Tutsi

Tutsi

Paul Kagame • Renovat Ndayirukiye Richard Sezibera • Esther Kamatari
Total population
2.5 million (Rwanda and Burundi)
Regions with significant populations
Rwanda, Burundi, Eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo
Languages
Rwanda-Rundi, French, English
Religion
Christianity
Related ethnic groups
Hutu, Twa

The Tutsi ( /ˈtʊtsi/; Rwanda-Rundi pronunciation: [tūtsī]), or Abatutsi, are an ethnic group in Central Africa. Historically, they were often referred to as the Watutsi and the Wahuma. They are the second largest population group among the three largest population groups in Rwanda and Burundi, the other two being the Hutu (largest) and the Twa (smallest). Tiny groups of Hema, Kiga and Furiiru people also live in Rwanda.

History

A Tutsi man.

Conceptions of the supposed ethnic groups in Rwanda and Burundi have a long history. The definitions of "Hutu" and "Tutsi" people may have changed through time and location. Social structures were not stable throughout Rwanda, even during colonial times under the Belgian rule. The Tutsi aristocracy or elite was distinguished from Tutsi commoners, and wealthy Hutu were often indistinguishable from upper-class Tutsi.

When the European colonists conducted censuses, they wanted to identify the people throughout Rwanda-Burundi according to a simple classification scheme. They defined "Tutsi" as anyone owning more than ten cows (a sign of wealth) or with the physical feature of a longer nose, or longer neck, commonly associated with the Tutsi. A person could change from Hutu to Tutsi by obtaining enough cows to acquire the status.

The Europeans noticed that some Tutsis had facial characteristics that were generally atypical of other Bantus. They sought to explain these divergent physical traits by postulating admixture with or partial descent from migrants of Caucasoid stock, who usually were said to have arrived in the Great Lakes region from the Horn of Africa and/or North Africa. In addition, some Tutsi believed that they were descendants of the ancient Israelites and had a mystical connection to Israel. By contrast, the Europeans considered the majority Hutu to be characteristic Bantu people of Central African origin.

These various migration theories of foreign provenance were also in part inspired by the Tutsi's own long-held oral traditions asserting that they originally descended from "white" migrants, who subsequently "lost" their original language and culture as they intermarried with the local Bantus. The British explorer John Hanning Speke recorded one such account in his book Journal of the Discovery of the Source of the Nile:

"The governor[...] said he thought the white men were flocking this way to retake their lost country; for tradition recorded that the Wahuma were once half black and half white, with half the hair straight and the other half curly; and how was this to be accounted for unless the country formerly belonged to white men with straight hair, but was subsequently taken by black men?"

Beginning about 1880, Catholic missionaries arrived in the Great Lakes region. Later, when German forces occupied the area during World War I, the conflict and efforts for Catholic conversion became more pronounced. As the Tutsi resisted conversion, the missionaries found success only among the Hutu. In an effort to reward conversion, the colonial government confiscated traditionally Tutsi land and reassigned it to Hutu tribes, igniting a conflict that has lasted into the 21st century.

Language

Tutsis speak Rwanda-Rundi as their native tongue, which is a member of the Bantu subgroup of the Niger-Congo language family. Rwanda-Rundi is subdivided into the Kinyarwanda and Kirundi dialects, which have been standardized as official languages of Burundi and Rwanda. It is also spoken as a mother tongue by the Hutu and Twa.

Additionally, many Tutsis speak French, the other official language of Rwanda and Burundi, as lingua franca.

Genetics

Modern-day genetic studies of the Y-chromosome suggest that the Tutsi are largely of Bantu extraction (80% E1b1a, 15% B, 4% E3). Paternal genetic influences associated with the Horn of Africa and North Africa are few (1% E1b1b), and are ascribed to much earlier inhabitants who were assimilated. The Tutsi, in general, demonstrate a close ethnic kinship with neighboring Bantu populations, particularly the Hutu.

[...]generations of gene flow obliterated whatever clear-cut physical distinctions may have once existed between these two Bantu peoples -- renowned to be height, body build, and facial features. With a spectrum of physical variation in the peoples, Belgian authorities legally mandated ethnic affiliation in the 1920s, based on economic criteria. Formal and discrete social divisions were consequently imposed upon ambiguous biological distinctions. To some extent, the permeability of these categories in the intervening decades helped to reify the biological distinctions, generating a taller elite and a shorter underclass, but with little relation to the gene pools that had existed a few centuries ago. The social categories are thus real, but there is little if any detectable genetic differentiation between Hutu and Tutsi.

Culture

Tutsi students in a Rwanda classroom.

In the Rwanda territory, from the 15th century until 1961, the Tutsi were ruled by a king (the mwami). Belgium abolished the monarchy in response to Hutu activism, following the national referendum that led to independence. In the northwestern part of the country (predominantly Hutu), by contrast, the society more closely resembled that of Bugandan society (in what is now Uganda); large regional landholders shared power instead of a central monarch.

Little difference can be ascertained between the cultures of the Tutsi and Hutu; both groups speak the same Bantu language. The rate of intermarriage between the two groups has traditionally been very high, with historically amicable relations until the 20th century. Many scholars have concluded that the determination of Tutsi was and is mainly an expression of class or caste, rather than ethnicity. DNA studies, as noted above, show clearly that the peoples are more closely related to each other as Bantu than to any other. Differences have arisen due to social constructs, which created greater differences between the groups.

During the 1980s, school principals reported that, although secondary school admissions were in accordance with quotas mandated by the Habyarimana government (in line with the proportions of the groups within the country), and by competition within ethnic groups, the students of Tutsi origin (14% of intake) comprised nearly 50%, on average, of those who graduated. This result provoked accusations of tribal favoritism.^{[citation needed]} It may have been a product of the wealthier Tutsi not needing their children's labor to contribute to family welfare and therefore being able to let them stay in school long enough to graduate.

Colonial influences

Both Germany (before World War I) and Belgium ruled the area in a colonial capacity. They allowed only the Tutsi to be educated and only they could participate in the colonial government. Such discriminatory policies engendered resentment.^{[citation needed]}. When the Belgians assumed control following World War I, they asked for advice from the Germans, who told them to continue promoting the Tutsis, which they did.^{[citation needed]}.

The traditional Tutsi king's palace in Nyanza.

When the Belgians took over the colony in 1916, they believed the colony could be better governed if they continued to identify the different populations. In the 1920s, they required people to identify with a particular ethnic group and classified them in censuses^{[citation needed]}. Belgian colonists viewed Africans in general as children^{[citation needed]} who needed to be guided, but noted the Tutsi to be the ruling culture in Rwanda-Burundi. In 1959, Belgium reversed its stance and allowed the majority Hutu to assume control of the government through universal elections.

A Tutsi immigrant in Berlin.

The Hutu majority had revolted against the Tutsi but was unable to take power. Since the nation's independence, more extremist Tutsi came to power and oppressed the Hutu people, especially those who were educated. Their actions led to the deaths of up to 200,000 Hutus. In 1993, Burundi's first democratically elected president, Melchior Ndadaye, a Hutu, was assassinated by Tutsi officers, as was the person entitled to succeed him under the constitution. This sparked a period of civil strife between Hutu political structures and the Tutsi military, in which an estimated 800,000 Burundians, mostly Tutsi, were murdered.^{[citation needed]}

Since the 2000 Arusha Peace Process, today in Burundi the Tutsi minority shares power in a more or less equitable manner with the Hutu majority. Traditionally, the Tutsi had held more economic power and controlled the military.

A similar pattern of events took place in Rwanda, but there the Hutu came to power in 1962. They in turn often oppressed the Tutsi, giving rise to Tutsi rebel movements. The exiled Tutsi attacked Rwanda in 1990 with the reason to liberate Rwanda. This lead later to a genocide started by the RPF which was to be continued by the Interahamwe. This culminated in the Hutu mass killings of Tutsi and Hutu in the Rwandan Genocide of 1994, in which the Hutu then in power killed an estimated 500,000–1,000,000 people, largely of Tutsi origin. Contemporary to these events in 1994, the Rwandan Patriotic Front, constituted mostly from diasporic Tutsi in Uganda, had begun a strategic move on Rwandan territory from Uganda, where they had acquired significant experience of highly organized irregular warfare in the Ugandan Bush War. Victorious in the aftermath of the genocide, the RPF came to power in July 1994. The RPF Rwandan Patriotic Front,killed numerous Hutus after taking power to revenge the genocide.

Congolese Tutsi

Main article: Banyamulenge

Mixed group of Banyamulenge and Bafuliru repairing a road between Lemera and Mulenge, South Kivu (ca. 2003).

In the eastern region of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), ethnic Tutsi formerly from Rwanda (Banyarwanda) are concentrated on the Itombwe Plateau of South Kivu, close to the Burundi-Congo-Rwanda border. Use of the term Banyamulenge has been controversial, but since the late 1990s following the Rwanda Genocide, it has been used to refer to all ethnic Tutsi living in North and South Kivu.

Banyarwanda may have migrated from Rwanda as early as the seventeenth century. The first significant migration of Banyarwanda into South Kivu was recorded in the 1880s. Banyarwanda migrants continued to arrive during the colonial period, particularly as labor migrants. In the early 1970s, they began calling themselves Banyamulenge to avoid being called Banyarwanda and seen as foreigners, as they had been settled there with descendants for many generations.

The Banyamulenge have an ambiguous political and social position in the Congo, which has been an issue of contention with other ethnic groups. They played a key role in the run-up to the First Congo War in 1996-7 and Second Congo War of 1998-2003.

External links

• A personal note by a Tutsi academic
• A traveler learns about the Hutu and Tutsi conflict and reflects on it
• The International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (the status and judgments of all cases before the ICTR are available here)
• Sexual Violence against Tutsi Women
• Tutsi
• Worlds Apart: The Roots of Regional Conflicts
• Ex-Rwandan PM contests genocide conviction
• "Intended Consequences" by Jonathan Torgovnik on MediaStorm