CHAPTER 4: ANALYSIS OF THE RWANDAN CONTEXT AND WOMEN’S PLIGHT AND ROLE IN THEIR COMMUNITY
4.0 Introduction
4.1.4 The population of Rwanda
As mentioned earlier the high rate of growth of the Rwandan population is challenge to the country. Rwanda is classified among the most overpopulated27
A second group, identified as “Hutu”, makes up the vast majority of the population.
Traditionally they are described as farmers who cultivated the soil. According to Prunier, the Hutu have typical ‘Bantu’ features very much identical to most of Bantu people living in neighbouring countries (Prunier 1995:6). In the third group are the Tutsi, who are less in number than the Hutu. Tutsi were traditionally known as cattle-rearers and sometimes
countries of Africa.
4.1.4.1 The Rwandan social groups
Rwandan history is intertwined with the origin of its inhabitants, made up of three social groups namely: Twa, Tutsi and Hutu. The Twa are very few in number, more or less one percent of the population. They lived in the forest as hunter-gatherers, or else served the high-ranking personalities and the King in a variety of menial tasks. The Twa are a group of people who have been exploited and driven out of their land. This group shares the problem of most aboriginal peoples around the world. They depended on a hunter-gather economy, which was destroyed by settler farming. Marginalized by other ethnic groups and under extreme pressure economically, their situation seldom attracts the attention of writers on Rwanda.
27 The data provided by the Politique Nationale de Santé in July 2003 shows that the population size was 8 128,553 people, comprising 3 879,448 males and 4 249,105 females. The majority of the population (88.6%) lives by agriculture and is consentrated mostly in the rural area. The remaining 11.4% are distributed across other services, such as specialized workers in the civil service, business and trade industries. The total rural population is 83.1% while the urban population is 16%. The ever-growing population carries with it a number of problems, including a negative impact on the economy. The scarcity of the resources needed for the subsistence of the whole population has been a factor responsible for the social conflicts that divide the Rwandan society and antagonize social groups – a society that otherwise shares much in common, as history shows.
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differentiated by their physical features. The three Rwandan social groups are commonly referred to as tribes although the basis for that qualification is not clear. All three share the same territory; they stay together, share the same religion, the same ancestral stories, speak the same language, eat the same food, and are united in one culture. Theories explaining the origin of these social groups remain inconclusive.
The origin of these three groups is problematic and remains a contested mystery in Rwandan history. This is partly because Rwandan pre-colonial history was not written and was rather recalled in poems and myths orally transmitted from generation to generation, until the late nineteenth century when the first European arrived in Rwanda and was able to write about the country of his discovery. A wide-spread Rwandan myth suggests that Gihanga, the first king and “founder” of Rwanda, had three sons namely, Gatwa, the ancestor of the Twa, Gahutu, the ancestor of Hutu and Gatutsi the ancestor of Tutsi. According to this myth, the three groups came from the same ancestor who inhabited the country. This myth, therefore, stresses the kinship and solidarity of the three ethnic groups. However, this myth which emphasized kinship and solidarity was later on overcame by some theories which stress divisions among the Rwandan social groups.
Rwanda became known to the western world in the late nineteenth century when the first European, a German count, Gustav Adolf von Gotzen, was received at court by King Rwabugiri on 4 May 1894 (Melvern 2000:7). The written history from this time reflects the labyrinth of theories and ideas of the Western world about Rwanda, recorded according to their domain of interest. Some of the root of conflicts between Rwandans can be traced to these ambiguous stories, especially in terms of their origin. Basing his research on archaeology and discoveries of the neighbouring countries, Muzungu claims that Rwanda was inhabited at least since the seventh century before Jesus Christ (Muzungu 2003:10). However, Muzungu’s findings do not provide any clear information about the now debated issue of the order of settlement of the Rwandan social groups.
The most prominent hypothesis suggests that the Twa were the first to arrive in the area, then Hutu followed and Tutsi arrived last. The first group, the Batwa, is believed to have
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arrived between 2000 BC and 1000 AD when people migrated in successive waves into the area between the Rift Valley lakes of central Africa. The Batwa were referred to as Abasangwabutaka, meaning “those found in the land”. For the next 500 years, new people – the Hutu - migrated into the area. They concentrated on clearing the land for cultivation. They were organized in small monarchies based on clans of related families.
As stated above, the Hutu are believed to be descended from the Bantu family because they share the same typical Bantu features with those from neighbouring countries, Uganda and Tanzania (Melvern 2000:8; Lemarchand 1970:8; Prunier 1995:5). However, there is no other indication that they came from those countries. The Tutsi, around fifteen percent of the population, were cattle-herders. According to Waller (1996:4), they arrived on Rwanda territory between the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries (Waller 1996:4).
Fegley calculates that they may have entered the area in the fourteenth or fifteenth century from the northeast (Fegley 1993:xix; Melvern 2000:8).
Given the absence of consensus among historians and anthropologists, the origins of Rwandan social groups remains obscure and different theories of origins have been at the basis of exclusivist ideologies that fuelled conflicts in Rwanda. At the time Rwanda was
“discovered” by the first Westerners, the Hamitic theory, initiated by the explorer John H.
Speke, was supported. This theory suggested different origins for the three social groups.
Speke asserted that the Tutsi were a branch of the Hima. He contended that, judging from the physical appearance of the Wahima (i.e. Hima28
28 People known as Bahima coming from the Hima group are a branch of Tutsi. But all the Tutsi people are not from the Hima group. This tiny group was living in a part of Mutara in the north-east of the country.
They had a nomadic life and lived only from milk -; they were not cultivating - while other Tutsi people lived on agriculture though their servants were the ones cultivating. However, there were also Tutsi who were poor and could not have servants. It appears that Westerners who do not have a full understanding of Rwandan social groups promote false information, and in some cases create confusion for their readers and even problems among the population.
), they could not be of any other race than the semi-Shem-Hamitic people of Ethiopia. The Hima descended from the Gala (Oromo), the cattle-raising nomadic branch of Ethipoia. The key elements were preconceived or speculative, based on the alleged resemblance of Galla-Oromo and Hima-Tutsi (Turner 2007:53). The Tutsi were then described as a ‘foreign caste’ of cattle rearers recognizable by their fine features (Turner 2007:227-254). Their physical features, spoken languages and other cultural characteristics distinguished them from
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those called Bantu (Rutayisire 2005:24). The Hamitic/Semitic hypothesis promoted the superiority of Tutsi people saying that Tutsis are superior beings of a good race which does not have anything of the Negro, apart from the colour. These hypotheses also claimed that Tutsi are gifted with a vivacious intelligence and they are natural-born leaders (Prunier 1995:6).
The Hamitic hypothesis initiated by Speke became popular from the early phase of the colonization of Rwanda. The theory suggested that any form of civilization seen in Africa was the work of the Hamitic population who were allegedly of Caucasian origin and who had immigrated into (Sub-Sahara) Africa through North Africa. Such an argument denied that black Africans were capable of creating any viable political, social, technical or advanced cultural organization. More harmful to social unity was the ideological distinction between the Hamites and the Bantu, a distinction that made the Hamites a superior race fit to lead and the Bantu an inferior race born to serve. Gatwa29
The contribution of colonial power in constructing Rwandan social and economic categories, often described as ethnic groups, shaped the life of the country so that the great part of Rwandan history revolves around the relations among its social groups. This argues that until the 1960s, the prevalent scholarship on Rwanda supported the explorers’ and colonizers’ theories of Hamite monarchy, pitting the ‘lords of the thousand hills’ the Batutsi against their vassals, the Bahutu (Gatwa 2005:5-6). In identifying the Tutsi as Hamites, the Hamitic theory rendered them alien, not belonging to Rwanda, while the Hutu were surmised to be more connected to the land. These hypotheses gave rise to claims to inequalities of rights, resulting in tensions and hostilities among Rwandans.
Mamdani describes the situation:
The origin of the violence is connected to how Hutu and Tutsi were constructed as political identities by the colonial state, Hutu as indigenous and Tutsi as alien.
The reason for continued violence between Hutu and Tutsi, I argue, is connected with the failure of Rwandan nationalism to transcend the colonial construction of Hutu and Tutsi as native and alien (Mamdani 2001:34).
29 Gatwa Tharcisse is a Rwandan who made a significant contribution to the Rwandan church. He served in the leadership, and worked as the Director of the Bible Society in Rwanda from 1983-94.
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pertains too, to the role and place of women in Rwandan society. Rwandan women already had roles in society before the arrival of the European colonizers. The next section examines their contribution to the life of the nation during the pre-colonial period.