Conflict and Coffee in Burundi 133confrontation between rebel groups and government forces in the 1990s.
has relocated to regroupment camps. Internal displacement has far-reaching
implications for agricultural production, with soaring food prices and
reduced production of export crops, coffee and tea. The manoeuvring lati-
tude of the 'middleman has correspondingly been narrowed,
exacerbating elite tensions. This was made worse by the imposition of sanc-
tions between 1996 and 1999, imposing increased external costs on the
operations of coffee exporters.
To these factors must be added the history of the crop, its introduction into
the Burundi economy and symbolic significance. An addition of the colonial
economic package, coffee was introduced by the Belgian trustee administra-
tion to Burundi in the 1930s. Belgian colonial policy elevated the Tutsi group
in a structure resembling indirect rule, making them overseers in the activi-
ties of the natives. Thus coffee production was done by the Hutus and over-
seen by Tutsi local administrators. This reinforced the chasm between the
Hutus and the Tutsis as subject and ruler. Attitudes and perceptions have per-
sisted and permeated the ideology of the civil war. The government and
Tutsis view the army as their last line of defence against an imagined Hutu
peril. Hutus and the armed opposition in turn view with suspicion and
describe the armed forces in all manner of pejorative terms. It is the same
army that has been the principal agent of oppression and mass murder. Rebel
groups have reportedly been waging a propaganda war against the cultiva-
tion of coffee for this reason. in the mid-1990s, rebels waged a campaign to
destroy the coffee trade by inciting the people to uproot the trees so as to
destabilise the government revenue base and cripple the economy.%
Coffee production, processing and marketing, including the crop's export,
reflect and reinforce the country's ethnic divisions. The ntsi play an almost
exclusive pan in the role of the 'minority middleman' and the state, effec-
tively controlled by a cabal within this group, expropriates the earnings, leav-
ing little trickling down the peasants' way.
Global commodity price fluctuations have made matters no easier. The
near collapse of coffee prices in the world market (mid-2001) saw the lowest
world coffee prices ever) has ensured that it is the primary producers' whose
receipts are minimal, often to the benefit of the state. in Burundi, certain
episodic outbursts of violence are attributed to the smuggling of coffee to
neighbouring Rwanda for better returns and the government's attempts to
curtail them.
There are some hopeful signs of progressive change, especially in the north-
em Ngozi province, the stronghold of coffee production. In this case, farmers
and other stakeholders from Ngozi region have organised themselves into a
cooperative society, including a financial credit facility to farmers in order to put
to good use coffee proceeds for the benefit of the region, irrespective of the iden-
tity of the farmers. This coalition of farmers, former politicians and ershvhile