Conflict and Coffee in Burundi 93
The concretisation of political, social and economic categories of ethnic
identity was underpinned on the one hand by the so-called 'hermitic myth'
and on the other by the introduction of identity cards. The 'hermitic myth',
which was introduced by colonial anthropologists, claimed that Tutsis were
'natural rulers' compared to Hutus, based on the supposed origin of Tutsi in
northern Africa, and the portrayal of the 'indigenous' Hutu as "disposed to
opposition and disobedience" (see Lemarchandz4 for an expose of the 'her-
mitic myth'). Identity cards bearing the holder's ethnicity also played a high-
ly significant role in destroying the flexibility of ethnic ascription. It was the
ethnic classification on a holder's identity card that determined liability to
forced labour for the Hutu and admissions to the administrative school for
the Tutsi at A~trida.~~
If the Belgians, as Reyntjens charitably observes. "unwittingly initialled
changes [in ethnic identities], not realising their potential for ~onflict",~ the
restructuring of the economy and the introduction of a predator): rent-seeking
and extractive state model were clearly not unwitting. Before colonialism,
Burundi had an economy based on subsistence and the transfer of agricultur-
al produce and cattle within a vertical social and political system of patronage.
The self-sustaining cycle of economic and political exchange served the needs
of its participants. The colonial administrations replaced this with an economy
completely oriented toward fulfilling external needs. Export crops such as cof-
fee and tea for Belgian consumption and sale displaced subsistence food crop-
ping and animal husbandry, and the intensification of commercial food crop
production served to free up provisions and labour to support the mining sec-
tor in the neighbouring Belgian colony, the Congo. Therefore, Burundi's econ-
omy became doubly extroverted and doubly dependent on Belgium, directly
and via the giant neighbouring country, into whose currency sphere and trad-
ing system Burundi had been integrated.17
A centralised and extroverted economy has three effects. First, it creates
opportunities for rent seeking for those who control the trade of expon goods,
and second it disengages the economy from the fulfilment of domestic devel-
opment objectives. This is because the economy is driven by the twin princi-
ples of meeting external rather than domestic demands, and maximising rents
for the domestic elite. Third, and also connected to the above phenomena, is
the incentive to focus on maximum extraction rather than sustainable devel-
opment of and reinvestment in primary resources. All three elements remain
characteristic of Burundi's current economy and the way it is managed by the
predatory and rent-seeking elite who control the state apparatus.
Under the colonial system, especially the Belgians, the state as an adminis-
trative body was fundamentally geared toward facilitating the extraction of
wealth from the territory it oversaw, while controlling the population in a way
to support this extraction and repress opposition. This function of the state
stands in contrast to the pre-colonial kingdom, in which patronage networks