Similarly, the peopling of Rwanda—when the peoples referred to as Hutu, Tutsi, and Twa arrived in the territory now called Rwanda—has been long contested. The dominant view was that Tutsi arrived in the region centuries after Hutu, but the details and implications of this view remain contentious. Did it mean Tutsi were destined to rule, or that they were foreigners who should not be allowed to do so? Did it mean Hutu were autochthonous and therefore had rights to govern? There remains debate about the precise amount and origins of biological difference and what the differences mean for interpreting human migrations (Cavalli-Sforza et al. 1994; Excoffier et al. 1987; Mamdani 2001:43–50), but Vansina’s recent analysis suggests that what physical differences existed must go back millennia, not centuries, as posited in the migration histories (Vansina 2004:37–38, 198).
Current scholarship argues that the categories of Hutu and Tutsi were primarily socioeconomic, referring to elites or to control over wealth (particularly cattle) and power (C. Newbury 1988:11–12). As far back as the seventeenth century, the term Tutsi “referred mostly to a social class among herders, a political elite,” while the term Hutu applied to everyone else, including poor Tutsi and foreigners (Vansina 2004:37, 134–135).8 The boundaries of the ethnic categories had some flexibility, so people could move across statuses over generations as their families gained or lost wealth (D. Newbury 1998:84–86, 2009; Twagilimana 2003:55). Further, ethnicity was only one form of identity, and other forms, such as region, class, lineage (a corporate descent group), and clan (a social descent group), were often more significant (d’Hertefelt 1971; C. Newbury 1978:17, 1988; D. Newbury 1998:83, 2009). The term for ethnic group, ubwoko, also translates as clan. Each clan was made up of people from all three putative “ethnicities,” and clans changed over time, operating as strategic alliances between lineages (C. Newbury 1988:96, 1980b; Vansina 2004:34–35, 198).
Colonial rule arrived in Rwanda when the first German colonial officer arrived in 1897. Two decades of German rule influenced primarily the royal court without interfering substantially in internal affairs. When Belgians took over Rwanda during World War I, in 1916, they extended their influence deeper than that of the Germans, such that Belgian rule had more extensive social and economic impacts. The colonial state contributed to formalizing and legitimizing the Hutu-Tutsi distinction, reifying formerly fluid boundaries, in its efforts to make more legible the existing complex ethnic configurations (Lemarchand 2009:9; Scott 1998). As part of the standardization of the administration in the late 1920s, the Belgians introduced identity cards that marked ethnicity (Des Forges 1995; Twagilimana 2003:55). The reification of ethnic groups was linked to European ideas of biological race, and it took an essentialized and hierarchical view of Hutu and Tutsi, which contemporary scholarship has completely debunked. It built on the Hamitic Hypothesis, put forth by explorer John Hanning Speke in 1863. Speke proposed that a race of tall, sharp-featured people who had Caucasian origins and were superior to the native Negro had introduced the cultures and civilizations of Central Africa.9 Anthropologists converted Speke’s conjectures into scientific truths with regard to African peoples in ensuing years (e.g., Seligman 1930; Westermann 1949 [1934]).10
Through the twentieth century, scholars writing on Rwanda continued to emphasize that there were three separate groups in Rwanda (Hutu, Tutsi, and Twa), and continued to imply that their current form had existed relatively unchanged since Tutsi arrived in the tenth century (D. Newbury and C. Newbury 2000:836; Twagilimana 2003:53). For example, anthropologist Jacques Maquet described Rwandans’ prevailing stereotypes of each other in the 1950s as follows: “Tutsi were said to be intelligent (in the sense of astute in political intrigues), capable of command, refined, courageous, and cruel; Hutu, hardworking, not very clever, extrovert, irascible, unmannerly, obedient, physically strong” (Maquet 1961:164).11 Explanatory models privileging biology were perhaps particularly seductive and enduring in the absence of other clear markers of difference between the groups.12 Even as belief in the scientific validity of race began to weaken and scholars moved from biological toward other sociocultural means of identifying groups, Hutu and Tutsi did not fit easily into typical definitions of ethnic groups as marked by distinctive cultural features, such as language or religion, used to define boundaries in opposition to other collective identities (Eller 1999; Tambiah 1989; Weber 1968:389). While occupation varied, what cultural differences existed were minimal—for example, preferences in diet—and the groups had intermarried for centuries.
Further, the colonial period dramatically increased the political salience of ethnicity, while undermining the political autonomy of lineage groups and their role as a form of belonging, and changing the relations between the groups Hutu and Tutsi for the worse (Lemarchand 1970; Longman 2010a; C. Newbury 1988; Reyntjens 1985). Both the Germans and the Belgians, accompanied by the Catholic Church, ruled indirectly through the Tutsi kings and chiefs and discriminated against Hutu. Tutsi elites had preferential access to education and to administrative and church positions, because colonial leaders believed Tutsi were superior and excluded Hutu. Further, Rwandan political leaders used these outside ideas in their own efforts to articulate agendas and mobilize followers, with divisive consequences. The growing power of the colonial state privileged Tutsi’s access to power while incorporating Rwanda into the world economy, which dramatically increased the advantages and disadvantages of being Tutsi versus being Hutu. While Tutsi chiefs had political power and were in a position to accumulate wealth through taxes, rural dwellers, who were predominantly Hutu, faced new demands, particularly under the Belgians, including increased taxes, compulsory cultivation of certain crops, and forced labor. Clientship institutions, particularly ubuhake, became less reciprocal and voluntary—in conditions of growing economic insecurity, people’s “choice” to enter into clientship was a form of indirect or direct coercion—and more rigid and exploitative, as they extended to less powerful people and became aligned with administrative demands (C. Newbury 1988:137–140). Overall, the condition of rural Hutu worsened, as they bore the brunt of the increasingly onerous forms of exploitation and discrimination (C. Newbury 1988:178–179; Reyntjens 1985:135–142). Yet not all the Tutsi were elites, even during the colonial period when virtually all elites were Tutsi (Codere 1973:70; D. Newbury and C. Newbury 2000:839).
The transition from colonial rule to independence is another period of Rwandan history that has been highly contested, described either as a democratic revolution framed around legitimate grievances where the majority took power from the minority or as precursor to genocide. By the 1950s, when Tutsi elites began calls for independence, Hutu activists became increasingly vocal, arguing that the elite Tutsi ruled in an oppressive and dominating manner, both under the precolonial feudal system and under Belgian rule, and benefited unfairly from the colonial administration. Hutu activists sought to address poverty, inequality, insecure access to land, inadequate access to education, and youth issues, and they argued for democracy and majority rule (Lemarchand 1970; C. Newbury 1988; Reyntjens 1985). They were successful in large part because they responded to and channeled widespread legitimate rural discontent generated by Hutu’s shared structural position of oppression (C. Newbury 1978, 1980, 1988).
The United Nations set a date for independence, which Lemarchand (1970) argues propelled revolution and violence, because Hutu parties wanted to ensure they, not the Tutsi monarchy, held power before the deadline. The Belgian authorities