AbanyaRwanda | |
---|---|
Total population | |
16,044,000 [1] | |
Regions with significant populations | |
Rwanda, Burundi, Uganda and the DR Congo | |
Languages | |
Kinyarwanda | |
Religion | |
Christianity, Islam and Rwandan religion | |
Related ethnic groups | |
Other Bantu peoples |
Rwanda | |
---|---|
Person | UmunyaRwanda |
People | AbanyaRwanda |
Language | IkinyaRwanda |
Country | Rwanda |
The Banyarwanda (Kinyarwanda : Abanyarwanda, plural; Umunyarwanda, singular) are a Bantu ethnolinguistic supraethnicity. The Banyarwanda are also minorities in neighboring Burundi, DR Congo, Uganda, Tanzania.
Although the ethnic make-up of Burundi is similar to that of Rwanda, Banyarwanda is a political neologism used solely in Rwanda since the 1990s in order to mitigate ethnic division within the country following the Rwandan Civil War and the 1994 Rwandan genocide.
In the 1930s the Belgian colonial authorities, who controlled both Congo, Rwanda and Burundi at the time, implemented programs to encourage large numbers of Banyarwanda to emigrate to the Belgian Congo from Rwanda and Burundi. The population of Banyarwanda has increased later by large numbers fleeing violence in those two countries especially in the 1960s and the 1990s.
An estimated 524,098 Banyarwanda live in Uganda, [2] where they live in the west of the country; Umutara and Kitara are the centres of their pastoral and agricultural areas.
The Banyarwanda, through their language of Kinyarwanda, form a subgroup of the Bantu peoples, who inhabit a geographical area stretching east and southward from Central Africa across the African Great Lakes region down to Southern Africa. [3] [4]
Scholars from the Royal Museum of Central Africa in Tervuren, building on earlier work by Malcolm Guthrie, placed Kinyarwanda within the Great Lakes Bantu languages. [5] This classification groups the Banyarwanda with nineteen other ethnic groups including the Barundi, Banyankore, Baganda and Bahunde. [6]
The Banyarwanda are descended from a diverse group of people, who settled in the area through a series of migrations. The earliest known inhabitants of the African Great Lakes area were a sparse group of hunter gatherers, who lived in the late Stone Age. They were followed by a larger population of early Iron Age settlers, who produced dimpled pottery and iron tools. [7] [8] According to some theories these early inhabitants were the ancestors of the Twa, a group of aboriginal pygmy hunter-gatherers who remain in the area today. [9] Between 700 BC and 1500 AD, a number of Bantu groups migrated into the territory, and began to clear forest land for agriculture. [10] [9] [11] [12]
Some state that the forest-dwelling Twa lost much of their habitat and moved to the slopes of mountains. [13] Others argue the Twa came to exist as a group who were in a close client relationship with the farmer populations, and that perceived physical distinctions are not from separate Origins, but caused by the advantages of small stature in forest hunting leading to more opportunities to have children and to those of higher stature leaving the group. The removal of taller women from the marginalized class group may have also played a role. [14]
Historians have several theories regarding the nature of the Bantu migrations; one theory is that the first settlers were Hutu, while the Tutsi migrated later and formed a distinct racial group, possibly of Cushitic origin. [15] An alternative theory is that the migration was slow and steady, with incoming groups integrating into rather than conquering the existing society. [16] [9] Under this theory, the Hutu and Tutsi distinction arose later and was a class distinction rather than a racial one. [17] [18] [19] [20]
The earliest form of social organisation in the area was the clan (ubwoko). [21] The clans were not limited to genealogical lineages or geographical area, and most included Hutu, Tutsi, and Twa. [22] From the 14th or 15th centuries, the clans began to coalesce into kingdoms, of which the Kingdom of Rwanda was one. [23] The first Banyarwanda were the people of this kingdom. According to oral history, Rwanda was founded on the shores of Lake Muhazi in the Buganza area, close to the modern city of Rwamagana. [24] [25] [26] At that time it was a small state in a loose confederation with the larger and more powerful neighbouring kingdoms, Bugesera and Gisaka. [27] The kingdom was invaded by the Banyoro around 1600, and the kings forced to flee westward, [25] [27] but the kingdom survived and a new dynasty, the Nyiginya, was built by Ruganzu Ndori, which started expanding from its base in Nyanza. [28] As the kingdom expanded, the people in conquered areas became part of the Banyarwanda identity.[ citation needed ] The kingdom reached its greatest extent during the nineteenth century under the reign of King Kigeli Rwabugiri. Rwabugiri initiated several administrative reforms in Banyarwanda culture; these included ubuhake , in which Tutsi patrons ceded cattle, and therefore privileged status, to Hutu or Tutsi clients in exchange for economic and personal service, [29] and uburetwa , a corvée system in which Hutu were forced to work for Tutsi chiefs. [30] Rwabugiri's changes caused a rift to grow between the Hutu and Tutsi populations. [30] The Twa were better off than in pre-Kingdom days, with some becoming dancers in the royal court, [13] but their numbers continued to decline. [31]
The first exodus of ethnic Banyarwanda from the jurisdiction of the Rwanda kingdom was the Banyamulenge, who crossed the Rusizi river into the South Kivu province of the Belgian Congo. Rwandan historian Alexis Kagame wrote in 1972 that soldiers under King Kigeli II settled in the Congo in the 1700s, although Gérard Prunier casts some doubt on this hypothesis, stating that Kagame had "a tendency to exaggerate the power of the old Rwanda kingdom." [32] [33] International historians believe the first significant influx of Banyarwanda into South Kivu occurred in the 1880s, although some Congolese intellectuals contest this. [34] Scholars cite two major reasons for the migration; the first is that the migrants were composed of Tutsi trying to avoid the increasingly high taxes imposed by Rwabugiri, while the second is that the group was fleeing the violent war of succession that erupted after the death of Rwabugiri in 1895. [35] This group was mostly Tutsi and their Hutu abagaragu (clients) had been icyihuture (turned Tutsi), which negated interethnic tension. They settled above the Ruzizi Plain on the Itombwe Plateau. The plateau, which reached an altitude of 3,000 metres (9,800 ft), could not support large-scale agriculture, but allowed cattle grazing. [32] Over time, the Banyamulenge identified less as Banyarwanda and more as Congolese. [36] Having settled in the country before the colonial era, they were later treated as a native ethnic minority within the Congo, rather than as migrants or refugees. [36] [37]
At the end of the nineteenth century, the territory of Rwanda was assigned to Germany, marking the beginning of the colonial era. The first major contact between the Banyarwanda and the Europeans occurred in 1894 when explorer Gustav Adolf von Götzen crossed Rwanda from the south-east to Lake Kivu and met the king. [38] [39] The Germans did not significantly alter the social structure of the country, but exerted influence by supporting the king and the existing hierarchy and delegating power to local chiefs. [40] Belgian forces took control of Rwanda and Burundi during World War I, and ruled the country much more directly. [41] Both the Germans and the Belgians promoted Tutsi supremacy, considering the Hutu and Tutsi different races while downplaying the Rwandan ethnicity. [42] In 1935, Belgium introduced identity cards labelling each individual as either Tutsi, Hutu, Twa or Naturalised. While it had previously been possible for particularly wealthy Hutu to become honorary Tutsi, the identity cards prevented any further movement between the classes. [43] The period of Belgian rule marked the second major exodus of Banyarwanda, this time predominantly the Hutu; a 1926 change in labour laws by the Belgians allowed Rwandans to seek employment abroad, and many moved to North Kivu in the Belgian Congo as well as to the British Uganda and Tanganyika colonies. [44] A major famine in the 1940s, as well as Belgium's desire for labourers in North Kivu, accelerated this process. The migrant Rwandans in North Kivu became known as the Banyamasisi. [45]
In 1959, following a decade of increasing tension between the Tutsi and the Hutu, a social revolution took place in Rwanda. Hutu activists began killing Tutsi, overturning the centuries-old Tutsi dominance amongst the Banyarwanda. [46] [47] The Belgians suddenly changed allegiance, becoming pro-Hutu, and the Rwandan monarchy was abolished in 1962 following a referendum. Rwanda then gained independence as a republic, under Hutu leadership. [48] As the revolution progressed, Tutsi began leaving the country to escape the Hutu purges, settling in the four neighbouring countries Burundi, Uganda, Tanzania and Zaire. [49] These exiles, unlike the Banyarwanda who migrated during the pre-colonial and colonial era, were regarded as refugees in their host countries, [50] and began almost immediately to agitate for a return to Rwanda. [51] They formed armed groups, known as inyenzi (cockroaches), who launched attacks into Rwanda; these were largely unsuccessful, and led to further reprisal killings of Tutsi and further Tutsi exiles. [51] By 1964, more than 300,000 Tutsi had fled, and were forced to remain in exile for the next three decades. [52] Pro-Hutu discrimination continued in Rwanda itself, although the violence against the Tutsi did reduce somewhat following a coup in 1973. [53] The Twa, the minority class of the Banyarwanda, remained marginalised, and by 1990 were almost entirely forced out of the forests by the government; many became beggars. [54] [55] [56]
In the 1980s, a group of 500 Banyarwanda refugees in Uganda, led by Fred Rwigyema, fought with the rebel National Resistance Army (NRA) in the Ugandan Bush War, which saw Yoweri Museveni overthrow Milton Obote. [57] These soldiers remained in the Ugandan army following Museveni's inauguration as Ugandan president, but simultaneously began planning an invasion of Rwanda through a covert network within the army's ranks. [58] In 1990, the soldiers broke ranks and launched an invasion of northern Rwanda as the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), initiating the Rwandan Civil War; [59] neither side was able to gain a decisive advantage, and in 1993 the Rwandan government and the RPF signed a cease-fire. [60] This ended on 6 April 1994 when President Habyarimana's plane was shot down near Kigali Airport, killing him. [61] The shooting down of the plane served as the catalyst for the Rwandan genocide, which began within a few hours. Over the course of approximately 100 days, between 500,000 and 1,000,000 [62] Tutsi and non-compliant Hutu were killed in well-planned attacks on the orders of the interim government. [63] Many Twa were also killed, despite not being directly targeted. [54] The RPF restarted their offensive, and took control of the country methodically, gaining control of the whole country by mid-July. [64]
The victory of the Tutsi-led rebels led to a fresh Banyarwanda exodus, this time of Hutu who feared reprisals following the genocide. [65] The largest refugee camps formed in Zaire, and were effectively controlled by the army and government of the former Hutu regime, including many leaders of the genocide. [66] This regime was determined to return to power in Rwanda and began rearming, killing Tutsi residing in Zaire and launching cross-border incursions in conjunction with the Interahamwe paramilitary group. [67] [68] By late 1996, the Hutu militants represented a serious threat to the new Rwandan regime, causing Paul Kagame to launch a counteroffensive. [69] The Rwandan army joined forces with Zairian Tutsi groups, including the Banyamulenge and Banyamasisi, attacking the refugee camps. [70] [68] Many refugees returned to Rwanda, while others ventured further west into Zaire. [71] A Hutu extremist group known as the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda, which seeks to restore the Hutu state in Rwanda, remains active in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. [72]
Music and dance are an integral part of Banyarwanda ceremonies, festivals, social gatherings and storytelling. The most famous traditional dance is a highly choreographed routine consisting of three components: the umushagiriro , or cow dance, performed by women; [73] the intore , or dance of heroes, performed by men; [73] and the drumming, also traditionally performed by men, on drums known as ingoma. [74] Traditionally, music is transmitted orally, with styles varying between the Hutu, Tutsi and Twa. Drums are of great importance; the royal drummers enjoyed high status within the court of the king. [75] Drummers play together in groups of varying sizes, usually between seven and nine in number. [76]
Traditionally, Rwandan women of marriageable age and high-status Rwandan men would wear the Amasunzu hairstyle, with the hair styled into elaborate crests. [77] [78]
A considerable amount of traditional arts and crafts is produced by the Banyarwanda, although most originated as functional items rather than purely for decoration. Woven baskets and bowls are especially common. [79] Imigongo , a unique cow dung art, is produced in the southeast of Rwanda, with a history dating back to when the region was part of the independent Gisaka kingdom. The dung is mixed with natural soils of various colours and painted into patterned ridges to form geometric shapes. [80] Other crafts include pottery and wood carving. [81] Traditional housing styles make use of locally available materials; circular or rectangular mud homes with grass-thatched roofs (known as nyakatsi) are the most common. The government has initiated a programme to replace these with more modern materials such as corrugated iron. [82] [83]
Kinyarwanda (also sometimes known as Rwanda language) is the native language of the Banyarwanda, and is spoken as a mother tongue by most Banyarwanda in Rwanda as well as those in the Congo and Uganda. [84] Kinyarwanda is a Bantu language, and is mutually intelligible with Kirundi, an official language of Burundi and Ha, a language of western Tanzania; together, these languages form part of the wider dialect continuum known as Rwanda-Rundi. [85] With more than 10 million Kinyarwanda speakers, [86] and around 20 million for Rwanda-Rundi as a whole, [86] it is one of the largest of the Bantu languages. [87] The language was likely to have been introduced to the area from Cameroon during the Bantu expansion, although the timescale and nature of this migration is not known conclusively. [88] It is likely that these migrations caused Kinyarwanda to replace the native tongue of the Twa, and the Tutsi may also have originally spoken a separate language, under the hypothesis that they migrated from Nilotic speaking regions. [89]
Like most other Bantu languages, Kinyarwanda is tonal and also agglutinative: most words are formed as a series of morphemes, including a prefix, a stem, and sometimes a preprefix. [90] Nouns are divided into sixteen classes, covering both singular and plural nouns. [91] Some of the classes are used exclusively for particular types of noun; for example classes 1 and 2 are for nouns related to people, singular and plural respectively, classes 7, 8 and 11 refer to big versions of nouns in other classes, and class 14 is for abstract nouns. [91] Adjectives applied to nouns generally take a prefix matching the prefix of the noun. [92] For example, the word abantu (people) is a class 2 noun with preprefix a- and prefix ba-; when applying the adjective -biri (two) to that noun, it takes the class 2 prefix ba-, so "two people" translates as abantu babiri; [93] ibintu (things) is a class 4 noun with prefix bi-, thus "two things" translates as ibintu bibiri. [93]
The Banyarwanda do not have a long history of written literature, and very little historical texts exist in the Kinyarwanda language. [94] Writing was introduced during the colonial era, but most Rwandan authors of that time wrote in French. [95] There is, however, a strong tradition of oral literature amongst the Banyarwanda. The royal court [96] included poets (abasizi), [97] who recited Kinyarwanda verse covering topics such as the royal lineage, [97] as well as religion [97] and warfare. [96] History and moral values were also passed down through the generations by word of mouth, and the oral tradition was used as a form of entertainment in precolonial days. [96] The most famous Rwandan literary figure was Alexis Kagame (1912–1981), who carried out and published research into oral traditions as well as writing his own poetry. [98]
Rwanda, officially the Republic of Rwanda, is a landlocked country in the Great Rift Valley of Central Africa, where the African Great Lakes region and Southeast Africa converge. Located a few degrees south of the Equator, Rwanda is bordered by Uganda, Tanzania, Burundi, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. It is highly elevated, giving it the soubriquet "land of a thousand hills", with its geography dominated by mountains in the west and savanna to the southeast, with numerous lakes throughout the country. The climate is temperate to subtropical, with two rainy seasons and two dry seasons each year. It is the most densely populated mainland African country; among countries larger than 10,000 km2, it is the fifth-most densely populated country in the world. Its capital and largest city is Kigali.
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.
The Hutu, also known as the Abahutu, are a Bantu ethnic or social group which is native to the African Great Lakes region. They mainly live in Rwanda, Burundi, and Uganda where they form one of the principal ethnic groups alongside the Tutsi and the Great Lakes Twa.
The Tutsi, also called Watusi, Watutsi or Abatutsi, are an ethnic group of the African Great Lakes region. They are a Bantu-speaking ethnic group and the second largest of three main ethnic groups in Rwanda and Burundi.
The Interahamwe is a Hutu paramilitary organization active in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Uganda. The Interahamwe was formed around 1990 as the youth wing of the National Republican Movement for Democracy and Development, the then-ruling party of Rwanda, and enjoyed the backing of the Hutu Power government. The Interahamwe, led by Robert Kajuga, were the main perpetrators of the Rwandan genocide, during which an estimated 500,000 to 1,000,000 Tutsi, Twa, and moderate Hutus were killed from April to July 1994, and the term "Interahamwe" was widened to mean any civilian militias or bands killing Tutsi.
The Rwandan genocide, also known as the genocide against the Tutsi, occurred between 7 April and 19 July 1994 during the Rwandan Civil War. During this period of around 100 days, members of the Tutsi minority ethnic group, as well as some moderate Hutu and Twa, were killed by armed Hutu militias. Although the Constitution of Rwanda states that more than 1 million people perished in the genocide, the actual number of fatalities is unclear, and some estimates suggest that the real number killed was likely lower. The most widely accepted scholarly estimates are around 500,000 to 800,000 Tutsi deaths.
Banyamulenge is a community from the Democratic Republic of the Congo's South Kivu province. The Banyamulenge are culturally and socially distinct from the Tutsi of South Kivu, with most speaking Kinyamulenge, a mix of Kinyarwanda, Kirundi, Ha language, and Swahili. Banyamulenge are often discriminated against in the DRC due to their Tutsi phenotype, similar to that of people living in the Horn of Africa, their insubordination towards colonial rule, their role in Mobutu's war against and victory over the Simba Rebellion, which was supported by the majority of other tribes in South Kivu, their role during the First Congo War and subsequent regional conflicts (Rally for Congolese Democracy–Goma, Movement for the Liberation of the Congo, National Congress for the Defence of the People, and more importantly for the fact that two of the most influential presidents of their country declared them as enemy of the State both in 1996 and 1998.
The First Congo War, also nicknamed Africa's First World War, was a civil war and international military conflict which lasted from 24 October 1996 to 16 May 1997 and took place mostly in Zaire, with major spillovers into Sudan and Uganda. The conflict culminated in a foreign invasion that replaced Zairean president Mobutu Sese Seko with the rebel leader Laurent-Désiré Kabila. Kabila's unstable government subsequently came into conflict with his allies, setting the stage for the Second Congo War in 1998–2003.
The Rwandan Civil War was a large-scale civil war in Rwanda which was fought between the Rwandan Armed Forces, representing the country's government, and the rebel Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) from 1 October 1990 to 18 July 1994. The war arose from the long-running dispute between the Hutu and Tutsi groups within the Rwandan population. A 1959–1962 revolution had replaced the Tutsi monarchy with a Hutu-led republic, forcing more than 336,000 Tutsi to seek refuge in neighbouring countries. A group of these refugees in Uganda founded the RPF which, under the leadership of Fred Rwigyema and Paul Kagame, became a battle-ready army by the late 1980s.
The Great Lakes refugee crisis is the common name for the situation beginning with the exodus in April 1994 of over two million Rwandans to neighboring countries of the Great Lakes region of Africa in the aftermath of the Rwandan genocide. Many of the refugees were Hutu fleeing the predominantly Tutsi Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), which had gained control of the country at the end of the genocide. However, the humanitarian relief effort was vastly compromised by the presence among the refugees of many of the Interahamwe and government officials who carried out the genocide, who used the refugee camps as bases to launch attacks against the new government led by Paul Kagame. The camps in Zaire became particularly politicized and militarized. The knowledge that humanitarian aid was being diverted to further the aims of the genocidaires led many humanitarian organizations to withdraw their assistance. The conflict escalated until the start of the First Congo War in 1996, when RPF-supported rebels invaded Zaire and sought to repatriate the refugees.
The Army for the Liberation of Rwanda was a rebel group largely composed of members of the Interahamwe and Armed Forces of Rwanda. Operating mostly in the eastern regions of the Democratic Republic of the Congo along the border with Rwanda, it carried out attacks throughout the Second Congo War against forces aligned with Rwanda and Uganda. In 2000, the ALiR agreed to merge with the Hutu resistance movement based in Kinshasa into the new Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR). ALiR was largely supplanted by the FDLR by 2001.
Kiga people, or Abakiga, are a Bantu ethnic group native to south western Uganda and northern Rwanda.
The origins of the Hutu, Tutsi, and Twa people is a major issue of controversy in the histories of Rwanda and Burundi, as well as the Great Lakes region of Africa. The relationship among the three modern populations is thus, in many ways, derived from the perceived origins and claim to "Rwandan-ness". The largest conflicts related to this question were the Rwandan genocide, the Burundian genocide, and the First and Second Congo Wars.
Hutu Power is a racial supremacist ideology that asserts the ethnic superiority of Hutu, often in the context of being superior to Tutsi and Twa, and that therefore they are entitled to dominate and murder these two groups and other minorities. Espoused by Hutu extremists, widespread support for the ideology led to the 1994 Rwandan genocide against Tutsi and their family members, the moderate Hutu who opposed the killings, and Twa who were deemed traitors. Hutu Power political parties and movements included the Akazu, the Coalition for the Defence of the Republic and its Impuzamugambi paramilitary militia, and the governing National Republican Movement for Democracy and Development and its Interahamwe paramilitary militia. The theory of Hutu people being superior is most common in Rwanda and Burundi, where they make up the majority of the population. Due to its sheer destructiveness, the ideology has been compared to historical Nazism in the Western world.
These are some of the articles related to Rwanda on the English Wikipedia pages:
The Rwandan Revolution, also known as the Hutu Revolution, Social Revolution, or Wind of Destruction, was a period of ethnic violence in Rwanda from 1959 to 1961 between the Hutu and the Tutsi, two of the three ethnic groups in Rwanda. The revolution saw the country transition from a Tutsi monarchy under Belgian colonial authority to an independent Hutu-dominated republic.
The Bafumbira, are a Bantu ethnic group from Kisoro District in South Western Uganda. They are of three indigenous groups: Bahutu, Batutsi and Batwa.
The Kanyarwanda War was a conflict in the northeastern region of Congo-Léopoldville, specifically the newly-established province of North Kivu, between the Banyarwanda and indigenous groups within North Kivu including the Hunde and Nande groups that lasted from 1963 to 1966. It was sparked by years of ethnic tensions between the Banyarwandan people, who had significant influence and power in North Kivu and surrounding provinces, and native groups such as the Hunde and Nande groups.
Modern relations between the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Rwanda have origins that date back to the colonial era. Sharing a border that is 221 km in length, the two countries were both colonial possessions of Belgium between 1919 and 1960, and were impacted by the two world wars. Both Rwanda and the Congo experienced violent upheavals during their first years of independence, with the Congo being left with a weak central authority, and Rwanda dealing with periodic raids and incursions from expelled Tutsi rebels in the east of the Congo.
Relations between Burundi and Rwanda have existed for at least as long as the states themselves. Before contact with Europeans, Rwanda and Burundi were kingdoms competing to gain control over nearby territory. In the 1880s, the two kingdoms were placed under colonial authority, first by Germany, and then by Belgium after 1919.