How the Belgian administration promoted division

1Why this matters

Rwanda's Constitution commits the country to fighting divisionism and promoting national unity. To understand why, you need to know how division was deliberately built into government during colonial rule. Divide and rule means keeping power over a population by setting its groups against each other, so that they never unite against the ruler.

2Rwanda before colonial rule

Hutu, Tutsi and Twa spoke the same language, held the same beliefs, lived on the same hills and belonged to the same clans (for example the Abasinga, Abanyiginya or Abega), and each clan included members of all three groups. The labels were linked mainly to wealth and occupation, especially cattle ownership, and a family's status could change over generations. The kingdom had rich and poor, powerful and powerless, like every kingdom, but these differences were not treated as differences of "race".

3Five ways the administration divided Rwandans

1. A false "race" theory. Colonial officials and many missionaries taught that the Tutsi were a separate, superior race from the north-east, that the Hutu were a lower race, and that the Twa were lowest. This theory had no scientific basis.
2. Favouring one group for power. The reforms of 1926–1931 removed Hutu and Twa chiefs and gave almost all chiefships to a small number of Tutsi families.
3. Education for a few. Mission schools and the Groupe Scolaire of Astrida gave most places to the sons of Tutsi chiefs, which excluded most Rwandans from positions of responsibility.
4. Identity cards. From the early 1930s every Rwandan's "ethnic" label was written on an identity document and inherited through the father. Movement between groups ended, and the label became a permanent political identity.
5. Switching sides. In the 1950s the Mwami, chiefs and Tutsi-led nationalists demanded quick independence. The administration and many church leaders then switched support to Hutu politicians and presented Rwanda's problems as a conflict between "races". In November 1959 the Belgian special resident, Colonel Guy Logiest, replaced large numbers of Tutsi chiefs with Hutu ones while attacks on Tutsi went largely unpunished.

Notice that most Tutsi were never rulers: they were ordinary farmers who gained nothing from colonial favouritism. Yet the whole group was labelled and later blamed.

4Long-term consequences

• Politics after 1957 was organised along ethnic lines.
• Violence against Tutsi from 1959 onwards, and the exile of hundreds of thousands, went unpunished.
• The ethnic identity card survived independence and was used in 1994 at roadblocks to identify Tutsi during the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi.
• After 1994 the ethnic label was removed from identity cards, and unity became a founding principle of the state.

Worked example: evaluating a claim

Question: "Colonialism invented the words Hutu, Tutsi and Twa." Is this accurate?

Not exactly. The words existed before colonial rule, as social categories linked to wealth and occupation, and people could move between them. What colonialism did was change their meaning: it presented them as fixed "races", ranked them, wrote them on identity cards and used them to decide who could rule and who could study. So the words were older, but the rigid, hostile division built on them was a colonial creation, later deepened by the leaders of independent Rwanda.

Practice

Solution. A method of keeping control over a population by setting its groups against one another so that they do not unite against the ruler.

Solution. They shared one language, Kinyarwanda, one culture and religion, lived on the same hills, and belonged to the same clans; and a family's status could change over time.

Solution. The Mwami, chiefs and Tutsi-led nationalists were demanding rapid independence. The administration turned to Hutu politicians to keep influence and weaken the independence movement.

Solution. The card recorded each person's ethnic label from the 1930s onwards and was kept after independence. In 1994 the killers used it at roadblocks to identify Tutsi.