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Part 3: Roots of Hate: Rwanda, 1959-1994

Chapter 11: The Roots of Hate I: Kingdom of Milk and Blood: Pre-Colonial Rwanda

Gahigi was a son of the soil, born into a family whose identity was tied to the rhythm of the hoe. They were Hutu. His childhood was marked by seasons of rain and sun, planting and harvest. As a young man, he performed his uburetwa, his labor service, for the local chief, a man of cattle whose lineage was Tutsi. The relationship was not one of master and slave; it was an obligation, a complex dance of power and patronage that bound the hill together.

Gahigi was strong and loyal. When skirmishes broke out with a rival clan, he distinguished himself, not with great heroics, but with a steadfast courage that the chief noticed. His reward was not in money, for there was little of that, but in the ultimate symbol of wealth, status, and social mobility: a single, long-horned inyambo cow.

The cow was a key that unlocked a new world. It calved. Within a few years, Gahigi's shrewd management had produced a small but growing herd. He was no longer just a farmer; he was a man of property. He began to lend his own cattle to poorer Hutu families, entering into the ubuhake system not as a client, but as a patron. He had standing.

With status came new possibilities. He was a desirable match. He married the daughter of a Tutsi family of modest means, an alliance that solidified his ascent. The boy who was born a simple farmer had become a man of cattle and influence, his children's future transformed. He had not "crossed" a racial line, for no such line existed in the way the modern world would understand it. He had simply, and successfully, climbed the social ladder of his time. He had, in effect, become Tutsi.

The Discourse 11: Deconstructing the "Ancient Hatreds" Myth

11.1 Shared Culture, Shared Kingdom
The common narrative that the Rwandan Genocide was the eruption of "ancient tribal hatreds" between the Hutu and Tutsi is a historical falsehood, often deployed to absolve the international community of its responsibility. Pre-colonial Rwandan society was a complex, unequal, but socially fluid kingdom where the categories of Hutu and Tutsi were primarily socio-economic, not immutable racial or ethnic identities.

Prior to the arrival of Europeans, all inhabitants of the kingdom of Rwanda shared a single language (Kinyarwanda), a single set of religious and cultural beliefs surrounding a creator-god, Imana, and allegiance to a single monarch, the Mwami. [CITATION 1] Historians and anthropologists overwhelmingly agree that Hutu and Tutsi lived intermingled on the same hills, intermarried, and were not distinct "tribes" in any meaningful sense. They constituted a single, unified Banyarwanda people.

11.2 Hutu and Tutsi as Socio-Economic Classes
The primary distinction between Hutu and Tutsi was occupational and economic. The term "Hutu" generally referred to the majority cultivator class, those who worked the land. The term "Tutsi" referred to the minority herder class, those whose wealth and status were derived from owning cattle. [CITATION 2] While the monarchy and aristocracy were dominated by the Tutsi elite, these categories were not rigid. The central thesis of modern scholarship on Rwanda is that these were more akin to social castes or classes than to distinct ethnic groups.

11.3 The Ubuhake System: A Bond of Interdependence
The relationship between these groups was often formalized in the ubuhake system, a complex patron-client relationship. A wealthy Tutsi patron would grant the use of cattle to a poorer Hutu (or less-well-off Tutsi) client in exchange for service and loyalty. While inherently unequal and exploitative, this system created a powerful bond of mutual obligation and interdependence that integrated all levels of society. [CITATION 3] Crucially, the system allowed for social mobility. Through loyal service, military valor, or clever management of cattle, a Hutu could acquire his own herd, enter into the ubuhake system as a patron, and effectively "become" a Tutsi over a generation or two. This fluidity is the key feature that would be systematically destroyed under colonial rule. [CITATION 4]

References

1. Chrétien, Jean-Pierre. The Great Lakes of Africa: Two Thousand Years of History. Translated by Scott Straus, Zone Books, 2003.

2. Mamdani, Mahmood. When Victims Become Killers: Colonialism, Nativism, and the Genocide in Rwanda. Princeton University Press, 2001.

3. Newbury, Catharine. The Cohesion of Oppression: Clientship and Ethnicity in Rwanda, 1860-1960. Columbia University Press, 1988.

4. Prunier, Gérard. The Rwanda Crisis: History of a Genocide. Columbia University Press, 1995.