Book dossier

Rwanda after Genocide

by Caroline Williamson Sinalo

"Before the arrival of Europeans, conflict rarely took place between the Tutsi and Hutu in Rwanda. Wars generally pitted the Banyarwanda as a group against outsiders and, with the same language, religion and cultural practices, the terms Hutu and Tutsi did not refer to distinct ethnic groups, as such, but to political status and occupation. The racialisation of these groups came with the arrival of the German and later Belgian colonists who believed the Tutsi to be racially superior to the Hutu. Such divisions were further reinforced by the colonial policy of introducing identity cards in the 1930s which explicitly stated the individual's ethnic group. Alongside these reforms, the Belgians established Tutsi supremacy by reserving educational opportunities for Tutsi and replacing all Hutu in power with pro-European Tutsi chiefs"--