Burundi became an independent constitutional monarchy on July 1, 1962, with Mwambutsa IV as king. Mwambutsa was overthrown in a military coup in July 1966 by his son Charles who subsequently reigned for a few months as King Ntare V, with the military leader Michel Micombero as prime minister. King Ntare was deposed by Micombero on Nov. 29, 1966, and Burundi was declared a republic with Micombero as president. In 1972 an attempt to restore the monarchy was unsuccessful, and in the fighting that followed King Ntare was killed, and as many as 150,000 Hutu, who were blamed by the government for the uprising, were slaughtered by the Tutsi and the Tutsi-dominated army.
Micombero was ousted on Nov. 1, 1976, in a military coup led by Lt.-Col. Jean Baptiste Bagaza, who remained president when civilian rule was formally restored in 1979 and was reelected in 1984. Baganza was overthrown in a 1987 coup led by Maj. Pierre Buyoya. In 1988 another eruption of tribal hostility led to the apparent massacre by the Tutsi of thousands of Huta, many more of whom fled into Rwanda. Buyoya lifted restrictions on the Roman Catholic church imposed by the Baganza regime, released many Hutu political prisoners, appointed a Huta prime minister, and ended a pro-Tutsi education policy.
Burundi was a one-party state from 1966 until 1992, when voters overwhelmingly approved a multiparty constitution under which new elections were to be held in 1993. It called for a president and national assembly directly elected to five-year terms, with the president limited to two terms. New parties were not permitted to identify with any single ethnic or other exclusive group.