Children of the revolution: the citizenship of urban Muslims in the Burundian decolonization process

Histories of decolonization in Africa tend to present a unidirectional process with the eventual independent states as the seemingly natural outcome, thus ignoring or distorting actions and actors with transnational or translocal agendas. In the case of Burundi, decolonization is presented either as national liberation or as a prelude to ethnic conflict within a national frame of reference. Both strands eclipse the initial exclusion of Burundian independence, which hit the Muslim or Swahili minority in Burundi’s urban centers. In this paper, I demonstrate how from 1955 onwards several Muslims in Burundian towns along Lake Tanganyika contributed significantly to the creation of a state from which they were eventually excluded. Thus, analogous to the French Revolution, the Burundian decolonization devoured its children. I continue explaining how political stances of some Muslim protagonists gradually diverged in light of the exclusionary politics of colonial authorities and Burundian nationalists. The omission of such local and translocal, national and transnational histories stands in the way of understanding – both of and in Burundi.