154 Scarcity and Surfeit
Ibid.
vpically the middleman minority is "any ethnically distinct group that specialis-
es in the selling of goods or skills", is alien to the society in which they carry out
business and is "typically much poorer than the ruling class but much richer than
the mass natives': Note that the use of the concept here varies from the original,
ideal construction given the identity configuration of Burundi and its homoge-
nous cultural orientation. P van den Berghe, The ethnic phenomenon, Westport,
New York, 1987.
Laely, op cit; Dupont, op cit.
Interview with a Burundian senior political analyst, International Crisis Group,
Nairobi, 12 June 2001, Nairobi .International Monetary Fund. Burundi - recent
economic developments, op cit.
This subsection is in large part taken from International Monetary Fund, Staff
Country Reports No. 971114 and Burundi's Administration Generale de la
Cooperation au Development.
A wholly government company, see Table 27, List of Public Companies,
lnternational Monetary Fund Staff Country Report No. 99/8 Burundi Statistical
Annex, February 1999,32. OCIBU and the SOGETALs are listed as mixed owner-
ship, i.e. private-public companies.
100 ~ai; Trade ~oundation rePo& that the commodity chain from the primary pro-
ducer to the supermarket shelf is 150 fold, Spilling the beans, Report, 2001.
lnternational Monetary Fund, Burundi - recent economic developments, op cit
Ibid. Emphasis added.
Interview with International Crisis Group political analyst, Nairobi.
Ibid.
Laely, op cit.
Ibid. Emphasis added.
Reyntjens, The proof of the pudding is in the eating: The June 1993 elections in
Burundi, op cit.
Interview with former OCIBU official in price department, Nairobi, 3 July 2001.
Weinstein, op cit; R Lemarchand, Burundi in comparative perspective:
Dimensions of ethnic strife, J McGarry & B O'Leary (eds) The politics of ethnic
conflict regulation: Case studies of protracted ethnic conflicts, London, Routledge.
The systematic elimination of a nascent Hutu counter-elite is best illustrated by
accounts of the 1972 massacres of educated Hutu in government and schools.
This trend continued more or less over the years until the reforms instituted by
Buyoya in 1989.
Ngaruko & Nkurunziza, op cit.
Ibid.
International Crisis Group, op cit.
This practice is common in African agricultural economies and is characterised
by the author as 'double extortion:
International Crisis Group, op cit.
115 Ibid.
116 Ibid; Ngaruko & Nkurunziza, op cit. The latter authors talk of the 'privatization'
of the state to serve the interests of some overlapping networks. (emphasis mine).