¹ Waldmeir, Patti and Holman, Michael, ‘A Powerful Spirit of Unity’, in the Financial Times (London), 18 07 1994, p. 1.Google Scholar

² The multi-ethnic archaic kingdoms of Rwanda and Burundi were first colonised by Germany and then entrusted to Belgium as Mandates under the League of Nations and as UN Trust Territories after World War II. They both became independent in 1962, Rwanda as a Hutudominated republic, Burundi as a constitutional monarchy. Although sharing a similar ethnic map – with Tutsi pastoralists said to represent approximately 14 per cent of the total population, Hutu agriculturalists 85 per cent, and Pygmoid Twa one per cent – only in Rwanda was Tutsi overrule highly institutionalised. Burundi society was characterised by greater complexity and fluidity, with power gravitating into the hands of a princely oligarchy (the so-called ganwa) whose identity was separate from that of either Hutu or Tutsi. Which helps explain why Burundi acceded to independence as yet untouched by the revolutionary upheavals during 1959–62 that brought the Hutu of Rwanda to power. For further details, see Lemarchand, René, Rwanda and Burundi (London, 1970).Google Scholar

³ In coldly statistical terms, compared to the loss of an estimated one million lives that has accompained Rwanda's descent into hell via genocide, battle-field casualties, cholera, dysentery, famine, and sheer human exhaustion, Burundi's haemorrhage - 50,000 dead evenly distributed between Hutu and Tutsi - seems almost inconsequential. However, it must not be forgotten that the 1972 bloodbath in Burundi took the lives of an estimated 100,000 Hutu, some say 200,000. See Lemarchand, René, Burundi: ethnocide as discourse and practice (New York and Cambridge, 1994), ch. 5, ‘The 1972 Watershed’.Google Scholar

⁴ For a sombre view of the future of South Africa, see Breytenbach, Breyten, ‘Dog's Bone’, in The New York Review of Books, 26 05 1994,Google Scholar in which the author referred to ‘the bloody mess of our transitional phase and the contradictions and discordances erupting like pus ever more violently day by day’ (p. 4). In more subdued language, Horowitz, Donald L., in A Democratic South Africa? Constitutional Engineering in a Divided Society (Berkeley, Los Angeles, and Oxford, 1991), p. 263,Google Scholar expressed similar misgivings about ‘the long-shot character of the democratic gamble in South Africa’, For a remarkably prescient – and optimistic – analysis, see Bratton, Michael and van de Walle, Nicolas, ‘Neopatrimonial Regimes and Political Transitions in Africa’, in World Politics (Princeton, NJ), 46, 1, 07 1994, pp. 454–89:Google Scholar‘although political transition in South Africa may be protracted and punctuated by violence, it may well ultimately occur by negotiation. And the long-term prospect for democratic consolidation may be better there than in other parts of contemporary Africa’ (p. 487).Google Scholar

⁵ Chrétien, Jean-Pierre, ‘Tournant historique au Burundi et au Rwanda’, in Marchés tropicaux et méditerranéens (Paris), 10 1993, pp. 2420–2.Google Scholar

⁶ Huntington, Samuel P., The Third Wave: democratization in the late twentieth century (Norman, OK, and London, 1991), p. 114.Google Scholar

⁷ For an excellent discussion of the Arusha accords, see Reyntjens, Filip, L'Afrique des grands lacsen crise: Rwanda, Burundi, 1988–1994 (Paris, 1994), pp. 248–56.Google Scholar For a full version, amounting to 182 pages, see Journal officiel de la République rwandaise (Kigali), 33, 15, 15 08 1993, pp. 1265–1447.Google Scholar

⁸ Huntington, op. cit.

⁹ Bratton, Michael, Political Liberalization in Africa in the 1990s: advances and setbacks (East Lansing, 05 1993), Michigan State University Working Paper No. 2, p. 14.Google Scholar

¹⁰ Ibid. p. 12.

¹¹ Bratton and van de Walle, loc. cit. fn. 90, p. 488. A convincing case can be made for viewing South Africa as an état de droit, though clearly upholding le droit du plus fort; constitutionalism, after all, does not rule out social injustice. In South Africa, the racial discriminations written into the apartheid state were sanctioned by an extraordinarily elaborate legal system, rather than left to the whim of patrimonial figures (as was the case of Liberia during the Americo-Liberian hegemony).Google Scholar

¹² For more statistical information, see the special section on South Africa in the Financial Times, 18 July 1994.Google Scholar

¹³ Moore, Barrington Jr., The Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy (Boston, 1966).Google Scholar

¹⁴ Pieterse, E. A. and Simone, A. M. (eds.), Governance and Development: a critical analysis of community-based organisations in Western Cape (Cape Town, 1994), p. 46.Google Scholar

¹⁵ Przeworski, Adam, Democracy and the Market (Cambridge, 1991), passim.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

¹⁶ See Lemarchand, 1970, op. cit.

¹⁷ For a persuasive refutation of the essentialist view of ethnicity, see Vail, Leroy (ed.), The Creation of Tribalism in Southern Africa (London, Berkeley, and Los Angeles, 1989).Google Scholar

¹⁸ Black-on-black violence, involving essentially Inkatha militants against partisans of the ANC, reached its peak in 1992: in Natal alone, human rights monitors recorded 1, 147 people killed during the first ten months of 1992. The New York Times, 18 November 1992, p. A6.Google Scholar See Johnston, Alexander, ‘South Africa: the election and the transition process – five contradictions in search of a resolution’, in Third World Quarterly (London), 15, 2, 06 1994, pp. 187–204,Google Scholar for a most illuminating discussion of South African political culture. He makes the point that violence in the townships ‘has become diffuse to the point of incoherence’, Specifically, ‘Although the Goldstone Commission has pinpointed rivalry between black political movements … political violence has no clear-cut axis of conflict and is overlaid with many exacerbating factors. These range from generational conflict between radical youth and traditional elders, disputes over chiefship succession, crime, economic rivalry (as in the so-called “taxi” wars) and cycles of vendetta-like clan conflict’ (p. 188). In this ‘diffuseness’ of violence also lies a critical difference with the situation in Rwanda and Burundi; in both of these states violence has been, and remains, much more specifically targeted in ethnic and political terms.

¹⁹ See, for example, Brown, and van Dyk, Bruno (eds.), Exchanges: South African writing in transition (Pietermaritzburg, 1991),Google Scholar and Petersen, Kirsten Holst and Rutherford, Anna (eds.), On Shifting Sands: new art and literature from South Africa (Portsmouth, NH, 1992).Google Scholar

²⁰ van Zyl Slabbert, Frederick and Welsh, David, South Africa's Options (Cape Town, 1979),Google Scholar quoted in Lodge, Tom, ‘Democracy Through Personal Chemistry’, in Southern African Review of Books (Cape Town), 4, 6, 09–10 1992, p. 3.Google Scholar

²¹ Karl, Terry Lynn, ‘Dilemmas of Democratization in Latin America’, in Rustow, Dankwart and Erikson, Kenneth (eds.), Comparative Political Dynamics: global research perspectives (New York, 1991), p. 168.Google Scholar

²² In Rwanda it is worth remembering that Juvénal Habyarimana came to power in 1973 as a result of a northern Hutu-instigated military coup designed to shift power away from southerners suspected of accumulating more than their fair shares of the national wealth, and that the deposed President, Grégoire Kayibanda, was thought to be too ‘soft’ on Tutsi. On This and other aspects of the 1973 coup, see Reyntjens, Filip, Pouvoir et droit au Rwanda (Tervueren, Musée Royal de l'Afrique Centrale, 1985).Google Scholar

²³ For an excellent analysis of the 1994 elections and what lies ahead, see Africa Report (New York), 39, 4, 07–08 1994, pp. 13–45.Google Scholar

²⁴ According to the Weekly Mail (Johannesburg), 20 05 1994, as a last-minute concession to win Natal's participation in the elections de Klerk ceded control over more than one-third of KwaZulu-Natal's land to King Goodwill Zwelithini, amounting to roughly three million hectares.Google Scholar

²⁵ Horowitz, op. cit. p. 203.

²⁶ See Reyntjens, Filip, ‘The Proof of the Pudding is in the Eating: the June 1993 elections in Burundi’, in The Journal of Modern African Studies (Cambridge), 31, 4, 12 1993, pp. 563–83,CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Lemarchand, 1994, op. cit.

²⁷ Shapiro, Ian, ‘Democratic Innovation: South Africa in comparative context’, in World Politics, 46, 1, 10 1993, pp. 138–9.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

²⁸ See Strauss, Annette, ‘The 1992 Referendum in South Africa’, in The Journal of Modern African Studies, 31, 2, 06 1993, pp. 339–60.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

²⁹ Quoted in Time Magazine (New York), 9 05 1994, p. 17.Google Scholar

³⁰ See Nelson Mandela Speaks: forging a democratic, nonracial South Africa (New York, 1993), passim.Google Scholar

³¹ See Howe, Herbert M.'s outstanding analysis, ‘The South African Defence Force and Political Reform’, in The Journal of Modern African Studies, 32, 1, 03 1994, pp. 29–51.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

³² See Waal, Alex de, ‘The Genocidal State’, in The Times Literary Supplement (London), 1 07 1994, pp. 3–4,Google Scholar and Lemarchand, René, ‘The Apocalypse in Rwanda’, in The Cultural Survival Quarterly (Cambridge, MA), forthcoming.Google Scholar

³³ Howe, loc. cit. p. 40.

³⁴ Ibid. p. 50.

³⁵ For further details, see Lemarchand, 1994, op. cit.

³⁶ The close connection between the PG and the akazu clique are excellently described by Braeckman, Colette and Guillaume, A., ‘La Poudrière rwandaise’, in Le Soir (Brussels), 1 06 1994, p. 8.Google Scholar

³⁷ Ibid.

³⁸ Howe, loc. cit. p. 5.

³⁹ Rothchild, Donald, ‘Regional Peacemaking in Africa: the role of the great powers as facilitators’, in Harbeson, John W. and Rothchild, (eds.), Africa in World Politics (Boulder, San Francisco, and Oxford, 1991), pp. 299–300.Google Scholar

⁴⁰ For a chilling account of the extent and modalities of the manipulation of political violence by the Habyarimana régime, see Association rwandaise pour le défense des droits de la personne et des libertés publique (ADL), Rapport sur les droits de l'homme au Rwanda: septembre 1991–septembre 1992 (Kigali, 12 1992).Google Scholar

⁴¹ Atwood, J. Brian, ‘Commencement Address to American University Law School’, Washington, DC., reported in US AID/General Notice, Washington, DC, 27 05 1994, p. 4.Google Scholar