II: PROBLEMS OF ETHNIC ANALYSIS

While an analysis of the role of ethnicity in the Rwandan genocide is essential to understanding the genocide, one that analyzes ethnicity as a motivator in its own right, and one that privileges this analysis over historical, political, economic, and social analysis draw simplistic conclusions, with perhaps dangerous consequences. One problem, then, is how ethnicity is conceptualized as an ancient, natural identity played out inevitability, rather than a constructed, politicized identity that gets its meaning from historical, economic, and social factors; another, the privileging of ethnicity over these very factors, so necessary to understanding the context and motivations for actions.
The idea that ethnic identity is the cause of conflict portrays this identity, as John Bowen argues, as "ancient and unchanging", comprised of "primordial ethnic...differences" and "age-old loyalties".(1) The inherent problem is that they are thus perceived to be natural, and therefore, the conflict unavoidable. Bowen goes on to point out that, in reality, "far from reflecting ancient ethnic or tribal loyalties, [group] cohesion and action are products of the modern state's demands that people make themselves heard as powerful groups, or else risk suffering severe disadvantages."(2) Ethnic identity is in this way a politicized identity, and therefore cannot be accepted as an objective factor: "Ethnicity, although generally considered a cause of the conflict, is not an explanation but rather that which is to be explained. The terminology of ethnicity is part of the conflict and cannot serve as a language of analysis."(3) The consequences of not recognizing the factors that shape ethnic identity are tragically evident in the case of Rwanda: if the conflict is inevitable, between groups that are natural enemies, there is nothing anybody can do to stop it, and the perpetrators are held accountable. -top-

III: ETHNICITY IN THE RWANDA GENOCIDE

While many theorists have asserted that ethnic identity is a constructed political identity that cannot serve as a frame of analysis for a conflict, and that it has a basis in complex historical, economic, and social situations, that does not mean it is not a powerful force, and that it does not influence behavior. In the case of Rwanda, the calculated extermination of a portion of the Rwandan population justified by ethnic identities shows what a powerful tool ethnicity can be. However, as Tim Allen points out, "The power of ethnicity comes from an acceptance by enough people that particular social divisions are natural and inevitable."(4) By the time of the genocide, the "ethnic" division between Hutu and Tutsi were inscribed through a long process, began in the colonial period that worked to translate conflict over power and resources into ethnic terms, and construct cultural and historical ethnic myths to support political interests. Regardless of their constructed nature, "once mythologies of ethnicity are sealed in bloodshed, to all intents and purposes, ethnic identities become objective social phenomena."(5) The actors in the situation may see these as their motivation, and "find highly ethnicized, often highly apolitical, explanations for what has happened to them (and what they do to others)...convincing."(6) In this way, ethnicity in Rwanda served as an explanation for violence, but only because of the history of the creation of separate ethnic groups, as well as the continued ethnic indoctrination promoted and enforced by the leaders of the genocide. Ethnicity becomes political reality, but is still "the product of social processes."(7) And when ethnicity is viewed detached from the processes that formed it, it can take the shape of an essentialized, apolitical justification for violence, and a natural identity that cannot be questioned. -top-

IV: HISTORY OF TUTSI AND HUTU ETHNIC IDENTITES

(1) ETHNIC GROUPS IN RWANDA

Before the genocide (prior to 1994), the accepted ethnic statistics identified 84 percent of the Rwandan population as Hutu, 15 percent as Tutsi, and 1% as the aboriginal Twa.(8) The differences between Hutus and Tutsis, however, are largely thought of in terms of occupation and economic status. The Hutu have traditionally been the farmers and commoners, while the Tutsi were the cattle owners, and the aristocracy.(9) However, this tendency for economic specialization, and each individual's economic and social status were often used to distinguish ethnic identity, rather than the other way around.(10) Many scholars argue that there are no separate ethnic groups in Rwanda because the identities we see today do not reflect fundamental cultural or other differences among the Rwandan people. McNutty quotes social geographer Dominique Franche: "The Hutus and Tutsis do not form two different ethnic groups. An ethnic group is defined by a unity of language, culture, religion, and territory. The Hutus, Tutsis, and Twas live together...they speak the same language and share the same culture and religion."(11)
The Organization for African Unity (OAU) finds that "Even today, after all the carnage, one historian estimates that at least 25 per cent of Rwandans have both Hutu and Tutsi among their eight great-grandparents. Looking back even further, the percentage with mixed ancestry would most likely exceed 50 per cent."(12) The intermixing of 'ethnically' different groups and the commonality of cultural and linguistic traditions challenges essentialist ideas of ethnic identity, and emphasizes the necessity of questioning what created the rigid ethnic identities that were used to justify genocide. -top-

(2) PRE-COLONIAL

According to a Special Report commissioned by the Organization for African Unity (OAU), there is a fundamental historical debate as to whether the ethnic categories in Rwanda existed prior to colonial rule.(13) The colonial history that the Tutsi were immigrant conquerors from the north has been used by both Tutsi and Hutu political leaders, but has been widely dismissed.(14) Instead the ethnic identities of current Rwanda were likely first used as a way of organizing power under King Rwabugiri, a Tutsi who ruled in the late 1800s, and created a centralized state that subordinated groups by ethnic differences. These ethnic differences were based on social status and occupation, and were fluid categories. However, there was no violence between these groups, and they lived among each other.(15) -top-

(3) COLONIAL

The colonial domination of Rwanda by first Germany in 1895, then Belgium from 1916 to 1961 strengthened these ethnic groups through a complex mythico-history and a European science of race. They created rigid boundaries, and purposefully denied power and resources to Hutus because of their "ethnicity". For the colonizers to maintain power over a population that far outnumbered their own, they had a system of indirect rule, whereby they supported a client group, often the minority, to rule over the rest of the population.(16) In Rwanda the colonizers found the Tutsi king in power, and it served their interests to support Tutsi domination over the majority Hutu, and to further divide Rwandan society.(17)
To justify colonial strengthening of ethnic divisions, they promoted a "theory of racial superiority [that] explained a situation of political privilege."(18) This was based on observations of earlier missionaries and anthropologists in the region, and informed by the racial science that was being developed in Europe at the time. The "Hamitic" hypothesis, which served to explain Tutsi superiority, created a mythical racial difference between Tutsi and Hutu, and posited that the Tutsi had emigrated from the Nile valley, and had Caucasoid origins.(19) Because of the 'more Caucasian' features of the Tutsi, they were seen as closer to whites on the evolutionary scale, and therefore justified to dominate the majority "Negroid" Hutus. The Tutsi political leaders supported the colonial authored history because it served their political interests, and served to institutionalize and naturalize their political power and control over resources.(20)
This historical and racial mythology became institutionalized because of the colonial control over the institutions of socialization. McNutty cites Prunier in asserting that "a (foreign-authored) cultural mythology, which, given the dominance of foreign influence in education and information, became reality."(21) The Catholic Church played a significant role in this process. "Because they controlled all schooling in the colony, the [Catholic] White Fathers were able, with the full endorsement of the Belgians, to indoctrinate generations of school children, both Hutu and Tutsi, with the pernicious Hamitic notions. Whatever else they learned, no student could have failed to absorb the lessons of ethnic cleavage and racial ranking."(22) While 'natural' ethnic divisions were taught in schools, access to resources and political power created tension between the groups.
In 1926, the Belgian colonizers issued ethnic identity cards to the Rwandan population, which were then used to determine who got access to education and resources.(23) That ethnicity determined this is obvious in the figures of the time period: "Between 1932 and 1957, for example, more than three-quarters of the students in the only secondary school in the small city of Butare were Tutsi. Ninety-five per cent of the country's civil service came to be Tutsi. Forty-three out of 45 chiefs and all but 10 of 559 sub-chiefs were Tutsi."(24)
However, how was ethnic identity determined? The fluidity of ethnic boundaries, given the intermarriage and shared cultural, linguistic, and religious traditions made it difficult to impose rigid racial categories. Ethnicity under colonial rule was thus largely defined through power and wealth. In the 1933-34 census, for example, a Tutsi was identified as someone owning 10 or more cattle.(25) Yet in order to create rigid ethnic identities where none existed, the colonial mythico-history identified very specific physical distinguishing characteristics, that were imbued with moral and character traits that served racist interests. "[T]he meticulously crafted maps of physical differences were superimposed ...with analogous maps of what were seen as innate moral character differences."(26) Through such racist myths, intense indoctrination and the use of 'ethnicity' to allocate power and resources, the colonists succeeded in dividing Rwandan society, and creating politicized identities that would play themselves out throughout the rest of Rwanda's history. -top-

(4) POST-COLONIAL

In 1959 the Rwandans began to fight for independence from colonial rule. During 1959 - 1961 the colonial rulers and the Church began to support the Hutu majority, recognizing that in a war for control of the country, the Hutu majority would inevitably come out on top.(27) The exploitation they endured under the Tutsi government, combined with a pervasive racial ideology contributed to the formation of an ethnic based Hutu identity reflecting political and economic grievances. Because power under the colonists and their client Tutsi leaders was justified in racial terms, they also informed the struggle over control of the country after independence. In 1962 when the Hutu gained control over the country, it was through the Parmehutu movement, which was the Party for Hutu Emancipation.(28) While the political leadership had changed hands, it only transferred power from one elite to another, and continued perpetrating ethnic resentment, and state sponsored inequality. "Accepting the racist premises of their former oppressors, the Hutu now treated all Tutsi as untrustworthy foreign invaders who had no rights and deserved no consideration."(29)
With the shift of power, Rwandan Tutsi became the victims of violence and severe discrimination, as economic and social inequalities were framed in ethnic terms. Hundreds of thousands of Tutsi became refugees, and thousands were killed in the massacres of 1963, 1967, and 1973.(30) The Hutu majority was not a unified group sharing similar interest, and defined themselves through their relationship to the Tutsi. When there were challenges to the power of the small elite running the country, the Parmehutu strengthened their position at the expense of the Tutsi.(31) This failed however, when the northern Hutu, a group that had been kept out of political power, initiated a coup, and General Juvenal Habyarimana ascended to the presidency in July 1973.(32) While he put an end to the anti-Tutsi terror of the Parmehutu, he continued to deny the return of Tutsi refugees.(33) This set the stage for the civil war and genocide to follow. -top-

V: CONCLUSION

An analysis of the history of ethnic identities in Rwanda brings to light their highly political and constructed nature. The result of almost a century of ethnic terms to describe a struggle over resources and power, as well as a reliance on a racist mythico-history to explain historical inequality and conflict tragically culminated in the Rwandan genocide, where ethnicity was exploited as a political tool to the extreme. However, with the recognition that ethnic identities are not natural or ahistorical, this political tool is significantly undermined. -top-

ENDNOTES

1. Bowen, John. 1996. "The Myth of Global Ethnic Conflict", Journal of Democracy
7:4, pp.3-14, 3
2. Ibid., 3
3. Pieterse, qtd in McNutty, Mel. 1999. Media Ethnicization and the International Response to War and Genocide in Rwanda. The Media of Conflict: War Reporting and Representations of Ethnic Violence. Edited by Tim Allen and Jean Seaton, London and New York: Zed Books, 276
4. Allen, Tim. 1999. Perceiving Contemporary Wars. The Media of Conflict: War Reporting and Representations of Ethnic Violence. Edited by Tim Allen and Jean Seaton
London and New York: Zed Books, 3
5. Ibid., 29
6. Ibid., 29
7. Ibid., 29
8. McNutty, 276
9. Kuperman, Alan. 1996. "The Other Lesson of Rwanda: Mediators Sometimes Do More Damage Than Good", SAIS Review 16.1, 1996, pp. 221-240, 223
10. Ibid., 223
11. Franche, qtd in McNutty, 276
12. Organization for African Unity. 2000. Special Report by the International Panel of Eminent Personalities to Investigate the 1994 Genocide in Rwanda and the Surrounding Events.
http://www.oau-oua.org/Document/ipep/ipep.htm
13. Ibid., ch 2
14. Pierce, Steven. Book Review of Mahmood Mamdani, When Victims Become Killers: Colonialism, Nativism, and the Genocide in Rwanda (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001). Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History 2:3. 2001
15. OAU, ch.2
16. Bowen, 5
17. OAU, ch.2
18. Pierce
19..OAU, ch.2
20. Ibid., ch.2
21. McNutty, 276
22. OAU, ch.2
23. Kuperman, 223
24. OAU, ch.2
25. Kuperman, 223
26. mythico history 78
27. OAU, ch. 3
28. Kuperman, 223
29. OAU, ch, 3
30. Kuperman, 223
31. OAU, ch.2
32. Ibid., ch.2
33. Kuperman, 223

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