A man's head is measured in an attempt to classify him
Juvenal Habyarimana
Rwanda to 1994
There follows a long (for a web-page) account of Rwanda's history. It is not intended to be definitive and cannot claim to be wholely accurate. It is derived from three sources: "We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will be Killed With Our Families: Stories from Rwanda" by Philip Gourevitch, "A People Betrayed: The Role of the West in Rwanda's Genocide" by Linda Melvern and the Bradt Guide to Rwanda. It is included here because I found reading these to be so helpful in understanding what followed.
Before colonisation
Rwanda is a small, hilly country in central Africa, over 500 miles from the nearest coast – the Indian Ocean at the border of Kenya and Tanzania. As a result of this isolation writing did not reach it until colonization by Germany and then Belgium at the end of the nineteenth century, and its earlier history is reliant on oral tradition only. The account that follows of the pre-colonial history of the country is therefore far from certain; especially since the history of Rwanda has probably been distorted by various groups to serve their own ends.
The earliest inhabitants of the region where pygmy hunter-gatherers properly know as the Batwa, or more commonly the Twa. Sometime in the first millennium B.C. Bantu speaking farmers apparently spread from an area around modern Nigeria throughout most of sub-Saharan Africa. Those that settled in the Great Lakes region of central Africa became known as the Bahutu, or Hutus. Later a third group of people arrived, bringing cattle, probably from the north. These Batutsi or Tutsis probably arrived between the tenth and fourteenth centuries A.D. In recent times the Twa made up approximately 1% of the population of Rwanda and the Tutsi 10-15%, the remainder being Hutu.
Much confusion exists over what type of groups the Twa, Hutu and Tutsi are in modern Rwanda. They are often described by foreigners as tribes, but tribes in Africa today are still defined by their unique languages and customs. In contrast Rwanda has existed as a single political entity with one language (Kinyarwanda), one culture, one religion and one head of state for five hundred years. As intermarriage has been relatively common during this time it is debatable whether the Tutsi, Hutu and Twa can be considered to be ‘ethnic’ groups – so what are the differences between them?
It appears that soon after their arrival the cattle-herding Tutsi came to dominate the other groups. A complex feudal system developed with a Tutsi monarch – the Mwami – at its head. The Mwami was considered to be of divine descent and the personification of the state. A hierarchy of chiefs with specific administrative responsibilities was also predominately Tutsi. The majority of the Hutu were peasant farmers who entered into feudal relationships known as ubuhake with Tutsi overlords whereby they received protection in return for labour. Fortunate Hutu who acquired enough wealth in the form of cattle could be granted Tutsi status and take a Tutsi wife, and vice-versa; less fortunate Tutsi might find themselves ‘demoted’ to become Hutu. It therefore seems reasonable to compare the situation in Rwanda with that in England at approximately the same time: in the centuries following the Norman Conquest. There, the monarch and feudal overlords were of Norman descent while the Anglo-Saxons formed a peasant class. Despite this all people soon spoke the same language, and divisions within society swiftly changed from ethnic distinctions to those of class.
Bad Science
Rwanda became part of German East Africa at the Berlin Conference of 1885, although as there had been no official visit by any European by this time Rwandans were unaware that they had been colonised for a number of years. Rwanda was a fertile and densely populated country, but as the ‘cash crops’ coffee and tea had yet to be introduced it had none of the natural resources which colonising powers were keen to plunder. As a result German interest in Rwanda was largely academic - scientists were fascinated by the physical differences in the three social groups. The Tutsi tended to be tall and slender with narrow noses, the Hutu stockier with broad noses and the Twa much smaller still.
The so-called Hamitic Hypothesis (or Hamitic Myth) is a very Victorian mix of Biblical and Biological ideas and a racist miss-application of Darwin’s evolutionary theory. White intellectuals during the colonial era assumed that their race was more intelligent than those indigenous to other parts of the world (as a result more complete evolution from ancestral apes) because of their greater wealth and technology. Unfortunately this belief is still held by some white people, but few of them could be called intellectuals. A convincing account of why Europeans colonised Africa and not vice versa is given by the Biologist Jarred Diamond in his book ‘Guns, Germs and Steel’: it is probably all down to climate, domesticable animal and plant species and natural barriers to travel on different continents. According to the colonisers Ham, Noah’s youngest and laziest son, was the ancestor of the down-trodden Hutu farmers, whilst the Tutsi clearly had some European blood in them, via Ethiopia and Egypt. Apart from introducing this unpleasant and dangerous idea and measuring a lot of noses in an attempt to classify the population, the Germans didn’t much interfere in the running of the country.
Belgian colonisation
After the first world war Germany’s colonies were divided up among the victorious nations, and Belgium took control of Rwanda (although it was responsible to the League of Nations and later to the United Nations). The Belgians took a far more active role in the running of the country, with thousands of administrators and priests taking over much of government and education. Although the power of the Mwami and the Tutsi aristocracy was reduced, the traditional power structure was left in place as it aided the colonisers task. In fact the Belgians exaggerated the divide between Rwanda’s groups by introducing identity cards and an education system heavily biased towards Tutsis: only one child out of five in school was Hutu.
As independence inevitably approached in the 1950s the Belgian administrators underwent a dramatic change of heart. Under pressure from the UN to prepare the colony for democratic elections they encouraged calls from the newly formed Hutu political parties for more power for the ‘majority people’. Then, in July 1959 the Tutsi monarch Mwami Rudahigwa died unexpectedly in a Belgian hospital, and Tutsis enraged at a presumed plot attacked a Hutu politician. In reprisal organised Hutu gangs burned and looted Tutsi homes killing 300 people. When the genocide was reported in the Western press references were made to the ‘age old’ or ‘ancient’ hostilities between the Hutus and Tutsis, yet this was the first ever recorded systematic violence between them.
Independence
Elections were held in 1960 and 61, both won by a PARMEHUTU (Parti du Mouvement de l’Emancipation Hutu) lead by Rwanda’s first president Gregoire Kayibanda. Both before and after the declaration of independence organised violence against Tutsis continued, and over 100,000 fled to neighbouring countries as refugees. The Belgian authorities managing the transition tacitly condoned these attacks, apparently on the grounds that they helped to redress centuries of discrimination against the Hutus.
After independence Rwanda was essentially a one-party Hutu-run state. When Juvenal Habyarimana deposed Kayibanda in a military coup in 1973 in became officially one-party, that being the MRND (Mouvement Revolutionnarie et National pour le Developpement). Tutsis were largely excluded from government and a strict quota system limited their access to education. Organised violence also continued: in 1963 for example 10,000 Tutsis died in reprisals following guerrilla raids by exiled Tutsi fighters, prompting The World Today to print the headline ‘Attempted Genocide in Rwanda’.
Large numbers of Tutsi refugees were prevented from returning home by the Habyarimana regime which claimed that Rwanda could not accommodate any more people. They were equally unwelcome in their adopted countries however. In Uganda many young Tutsis joined the rebel army which eventually took power from the dictator Milton Obote (Idi Amin’s successor). Many of these including Paul Kagame (Rwanda’s president at the time of writing) became the backbone of the RPF (Rwandan Patriotic Front) - a political movement demanding Rwandan unity and a highly trained army equipped with Ugandan weapons.
Civil war
In 1990 the RPF invaded northern Rwanda from Uganda, apparently seeking to put pressure on the Habyarimana regime and improve its bargaining position in the UN brokered negotiations that were scheduled. To meet this threat the Rwandan government spent a huge portion of its incoming aid money on weapons, increasing the army from 5,000 to 35,000 in 1993. In ’93 Rwanda was Africa’s second biggest arms importer, after Angola, despite being one of its smallest nations. With the help of French paratroops the Rwandan army managed to drive the RPF back into the volcanic north-west of the country. In august 1993 the Arusha Accords were agreed between the RPF, MRND and Hutu opposition parties. Brokered by the UN this treaty set out a rapid path to a power sharing transitional government made up of representatives of all parties and a new army formed from the RPF and the existing army. This amounted to a massive transfer of power away from the Habyarimana regime and was totally unacceptable to Hutu hard-liners.
During this time extremist Hutus prepared the way for the genocide that was to follow. Civilian militias, most notably the interahamwe (those who work together) were formed from the large numbers of disaffected, unemployed youths Rwanda’s collapsing economy had created. Officially a ‘self defence’ force designed to fight the RPF these groups were given beer, money and a wide range of weaponry including assault rifles and grenades. Lists were drawn up of the names and addresses of Tutsi families and militias were trained in the killing of large numbers of unarmed people. A newspaper and a radio station, both owned by Hutu extremists, churned out violently anti-Tutsi propaganda, claiming among other things that the RPF was planning to kill all Hutus and that the Tutsis must be destroyed. The Hamitic hypothesis introduced by the early European colonists resurfaced when Hutu extremists exhorted the people to send the Tutsi back to Ethiopia by throwing their corpses in the river. Tensions in Rwanda mounted when the Hutu president of neighbouring Burundi was killed in a coup by the Tutsi military. Following the disastrous intervention of U.S. troops in Somalia the international community opted to trust in the promises of the Arusha Accords and ignore the dire warnings of what was to come - the UN peacekeeping mission to Rwanda (UNAMIR) was small, poorly equipped and ordered not to use force.
