ABSTRACT
This chapter deals with the modern commitment to collective autonomy in the period following the Second World War until the early 1960s. It argues that in the period under investigation, multiple interpretations of the modern social imaginary emerged and competed with each other in the form of programmes for independence. The chapter suggests that one can see these movements in Burundi and Rwanda as a specific articulation of a transition from colonial modernity to what might be called a postcolonial modernity, via the 'decolonial' route. It summarizes three significant points raised by the analysis presented. The first concerns the entanglements of modernity and tradition in postcolonial societal self-understandings, and their relationship to violence. The second concerns the entanglement of Burundian and Rwandan trajectories towards independence in the broader structural problems intrinsic to global transformations of modernity. The third concerns the entangled historical routes of Burundi and Rwanda themselves.
