Jean-Baptiste Bagaza

Jean-Baptiste Bagaza (29 August 19464 May 2016) was a Burundian army officer and politician who ruled Burundi as president and de facto military dictator from November 1976 to September 1987.

Born into the Tutsi ethnic group in 1946, Bagaza served in the Burundian military and rose through the ranks under the rule of Michel Micombero after his rise to power in 1966.

Bagaza was born in Rutovu, Bururi Province in Belgian-ruled Ruanda-Urundi on 29 August 1946.

His family were ethnic Hima, part of the wider Tutsi ethnic group.

After studying in Catholic schools in Bujumbura, he enlisted in the army of the newly independent Kingdom of Burundi.

He was sent to Belgium in 1966 where he studied at the Royal Military Academy in Brussels until 1971.

He earned a sociology degree.

Despite having participated in the genocidal killings of 1972, he introduced various reforms which modernised the state and made concessions to the country's ethnic Hutu majority.

He returned to Burundi in 1972.

Bagaza was involved in President Michel Micombero's genocidal killings of ethnic Hutu in 1972, though the "extent or nature of his involvement" remain unclear.

In May he was, at the rank of captain, appointed adjunct chief of staff of the Burundian military in charge of logistics—largely because of his family's connections to the Micombero, replacing purged Hutu officer Martin Ndayahoze.

In November he was promoted to the rank of lieutenant colonel and made chief of the general staff.

In May 1975 he was appointed to the Chamber of Accounts under the Supreme Court.

Bagaza deposed Micombero in a bloodless coup d'état in 1976 and took power himself as head of the ruling Union for National Progress (Union pour le Progrès national, UPRONA).

Bagaza overthrew Micombero in a military coup on 1 November 1976.

The constitution was temporarily suspended by a military junta, the 30-member Supreme Revolutionary Council, which declared Bagaza president on 10 November 1976.

He was thirty at the time.

Bagaza initiated a number of reforms after taking power, attacking corruption and making modest reforms to improve conditions for Hutus who had been targeted under the Micombero regime.

He reformed taxation and the administration.

He earned respect for his work ethic, as he "drove himself to work at 7:30 a.m. each day" instead of travelling in large cavalcades as most regional politicians did at the time.

Some Hutu refugees were allowed to return from exile in Zaire and Tanzania where they had fled during the genocide.

Bagaza granted a few government posts to Hutu, appointing two Hutu ministers in his first cabinet.

Burundi's feudal system of land tenure, known as the Ubugererwa, was abolished in 1977.

Some Tutsi-held land was transferred to Hutu farmers.

The end of the Ubugererwa as well as the abolition of the ikori poll tax earned Bagaza much goodwill among Hutus.

Officially, Bagaza attempted to address the country's ethnic tensions by banning all mention of ethnicity, declaring that everyone was just Burundian or, more broadly, African.

Researcher Nigel Watt argued that this move was just disguising the continued dominance of the Tutsi elite.

Bagaza ensured that the Tutsi remained economically and politically dominant.

In fact, the marginalization of Hutus in the economy and education increased during Bagaza's rule.

This resulted in the emergence of the radical PALIPEHUTU party and militant group.

Under Bagaza, a programme of economic modernization was begun to allow the emergence of small-scale capitalist agriculture, involving the construction of two new hydroelectric dams which still form the basis for Burundi's energy infrastructure.

He also initiated road building programs, expanded the availability of drinking water, and developed a port on Lake Tanganyika.

His infrastructure investments helped to shape Burundi's export ecenomy which came to rely on coffee, tea and sugar.

Internationally, Bagaza successfully maneuvered between different political factions, securing economic aid from the Western Bloc, the Eastern Bloc, China, and the Arab world.

He expelled the large Congolese migrant community from Burundi, claiming that they had just decided to leave on their own.

Bagaza's regime introduced a new national constitution in 1981 which consolidated Burundi as a one-party dictatorship under the Union for National Progress (Union pour le Progrès national, UPRONA), which he re-organised under his own leadership.

His regime became increasingly repressive after it became consolidated in 1984, especially targeting the powerful Catholic Church.

His rule lasted until 1987 when his regime was overthrown in a further coup d'état and he was forced into exile.

He returned to Burundi in 1994 and became involved in national politics as the leader of the Party for National Recovery (Parti pour le Redressement National, PARENA).

He died in 2016.