The 1994 Rwandan genocide was preceded by centuries of political, eco-nomic, and social interaction among people of varied backgrounds, a pe-riod of intense political violence and consolidation of state power by the Rwandan kingdom (1860–95), six decades of colonial rule (1898–1962), and three decades of independence punctuated by waves of interethnic vio-lence and massive population displacement. The categorization of people according to socially constructed ethnic groups is a relatively recent phe-nomenon in Rwanda. Until the late nineteenth century, Rwandans tended to identify themselves by patrilineage or clan. Diverse peoples spoke the same language, engaged in commercial activities, and intermarried. Herd-ing, farmHerd-ing, and hunting and gathering were the primary means of subsis-tence, and most populations engaged in various combinations of the three.
After the consolidation of state power during the second half of the nineteenth century, wealthy cattle holders associated with the Rwandan central court and monarchy increasingly became known as Tutsis—a ref-erent that was later extended to pastoralists more generally. Sedentary ag-riculturalists without political connections or substantial cattle herds came to be known as Hutus. Hutus served as clients to Tutsi elites, laboring on their land, providing them with crops, and caring for their cattle. The small
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population of hunter-gatherers were referred to as Twa. Although hier-archical, Rwandan society was not static. Hutu families that established political connections—often through marriage to Tutsi women—and obtained substantial herds of cattle could, over the course of generations, come to be regarded as Tutsis. The reverse was also possible: Tutsis who lost power, status, and cattle could, over time, come to be viewed as Hutus.
However, because Hutus alone performed unpaid manual labor for Tutsi chiefs, distinctions between Hutu and Tutsi identities became increasingly rigid and hierarchical. On the eve of colonial conquest, exploited Hutus re-volted against their Tutsi overlords on numerous occasions. The European colonizers thus adapted and intensified a preexisting social, economic, and political system—which they erroneously attributed to racial differences.
Colonized in 1898 as a component of German East Africa, Rwanda was transferred to Belgium after World War I and administered as part of the League of Nations mandate of Ruanda-Urundi. By 1930, people iden-tified as Hutus composed approximately 84 percent of the population, Tutsis constituted 15 percent, and Twas made up the remaining 1 percent.
European administrators took advantage of the stratified society and im-plemented a system of indirect rule in which the Tutsi monarch, chiefs, and deputies extracted labor, collected taxes, and oversaw local justice on behalf of the imperial power. Tutsi chiefs benefited from increased con-trol over land, labor, and cattle. The prerogatives of the Tutsi aristocracy as a whole were enhanced through an expanded system of patron-client relationships. The status system, which had been somewhat malleable until the late nineteenth century, hardened into an entrenched ethnic divide. In the census of 1933–34, Belgian administrators used perceived physical traits to define ethnic identities, which were then inscribed on identity cards. It was no longer possible for families to transition over time from one identity to another.
Although status differences predated colonialism, it was Belgian colonial rulers who introduced the myth of superior and inferior races, using similarity to European phenotypes as the measure of superior-ity. They endorsed the “Hamitic myth,” popularized by the nineteenth- century British explorer John Hanning Speke, who hypothesized that the descendants of Noah’s son, Ham, brought civilization from Ethiopia to central Africa, which at that time was purportedly inhabited by less intelligent, more primitive races. The Belgians defined taller, thinner, lighter-skinned people with aquiline noses as Tutsis, who were deemed
superior, and shorter, stockier, darker-skinned people with broader noses as Hutus, who were considered inferior. Pseudo-scientific theories aside, centuries of intermarriage had undermined the validity of any categori-zation by phenotype. However, it was on the basis of these crude stereo-types that a minority of the population was granted access to privilege and resources and the majority of the population was denied them. Belgian Catholic missionaries welcomed Tutsi children into their schools, and Tutsis staffed the lower echelons of the colonial military and civil service, while Hutus were subjected to the most grueling forms of forced labor.
According to the 1956 census, conducted six years before independence, Tutsis owned nearly all of Rwanda’s cattle—historically, the main store of wealth—and controlled virtually all positions of power and prestige.
The corporate identity of Hutus was strengthened by their sense of shared oppression under both Tutsi and European rule. Hutu political consciousness began to emerge after World War II, influenced not only by their double oppression under Tutsi and Belgian authority, but also by the actions of Flemish priests who had migrated to the territory after the war. Because Belgium’s Dutch-speaking Flemish majority had been dominated politically by the French-speaking Walloon minority, many priests identified with the Hutus’ plight. They recruited Hutu children into mission schools, and by the late 1950s a new generation of Hutu intellectuals, supported by the Catholic Church that had spurned their ancestors, demanded majority rule and mobilized Hutu followers to overthrow the Tutsi aristocracy.
Under pressure to implement reforms in the territory, which became a UN trust in 1946, the Belgian colonial administration began to favor the Hutu majority. In the name of democracy, Belgian officials backed the Party for Hutu Emancipation (PARMEHUTU), which embraced the Hamitic myth that characterized Tutsis as foreign invaders, and advo-cated a transfer of power to the Hutu majority.3 With the colonial admin-istration and the Catholic Church in their camp, Hutu extremists began to employ ethnic violence to attain political power. During the Hutu Revolution of 1959–61, targeted killings focused on Tutsi power holders, primarily chiefs and subchiefs. The Tutsi monarchy was abolished, and some 10,000 Tutsis fled into exile. Over the next decade, armed invasions by Tutsi exiles provoked retaliatory massacres and new waves of refu-gees that drove hundreds of thousands of Rwandan Tutsis into Burundi, Uganda, Tanzania, and Zaire.
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When Rwanda obtained independence in July 1962, PARMEHUTU’s Grégoire Kayibanda, a southern Hutu, became president. The domina-tion of one group by another continued, this time with the Hutus on top.
A rigid system of ethnic quotas allotted Tutsis only a tiny percentage of the positions in schools and government and excluded them from the military. Exiled Tutsi insurgents organized armed attacks on Rwanda, and Hutu “self-defense” units retaliated against Tutsi civilians, killing more than 10,000 people in December 1963 alone. In July 1973, Major General Juvénal Habyarimana, a northern Hutu, seized power in a military coup.
Manipulating both ethnicity and regionalism in his bid for power, Hab-yarimana brutally oppressed Tutsis and southern and central Hutus. He presided over a patronage system that staffed the government and military bureaucracies with loyalists from top to bottom. Political opponents—
primarily Hutus—and civil society critics were imprisoned and killed.
By the late 1980s, political and economic crises threatened Habyari-mana’s hold on power. As the Cold War wound down, Western powers no longer needed loyal strongmen and regional policemen. Instead, they pressured African clients to open their countries to multiparty democ-racy and to improve human rights practices. In June 1990, French Presi-dent François Mitterrand outlined a new Africa policy that linked French development aid to progress in these areas. To protect their relationships with France, Habyarimana and other African dictators made superfi-cial reforms that suggested movement toward multiparty democracy, but which catered to the interests of political elites. The modifications failed to address the urgent needs of ordinary citizens, who suffered from growing poverty, landlessness, unemployment, and food insecurity—a serious shortcoming that later would be exploited by Hutu extremists.
Nonetheless, the reforms opened the door to restive civil society organi-zations that increasingly agitated for fundamental structural change.
Rwanda’s political tensions were compounded by an economic cri-sis that had roots both in the colonial past and in the neoliberal re-forms of the late twentieth century. Like many former colonies, Rwanda was an overwhelmingly agrarian society that depended on agriculture for local sustenance and government revenue. Established to serve the needs of the metropole, Rwanda exported primary products and im-ported manufactured goods. As a result, its economy was deeply af-fected by the worldwide depression in commodity prices that began in the late 1970s, by concurrent droughts and famines, and by the impact
of IMF and World Bank structural adjustment mandates that followed in their wake.
When coffee and tea prices plummeted in the mid-1980s and tin production was halted because of declining profits, Rwanda turned to international financial institutions for assistance. In November 1990, the IMF directed Rwanda to devalue its currency by 50 percent in order to strengthen its export market. The result was a dramatic increase in the cost of imported food, fuel, and other essential goods. A shortage of im-ported medicines led to the collapse of the health system, accompanied by a dramatic rise in malnutrition and preventable diseases. Reduced purchasing power led to business failures and escalating unemployment.
Other externally imposed free market practices led to the removal of gasoline subsidies and to the imposition of new fees for health care, schooling, and even water.
Rising economic inequality widened the gulf between the haves and have-nots. Tens of thousands of young Rwandan men were landless, un-educated, unemployed, and without hope for marriage and social adult-hood. Power elites faced growing insecurity as economic and political crises threatened the patronage system. In this context, Hutu extrem-ists found fertile ground for their proselytizing. Tutsis were maligned as wealthy foreigners who had invaded Rwanda to take what rightfully belonged to the indigenous Hutu population. As such, they became con-venient scapegoats for the country’s problems.