Conservation sociale et émergence contrainte des centres urbains dans les États-paysans des Hautes Terres centrales

Abstract

Social Conservation and Constraint Emergence of Urban Centres in the Peasant-States of the Central Highlands. In a continent where peasant systems are falling into decay and families swarm into nearby towns, the overcrowded Central Highlands provide us with an extraordinary example of rural stability. We are however faced with a demographic and economic situation (a density comparable with that of Asia, poor agricultural productivity, increasing soil erosion, a precarious food balance) which ought to trigger off a tendency to migrate. It is thanks to the unyielding efforts of the hill peasants that the Burundi and the Rwanda have more or less, managed to intensify their agriculture and meet their ever-growing needs. But on the other hand, the emergence and multiplication of new urban social layers, either self-employed, are strictly determined by the existence of eventual surplus food production. To be precise, the political and economic balance necessary to the survival of this original civilization, can be kept only through strict control of the usual mechanisms of social differenciation among the peasant community. Otherwise thousands of pauperized or landless peasants would be driven to the urban centres. Being isolated in the capital cities, the rulling classes have their range of action continuously limited to the one and only problem of controlling exportable agricultural products and foreign aid. In the end, they are even condemned to surrendering a lot of their privileges and means to the rural communities to guarantee the perenniality of the social and spatial order to which, due to the lack of authorized alternatives (settling in the cities) or possible alternatives Gobs and incomes outside agriculture), the population and in particular, the young peasants at school-leaving age, are to adhere. Paradoxically eventual urban growth will depend on the good-will of the peasant class and on agricultural dynamism.