of Congo, the bishop of Goma wrote a stinging pastoral
letter in April 1996 condemning political authorities:
The authorities who should come to help the victims of violence seem on the contrary
to want to feed the fire that destroys them. ... We are troubled to note that these
practices that sow division, misery, and death within the different ethnic groups
in our region are the result of an organization at a high level, and we regret that the
regional and local authorities who have as a mission to inform the central government
about the reality of facts prefer to execute directives based on lies.(28)
The bishop of Goma personally traveled to the regions of conflict to gather information
and show his support for those under attack.
There are numerous examples of pastors and priests and other church employees, such
as development workers, who have struggled on behalf of their parishioners, sometimes
in direct opposition to the political and business elite. Catharine Newbury has
documented examples in Kivu of clergy who encouraged their parishioners to oppose official
corruption. In one case, women in a church group who organized to fight against
an illegal tax on the cassava they transported to market turned to their priest for
advice and support. In another community, the clergy urged church members to reject corruption
and worked to inform people about the law and their rights. Development projects
led to conflicts with local authorities who wanted to protect their own economic
interests.(29) I found many similar examples in my own research in Rwanda of pastors and priests
who not only promoted development projects in their parishes but also challenged
what they viewed as injustice. In a number of cases, clergy and other church employees
have spoken out against ethnic prejudice and violence.
In all three countries, clergy have served as major informants for human rights research,
and they frequently intervene on behalf of church members who are unjustly imprisoned
or who are beaten. Social Justice Commissions have played important roles in publicizing government abuses in all three countries, but particularly in Congo. Churches
in Rwanda and Burundi have organized reconciliation projects to try to bring the
ethnic groups together. In interviews I conducted with Tutsi who fled violence in
North Kivu in 1996, many told me that they had sought refuge in churches and that the
priests, many of whom were themselves Hutu, had protected them. According to one
informant from Bwito in Rutshuru, North Kivu, "On March 5, [1996,] we went to the
priest to be protected. The priest hid us in the parish. The militia came and threatened
to kill him [the priest] if he did not turn people over to be killed. So he gave
them $200 to get them to leave."(30) The priest arranged to have the threatened Tutsi transported to a town with a military
post, where they were sheltered in another parish until they could be transported
to safety in Rwanda. Other Tutsi refugees told me that a Hutu priest had barred
the door of the church where they were hiding in Mweso, Masisi, and told the would-be
attackers that they could not kill in a church.(31)
The fact that Tutsi under threat in both North Kivu in 1996 and in Rwanda in 1994
sought refuge in churches reflects a wider popular perception that churches are committed
to defending the interests of the vulnerable. Tutsi sought refuge in the churches
in part because the local Christian parishes represented the clearest embodiment of
a moral authority in their communities, and the church buildings themselves possessed
at least some aura of holy ground, and as a result, those threatened by ethnic violence in the past had found safety in church buildings. Local pastors and priests, because
of their standing in the community, had the potential to offer protection. In Rwanda,
there are examples of priests and pastors who risked their own lives trying to protect the Tutsi in their parish buildings during the genocide -- though there are
even more stories of pastors who cooperated with the death squads, either out of
fear or because they were integrated into the structures of power that the genocide
was intended to defend. Nevertheless, for many common people, the churches are where they
go when they have troubles, whether those troubles involve the need for economic
assistance (to pay for medical treatment or to buy food) or intervention with political
authorities (to deal with an arrested relative or an unfair fine or some other vestige
of corruption).
Just as patrimonial networks help to organize power and serve to link the churches
to the wider structures of power in the three countries, those people who use the
churches to challenge the structures of power do not work in isolation. Priests
or pastors may receive support from their bishops in their struggles against corrupt local
officials, as with Bishop Ngabu's efforts to support the Tutsi in North Kivu. Development
offices of churches are often involved in building links between peasant organizers throughout a country or diocese. International church agencies, such as Catholic
Relief Services, try to pressure churches to ally themselves with the socially marginalized
(in sharp contrast to the historic role of missionaries) and attempt to target their funding in ways that do not reinforce the patrimonial structures. The churches
also have numerous links of reciprocal support with other organizations in civil
society, such as human rights groups, women's associations, and development centers.
It is important to note that the potential for church structures to challenge the
status quo is not wholly dependent on the actions of the clergy. Research on African
independent Christian churches indicates the capacity of the population to take the
Christian message and reshape it according to their own experience and needs.(32) This possibility exists within the established churches as well. As James Scott
observes, "Inasmuch as religion involves a system of meaning, it cannot be coerced
in the same way that behavior can be coerced. It may well be possible to force peasants
to attend mass or assemble at a temple, but their religious beliefs will have an autonomy
that compliance at the level of behavior cannot determine."(33) As early as the 1930s, a popular evangelical movement known as Abarokore swept the
Anglican church in Rwanda and challenged the missionaries for not living up to the
Christian message that they were preaching. In recent years, a number of popular
movements have swept through the Catholic and Protestant churches which have challenged
the authority of church leaders. The new Abarokore movement in the Protestant churches
in Rwanda and Burundi, which has advocated a strict code of conduct forbidding consumption of alcohol and tobacco, extra-marital sex, and participation in corruption, has
frequently been at odds with church leaders. In the Catholic church, a variety of
popular movements also provide laity with independent spiritual opportunities, ranging
from the older Jamaa movement in Congo to more recent movements such as the charismatic
movement imported from the United States and the popular expressions of faith that
have arisen surrounding the apparitions of the Virgin Mary at Kibeho. Although clergy try to limit and control these movements, they have largely resisted being reigned
in and serve as important independent sources of power within the churches for lay
people.
It is not without reason that both President Mobutu in Zaire and President Bagaza
in Burundi sought to reign in the churches and limit their operation. In both cases,
people who were frustrated with the corruption, inefficiency, and bias of the state
were turning increasingly to the churches for support. In Burundi, since the Tutsi-dominated
government sought to keep the Hutu masses subservient by limiting their access to
education and employment and circumscribing their economic opportunities, the Hutu
turned to the churches to provide in search of opportunities. While the churches
did not adopt a formal policy to challenge the authority of the state -- in fact,
some national leaders remained closely tied to the regime -- the efforts of clergy
and local lay leaders to meet the material needs of church members, to defend them from violence,
and to provide spiritual support were interpreted (probably correctly) by political
leaders as a threat to their power, since this could have empowered the masses and
eventually resulted in open resistance.(34)
The Two Aspects of the Churches in Practice
The personal histories of two men from communities where I conducted research in Rwanda
can serve to illuminate the contrasting purposes for which people have been able
to use church structures. Amani and Géras lived in neighboring communities in Kibuye
prefecture in west-central Rwanda. Both men were in their early thirties during the
period in which I conducted research in the area, and both were married, with children.
Although Amani was Hutu and Géras Tutsi, the two were both of mixed heritage and
were of similarly slight stature and build. They both worked for the Presbyterian
Church, Amani as a contractor and Géras as a regular employee.(35) Nonetheless, the men's connections to structures of power, their relationships with
the common people and with the elite, and their political ideas diverged sharply.
Amani
Amani (whose name ironically means "peace" in Swahili) came from the same hill just
east of Kirinda as Michel Twagirayezu, the president of the Presbyterian Church;
he and Twagirayezu were distant relatives.(36) Amani initially took a job as a house-hold worker for the national director of women's
programs in the church who was based in Kirinda. After a few years in this position,
he married the younger sister of the director. Amani then used his connections to these two powerful families within the Presbyterian Church to advance his personal
fortunes. Despite a lack of experience in construction, he secured a contract from
his in-law's department in the church to build a small hostel planned as a fund-raiser
for the church. Following this project, Amani received a variety of church construction
contracts such as contracts for school buildings and a health center. He invested
his sizable earnings in various trade deals (both legal trade and smuggling), including several that reportedly involved church personnel. Within a very short period
of time, Amani was able to accumulate substantial personal wealth and to raise improve
his status from houseboy to local bigman.
As someone with a good income by local standards and as an employer of a number of
individuals, Amani gained increasing importance within the local community. Amani
mixed socially with the other prominent local individuals -- the pastors, the directors
of the church schools, the doctors and the director from the church hospital, a few
local traders, the mayor -- who drank together, shared rides to Kigali, and played
on the same volleyball team. Amani was known as a devout Christian and became a
prominent lay leader in the church and served on various church committees.
Using his prominence in business and in the church, Amani became a local political
leader. When the Coalition for the Defense of the Republic (CDR), the virulantly
anti-Tutsi political party that splintered from but continued to cooperate with President
Habyarimana's MRND, was founded in 1992, Amani helped to organize the local chapter
and became its president. Some people from the community told me back in 1993 that
they speculated that Amani had become a leading anti-Tutsi activist to mask his own
mixed heritage at a time of increasing ethnic tensions, however, Amani's involvement in
the new party also provided him with new opportunities to advance his position in
the community. While most of the population supported opposition parties, nearly
all the local elite supported President Habyarimana, and several became active in the MRND
and CDR. National church president Twagirayezu was a strong supporter of President
Habyarimana and served on the Kibuye central committee of the MRND. Amani used his
church connections to encourage people to sign up with the CDR.
When the genocide exploded in April 1994, Amani became the leader of the local "self-defense"
efforts. As a church leader, Amani knew who the Tutsi in Kirinda were, and after
the April 6 plane crash, he went through the community and encouraged Tutsi to assemble at the local nursing school run by the church, telling them "We know you.
We will protect you." A few nights later, on April 13, Amani personally led the
gang that came at night to slaughter them. The one survivor of the attack personally
witnessed Amani at the head of the death squad that broke into the school and machete the
approximately 60 Tutsi gathered there to death.
Géras
Géras was born on a hill in Gitarama prefecture which is visible in the distance from
Kirinda. Quotas on Tutsi students prevented his studying in Rwanda, so Géras went
to Zaire for secondary school and earned a degree in agronomy. Returning to Rwanda,
he was hired by the Presbyterian Church in 1986 and placed at Biguhu, a small parish
about an hour from Kirinda by car in Kibuye in a region of high mountains along the
Congo-Nile continental divide. In Biguhu, Géras worked in the Service de Développement
Rural de Biguhu (SDRB) as an assistant to a Swiss missionary couple, an agronomist
and his wife, Jean-Marc and Francine Sigrist. The SDRB ran two model farms, which
introduced new technologies and crops to the area. Géras and the Sigrists worked
with the local population to set up a number of cooperatives, including a large silo where
farmers could store their sorghum and beans, a carpentry workshop, a bank on the
model of the Grameen Bank in Bangladesh, and a number of agricultural cooperatives.
When the Sigrists left Rwanda in 1989, Géras assumed the leadership of the SDRB.
He continued to direct the SDRB according to principles of sustainable development,
emphasizing local initiative, local control, local resources. Under his guidance,
the cooperatives founded by the SDRB gained increasing independence. The thirty cooperatives
that were members of the SDRB formed a committee to run the organization and elected
two assistants to work with Géras. While none of the thirty cooperatives was highly profitable, the successful local cooperative movement did contribute in small but
important ways to raising both the social and economic standing of a large number
of people in this very poor region, and it also had an impact on the attitudes of
participants. In the silo, cooperative members had initially elected the wealthiest and most
prominent members to the executive council, but when hints of fraud emerged, the
poorer members staged an electoral coup, ousting the original leaders and replacing
them with an executive council of poor farmers. In 1992, under their own initiative and
with no outside funding, six of the cooperatives set up a store in the small commercial
center in Biguhu, where they sold their products and supplied the raw materials they used in their production.
As a salaried employee of the church, Géras was a prominent member of the local community
and lived well. The church provided him with a house and a motorcycle, and his wife,
who taught at the local technical school, also earned an income. Géras maintained contact with the Sigrists and several other Europeans who had passed through
Biguhu, and these contacts provided him with opportunities that many others lacked,
such as a training course in Italy in 1993. Nevertheless, Géras did not live extravagantly, and he maintained a humble aspect. Géras called himself an animateur
, an organizer, not a director or chief, and he treated the poor farmers he worked
with as equals. In one story that was recounted to me, Géras went to a wedding at
the house of a poor farmer. According to custom, the family offered its few chairs
to Géras and other local elite as a sign of respect. Géras refused the chair and chided
the family for following the custom. "If you become sick, who will come to work
your fields. These big men? Or your neighbors? These little people are the ones
who should be honored." He often denounced ethnic prejudices and urged people to stand up
for their rights. Géras supported the moves toward democratization that undermined
President Habyarimana's power in the early 1990s. He arranged to have one of the
cooperative leaders receive training in Kigali to become a civic educator, to teach local
people about their rights under the new political system, although the local mayor
prevented the man from undertaking his work.
Géras received support from his international contacts and from the national office
of development of the Presbyterian Church. In addition, he had supporters among
the local elite -- the pastor of Biguhu parish, some of the teachers in the church
school -- but he had enemies, too. The mayor and other local politicians viewed his work
to empower the local peasantry as a threat to their own power. Local merchants knew
that the cooperative projects were specifically designed to reduce the vulnerability
of the poor farmers to exploitation by them and others. His status as a Tutsi made Géras
suspect. When rising ethnic tensions finally exploded in the genocide, Géras fled
Biguhu for Kirinda, along with several other local Tutsi, and took refuge at the
nursing school. He and his wife and youngest daughter were killed on April 13. His 6-year-old
daughter, Candide, survived the initial attack but was killed several weeks later
in the Kirinda Hospital.
Analysis
Both Amani and Géras used the offices and resources of the Presbyterian Church to
pursue goals that they felt important, but those goals differed widely. Amani used
connections in the church to enrich himself personally and to rise from a low social
status to a position of importance and respect. He became involved in organized efforts
to protect the status quo which was under attack (both by the rebel Rwandan Patriotic
Front and by opposition parties and the democracy movement within Rwanda), and he
relied on his church contacts to pursue that end. He was part of an alliance of business
people, church employees, and government officials who opposed political reform and
supported the president and his party.
Géras in contrast used church resources and contacts in an attempt to create opportunities
for those disadvantaged by the status quo and, beyond that, to support political
reform. Géras worked with others throughout the country who believed that the existing system was inequitable and tried to support the efforts of the poor in his local
community to organize and empower themselves. His efforts helped some of the poor
economically, but more significantly, they had an impact on people's attitudes.
The organizational capacity of the community was increased and fatalism undermined. As
a result, the poor farmers in the community were not only able to take initiative
for themselves, but also to challenge corruption and other forms of domination by
the elite. When the genocide occurred, the elite were disunified, and the type of large-scale
massacres that occurred in nearby Kirinda did not occur in Biguhu.
Despite their sharply different goals and conduct, both Amani and Géras represent
the church in Rwanda. They each held church office, they each used church resources
and facilities, and they each acted at times under church auspices. While the Presbyterian Church may not have had an official policy endorsing genocide, it is not inaccurate
to assert that the church supported the genocide. Amani may not have formally been
acting on behalf of the church in carrying out the massacres in Kirinda, but his
position as a church leader gave him influence, and many people in the community believed
that his actions were supported by others in the church. Local pastors and other
church employees and lay leaders were known for supporting Habyarimana and the CDR,
and they had actively discriminated against Tutsi in several instances. Members of the
local community had not heard anything from the official church -- either nationally
or through its local leaders -- that seemed to condemn the massacre of Tutsi.
At the same time as supporting it, the church opposed the genocide and was targeted
by it. In Biguhu, church members had heard condemnations of ethnic violence from
the pulpit. In its day-to-day operation, the church sought to bring Tutsi and Hutu
together, sending a clear message of support for inter-ethnic harmony. Some church leaders
had publicly supported democratic reforms. Even in Kirinda, there were a few prominent
individuals in the church who had opposed the dominant trend by befriending local Tutsi and supporting opposition politics. The killings in Kirinda took place on
church property, and among those killed were several church employees, including
Géras. Hence, both realities -- the church as perpetrator and the church as victim
-- however contradictory, are simultaneously true.
Conclusions
The point that I am trying to make in this paper is that Christian churches -- and
by extension religious institutions in general -- do not have a pre-determined relationship
to the power structure. Many people with an interest in religion seek to categorize churches as either
an ally of the poor or
an ally of the rich. In fact, both categorizations are correct. The churches, like
other institutions in the civil society, are contested terrain and, hence, the site
of politics. The churches are loosely organized and decentralized institutions which
can be exploited for diverse purposes. The powerful seek to use the churches in their
efforts to organize their domination of the masses, but the masses and their allies
also use the churches in their efforts to resist domination. The churches serve
both the existing hegemonic bloc and various counter-hegemonic projects.
As democratization and political liberalization have emerged as major political themes
in Africa in the 1990s, Christian churches have, not surprisingly, reacted inconsistently.
National church leaders in many countries have publicly supported political reform. Many activists in the various other organizations that constitute the civil
society -- women's associations, human rights groups, farmers' cooperatives -- have
received support from within the churches. In some cases this support has come from
church leaders -- in Burundi two of the Catholic bishops were founding members of the
main human rights group, ITEKA -- but more often, groups have received less formal
support from the churches, such as the use of church buildings or assistance from
church personnel in raising funds or recruiting members. This type of informal support
has been facilitated by the fact that many of the people in the civil society are
themselves church members or church employees. Like Géras, people who support democratic
reform employ church facilities to promote their political agenda.
At the same time, the institutional churches have generally not been at the forefront
of democracy movements. Church leaders have generally preferred to play a mediating
role between the government and opposition groups, and only a few church leaders
have explicitly and directly criticized government leaders. In a number of cases, church
leaders have continued to offer support to the regimes. In Kenya, for example, even
as some church leaders have criticized President Moi's authoritarian tendencies,
others, such as the leaders of the African Inland Church of which Moi is a member, have
continued to back him. Politicians at all levels continue to cooperate with church
personnel and use the churches to increase their power, and people within the churches
continue to rely on and work with the state. Many people who have profited from the
existing political arrangement have continued, like Amani, to use the churches to
organize opposition to reform.
The mixed response of churches to democratization should give pause to those who view
civil society in romantic terms as inherently democratic. While civil society does
have the potential to support real reforms and political restructuring, civil society organizations -- like the many religious groups in Rwanda, Burundi, and Congo --
can also be employed to resist reform and to serve the interests of the powerful.
The mere existence of organizations outside the direct control of the state does
not in and of itself produce democracy.
The inconsistency within churches also suggests an important point about the nature
of politics in Africa. Some analysts have looked at democratic reform in a manner
that focuses exclusively on the state, treating as politically significant only those
actions and organizations that are national in scope and seek to influence the nature
of state institutions.(37) My research on churches, however, indicates that they are politically significant
institutions not simply because they can influence the state, but because they are
themselves sites of politics, where various individuals and groups struggle to increase
their power. Both the powerful and the weak turn to the churches to improve their
social and economic positions. The results of these struggles may have impacts on
the wider political situation (i.e., the movement for political reform), but they
also have a direct impact on the lives of many people -- as the cases of Amani and Géras suggest.
To ignore conflicts within the churches over leadership, priorities, and distribution
of resources is to ignore a major aspect of politics within African societies, an aspect that may be as significant to peasants and other poor people as the struggle
for reforms in the state sphere.
Endnotes
(1)An earlier version of this paper was presented in the 1997-98 Colloquium Series for
the Program in Agrarian Studies, Yale University. This final version has benefitted
from the helpful comments of James Scott, David and Catharine Newbury, and other
participants in the colloquium.
(2)C.f., E. A. Ayandale, The Missionary Impact on Modern Nigeria, 1842-1914
(London: Longman, 1966); K. Asare Opolu. "Religion in Africa during the colonial
era," in A.Adu Boahen, ed., Africa under colonial domination 1880-1935
(UNESCO, 1985); Tshishiku Tshibangu, with J.F. Ade Ajayi and Lemin Sanneh, "Religion
and Social Evolution," Ali A. Mazrui, ed.,Africa since 1935
(UNESCO, 1993); Jean-François Bayart, The State in Africa: The Politics of the Belly
(London: Longman, 1993), p. 30; various articles in Leroy Vail, ec., The Creation of Tribalism in Southern Africa
, (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989); Crawford Young and Thomas Turner,
The Rise and Decline of the Zairian State
(Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1985), p. 112; James Coleman, Nigeria: Background to Nationalism
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1958), p. 108.
(3)For a more detailed discussion of the involvement of Catholic and Protestant churches
in the Rwandan genocide, see my thesis, "Christianity and Crisis in Rwanda: Religion,
Civil Society, Democratization, and Decline," dissertation for the University of
Wisconsin-Madison, 1995.
(4)Hence, the proliferation of studies of schismatic movements and independent churches.
Some excellent examples include, Jean Comaroff, Body of Power, Spirit of Resistance: The Culture and History of a South African People
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985); Karen Fields, Revival and Rebellion in Colonial Central Africa
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985); Bengt Sundkler, Bantu Prophets in South Africa
(Oxford: Oxford University Pres, 1961).
(5)Both Samuel Huntington, The Third Wave: Democratization in the Late Twentieth Century
(Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1991) and John Witte, "Introduction" in John
Witte, ed., Christianity and Democracy in Global Context
(Boulder: Westview, 1993) credit the Catholic Church with making critical contributions
to democratic transition. Witte notes that 24 of the 32 states to experience democratic
transitions after 1973 had Catholic majorities.
(6)Paul Gifford, ed., Christian Churches and the Democratisation of Africa
(Lieden: E.J. Brill, 1995) provides case studies of a the involvement of churches
in the process of democratic reform in a number of African states. Jeff Haynes,
Religion and Politics in Africa
(London: Zed Books, 1996) also provides a useful discussion of the topic in chapter
4.
(7)C.f., Célestin Monga, "Civil Society and Democratisation in Francophone Africa," The Journal of Modern African Studies
1995, pp. 359-379; Naomi Chazan, "Africa's Democratic Challenge," World Policy Journal
1991, pp. 279-307; Pierre Landell-Mills, "Governance, Cultural Change, and Empowerment,"
Journal of Modern African Studies
1992, pp. 543-567; Michael Bratton, "Beyond the State: Civil Society and Associational
Life in Africa," World Politics
1989, pp. 407-430.
(8)Much of the information for this paper is drawn from original research conducted during
several trips to the region. I conducted dissertation research in Rwanda in 1992-93,
then returned to Rwanda under the auspices of Human Rights Watch and the Fédération Internationale des Ligues des Droits de l'Homme (FIDH) in 1995-96. During 1996,
I conducted extensive interviews with refugees fleeing violence in North and South
Kivu. I conducted research in Burundi in June and July 1997 again under the auspices
of Human Rights Watch.
(9)This phrase from Gustavo Gutierrez, A Theology of Liberation: History, Politics, and Salvation
(Maryknoll NY: Orbis Books, 1988) expresses the idea that the church as the embodiment
of God on earth chooses to side with the less fortunate in their struggles for empowerment.
(10)A large number of Protestant confessions are present in each country, growing out
of the missionary efforts of various churches in Europe and North America. In Congo,
the Protestant groups are all formally linked in the Eglise du Christ (ECZ), while
in Rwanda and Burundi, many of the Protestant sects work together in a national Protestant
council.
(11)According to the 1991 census in Rwanda, 89.8% of the population claimed membership
in a Christian Church -- 62.6% Catholic, 18.8% Protestant, and 8.4% Seventh Day Adventist,
(Government of Rwanda, Recensement General de la Population et de l'Habitat au 15 Août 1991: Analyse des
Résultats Definitifs,
Kigali: April 1994, pp. 126-128). No accurate figures for Burundi are available,
but they are believed to be comparable to those in Rwanda. In Zaire, Catholics comprise
just under 50%, Protestants around 35%, and the Kimbanguist Church, a Zairian Christian group, just under 10% ("Zaire: la plus forte chrétienté d'Afrique," Missi
, February 1989.
(12)In Zaire, President Mobutu required all of the officially registered Protestant churches
to be united in one administrative structure, the Eglise du Christ au Zaire (ECZ).
In practice, however, each of the 62 member churches, such as the Presbyterian Church in Shaba and the Disciples of Christ in Equateur, retained substantial autonomy.
(13)Crawford Young, The African Colonial State in Comparative Perspective
(New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994), pp. 35-40, among other authors who focus
on the state, discusses a raison d'état
that creates imperatives for the state as an institution that limit the individual
autonomy of state officers. I would suggest that church officers are similarly limited
by the institutional imperatives of churches.
(14)Ian Linden, Church and Revolution in Rwanda
(New York: Africana Publishing Company, 1977; Justin Kalibwami, Le catholicisme et la société au Rwanda
(Paris: Présence Africaine, 1991); Jean Perraudin, Naissance d'une église: Histoire du Burundi chrétien
, (Bujumbura, 1963).
(15)Marvin Markowitz, Cross and Sword: The Political Role of Missions in the Belgian Congo, 1908-1960
(Stanford: Hoover Institution Press, 1972); On les appele Pères blancs, Soeurs blanches: missionaires d'Afrique, soeurs missionaires
de Notre Dame d'Afrique
(Paris: Fayard, 1984).
(16)Michael Schatzberg, The Dialectics of Oppression in Zaire
(Bloomington: University of Indiana Press, 1988, pp. 116-117; Linden, Church and Revolution in Rwanda
. Kalibwami quotes a remarkable letter from the first German colonial administrator
Dr. Kandt to the White Fathers thanking them for the role their missions have played
in "contributing to the pacification" of Northern Rwanda and asking them to expand
into regions where resistance to colonial authority persists (pp. 169-170).
(17)Philippe B. Kabongo-Mbaya, L'Eglise du Christ au Zaïre: Formation et adaptation d'un protestantisme en situation
de dictature
(Paris: Karthala, 1992); Tharcisse Gatwa and André Karamaga, La présence protestante: Les autres Chrétiens rwandais
(Kigali: Editions URWEGO, 1990).
(18)In all three countries, churches were required to register with the state, and those
religious groups that refused to register or that the states deemed disruptive were
denied the legal right to function and were actively presecuted.
(19)André Guichaoua, Les crises politiques au Burundi et au Rwanda (1993-1994)
, (Lille: Université des Sciences et Technologies, 1995), pp. 750.
(20)Guichaoua, Les crises politiques au Burundi et au Rwanda (1993-1994)
, p. 774.
(21)Young and Turner, The Rise and Decline of the Zairian State
, pp. 66-68; Schatzberg, The Dialectics of Oppression in Zaire
, pp. 117-122.
(22)Jean-Pierre Chrétien, "Eglise et Etat au Burundi: les enjeux politiques," Afrique Contemporaine
, no. 142, April-May-June 1987, pp. 63-68; Philippe Chamay, "L'Eglise au Burundi:
Un conflit peut en cacher un autre," Etudes
, February 1987, pp. 159-170.
(23)Timothy Longman, "Rwanda: Democratization and Disorder, Political Transformation
and Social Deterioration," in John F. Clark and David E. Gardinier, Political Reform in Francophone Africa
(Boulder: Westview, 1997), pp. 287-306; Timothy Longman, "Chaos from Above in Rwanda,"
in Leonardo Villalon and Phil Huxtable, eds., Critical Juncture: The African State Between Reconfiguration and Decline
(Boulder: Lynne Rienner, forthcoming 1997).
(24)See my paper "Christian Churches and Genocide in Rwanda," presented at the Conference
on Genocide, Religion, and Modernity, held at the United States Holocaust Memorial
Museum, May 11-13, 1997, to be published in a forthcoming volume edited by Omer Bartov
and Phyllis Mack.
(25)Ruth Slade, King Leopold's Congo: Aspects of the development of race relations in the Congo Independent
State
(London: Oxford, 1962).
(26)Alison Liebhafsky DesForges, "Defeat is the Only Bad News: Rwanda Under Musinga,
1896-1931," Ph.D. dissertation, Yale University, 1972.
(27)Linden, Church and Revolution in Rwanda
.
(28)Faustin Ngabu, "Renoncez au mensonge (Eph. 4:25)" Declaration de Mgr. Faustin Ngabu,
Eveque de Goma aux Chrétiens de bonne volontés," April 21, 1996. See the report
I wrote for Human Rights Watch/Africa and the Fédération Internationale des Droits
de l'Homme (FIDH), "Zaire: Forced to Flee: Violence Against the Tutsis in Zaire," New York
and Paris, July 1996.
(29)Catharine Newbury, "Ebutumwa Bw'Emiogo: The Tyranny of Cassava: A Women's Tax Revolt
in Eastern Zaire," Canadian Journal of African Studies
18, no. 1, pp. 35-53; Catharine Newbury, "Survival Strategies in Rural Zaire: Realities
of Coping with Crisis" in Nzongola-Ntalaja, ed., The Crisis in Zaire: Myths and Realities
(Trenton: Africa World Press, 1986), pp. 99-112.
(30)Interview conducted April 16, 1996, in Nkamira transit camp, Gisenyi, Rwanda.
(31)Interview conducted April 17, 1996, in Nkamira transit camp, Gisenyi, Rwanda.
(32)C.f., Audrey Wipper, Rural Rebels: A Study of Two Protest Movements in Kenya
(London: Oxford University Press, 1977); Fields, Revival and Rebellion in Colonial Central Africa
.
(33)James Scott, "Hegemony and the Peasantry," Politics and Society
7, no. 3, 1977, p. 283.
(34)Chrétien, "Eglise et Etat au Burundi: les enjeux politiques;" Chamay, "L'Eglise au
Burundi: Un conflit peut en cacher un autre."
(35)These two biographies are based on personal knowledge of the two men and on interviews
and observation conducted in the area in 1992 and 1993 and again in 1996.
(36)n Rwanda, where people traditionally lived in isolated homesteads scattered across
the mountainous terrain rather than in villages, the umusozi
, or hill, was the primary unit for political and social purposes, linking together
all of the people who live on the same hill.
(37)C.f., Claude Ake, "Rethinking African Democracy," Journal of Democracy
2, no. 1 (1991), pp. 32-44; Chazan, "Africa's Democratic Challenge."