Social, Cultural and Economic Organisation of Precolonial Rwanda

1Hoes from the king

Every year in early August, the Mwami handed new hoes to the ritualists in charge of cultivation, so that sorghum and finger millet could be sown. This was the first stage of umuganura, the first-fruits ritual, which ran in four phases from August to June and was the greatest of the 18 royal rituals of the ubwiru. This first stage took place at Huro.

One act, four meanings. Economic: it opened the farming year. Religious: it asked for blessing on the harvest. Political: it showed that prosperity flowed from the king. Social: every family repeated the celebration at home. This lesson analyses those four sides of life in the precolonial kingdom: how society was organised, what Rwandans believed and created, and how they made a living.

2Social organisation

Family, lineage and clan. The basic unit was the household (urugo, plural ingo). Households formed lineages, lineages formed sub-clans (amashyanga), and sub-clans formed clans. Writers list 15 to 18 clans in old Rwanda, among them the Abanyiginya, Abega, Abasinga, Abazigaba and Abagesera. Clan members were scattered across the country, but a clan gave a person friends and hospitality almost anywhere, and people usually married outside their own clan. Until 1960, a Rwandan asked "what are you?" would answer with a clan name.

Clans cut across the social categories. At least nine of the largest clans included Hutu, Tutsi and Twa members. A person could change social category, but never his or her clan. This is strong evidence that the categories were not separate "peoples" with separate origins.

Hutu, Tutsi and Twa. All three spoke Kinyarwanda, shared one set of religious beliefs and one culture of song, dance and poetry, and celebrated the same heroes. The word "Tutsi" seems first to have described an individual's status, a person rich in cattle; "Hutu" meant a subordinate, a follower of someone more powerful. Twa were the smallest group, many of them potters, hunters and gatherers. The categories were linked to wealth and way of life, and people could move between them as their fortunes rose or fell: a family that gained cattle could "shed Hutuness" (kwihutura). As the state grew in the 19th century, especially under Rwabugiri, "Tutsi" came to mean the ruling elite and "Hutu" the mass of ordinary subjects, and the categories hardened; but the lines were not yet fixed across the whole country when Europeans arrived.

3Relationships of dependence

Much of social and economic life ran through three relationships between stronger and weaker parties:

• Ubuhake (cattle clientship): a patron granted a client the use of cattle, with their milk and calves, and protection; the client did not own the cows and owed loyalty and service.
• Ubukonde (lineage land rights): the lineage that first cleared a forest held the land by right and could settle other families on it; these settlers, the abagererwa, had rights to their plots, subject to customary obligations.
• Uburetwa (labour for land): when Rwabugiri redistributed land to chiefs he appointed, the chiefs demanded manual labour from the families who farmed it, in return for the right to stay on the land.

Weigh the evidence. Alexis Kagame, followed by the Belgian anthropologist Jacques Maquet, described ubuhake as the heart of a harmonious society. Later research, which took account of uburetwa, largely disproved that idyllic picture: the labour contract was degrading and fell on the poorest. A balanced answer recognises both the protection that clientship could offer and the inequality it carried.

4Cultural organisation

• Language. Kinyarwanda was the language of the whole kingdom and of its schools, the itorero and the ibohero (Lesson 3).
• Religion. Rwandans believed in one creator god, Imana, almighty and gracious. The veneration of ancestors was also part of religious life: Kigeli III Ndabarasa is remembered for reducing it, even for the royal ancestors. At umuganura, families gathered to share food from the first harvest. Kubandwa, a spirit-possession cult found across the Great Lakes region, in which women played an important part as mediums, was also practised. The old religion survived well into the colonial period, when, as one elderly witness recalled, people "prayed to the God of the white men in the daylight" and "to Ryangombe" at night.
• Oral literature. Dynastic poetry, genealogies, court histories and warriors' self-praise (Lesson 1), with proverbs, riddles and tales for everyone.
• Music and dance. Drums were of great importance, and the royal drummers had high status at court; the intore dance combined a dance of heroes by men with dancing by women and the drums.
• Arts and crafts. Craftspeople made baskets, woodwork, metalwork, woven goods and pottery, mostly useful objects that were exchanged. Imigongo, geometric panels made from cow dung and ash, appeared in the Kibungo area in the 18th century; one tradition credits Prince Kakira of Gisaka.
• Festivals. Umuganura united the kingdom from the court to every household. The colonial power abolished it in 1925, when its last ritualist, Gashamura, was driven into exile; Rwanda revived it in 2011, and it is now celebrated on the first Friday of August.

5Economic organisation