Paper short abstract:

The central focus of inquiry in the paper is on how continuities from the wartime past shape post-war legitimacy and power in Burundi. This will be done through analyzing both the local legacies of rebel governance and the post-war symbolic repertoires of the former rebel FNL and CNDD-FDD parties.

Paper long abstract:

This paper explores the legacies of rebellion in relation to the making and contestation of political order in Burundi after the war. Initially, Burundi was lauded as a successful case of liberal peacebuilding in Africa. Today however, Burundi is looked upon as fragile and on the brink of implosion. The paper will argue against overly simplistic explanations of the current political violence as a direct consequence of the rebel past of CNDD-FDD and FNL, Burundi's main parties. Instead, it posits that rebel legacies constitute a complex, multidimensional source of post-war legitimacy. In order to demonstrate this, three particular perspectives on these legacies will be elaborated. First, the paper will look into the retrospective appreciation by citizens in Bujumbura Rural of the wartime FNL presence and rebel governance practices in that area. Secondly, it will be highlighted how the civilian networks of support put in place by the FNL rebellion during the war in the same area, have produced a political counter-elite and continue to bear their mark on everyday politics and local governance. Finally, the paper will look into how the 'charisma of rebellion' has become an important element in the symbolic repertoires on which both the ruling CNDD-FDD and the weakened FNL rely in their competition for power in the post-war political arena. The insights in this paper draw from ethnographic fieldwork conducted since 2010 in Bujumbura Rural, a stronghold of the FNL party, and on ongoing observations of the post-war political landscape in Burundi.