Text
E-book Reconciling Rwanda : Unity, Nationality and State Control
Rwanda is a small land-locked country in the Great Lakes Region of central Africa. Bordering Burundi, Uganda, Tanzania and Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) (see image 1 below), it is the most densely populated country in sub-Saharan Africa with a population of 12 million in July 2015.1 The Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) won the parliamentary election in 2003 and continues to lead the country under the presidency of Paul Kagame. Although the current RPF government promotes a national identity that supersedes ethnicity, the population can be roughly divided into three major ethnic groups: the Hutu majority, Tutsi minority and indigenous Twa community. Kinyarwanda is the language most commonly spoken by all three groups.2Rwanda’s colonial history began in 1884 under German rule (Newbury 1983, p. 257). Prior to the arrival of the German colonists, Rwanda was ruled by a Mwami or King of Bahindiro Tutsi lineage (Eltringham, 2004, p. 13). A small number of Tutsi chiefs held most of the political power. While opportunities were rare for Hutu to gain such power during this period. Hutu civilians could only do so either by becoming Chiefs of Landholdings, whose responsibility it was to watch over agricultural land and production, or through improving their socio-economic status by accumulating cattle through the kwihutura process to become Tutsi (Mamdani, 1996, p. 10). But under colonial rule, even these limited prospects were lost, particularly that of the Belgians which began in 1916 (ibid.). As the colonial period progressed, the political, social and economic gap between the Hutu majority and Tutsi minority widened. Forced labour was a key factor in the subjugation of the majority of Hutu pastoral workers under Belgian rule. It became clear in 1928 how brutal the forced labour system was when hundreds of thousands of Hutu peasants fled to Uganda (ibid., p. 11). A short time later the process of ethnic stratification was formally institutionalised with the inclusion of ethnic identities in the 1933 census (Straus, 2006, p. 225). The final years of colonial rule were shaped by a transition towards independence and episodes of systematic brutality against civilians. The 1959 ‘Social Revolution’ was the first major instance of anti-monarchic political upheaval and anti-Tutsi violence in the colonial period (Uvin, 1999, p. 256). It resulted in the deaths of hundreds of Tutsi civilians and an exodus of many more Tutsi into neighbouring countries (ibid.)
Tidak tersedia versi lain