Rwanda Under German and Belgian Colonial Rule (1897-1962)
Senior 4 · History
Rwanda Under German and Belgian Colonial Rule (1897-1962)
Lesson 3 of 4
25 min
Historians often begin with numbers, then ask what lies behind them. Study this chart of Tutsi refugees who left Rwanda after November 1959.
Analyse it. The first exodus was about 10,000 people; within five years the official count was 336,000, settled mainly in Burundi, Uganda, Tanganyika and the Congo. Human Rights Watch estimates that by 1967 more than 300,000 Tutsi had been forced to flee abroad and some 20,000 had been killed. A movement that grew thirtyfold was not a single riot. It was the start of a long process in which Tutsi were driven out of public life, out of their homes and out of the country. This lesson asks how it began, who was responsible, and why Rwandans regard 1959 as a turning point on the road to the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi.
Definition
Refugee: a person forced to flee their country because of persecution or violence. Persecution: harming people because of who they are. Impunity: when people who commit crimes are not punished. State of emergency: a period when a government takes special powers to restore order.
Political parties of 1959: UNAR (Union Nationale Rwandaise), which supported the monarchy and wanted immediate independence; PARMEHUTU (Parti du Mouvement de l'Émancipation Hutu), led by Grégoire Kayibanda, which defined itself as a party of the Hutu; APROSOMA (Association pour la Promotion Sociale de la Masse), led by Joseph Gitera; and smaller parties such as RADER (Rassemblement Démocratique Rwandais). Rubanda nyamwinshi: "the great majority", the slogan by which PARMEHUTU leaders claimed that the Hutu majority had the right to rule.
Unit 8 traces the roots in detail. In short: for thirty years Belgium had given office and higher education almost only to a Tutsi aristocracy. In the 1950s, facing the end of colonial rule and pressure from the United Nations, the Belgians began to open positions and schools to Hutu and held limited elections for advisory councils. Human Rights Watch judges that the changes "were enough to frighten the Tutsi, yet not enough to satisfy the Hutu": the monarchy and its supporters wanted independence quickly, before majority rule; the new Hutu leaders wanted power before the Belgians left. Mwami Mutara III Rudahigwa had kept the situation calm.
| Significance | Explanation and evidence |
|---|---|
| The first large-scale violence against Tutsi as a group | Homes were burned and people killed because they were Tutsi, and those who incited the attacks went unpunished. Human Rights Watch shows how, in the years that followed, the circle of targets widened from former office-holders to all Tutsi. |
| The beginning of the refugee problem | About 10,000 in exile at first; 336,000 by late 1964. For three decades many refugees and their children were refused the right to return. |
| A colonial power taking sides | Belgium, which had favoured a Tutsi aristocracy, now backed PARMEHUTU and installed its members as chiefs, shaping the outcome of the political transition (lesson 4). |
| Politics by fixed categories | Parties were organised around Hutu and Tutsi identities; "rubanda nyamwinshi" equated a majority defined by birth with a democratic majority; identity cards, once a mark of privilege for some Tutsi, became a means of discrimination against Tutsi. |
| A cycle of attacks and reprisals | From 1961 refugee groups attacked Rwanda; after each attack officials led reprisals against Tutsi still in the country, accusing them of helping the attackers. About 10,000 Tutsi were killed in December 1963 and January 1964 alone. |
| A road to 1994 | Human Rights Watch notes that during the genocide politicians "waved the flag of the revolution". The ideology, the impunity and the exclusion that began in 1959 prepared the ground for the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi; the refugees' movement, the Rwandan Patriotic Front, formed mainly of refugees and their children, launched the liberation war in 1990 and stopped the genocide in 1994. |
PARMEHUTU and the governments that followed it called these years the "social revolution" or "Hutu revolution" and celebrated them for decades. Human Rights Watch's historians conclude that the revolution "was neither so heroic nor so dramatic as it was later presented", that the Hutu leaders were "helped considerably by the Belgians, both politically and militarily", and that its myths were later used to mobilise killers. Rwanda today remembers 1959 as the beginning of the persecution and exile of Tutsi. When you meet a name for an event, ask who chose it and what it was meant to do.
Warning
Do not describe 1959 as a fight between two equal sides or as "age-old hatred". Hutu, Tutsi and Twa were social categories that colonial rule had made rigid; in 1959 political leaders and a colonial administration turned those categories into the basis of politics, and violence fell above all on Tutsi as a group, followed by impunity and exile. Name the actors: parties, leaders, the Belgian administration.
Tip
Significance of 1959: "PRICE". Persecution of Tutsi as a group; Refugees; Impunity; Colonial power taking sides; Ethnic politics (rubanda nyamwinshi) that led towards 1994.
Important
Discuss. Refugees from 1959 and their children lived in exile for up to thirty-five years. What does it do to a society when part of its people are refused the right to return? How does Rwanda's emphasis today on Ndi Umunyarwanda, a shared Rwandan identity, respond to the lessons of 1959?
"Dushaka Kubaho" ("We want to live"), a 1962 film by the Red Cross and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, from the Red Cross Red Crescent historic film collection. It shows the relief work of March 1962 for some 60,000 Tutsi refugees in Kivu (Congo) who had fled Rwanda in December 1961, and their resettlement at a new village, Bibwe. Watch it as a primary source: who made it, for whom, and what it shows of the refugees' lives.
Practice
Key points
Sources and credits
Written by Ganzaa: the analysis, the charts, the tables and the exercises. This lesson adapts CC BY-SA material and is shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Quick check
Put these events of 1959 in order, earliest first.
Tap the cards in the right order.
