This post discusses the political history of Rwanda from the early times down to the colonial, the independence and politics of Rwanda.
Human occupation of Rwanda is thought to have begun shortly after the last ice age. By the 11th century, the inhabitants had organized into a number of kingdoms. In the 19th century, Mwami (king) Rwabugiri of the Kingdom of Rwanda conducted a decades-long process of military conquest and administrative consolidation that resulted in the kingdom coming to control most of what is now Rwanda. The colonial powers, Germany and Belgium, allied with the Rwandan court.
MIDDLE AGES
By the 15th century, many of the Bantu-speakers, including both Hutu and Tutsi, had organized themselves into small states. According to Bethwell Allan Ogot, these included at least three. The oldest state, which has no name, was probably established by the Renge lineages of the Singa clan and covered most of modern Rwanda, besides the northern region. The Mubari state of the Zigaba (Abazigaba) clan also covered an extensive area. The Gisaka state in southeast Rwanda was powerful, maintaining its independence until the mid-19th century. However, the latter two states are largely unmentioned in contemporary discussion of Rwandan civilization.
REIGN OF RWABUGIRI (19TH CENTURY)
In the 19th century, the state became far more centralized, and the history far more precise. Expansion continued, reaching the shores of Lake Kivu. This expansion was less about military conquest and more about a migrating population spreading Rwandan agricultural techniques, social organization, and the extension of the political control of a Mwami. Once this was established camps of warriors were established along the vulnerable borders to prevent incursions. Only against other well-developed states such as Gisaka, Bugesera, and Burundi was expansion carried out primarily by force of arms.
Under the monarchy the economic imbalance between the Hutus and the Tutsis crystallized, and a complex political imbalance emerged as the Tutsis formed into a hierarchy dominated by a Mwami or ‘king’. The King was treated as a semi-divine being, responsible for making the country prosper. The symbol of the King was the Kalinga, the sacred drum.
All the people of Rwanda were expected to pay tribute to the Mwami; it was collected by a Tutsi administrative hierarchy. Beneath the Mwami was a Tutsi ministerial council of great chiefs, some of them were the chiefs of cattle, chiefs of land and last but not least the military chiefs.
Due to their position of power and system of exploitation of the Hutu peasantry a sort of feudal relationship developed where Tutsi aristocracy started to see themselves as superior beings, turning the Hutu into second class citizens. Rebellions by Hutu peasantry were struck down without mercy, with villages being massacred and property being confiscated.
By the 19th century the rate of social mobility had severely dwindled and cases of “class promotion” had become exceedingly rare, which slowly changed the kingdom into a caste system. What little social mobility was left ended abruptly with the onset of colonial administration.
COLONIAL RWANDA
Unlike much of Africa, Rwanda and the Great Lakes region was not divided by the 1884 Berlin Conference. This declared Rwanda and Burundi as part of the German Empire as colonial spheres of interest in exchange for renouncing all claims on Uganda. The inferior European maps referenced in these agreements left Belgium with a claim on the western half of the country; after several border skirmishes the final borders of the colony were not established until 1900. These borders contained the Kingdom of Rwanda as well as a group of smaller kingdoms on the shore of Lake Victoria.
In 1894 Rutarindwa inherited the kingdom from his father Rwabugiri IV, but many on the king’s council were unhappy. There was a rebellion and the family was killed. Yuhi Musinga inherited the throne through his mother and uncles, but there was still dissent.
German East Africa (1885–1919)
The first European to visit or explore Rwanda was a German, Count Gustav Adolf von Götzen, who from 1893 to 1894 led an expedition to claim the hinterlands of the Tanganyika colony. Götzen entered Rwanda at Rusumo Falls, and then travelled through Rwanda, visiting the court of Rwabugiri in 1894, at his palace in Nyanza, and eventually reached Lake Kivu, the western edge of the kingdom. The next year the king died. With Rwanda in turmoil over the succession, the Germans moved in (in 1897, from Tanzania) to claim the region for the Kaiser.[14] With only 2,500 soldiers in East Africa, Germany hardly changed the social structures in much of the region, especially in Rwanda.
Belgian League of Nations mandate (1916–1945)
At the end of WWI, Belgium accepted the League of Nations Mandate of 1916 to govern Rwanda as one of the two kingdoms making up the territory Ruanda-Urundi, along with its existing Congo colony to the west. The portion of the German territory, never a part of the Kingdom of Rwanda, was stripped from the colony and attached to Tanganyika mandate. A colonial military campaign from 1923 to 1925 brought the small independent kingdoms to the west, such as Kingogo, Bushiru, Bukunzi and Busozo, under the power of the central Rwandan court.
The Belgian government continued to rely on the Tutsi power structure for administering the country, although they became more directly involved in extended its interests into education and agricultural supervision. The Belgians introduced cassava, maize and the Irish potato, to try to improve food production for subsistence farmers. This was especially important in the face of two droughts and subsequent famines in 1928–29 and in 1943–44. In the second, known as the Ruzagayura famine, one-fifth to one-third of the population died. In addition, many Rwandans migrated to neighboring Congo, adding to later instability there.
Belgian UN trust territory (1945–1961)
Following World War II, Ruanda-Urundi became a United Nations trust territory with Belgium as the administrative authority. Reforms instituted by the Belgians in the 1950s encouraged the growth of democratic political institutions but were resisted by the Tutsi traditionalists, who saw them as a threat to Tutsi rule.
From the late 1940s, King Rudahigwa, a Tutsi with democratic vision, abolished the “ubuhake” system and redistributed cattle and land. Although the majority of pasture lands remained under Tutsi control, the Hutu began to feel more liberation from Tutsi rule. Through the reforms, the Tutsis were no longer perceived to be in total control of cattle, the long-standing measure of a person’s wealth and social position. The reforms contributed to ethnic tensions.
Strife and lead up to independence
In the 1950s and early 1960s, a wave of Pan-Africanism swept through Central Africa, expressed by leaders such as Julius Nyerere in Tanzania and Patrice Lumumba in the Congo. Anti-colonial sentiment rose throughout central Africa, and a socialist platform of African unity and equality for all Africans was promoted. Encouraged by the Pan-Africanists, Hutu advocates in the Catholic Church, and by Christian Belgians (who were increasingly influential in the Congo), Hutu resentment of the Tutsi increased. The United Nations mandates, the Tutsi elite class, and the Belgian colonialists added to the growing unrest. Grégoire Kayibanda, founder of PARMEHUTU, led the Hutu “emancipation” movement. In 1957, he wrote the “Hutu Manifesto”. His party quickly became militarized. In reaction, in 1959 the Tutsi formed the UNAR party, lobbying for immediate independence for Ruanda-Urundi, to be based on the existing Tutsi monarchy. This group also became militarized. Skirmishes began between UNAR and PARMEHUTU groups. In July 1959, when the Tutsi Mwami (King) Mutara III Charles died following a routine vaccination, some Tutsi thought he had been assassinated. His younger half-brother became the next Tutsi monarch, Mwami (King) Kigeli V.
In November 1959, Tutsis to assassinate Kayibanda. Rumors of the death of Hutu politician Dominique Mbonyumutwa at the hands of Tutsis, who had beaten him, set off a violent retaliation, called the wind of destruction. Hutus killed an estimated 20,000 to 100,000 Tutsi; thousands more, including the Mwami, fled to neighboring Uganda before Belgian commandos arrived to quell the violence. Tutsi leaders accused the Belgians of abetting the Hutus. A UN special commission reported racism reminiscent of “Nazism” against the Tutsi minorities, and discriminatory actions by the government and Belgian authorities.
The revolution of 1959 marked a major change in political life in Rwanda. Some 150,000 Tutsis were exiled to neighboring countries. Tutsis who remained in Rwanda were excluded from political power in a state becoming more centralized under Hutu power. Tutsi refugees also fled to the South Kivu province of the Congo, where they were known as Banyamalenge.
In 1960, the Belgian government agreed to hold democratic municipal elections in Ruanda-Urundi.
Independence (1962)
On 25 September 1961, a referendum was held to establish whether Rwanda should become a republic or remain a kingdom. Citizens voted overwhelmingly for a republic. After parliamentary elections held on the same day, the first Rwandese Republic was declared, with Kayibanda as prime minister. Dominique Mbonyumutwa was named the first president of the transitional government.
Between 1961 and 1962, Tutsi guerrilla groups staged attacks into Rwanda from neighboring countries. Rwandan Hutu-based troops responded, and thousands more were killed in the clashes. On 1 July 1962, Belgium, with UN oversight, granted full independence to the two countries. Rwanda was created as a republic governed by the majority MDR-Parmehutu, which had gained full control of national politics. In 1963, a Tutsi guerrilla invasion into Rwanda from Burundi unleashed another anti-Tutsi backlash by the Hutu government; their forces killed an estimated 14,000 people. The economic union between Rwanda and Burundi was dissolved and tensions between the two countries worsened. Rwanda became a Hutu-dominated one-party state. In excess of 70,000 people had been killed.
POLITICS OF RWANDA
The politics of Rwanda reflect Belgian and German civil law systems and customary law takes place in a framework of a semi-presidential republic, whereby the President of Rwanda is the head of state with significant executive power, with the Prime Minister of Rwanda being the constitutional head of government.
Legislative power is vested in both the government and the two chambers of parliament, the Senate and the Chamber of Deputies. On 5 May 1995, the Transitional National Assembly adopted a new constitution which included elements of the constitution of 18 June 1991 as well as provisions of the 1993 Arusha peace accord and the November 1994 multiparty protocol of understanding.
HISTORICAL BACKGROUND
After its military victory in July 1994, the Rwandese Patriotic Front organized a coalition government similar to that established by President Juvénal Habyarimana in 1992. Called The Broad-Based Government of National Unity, its fundamental law is based on a combination of the constitution, the Arusha accords, and political declarations by the parties. The MRND party was outlawed.
Political organizing was banned until 2003. The first post-Genocide of Tutsi, presidential and legislative elections were held in August and September 2003, respectively.
The biggest problems facing the government were the reintegration of more than 2 million refugees returning from as long ago as 1959; the end of the insurgency and counter-insurgency among ex-military and Interahamwe militia and the Rwandan Patriotic Army, which is concentrated in the north and south west; and the shift away from crisis to medium- and long-term development planning. The prison population will continue to be an urgent problem for the foreseeable future, having swelled to more than 100,000 in the 3 years after the war.
The government prohibits any form of discrimination by gender, ethnicity, race or religion. The government has passed laws prohibiting emphasis on Hutu or Tutsi identity in most types of political activity.
Current Presidential Overview
The current President of Rwanda is Paul Kagame, born in 1957. He is the 6th President of Rwanda and was elected in 2003. In 2007, the former president, Pasteur Bizimungu, was released from prison on a presidential pardon. Kagame was reelected in 2010, receiving 93.1 percent of the votes cast. Since taking office, Kagame has raised business, reduced crime and corruption, and has attracted the likes of many foreign investors.
Kagame has not groomed anyone to be his successor, so there is nothing that points to who his successor could or should be.
President Paul Kagame and his Rwandan Patriotic Front are the dominant political forces in Rwanda. There is only one registered opposition party and many political opponents have fled into exile.
President Kagame received military training in Uganda, Tanzania and the United States. He was a founding member of current Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni’s rebel army in 1979 and headed its intelligence wing, helping Mr. Museveni take power in 1986.
