the evolution of the Tutsi/Hima and Hutu/Iru dichotomy from the 17th century to 1962: state and ethnicity in Rwanda and Nkore. (Patreon)

Few topics have inspired as much debate and controversy as the social identities of the herders and farmers in the pre-colonial kingdoms of the Great Lakes region.

The first "explorers" were struck by the geographic and human contrasts of the region. They provided accounts of societies ruled by Tutsi/Hima herders, whom they described as a foreign 'race' of Semites/Hamites "of Abyssinia", and were thought to be different from the Hutu/Iru farmers, whom they described as the "common order of the natives of the surrounding districts."

These accounts, which mixed biblical theories of human origins with scientific racism, became the ethnohistoric gospel for this region. In the colonies of Rwanda and Uganda, the so-called Hamitic hypothesis gained political potency, adapted itself to all sorts of environments, and converted Africans to its cause.

However, on the eve of the independence of both colonies in 1962, a significant divergence had emerged between Rwanda and Uganda with regard to these social divisions. While the Hima and Iru in Uganda's colonial district of Ankole forged political alliances and reduced ethnic strife, relations between the Tutsi and Hutu in Rwanda were at their most polarized, as patterns of violence that began in 1959 culminated in the 1994 genocide.

While the complicit role of colonial history writing in shaping social interactions between the Tutsi and Hutu is widely recognized by virtually all scholars of the 1994 Rwandan genocide, they remain divided on the exact origins of the Tutsi/Hutu social divisions, and how much they determined the trajectory of Rwanda's post-colonial politics.

Some scholars point to the existence of similar social divisions in the neighboring kingdom of Nkore (later called Ankole in the colonial era) as a counter-argument against claims that the ethnic strife in Rwanda was an inevitable consequence of its social divisions in the pre-colonial period.

This article explores the history of the Tutsi/Hima and Hutu/Iru dichotomy in the kingdoms of Rwanda and Nkore. It outlines the evolution of these social divisions from the pre-colonial period to the colonial era and examines why the political trajectory of the two societies diverged on the eve of independence. 

King and Queen of Rwanda at a ceremony in 1950.

Group of 'Watuzi' near Kigali, Rwanda. ca. 1914-1918.

On the historiography of state formation in the Great Lakes region.

the kingdoms of Nyiginya (Rwanda) and Nkore around 1900

Oral communication and historical inquiry have been present in all human societies for all time, but it wasn't until the decolonization period of the 1950s that modern historiography began to recognize oral accounts as historical sources. This monumental turning point is largely credited to the work of the historian Jan Vansina who argued for oral history as a conceptual bedrock essential to understanding Africa's past.

Vansina wanted the discipline of history to move from the exclusive paleographic study of texts to a broader, interdisciplinary search for clues of the human experiences in order to show that 'oral societies' had a history --something that was viciously denied by his peers in colonial academia, who insisted that Africa had no written history and therefore had no history. As fierce debates raged over the acceptance of oral accounts as history, its methodology was redefined, and it gradually joined the canon of historical sources. 

(Once upon a Time: Oral Traditions as History in Africa, pg 442-468,  For Oral Tradition (But Not against Braudel) pg 351-356)

Incidentally, Vansina developed his arguments for oral history through his specialist research in the kingdoms of Kuba (in D.R.Congo) and Rwanda, two kingdoms in which a plethora of information was available in their rich corpus of oral traditions in the form of long, elaborate historical narratives. Vansina was however acutely aware of the challenges of Oral history, especially its fluidity, its chronological imprecision and its chain of transmission. Criticism from his successors in the use of oral history, some of whom were his students, and the evolution of Vansina's own approach served to further refine the application of oral accounts as historical sources.

(Contradictions at the Heart of the Canon: Jan Vansina and the Debate over Oral pg 213-254)

Conversely, the first written historiography emerged in the first decades of the 20th century and was based on the accounts of earlier travelers like John Hanning Speke (quoted in the introduction). The hypothesis put forward by Speke in 1863 of a Hamitic invasion of the Great Lakes region from 16th-18th century Ethiopia, permeated the accounts of early colonial officers from 1890 to 1914, and also the traditional (oral) sources of the history in a feedback loop.

The writings of the first colonial administrators and anthropologists often reflected the prevailing understanding of social divisions, hierarchies and power. While the Hamitic hypothesis was challenged in later literature, it continued to animate the institutions of colonial and post-colonial Rwanda.

(The Great Lakes of Africa pg 28-37, Unesco Vol 5 pg 803-806,  When victims become killers pg 42-50, Not All the king's Men pg 25,)

A combination of written and oral accounts gathered by the first educated Rwandan historians such as Alexis Kagame were retrieved from modern mythologies in the light of the culture of their possessors. Kagame's approach was a product of its times, it was therefore fundamentalist and privileged a literalist interpretation of kinglists and dynastic narratives as they were recounted by the official court historians.

It also included accounts of the 'Hamitic' pastoralists migrating from Ethiopia to subjugate the indigenes. Despite the challenges inherent in interpreting Kagame's historiography of Rwanda, his books such as Inganji Karinga (1943), Code de Institutions (1952) and Abrégés (1972) were and still are indispensable sources of Rwanda's past that were debated by later historians such as Jan Vansina (1968 and 2001) and David Newbury (1991).  

(Narrating and Teaching the Nation pg 49-54, Antecedents to Modern Rwanda pg 4-13)

In the historiography of Uganda, specifically western Uganda where the kingdom of Nkore emerged, a similar combination of 19th-century travel accounts and oral history inspired the publication of the first written histories by A.G. Katate and L. Kamugungunu in 1955. It would prove indispensable to the first archeologists such as Roland Oliver (1959) and Merrick Posnansky (1968), who uncovered the old iron-age sites of the region, and their results would inform the writings of later historians such as Samwiri Karugire (1969) and Martin Doornbos (1978).

And just as in Rwanda, the Hamitic theory informed many of the arguments made by the earlier historians. Ethnographers such as Charles Seligman and James Frederick Cunningham posited that the similarities between the Hima and the Oromo were manifest in their pastoral culture. Arguing that since "such principles of their native laws and customs could hardly be a coincidence", the Hima must have migrated from Egypt or Ethiopia. While such writings were later discredited by later professional historians like Karugire and Doornbos, they retained potency during the colonial era and in the early post-colonial period.

(A History of the Kingdom of Nkore, pg 42-44, A New Look at Ankole Capital Sites pg 83)

I will primarily rely on the works of Vansina, Newbury, and Doornbos for this article, supplemented by a few other publications.

Background to state formation in the Great Lakes region.

Archeological and linguistic evidence indicates that the lakes region was settled in the 1st millennium BCE by Bantu-speaking agro-pastoralists, who were associated with the iron-Age Neolithic culture of Urewe that lasted until the 8th century AD. In western Uganda, the Urewe neolithic was succeeded by several neolithic cultures at Munsa by the 10th century and at Bigo by the 15th century. 

In central Rwanda, the ceramics of the Urewe culture were succeeded by the W-ceramics from the 8th-14th century, and later by the X&Y ceramics for the 16th-20th century, with some overlap during the 14th-16th century. 

(Multidisciplinary evidence for mixed farming, pg 299-315, The development of iron technology in precolonial western Uganda, pg 65-79, Antecedents to Modern Rwanda pg 16-18)

X&Y ceramics also appear across western Uganda, and some scholars associate their appearance in Rwanda with the expansion of states and migration of elites associated with historical events in Bunyoro during this period. Vasina argues against migration, using evidence from the settlement continuity of W and X&Y sites, he suggests that it was a simple change in style with minimal external influence, and associates it with similar changes in techniques of making furnaces and hoes. 

(Antecedents to Modern Rwanda pg 20-23)

Iron age sites in western Uganda between the 10th to 16th centuries, and the later kingdoms.

By the 17th century, the inhabitants of central Rwanda and Nkore were engaged in farming, herding, and foraging.  Farmers practiced intensive and shifting agriculture, rotating staples like millet, sorghum, yams, and bananas, alongside some cattle and goats, while herders tended unit herds of about 30-50 cattle, although the herds were larger in Nkore than in Rwanda. In both regions, there were specialties, often among the farmers, that were engaged in metallurgy, potting, tanning, woodcarving, and the manufacture of bark cloth, and evidence of glass beads and tobacco pipes at some of the Nkore capital sites like Bweyorere points to long-distance trade with the east African coast.

(Antecedents to Modern Rwanda pg 24-26, Not all the King's Men pg 20, 41, A New Look at the Ankole Capital Sites pg 86.)

It is instructive at this point to note that there never was a clear difference between the cultural economies of the populations of Rwanda. Agricultural and pastoral activities were hardly exclusive; they tended to be carried out jointly in most regions. Many of those considered Hutu in the 20th century had cattle, and many of those considered Tutsi farmed the land. To illustrate the complexities of the Hutu/Tutsi dichotomy, in 1955, 45% of the bovines in Rwanda were kept by the Hutu while 50% were held by the Tutsi.

(When victims become killers pg 51, Antecedents to Modern Rwanda pg 299, n. 59)

In Rwanda, the fact that the agricultural and herding economies were interwoven on the hills, without being integrated with each other, required a certain level of coordination between herders and farmers. Such included not just bush clearing and the use of manure as fertilizer, but also the designation of a certain authority to decide every year how to use the land inorder to resolve disputes between the herders and farmers.  Interactions between herders and farmers were decidedly more limited in Nkore than in Rwanda, owing to the availability of more grazing lands in the former. This may have increased the advantages of herders over farmers, but the relatively limited exchanges between the two lessen its effect.

In Rwanda, Herders usually needed farmers more than the reverse, as the latter's diet was often self-sufficient while the former needed to supplement theirs with farmed crops. However, during periods of drought, the herders had an advantage over the farmers, as they were more mobile and could borrow cattle as a loan.

(Not All the King's Men pg 41, Antecedents to Modern Rwanda 27-29, 33)

Fenced compound and cattle-Kraal, Rwanda, ca. 1910, Collection Pierre Gallez. This is very likely the king's kraal.

 'kraal de muhutu' undated photo

Tracing the origins of the ethnonyms; Tutsi, Hima, Hutu, Iru, and Twa: Social organization on the eve of the state formation.

 According to Vansina, the ethnonyms of Twa, Tutsi, and Hima were defined in opposition to the bulk of the farming population. Their terminology suggests that an agricultural way of life was perceived as the normal condition of the inhabitants, from whom one had to distinguish “different” people who practiced another way of life.

The terms 'Hima' and Tutsi' appear in the earliest recorded accounts of the region, with 'Hima' often being used in southern Uganda and parts of northern Tanzania, while 'Tutsi' was used in Rwanda, Burundi, and parts of northern Tanzania, which used 'Hima' for the non-elite class of herders. Conversely, Twa was used for foragers who lived in the forested regions. Mutual hostility and cordial exchanges characterized relations between the three groups, with some level of intermarriage.

(Antecedents to Modern Rwanda pg 36-37)

The basic social unit was the localized and exogamic patrilineage called inzu (“the house”), which could grow into lineages (umuryango), that were inturn part of a clan (ubwoko).  Similarly in Nkore, the exogamous groups of families (ekiika), lineages (omuryango) and clan-groups (oruganda) were territorially concentrated, although residence patterns were generally based on scattered homesteads, not villages. In both regions, the clans included Tutsi/Hima and Hutu/Iru members. Wealth was mainly counted in cattle as well as in iron hoes which formed a type of currency. Units of territories were known as 'Rwanda' (physical space/country occupied by a something/a social group).

(Clan and History in Western Uganda pg 587-593, Antecedents to Modern Rwanda pg 30-35, Not all the King's Men pg 20-21, 27, 43, When Victims Become Killers pg 54-56)

17th-century central Rwanda was divided into many small states ruled by kings (umwami) who shared their authority with other courtiers. Land tenure was a crucial foundation of the political structure, as kings were understood to be descended from autochthonous lineages who first cleared the land, while lineages that emerged later were recognized as clients. The latter acted as chiefs to the former managed herder-farmer land use, and provided tribute to the king in exchange for protection

Unlike Rwanda however, the availability and access to grazing land in Nkore posed few problems between the herders and farmers, so the need for instituting control over agricultural land hardly arose and the herder's capacity to effect that was never tested. Nevertheless, patron-client relations did emerge between the herders and farmers, which gave the former some control over the latter's produce

(Antecedents to Modern Rwanda pg 38-43, Not all the King's Men pg 41-42, Clan and History in Western Uganda pg 596-597)

mixed agro-pastoral land use on the hills of Rwanda, showing the typical Ankole-Watusi long-horned cattle grazing below a field of crops. ca. 1950, Collection Pierre Gallez

The cores of the kingdoms of Rwanda and Nkore emerged during the 17th century, a time when archeological evidence from the sites of Bweyorere in Nkore and Ryamurari in Ndorwa, matches with the more precise oral histories of several kingdoms including Rwanda and Karagwe. The earliest historical king of Rwanda was Ndori who is associated with the northern kingdoms of Nkore and Ndorwa, and likely owed his success to his larger herd of cattle, which he re-distributed among allies through an unequal contract called ubuhakwe.

(Antecedents to Modern Rwanda pg 45-51, A New Look at Ankole Capital Sites pg 83-88)

Most of the court activities and political relationships were between herders, and it was they who were the primary target of military campaigns that reaped booty in the form of herds of cattle. Political appointments and court litigations are thus largely involved herders, and in the cases where farmers were involved such as conflicts over encroachment of farms, murder, theft, etc , it was often in favour of the herders.

Similar inauguration rites existed in Nkore as in Rwanda, where kings engaged in some rather un-pastoral ceremonies, such as the planting of millet seeds. However, in Rwanda, the king also participated in the annual celebration of the first fruits (umuganura), which expressed the unity of the kingdom since all chiefs participated and was also the occasion for collecting tribute. 

(Not All the King's Men pg 26, 42-43, The Land Beyond the Mists pg 239-251, Antecedents to Modern Rwanda pg 54-55, 97)

dances near the entrance to the king's residence, Rwanda, ca. 1931, Collection Pierre Gallez

The founder King Ndori is said to have established the first large army which by the reign of Mazimpaka at the turn of the 18th century, resembled the armies of Nkore and Bunyoro, with companies of forces under a general (umugaba). The earliest centralizing elements were thus the court and the regional residences, and an army used to control the political clientele, and its from Mazimpaka's reign that the word 'Nyiginya' became the name of the royal kinsmen, and thus the dynasty.

(Antecedents to Modern Rwanda pg 60-61, 63-65, 74, 86)

Its also during the reign of Mazimpaka that the term 'Hutu' first appeared according to the historian Ivan Reisdorff, whose view is supported by most specialists. The first systematic differentiation between Tutsi and Hutu evolved in the military context differentiating 'Tutsi' combatants/rustlers, who were accompanied by servants called Hutu under a section known as Abatabaga. These 'Hutu' sections were in charge of provisioning the army, which normally obtained its supplies from the farms they passed through.

(Antecedents to Modern Rwanda pg 75-76, When Victims Become Killers pg 67-68)

A similar political structure emerged in Nkore, with a Hima-dominated political system, which, however, lacked the structure and 'interest' in sustaining a pervasive downward control of society. According to the historian Martin Doornbos; Nkore's complex political framework was thus characterized by separate economic pursuits of its social groups who were largely self-sufficient.

It's relevant to note that unlike many of the earliest written accounts about Rwanda where the terms Tutsi and Hutu appear frequently, the kingdom of Nkore was largely described as a 'Hima' society by its earliest visitors, with only scattered mentions of a few 'Iru' servants.

(Not all the King's Men pg 22, 31-36)

It's also important to note that in Rwanda, the term abiiru (ie the Iru) was used for court ritualists, while Hima was a term for lesser status herders, and Umugaba (the Nkore king's title) meant commander. Vasina argues that these terms spread from western Uganda to Rwanda, and the Ndori was himself a Hima. Another scholar, Mahmood Mamadani, argues that the abiiru court ritualists were mostly derived from Hutu lineages during the reign of Rujugira (1756–65). This theory may have some support Vansina, who argues that the Nyiginya founder Ndori was aided by ritualists from the kingdom of Ndorwa and autochthonous lineages in Rwanda that may well have been considered predominantly Hutu in later times. However, by the time of Alexis Kagame, who was himself a mwiiru, these ritualists were recognized as Tutsi.

(When victims become killers, pg 63-64,  Antecedents to Modern Rwanda pg 37, 46-57)

The above arguments indicate that while the terms Tutsi and Hima are likely to have been given to the pastoral population by the farmers,  the terms 'Hutu' and 'Iru' referred to specific social groups within the Tutsi and Hima societies that would later be projected onto the rest of the farmers after the expansion of the Tutsi/Hima led kingdoms of Rwanda and Nkore.

The southern Great Lakes region at the end of the seventeenth century

The kingdom of Nyiginya and Nkore in the 18th and 19th century: centralization and social evolution.

In Rwanda, the army organization constituted the administrative framework of the country, power gradually concentrated in the hands of the army commanders at the expense of the provincial chiefs. By the late 18th century, King Rujugira begun to install permanent camps along the borders while their commanders (and thus, the great chiefs) were required to stay at the capital, whose large population was sustained by ever-increasing taxes and tribute.

In the 18th and 19th centuries, the Nyiginya kingdom was part of a political region composed of kingdoms that were all led by a ruling class of Tutsi or Hima herders and their courts maintained fairly frequent contacts with each other, often warring to seize territory and cattle. The most significant of which included Ndorwa/Mpororo to the north, Karagwe and Gisaka to the east, and Burundi to the south. The region experienced a growth in Trade, warfare and limited migration between the kingdoms, as their borders expanded, so did their armies. 

(Antecedents to Modern Rwanda pg 78-80, 97, 110-112, The land beyond the Mists pg 209-214)

In Nkore, the less centralized political structure essentially juxtaposed a Hima superstructure over two, largely autonomous socio-economic poles of herders and farmers, of which only the former was directly and more intimately related to this superstructure. Internally, political and judicial matters revolved around the court of the Omugabe (king) and his royal lineage group; the ba-Hinda, who entered patronage relationships with their clients; both Hima and Iru, as well as intermediate groups called ba-Kungu.

And like Rwanda, the kings of Nkore conducted a number of expansionist wars in the 19th century, taking advantage of the decline of Bunyoro. Several smaller neighboring states mostly led by herder elites, were eventually made to acknowledge Nkore's paramountcy, expressed through the tribute they paid to its ruler.

Despite earlier assertions to the contrary --including by Vansina's earlier works--, Doornbos emphatically argues that the Omugabe did not hold absolute power since there was a difference between the actual and ideal aspects of the authority vested in the Omugabe. Kingship in both Rwanda and Nkore was limited by the nature of court politics involving other royals and officials.

The absence of a cadre of officials solely loyal to the capital meant Nkore's integration was even less elaborate than Rwanda's, where the institution of the army displaced leaders of pre-existing social groups, and its presence in the capital and regional centers constituted the administrative structure of the state.

(Not all the King's Men pg 19, 39-40, 45-47, 52-59, Antecedents to Modern Rwanda pg 66.)

As political centralization grew in Rwanda, increasing internal competition by title holders at the court, and regional governors in the provinces fueled the expansion of the kingdom and the entrenchment of social hierarchies. By the  19th century, especially during the reign of  Kigeri Rwabugiri (1860–95), transformations in land tenure brought about by population increase compelled the chiefs to play a more active role in determining land use, as more farmers found themselves without land and hired themselves out as day labourers (umucancuro). Around 1870, the obligations of these day-laborers/tenants to their chief/landlord had grown into a system known as oburetwa.

(Antecedents to Modern Rwanda pg 129-134)

According to Vansina, the institutionalization of oburetwa was the most significant of the centuries-long process which transformed Tutsi and Hutu into the social categories as they would be known in the 20th century.

While Tutsi initially designated a section of herders, and later came to be used by the court elites, Hutu was used to describe noncombatants and other servants that included other herders. As the influence of the capital, the kingdom and its armies grew, the distinctions between Hutu and Tutsi gradually spread all across the country, and neighboring states with herder elites became known as Tutsis with Hutu subjects. When the uburetwa was imposed exclusively on farmers, a new social awareness emerged that displaced older social divisions.

(Antecedents to Modern Rwanda pg 134-136)

As the new social categories became rallying points for political movements, the farmers labeled as 'Hutu' began to resist the exploitation by their 'Tutsi' chiefs. The frequent internal conflicts between elites now acquired a quasi-ethnic dimension. Beginning in the 1880s, several rebellions by the Hutu broke out against the Tutsi elites, with the former seeking foreign allies or disgraced Tutsi, while the latter sought the aid of the royal court. In 1895, one of these anti-Tutsi rebellions led to the wholesale killing of several Tutsi and two chiefs before it was crushed.

Outside the core of the Nyiginya state, its expansionist armies brought several previously independent polities like Kinyaga in S.W Rwanda, and most parts of Ndorwa in S.W Uganda under its control, and their populations subsequently "became" Hutu and Tutsi. However, the people called 'Hutu' did not use this exonymous term to describe themselves, as they insisted on referring to themselves by the pre-existing ethnonyms tied to the lands they called home, such as “people” of Bugoyi, Kinyaga, Nduga, Rukiga.

(When Victims Become Killers pg 69-71, Antecedents to Modern Rwanda pg 137-139)

 Cultural subregions of Rwanda at the turn of the 20th century. Note that the regions in the north and west labeled 'Rukiga', 'Ndorwa', 'Bugoyi', and 'Kinyaga' were not subsumed by Nyiginya until the early colonial period.

The early colonial period in "Ankole" and "Rwanda" (ca. 1900-1950): a convergence of social divisions.

The kingdom of Nkore formally became part of the Uganda colony in 1901, in a relatively peaceful process compared to the long period of warfare in Bunyoro and Buganda. The British then added several neighboring kingdoms to Nkore, doubling its size by 1901, and further enlarging it in subsequent decades to become the colonial subdivision of Ankole. This brought in regions that had almost no Hima groups, thus making the latter a minority. And also brought in other kingdoms like Buhweju whose political structure was similar to Bunyoro than to the pastoral states in the south. It also brought in rival Hima clans like the ba-Shambo from Mpororo/Ndorwa.

(Not all the king's men pg 62-68)

The establishment of a colonial administrative state led to the creation of a new chiefly elite that disproportionately recruited among the Hima. Internal competition between the ba-Hinda royal lineage and the upstart groups drawn from the ba-Shambo, and other Hima clans led to the erosion of the ba-Hinda's authority in administration, especially after the newly appointed enganzi (prime-minister) of Ankole, Nuwa Mbaguta, came from the ba-Shambo .

It also entailed inbuilt ethnic friction, as the Iru in due course began to question and challenge the basis on which political privileges were allocated. Despite being 90% of Ankole's population, they made up just 11% of the chief positions in Ankole in 1907. Yet foreign elites such as the baGanda and baNyoro (from the kingdoms of Buganda and Bunyoro) occupied 32% of chiefly offices, and even Tutsi elites were assimilated as Hima and counted among the total Hima&Hinda proportion of 57%.

(Not all the king's men pg 70-75)

historical Nkore (circled) versus colonial Ankole

The colonial administration favoured the now-expanded Hima administrative elite. This had always been framed in racial terms, with early reporters calling them 'born rulers' and a 'superior race' of Hamites, in contrast to the Iru who were given negative descriptions. The appointment of the Hima entailed a self-fulfilling hypothesis in which the Iru who were now subject to the Hima, were presumed to have always occupied this subjugated position. Hima chiefs collected taxes and tribute from the Iru, as well as rents from agricultural land given to them by the colonial government, which they intern leased to Iru farmers.

Colonial privileges stimulated the emergence of a nascent consciousness among the Hima elites, whose structured superiority led to affections of arrogance and assumptions of Iru inferiority and increasingly coloured social relationships in Ankole society. Pre-colonial Hima experiences with Iru servants tended to be extended by the colonial Hima chiefs to the Iru communities as a whole, which was again reinforced by the British officer's constant lauding of Hima superiority and racialization of social cleavages.

(Not all the king's men pg 77-81, 85-86)

 the king of Ankole, Omugabe Kahaya, and the prime-minster Nuwa Mbaguta, ca. 1919, MAA, UK. Note that colonial photography was a key to the construction of a 'Hima' social identity, the caption on the right reads that the king's entourage are "pure bahima, and their features are typical"

Rwanda's society underwent a similar colonial experience as Nkore. The Nyiginya kingdom formally came under German control in 1899, initially as a protectorate that mostly left internal autonomy in place, mediated by missionary groups. Rwanda's king Musinga (1896-1931) thus continued expanding into the northern region, but not without several revolts and resistance from the Hutu and Twa, at times allied with the missionaries.

A colonial resident didn't assume office until 1907 and while they were relatively respectful of royal authority in matters concerning only Rwandans, the Germans were less so in affairs related to their own interests. They began appointing government chiefs/officials by 1912, and collecting tax by 1914, but the king continued to try and stall colonial encroachment. In the newly conquered regions, the Tutsi elites received grants of land/territory from the Court and started defining their domains by hills instead of by lineages.

As they installed governors/chiefs in the area and began to requisition regular taxes in produce and in uburetwa labor, they needed more formal representatives with wider powers to ensure the efficient functioning of their residences while they were at Court. This gradually began a transformation similar in Tutsi/Hutu identities across the country, similar to that which had taken place in central Rwanda. Eventually, the Hutu uprisings such as Ndungutse in 1912, which were directed against their Tutsi chiefs brought German retaliation and the reduction of the King's power.

(Defeat is the Only bad news pg 85-90, 102-109, 111-112, 120-129)

 Group of 'Tutsis' near Kigali, ca. 1914-1918. photo likely taken shortly after the Belgian occupation

During Germany's defeat in the First World War, a combined Belgian-British force arrived in Rwanda in 1916, and forced the Germans out. Initial antagonism between the Belgians and the king gave way to a sharp reversal as both became very accommodating to each other. The Belgians became committed to upholding the Tutsi elites’ power as part of the effort to rebuild the authority of the Court across the colony, and the latter used the Belgians to affirm their control over the Hutu. The administrators began to accept more rigidly the myth of the superiority of the Tutsi, using it to explain their own neglect of the Hutu and to justify increased demands on them: the Tutsi were born to rule, the Hutu to labour.

(Defeat is the Only bad news pg 142-147, 157-164, 227-236)

In Rwanda, as in Nkore, the Hamitic theory evolved from an intellectual construct into an institutional construct. This racial discourse guided policy making and was translated into a set of institutions and reforms that the ideology inspired and which inturn reproduced it. The Catholic church was instrumental in the maintenance of a Tutsi-dominated hierarchy, and the racialization of the Tutsi/Hutu dichotomy. Mission schools gave preferential treatment to Tutsi children while restricting the enrollment of Hutu children. The educated Tutsi were then appointed in the local administration, replacing the few Hutu who had retained such privileges.

Church leaders like  Francois Menard, who wrote in 1917 that a Tutsi was “a European under a black Skin," prepared anthropological treatises that guided colonial 'race policy', especially during institutional reforms of the 1920s and 30s. The reforms were capped with a census of 1933-34 that classified the entire population as Tutsi, Hutu, or Twa, based on a rule that every Tutsi had to have ten cows. They then issued each person with a card proclaiming their official identity, completing the transformation of the Tutsi/Hutu dichotomy into a "race".

(When Victims Become Killers pg 89-93, 98-100)

An awareness of a common social identity among the Hutu thus arose only as the result of their common experience with subjects of the same colony and by its institutionalization in all manner of census and identity papers. This awareness among the Hutu counter-elite would then be openly appropriated and further refined during the political struggles of the 1950s.

It's at this point that the trajectory of Rwanda and Nkore diverge because while religion and education racialized the Tutsi/Hutu dichotomy in Rwanda, it was within these exact institutions that decisions of local agents eventually led to the reduction in the significance of the Hima/Iru dichotomy in Nkore.

 Mwami Mutara III Rudahigwa of Rwanda on a state visit to Belgium, ca. 1949.

Divergent paths: the transition from colonialism to self-governance in Ankole and Rwanda ca. 1950-1962.

In Nkore, Church Mission schools, mostly run by protestants, provided the kind of education needed for administrative roles. Children of Hima elites comprised 75% of the first high schools, and staffed chiefly offices once they completed school, while the Iru were divided between protestants and Catholics so they wouldn't immediately pose a threat. But by the second quarter of the 20th century, increased enrollment of Iru children reduced the advantages held by the Hima and gradually eroded their privileged position in Ankole, and by 1949, the Enganzi of Ankole was appointed from among the Iru.

(Not all The King's Men pg 88-95, 12122)

Political changes in the 1930s and 40s brought about by complaints from the Iru about the Hima and Ganda chiefs, induced policies of withdrawal which tended to be directed against the Ganda who were replaced by Iru chiefs. Yet the Iru still occupied only 39 out of 63 sub-county chieftainships, despite making up 90% of the population. Later political movements such as the Kumanyana protest which was in response to Hima backlash against the appointment of an Iru prime-minister, coincided with the colonial government's increased drive of recruiting among the Iru and gradually led to the erosion of Hima elite dominance.

 These movements were largely dominated by insiders; Iru protestants, who chose not to be directly confrontational but to influence political appointments in their favour. Contact was largely maintained by secret gatherings, political agitation was done individually rather than representing a group, but funds for sponsoring the education of Iru children were gathered collectively.  The Iru scored more political victories, culminating with another Iru enganzi being appointed in 1955.

(Not all king's men pg 76, 120, 123, 125-131)

On the other hand, Rwanda in the 1950s was the most decisive decade during which social tensions between the established Tutsi elite and the emerging Hutu counter-elite reached a boiling point. The Hutu counter-elite had grown out of the complex patterns of labour migration in response to colonial era corvee laws, and the emergence of a small but influential group of Hutu intellectuals both abroad (in Congo and Uganda) and in Rwanda.

The Tutsi elites were loudly opposed to this small Hutu ascendancy, including the historian Alexis Kagame, and they continued to hold power, and the Hutu found themselves shut out of private and civil service. The only space that wasn't entirely exclusionary was the Church, which was undergoing reforms in ideology after the Nazi defeat had forced a reckoning in theories of race science. it was here that Hutu intellectuals began publishing newspapers for a Hutu audience.

(When victims become killers pg 107-114)

Political reforms in the 1950s which begun with the local elections of 1953 and the general elections of 1956, that were intended by the UN to transition the colony to independence, were heavily biased in favour of the Tutsi elite, which influenced the choice of eligible candidates at most council levels. Upto 52% of lower-level councilors were Tutsi, a level that rose to a whopping 90.6% on the highest level of the colony. This was disproportionate to their 10-15% share of the population, and worsened by the support of the king whose council was 94% Tutsi.

This loss compelled the Hutu intellectuals to author a manifesto to the UN opposing the transfer of power to what would be a Tutsi-led government. The "foreignness" of the Tutsi was at the heart of the debate. 'The more assertive the Hutu counter elite grew, the more it provoked a shrill reaction from those Tutsi who had swallowed wholesale the venom that was the Hamitic hypothesis and who were bent on defending colonial privilege as a time-tested tradition'.

(When victims become killers pg 115-120)

Its in this context that four main parties were founded, of which two were the most consequential; the pro-monarchist UNAR and the militant PARMEHUTU. While all parties hoped to attract both Hutu and Tutsi members, the prevailing social climate ultimately served to associate each party with ethnic/racial affiliations. The death of the king in 1959 provided the spark that lit the fuse of what would become the first genocide in Rwanda.

The monarchists quickly inaugurated a puppet king without informing the Belgian colonialists, followed by rumors that UNAR militants had attacked the Hutu leader of PARMEHUTU sparking a revolt that led to the killing of hundreds of Tutsis. The violence only ended after the Belgians declared a state of emergence, replaced "troublesome" Tutsi chiefs with Hutus, and organized communal elections in 1960 that were boycotted by UNAR and overwhelmingly won by PARMEHUTU. The monarchy was abolished in 1961, and the country attained independence in 1962 under a Hutu elite that was explicitly anti-Tutsi. The monarchist Tutsi elites moved to exile and organized minor raids into Rwanda that were responded to with killings of local Tutsis by the Hutu-led government, in a precursor to the patterns that led to the 1994 genocide.

(When victims become killers pg 120-131) 

Contrast this with Ankole, where in the years preceding Uganda's independence in 1962, the increasingly marginalized but still powerful Hima elite began forming alliances with the equally marginalized but weak Iru Catholics in order to retain power in response to increased political gains by the Iru protestants. This also mirrored trends across the rest of the colony where religious affiliations supplanted ethnic affiliations as vehicles of maximizing political influence in Uganda, as the country's two main parties; D.P and UPC became associated with protestants and Catholics respectively.

It was common for Hima and Iru politicians on either side to court the support of both groups, because the 50% split between protestant and Catholic Iru made the otherwise smaller population of the Hima important in Ankole, especially for the D.P party. Yet the predominance of the UPC party in Uganda after its independence served as a counter-balance against the influence of the Hima on a national level, making the strategies of the different political groups more complex. This complex equilibrium of coalition politics would prevail in Ankole long after the kingdom was formally abolished in 1967, and served to further reduce Hima/Iru tensions to this day.

(Not all the king's men pg 146-162)

Mwami Mutara Rudahigwa accompanied by some chiefs and dignitaries, ca. 1940, Collection Michel Campion

Conclusion: how African cultures shape and are shaped by history.

The above historical analysis of the Tutsi/Hima vs Hutu/Iru dichotomy shows that ethnicities and other social divisions are neither inherently problematic nor are they primordial. In Rwanda, as in Nkore the categories used to describe different social groups were shaped by the complex history of interactions between societies and states, which created the social landscape of their kingdoms in a process that was in no way inevitable or pre-determined.

In Nkore, these social interactions evolved from limited albeit unequal contacts between Hima and Iru during the pre-colonial period, to institutionalized inequality during the colonial era, to the subsiding of ethnic strife during the post-colonial era. In Rwanda, the same interactions were slightly more frequent and just as unequal during the pre-colonial period, but were greatly transformed and institutionalised during the colonial era, and further sustained during the post-colonial period.

As Mamdani observes, "The colonial state in Rwanda produced bipolar racial identities, and not plural ethnic identities, among the colonized. This difference cannot be explained as either a simple carryover from the precolonial era or its inevitable consequence. It has to be seen as a specific outcome of the articulation between precolonial and colonial institutions and ideologies,

The Rwandan genocide is testimony to both the poisoned colonial legacy and the nativist nationalist project that failed to transcend it."

References:

Antecedents to Modern Rwanda: The Nyiginya Kingdom By Jan Vansina

The Land Beyond the Mists: Essays in Identity & Authority in Precolonial Congo and Rwanda by David Newbury

Narrating and Teaching the Nation by Denise Bentrovato

UNESCO Vol.5, Africa from the Sixteenth to the Eighteenth Century

When Victims Become Killers: Colonialism, Nativism, and the Genocide in Rwanda By Mahmood Mamdani

Not All the King's Men: Inequality as a Political Instrument in Ankole, Uganda by Martin Doornbos

A History of the Kingdom of Nkore in Western Uganda to 1896 by Samwiri Rubaraza Karugire

Defeat Is the Only Bad News: Rwanda under Musinga, 1896–1931 By Alison Des Forges

Once upon a Time: Oral Traditions as History in Africa by Jan Vansina

For Oral Tradition (But Not against Braudel) by Jan Vansina

Contradictions at the Heart of the Canon: Jan Vansina and the Debate over Oral by D Newbury

Multidisciplinary Evidence of Mixed Farming during the Early Iron Age in Rwanda and Burundi by Van Grunderbeek MC and Roche E

The development of iron technology in precolonial western Uganda by L Iles

A new look at the Ankole capital sites by Andrew Reid & Peter Robert shaw

Clan and history in western Uganda: A New Perspective on the Origins of Pastoral Dominance by Justin Willis

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