2.3 Pre-Colonial Period
2.3.1 Myth in ancient Rwanda
Myths play an important role in traditional literature; they express an original message as the fruit of intellectual imagination. On their own, they do not make sense. Therefore they acquire their meaning through social, cultural and political institutions in the milieu in which they are rooted and take form. Lévi-Strauss (1978:16-18) stresses that myths do not have any significance in themselves. Their meaning is included in the context in which they are conceived.
This statement reinforces the point of view that the values of myths are embedded in their context.
These values are therefore subject to unconscious or conscious manipulation,. This manipulation occurs when people ignore the contexts of myths, or when they choose to introduce other realities into the fabric of the myth. In this way the myth has been misused. When the colonizer tried to understand the significance of the three Rwandan social groups, Twa, Hutu and Tutsi, he considered realities using his own social and cultural background.
Mythology has assumed the responsibility of expressing from where they come from. For this reason, the origin of these groups is uncertain in Rwanda‘s history. Each group‘s origin is
30 explained by more than one myth. In the present research, two popular myths expressing a contradictory explanation of the origin of Rwanda‘s groups will be scrutinized. The first myth, told by Lema, is quoted by Melvern (2000:7), as follows:
The pre-colonial Rwanda remains largely a mystery, [---]. One myth told how the first king of all the earth had three sons, Gatwa,Gahutu and Gatutsi, and to test them he entrusted to each a churn of milk. Gatwa quenched his thirst, Gahutu spilt the milk but Gatutsi kept his intact and so he was entrusted to command the others.
The second myth explaining the origin of the three groups, according to Prunier (1995: 12), suggests that:
What is Rwanda now was inhabited by the hunter-gatherers, the Twa, who were displaced by agriculturalists migrating northwards, and supposedly the ancestors of the Hutu. The Tutsi were said to have originated in the Horn of Africa, migrating south, and they gradually achieved dominance over the other two groups. It is this theory which led eventually to the view that the Tutsi were somehow a ‗superior race‘, a lethal interpretation of history and one that would seriously affect the views and the attitudes of the Europeans.
These two myths have some points in common, but others are quite different. The common aspect is that both name three social groups, affirm their existence and give an elevated authority to the Tutsi group. They also characterize the three groups differently. The difference asserted by the first myth suggests that Gatutsi‘s leadership came from his obedience to his father.
Such behaviour was rewarded and Gatutsi received the authority to reign over his two brothers.
The ideology behind this can be understood as expressing the power, the kindness and the merit of the King when Rwanda was a kingdom, since the kings came from the Tutsi group (Smith 1975: 38-39). This would be feasible due to the Tutsi domination during the ancient Rwandan period; the power of the kingship has always been expressed in a mythical language. For instance, there is a myth concerning why the Umwami came from the Nyiginya clan.
31 The second myth explains the three groups as originating from different regions; one of them coming with authority and reigning over the other groups, even over one group which was considered the landlord of the country, the Twa. It addresses the labor division between the three groups; the Twa were the hunter-gatherers, the Hutu, were farmers and the Tutsi were a ‗superior race‘. This myth introduced a crucial issue which produced a polar understanding and thought process in Rwanda. It emphasizes the different origins of Rwanda‘s population, each having its own intrinsic knowledge, which places each poles apart from the other. Even though there are no exact criteria that would assist anyone who needs to analyze the Rwandan ethnic grouping, these groups are still socially typecast.
Mythology is part of Rwanda‘s community, integral to its traditional customs to conceptualize the origin of everything existing within society (Muzungu, 1975: 28-29). Myths are one method forefathers used to communicate realities which necessitated explanation in their social and cultural context in order to be understood. Lévi-Strauss (1978:17-18) states that, myths have something to say in the community. Myths are not simply abstract stories, they have a valuable message; they are distinguishable from other forms of storytelling and they occupy a particular context within each culture. This context includes the way in which a society explains its realities through the behaviour of humankind, which influences the way of life of that community.
Mythology explores such realities in a mythical system of language which is acceptable and understandable within a particular culture. In Rwanda‘s customs, each important historical event is told through myth. For example, one heroic Rwandan King, Ruganzu Ndori, who ruled from 1510-1543, conquered through war and added a portion to what was ancient Rwanda, to form today‘s Rwanda. His courage is told in mythical language. He reigned as a powerful king and a myth conveys this power in its descriptions of his footsteps (Smith 1975: 76).
32 Within the Rwandan mythological philosophy, everything that exists has an original myth connected to its origin. For example, one myth tells why and when every animal stopped speaking human language, another explains why Rwanda‘s landscape has hills and valleys.
These myths have been told in the daily lives of the Rwandan people and they have both negative and positive impacts on the population, influencing the way they read and understand their history (Smith 1975: 76).
Beyond the social and cultural context, myths do not make sense, but the importance of myths within the social and anthropological existence of communities is considerable, in that they tell
―An ancient story or a set of stories, especially explaining in a literary way the early history of a group of people or about natural events and facts‖ (Procter et al. 1995: 935). A myth comprises both real and unreal elements; separating the real from the unreal is not easy. If the reader is unfamiliar with the textural context of the myth, the entire myth could be grossly misinterpreted.
The two myths explaining the origin of the Rwandan social groups have been described in detail because of their contribution to the development of the stereotypes between these groups. The stereotypes have been internalized and socialized throughout the history of the groups.
However, it becomes more complicated when one reality is expressed differently by more than one myth. This is how the problem of the historical origin of the three social groups in Rwanda came about; the myths tried, and still try, to explain where each of those social groups came from, based on the intellectual imagination of those who told them. The discussion in this chapter on mythology can be complemented by the views of Smith (2001: 182.) in his book
―Nationalism, ideology and history‖. According to Smith, myths are central to the way we live and how we define ourselves. In his pioneering book ―Nationalism, Ideology and History‖, Smith looks at the overall and theoretical nature of myth on a worldwide basis and examines the explicit myths of various nations. With nationhood and ethnicity at the centre of political attention, Smith‘s book is well-timed in revealing the deeper, fundamental issues of nationalism that cause so much conflict throughout the world (Smith, 2001: 362-380). Smith attempts a
33 theoretical explanation and illustration of his approach to nationalism, which he calls ‗ethno- symbolism‘.
There are two wide-ranging approaches to studying nationalism which, following Smith, termed as ‗perennialist‘ and ‗modernist‘. Perennialists believe that nations have always existed throughout history. Some individual nations are themselves perennial, other nations come and go, but there is a continuous presence of nations as social and historical phenomena. The modernists reply that nationalism proper, and hence full consciousness of nationhood, is essentially a post-Enlightenment construction.
Smith criticizes the modernists for ignoring the historical precedents of nationalism, which he locates in long-term cultural and ethnic ‗myths and memories‘. As a consequence, he believes, the modernists fail to explain the popular and emotional appeal of nationalism. ‗What gives nationalism its power‘, he says, ‗are the myths, memories, traditions and symbols of ethnic heritages and the ways in which a popular living past has been, and can be, rediscovered.‘ At the same time, Smith rejects the perennialist trap of implying that nations are an inevitable part of the ‗natural order‘. He acknowledges that nationalism has other uses which partly explain its ubiquity in the modern era. For example, as religious feeling has faded, nationalism has been able to provide an alternative source of meaning and belonging. It helps to explain the individual‘s place in the world, his or her moment in a longer, encompassing history.
Nationalism has also been a tool of political mobilization. The attachment to a particular homeland may distinguish it from other kinds of political ideology, but it is nationalism‘s unsurpassed capacity for motivating people that has made it such a dynamic force in the modern world.
Although Smith accepts that nationalism and, indeed, most nations are modern, he believes they cannot be understood without appreciating ‗their rootedness in shared long term memories or ethno-history and the resulting need to analyze them over long historical time-spans.‘ The relationship between past and present may be complex and, to some extent, reconstructed or re-
34 appropriated; but it is a cardinal failure of the modernists that they ignore ―la longue durée‖ (Smith, 2001: 362-380).
Nations may not be themselves perennial, says Smith, but ethnic groupings are. They ‗can be found in every epoch and continent, wherever human beings feel that they share common ancestry and culture‘. ―There is,‖ he says, ―in most cases, a more or less powerful link between modern nations and pre-existing, and often pre-modern ethnicities‖. Although the various elements of ethno-history are subjective, in that they focus on perceptions, memories, beliefs and values, over time they produce a structure which is independent of these beliefs and perceptions and which provides ‗the framework for the socialisation of successive generations‘. These cultural structures also allow flexibility in ethnic groupings, permitting demographic turnover and cultural adaptation and change. Smith therefore rejects the sharp distinction, popular nowadays, between ethnic nations and civic nations, arguing that the latter always have an ethnic core represented in their myths and memories, and that the former have an adaptive and porous cultural superstructure.