The Lesson from Rwanda — there are no ‘human races’ we are ONE species
Our species, Homo sapien (‘wise man’), is the last survivor of the genus of homo (human), which also included Neanderthals and several other extinct species. We are one of a number of Hominidae (great apes) that developed to adapt, with greater or lesser success, to our world.
‘Scientific racism’, or pseudo-scientific racism as it is more accurate to call it, uses pseudo-scientific theories to justify ideas about ‘racial’ superiority or inferiority. It includes the drive to classify people exhibiting particular observable traits and perceived psychological traits into distinctive categories or ‘races’. I put ‘races’ in inverted commas as it is now recognised that this is a social construct. We are a single species.
The tendency to classify humans as though markedly distinct races, though seen as problematic by anthropologists, is common within the human experience, from folk notions differentiating one’s ‘tribe’ from others, to notions of purity peddled by ‘elites’ and supremacists.
The genocide in Rwanda, which led to a significant proportion of the population being butchered by other citizens — is a dramatic example from modern history of the veneer of civilisation being torn away. As a result of it being so dramatic, it can seem like an unfathomable aberration, with little relevance to European and North American societies. Sadly, this is far from the case. The ‘othering’ which led to ethnic cleansing happens in numerous contexts daily.
It is critical to understand the historical context of the atrocities in Rwanda. Once we understand this, we can appreciate how flawed notions of distinct ‘races’, which underpinned Rwandan society and the genocide, remains one of our greatest threats as a species. All the information is available to move beyond this, but some cling onto it as though it is integral to their existence.
It is 25 years since the Rwandan genocide, in which approximately 800,000 people were slaughtered in a 100-day period. The events have stayed in my mind, informed my work and encouraged me to study anthropology. It also became a marker in my mind of how far and fast human communities are capable of disintegrating.
I have found that in discussions of conflicts in Africa, people often do one (or both) of two things, grounded in ignorant and (often) racist assumptions. One is to bring up the concept of tribes, usually before making the dull assertion that, ‘Africans will inevitably fight with each other’ as a result of ancient ‘tribal’ histories. The other blinkered assertion often made relates to the fallacy that Africans live more peacefully when there are ‘civilised’ white colonialists to keep the ‘tribes’ from fighting. Ironically, this sort of racist narrative has much in common with the narratives of those who commit genocide.
Examples like Rwanda should teach such people that they have got it terribly wrong. However, in order to gain that awareness, they need to look into it carefully and with open minds. Culture and conflict in Africa are much more complicated than just tribal histories. Economics, inequality, colonialism and political manipulations have played highly significant roles, not least in the build-up to the genocide.
To understand the Rwandan civil war of the 1990s and the genocide, it is vital to understand the historical context. The earliest known inhabitants of what is currently known as Rwanda were the Great Lakes Twa, a semi-nomadic community of ‘pygmy’ hunter-gatherers. The Twa settled in the region several thousand years ago. However, between 700 BCE and 1500 CE, a number of Bantu-speaking groups moved into the area and cleared forest for agriculture, and the Twa lost much of their forest habitat, shifting their settlements to the slopes of mountains.
‘Bantu’ is a term that describes more than 500 ethnic groups in Africa who speak one or some of the hundreds of Bantu languages. Bantu groups exist from central to southern Africa. Both Hutu and Tutsi are Bantu — and the cultural distinctions between these groups grew over time. In the Rwandan context, they can be better understood as constructed class or caste divisions rather than ‘racial’ or ‘tribal’ distinctions.
It is possible that differentiation of Hutu and Tutsi happened prior to the movement of Bantu into Twa territory, but this process could have happened after the migration. This has not been proven either way, but what is known is that differentiation and resultant conflict were amplified in recent centuries.
It appears that, before the 17th century, the Bantu population in the area was split into clans composed of both Hutu and Tutsi, but by around 1700 the population had divided into eight kingdoms, some amassing more power than others. One such group, the Kingdom of Rwanda, became the dominant power from the middle of the 18th century.
As the kingdom expanded north and west in the late 19th century, divisions grew between the Hutu and Tutsi. Though the Hutu was by far in the majority within the kingdom, they were primarily peasant agricultural workers, while the royalty was primarily Tutsi. However, at this stage, there appears to have been some fluidity between groups, and some Hutu had the status of nobility. Divisions increased, however, with the influence of European colonialists.
The influence of European colonial powers in the territory became significant towards the end of the 19th century. The Berlin Conference of 1884 (also known as the Congo Conference) was a meeting of imperial powers about dividing up Africa. The conference assigned the area to Germany. As was common in colonialism, the invading empire used existing systems of power — in this case, the Rwandan monarchy, to rule the territory.
After the defeat of Germany in World War One, Belgium became the colonial master of both Rwanda and neighbouring Burundi. The Tutsi supremacy over the Hutu was only strengthened under the new colonial regime. The distant Belgian society, which was highly stratified, formalised a rigid ethnic distinction of the citizens of the colony in 1935 by introducing identity cards that defined people as either Tutsi, Hutu or Twa.
In the years leading up to that, the Belgians also reinforced divisions by enabling Tutsi chiefs to take control of grazing land historically used by Hutu. Although the colonisers initiated developments in areas like education and health, the Hutu were not the major beneficiaries of ‘development’ in the country, and many were driven into forced labour in the 1930s.
A class distinction that had grown over the centuries had been, under colonial rule, cemented into something that appeared like a racial distinction. This construction over time of a rigid distinction between people is a warning from history about how ‘racial’ categories can be constructed, leading to division, conflict and — in the case of Rwanda — ultimately genocide.
For the marginalised Hutu in the 1930s and 1940s, Catholicism became a strong draw. Faith and the support of the Catholic Church were significant in the emancipation movement which gathered potency. Catholic missionaries were sympathetic to the plight of the Hutu and sought to strengthen their position in relation to the economically and politically dominant Tutsi. One way in which this shift in power happened was through the creation of a new Hutu intellectual elite.
The historically constructed distinctions between Hutu and Tutsi were reinforced, ironically, by the Hutu in a 1957 document called the Bahutu Manifesto. Written by nine Hutu intellectuals, the manifesto defined the Tutsi and Hutu as different ‘races’. The full title of the 10-page manifesto was Note on the Social Aspect of the Indigenous Racial Problem in Rwanda. Addressed to the Belgian vice-governor general of Rwanda, the document called for the liberation of the Hutu people from both the colonialists and the Tutsi. The document referred to the “monopoly which is held by one race, the Tutsi” and stated that “statistical law” requires that power should shift to the majority Hutu population.
A Tutsi attack in 1959 on Hutu sub-chief Dominique Mbonyumutwa was the spark that led to a bloody revolution lasting two years. Mbonyumutwa was not killed but rumours that he had been were enough for Hutu revolutionaries to begin killing Tutsi. The revolution started with riots and arson attacks on Tutsi.
There was retaliation from Tutsi, but the Belgian powers had decided, no doubt to protect their own interests and lives, to back the Hutu. Less than a year into the revolution, the Belgian administration replaced most Tutsi chiefs and sub-chiefs with Hutu. The Belgians also organised elections, which took place in the middle of 1960 and resulted in a landslide Hutu victory.
By 1964, within five years of the revolution starting, around 330,000 Tutsi had left Rwanda — a significant proportion of Rwanda’s Tutsi population. Those Tutsis that remained had the status of second-class citizens and were frequently subjected to violence because of their ethnic classification.
There were no more attacks by Tutsi refugee militias in the decades that led up to the civil war of the 1990s, though the strengthening of Tutsi capacities started in the 1980s as they fought alongside Uganda’s National Resistance Army in the Ugandan Bush War, gaining experience with the aim of deposing the Hutu regime back home. Once this Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) had gathered strength, it commenced a guerrilla war against Rwandan forces.
This prompted new attacks by Hutu against Tutsi still living in Rwanda. There was also a rising tide of protests in the country, which by the middle of 1992 helped push President Juvénal Habyarimana towards peace negotiations, though these were undermined by Hutu hardliners. These hardliners were behind massacres of Tutsi citizens in 1993 and these led to an offensive which took the guerrillas close to taking the country’s capital city.
The RPF subsequently returned to negotiations with the government and signed a peace agreement known as the Arusha Accords, which established a transitional government composed of the RPF and five Rwandan political parties. The Accords included agreement on the repatriation of refugees, the rule of law, a power-sharing agreement and the ultimate merging of government forces and rebel militia. The United Nations Assistance Mission for Rwanda was established to supervise the implementation of the agreement. This meant there were around 2,500 UN military personnel in the country as a peacekeeping force, but peace soon unravelled.
In the background, a growing group of Hutu hardliners had been plotting a ‘final solution’ to wipe out Tutsi. A significant event in triggering the genocide to come was the assassination of Habyarimana by missile strikes, which could have been ordered by the hardliners or carried out by the RPF.
The 100-day genocide that was to follow commenced on the orders of the interim government, led by hardliner Théoneste Bagosora. A Hutu military officer, Bagosora had never accepted the power-sharing agreement or the influx of Tutsis into the military. Present during the Arusha negotiations, he reportedly said he would return to Rwanda and “prepare for the apocalypse” after the Accords had been signed. His goal, and that of other Hutu hardliners, had long been genocide.
Bagosora had been establishing sleeper paramilitary (ultimately genocidal massacre) units called ‘Interahamwe’ in communities across the country. These have often been described as ‘self-defence’ units, but the term actually translates to “those who work together”. This sounds all very cooperative and warm, but it contained a sinister euphemism. By the time of the genocide, it was apparent from radio broadcasts encouraging attacks that the word ‘work’ was being used as code, translated to ‘murder people with machetes’.
Using the Interahamwe network, Bagosora had been arming the Hutu population with guns and a huge number of machetes. It has been established that between early 1993 and the following March more than half a million machetes were imported into Rwanda. Bagosora and other plotters also prepared by drawing up lists of early victims of the impending bloodbath, including not only Tutsis but also moderate Hutus.
The genocide began the day after the plane was brought down. Soldiers, police and local militia set about killing Tutsis and moderate Hutus. The latter were seen as agents of an unacceptable power-sharing agreement and potential threat to the new order. Checkpoints were erected so that ID cards (showing ethnic designation) could be checked and Tutsi quickly identified and killed. As well as machetes, Hutu civilians were encouraged to use clubs or other blunt objects to kill their Tutsi neighbours.
Rape was also used as a weapon in the genocide, with hundreds of thousands of women and children raped. sexually mutilated or murdered. It was the first recorded instance of mass rape during warfare being used as an act of genocidal rape, with the intention being to destroy an ethnic group.
People who refused to take part in massacres and brutality were routinely killed. People were whipped into a violent frenzy by malicious leaders, a history of oppression, fear and a disturbing inclination of human beings towards conformity. The grisly process was underpinned by ideologies that encouraged citizens to view part of the population as dangerous, evil, the source of all problems and, critically and erroneously, essentially different.
Racist narratives and ideologies connected with relative worth appear to be one of the easiest ways of encouraging people to dehumanise and harm others. Just as we have seen elsewhere in recent years, elements of the media and political parties help push divisive narratives, and this can lay the foundations for and justify brutality.
The development of greater and greater distinctions between the Hutu and Tutsi over the centuries, leading to social stratification, a caste system, resentment, conflicts and ultimately genocide, can be seen as a horrific illustrative fractal of a larger reality. It just happened to be that the amplification of otherness and conflict occurred in an era where events could be documented, but it would appear reflective of the fundamental human problem of what happens when unity disintegrates into division, dehumanisation and violence.
It is perhaps easy for some in ‘the West’ to imagine that what happened in Rwanda has no bearing on the life they live or where they live. However, if they consider the way in which certain political figures, elements of the media, far-right hate preachers and terrorist groups construct and amplify a sense of otherness to foster division, it is clear that this grotesque example from not so long ago has relevance across societies.
