CHAPTER 2: BEFORE THE GENOCIDE
2.4. Rwandan identity during colonialism
The political identities that Mamdani described as being the most divisive were formed not so much by conscious political manipulation as by unconscious influence of political contexts (such as the expansion of the Abanyiginya clan and European race ideology). This is true of both the early Rwandan monarchy and early explorers and missionaries to Rwanda. However, the political agenda of first the German, and later the Belgian, colonialists, the international community and
politicised Hutu and Tutsi groups, from the early 1900s onwards was significantly less unconscious.
Due to the writings of various early explorers (who were looking for the source of the Nile river) and missionaries, when colonialists arrived in Rwanda, with their European race ideologies, the scene was set for creating a misrepresentation of Rwandan identity relations which soon became the ‘official’ version of reality which informed all German and Belgian colonial decision-making (Prunier, 1995, 9).
These colonial powers introduced several structural changes that impacted significantly on Rwandan identity politics. One was that the corvée exacted from Rwandans by the central court was distorted; from being a duty that was imposed on a ‘hill’ where people on a hill could decide how they would fulfil this obligation, the Belgians formed it into an obligation that everyone was responsible for individually (Prunier, 1995). This placed tremendous pressure on the average Rwandan, who found themselves without time to work their own lands and thus led them towards poverty. Another was the introduction of identity cards by the Belgian colonialists in 1933, which explicitly mentioned one’s ethnic identity and disallowed further fluidity of movement between Hutu and Tutsi (Pottier, 2002, 65). Further, the colonisers centralized power with the royal court, making the complex system of three chiefs on a hill redundant. They then violently forced all the outlying autonomous Hutu kingdoms in the north under the control of the Tutsi central court, thereby solidifying the north-south divide (Pottier, 2002).
To understand how the process of solidifying ethnic identities took place, Jenkins speaks of the role of boundaries. He argues that there are two ways in which boundaries between groups are created; through internal definition and external definition, the latter being imposed by someone in power (2003, 53). Jenkins then discusses the question of why external definitions become internalised, arguing that this can happen in five ways. The first is that the external category reinforces aspects of identity that already exist (for example, physical features). Second, certain external categorizations may, through a slow process of cultural change, actually form a lived part of group identity. Third, the external category may be produced by people who, in the eyes of the defined group, have legitimate
authority to categorize them (due to their superior knowledge, ritual status etc).
Fourth, external categorization is imposed by force (for example, carrying of identity cards) and the categorized cannot resist. Lastly, the categorized do resist, but this very act of resistance is the direct result of having been categorized (2003, 70, 71).
Elements of all of these can be argued to have occurred in Rwanda during the colonial period. Colonialists emphasized physical features. Prunier describes the obsession of the Germans in measuring the length of people’s noses, hands and feet. This external categorization indeed formed a ‘lived part of group identity’. As Des Forges noted, intermarriage came to an end in the 1800s and it is likely that people married within their ‘group’, thus reinforcing certain genetic features.
Further it was believed that westerners, with their more advanced technology (and military force) had legitimate power to categorise. Apart from having legitimate power, this categorization was enforced through violence. Prunier describes how people were forcefully subjugated by the Belgians through torture, maiming and killing (1995, 11). Lastly, all forms of resistance became part and parcel of the categorization process. On this last point, the monarchy attempted to strategically use this categorization to their advantage (Taylor, 2001, 41). Seeing that
westerners categorized them more positively, the Tutsi were automatically given an increase in power. Further the Belgians helped the monarchy secure the northern parts of the country under their central governance. The most
disadvantaged were those categorized as Hutu, and with both the monarchy and the colonialists against them, they had little chance of successfully resisting.
It was the ‘Hamitic’ hypothesis, though, that created the most lasting and profound destruction. This hypothesis, which was reiterated by anthropologists,
missionaries and colonial leaders during colonial rule, asserted that in the Great Chain of Being, Europeans rated first place, followed by the Hamites, the tall, elegant Tutsi, and at the bottom of the rung were the ‘slow-witted’ Bantu Hutu (Taylor, 2001, 55). The Tutsi were seen as the descendants of Ham the son of Noah, ‘who was banished to the south of the Promised Land’ (2001, 39). This placed the Tutsi, with their more European-like features and their apparently wealthier, higher status in Rwandan society, in a privileged position in the eyes of the Germans and Belgians. Until today, Taylor argues, “Tutsi extremists make use
of their version of the hypothesis to claim intellectual superiority; Hutu extremists employ theirs to insist upon the foreign origins of Tutsi, and the autochthony of Hutu” (2001, 57). Taylor argues that they are reproducing a colonial pattern; “one that essentializes ethnic difference, justifies political domination by a single group, and nurtures a profound thirst for redress and vengeance on the part of the
defavourized group” (2001, 57). This is a prime example of how external definitions have become internalized and have formed the basis of internal definitions and divisions between self and other.
Taylor discusses how John Henning Speke, one of the explorers looking for the source of the Nile, was the first to develop the theory of the Hamites as being the ones to bring civilization to Africa (2001, 59). According to this theory, black
Caucasians from the Middle East moved through Ethiopia (where they were called the Galla-Hamites), through Uganda (where they were called the Hima) to
Rwanda where they were called Tutsi. All subsequent historians and
anthropologists took this as their foundational knowledge. Taylor writes how many early anthropologists seemed to agree that, “the Hamites were not Negroes, they were more intelligent than other Africans, and they were physically more
attractive” (2001, 60). Further, Tutsi were described as being “intelligent and attractive, but rather frail; they were destined for governance. Hutu were stocky, coarser featured, but not overly intelligent; physical strength made them suitable for agricultural labour” (2001, 60). Catholic missionaries then taught Rwandans these theories as they taught them to read and write
As these categories became enforced, they slowly became lived. Prunier describes how the Belgian colonialists worked hand in hand with the Tutsi
aristocracy to write a ‘beautiful’ fantasy (1995, 36). Highly influential in this fantasy was Alexis Kagame, perhaps the best known Rwandan intellectual, who
represented the Royal Court, during the 20th century. Kagame worked with anthropologists such as Macquet to reiterate this same ‘fantastical’ history to the outside world. What started off a creation became reality and by the time the 1959 revolution came, ethnic identities seemed cast in stone.