‘streamlining’ in stating that it not only “deprived the Hutu of opportunities to play one chief off against another, but it also eliminated the channels of appeal offered by the previous arrangement”. 21 The Tutsis, who Pierre Ryckmans, a Belgian administrator claimed were ‘meant to reign’, 22 greatly benefitted from the scheme, with Belgian legislation even assisting the Tutsis in gaining more land. 23 Bishop Leon Classe, similarly advised the Belgians (who were grateful for advice from priests that had a greater knowledge of indigenous affairs) that the government should be working mainly with the Tutsis. 24 Under the changes to administration that followed, Hutu were shorn of all political power and were exploited not only by whites but also by Tutsis, who, although often benefitting from this behaviour, were given little choice in the matter. This is highlighted in Catherine Watson’s words, who summarised the Belgian attitude in the following way: “You whip the Hutu or we will whip you”. 25 Consequently, the Hutus were made to feel increasingly inferior and the Tutsis increasingly superior. It seemed to them, in Prunier’s emotive words “that under the same rags as their Hutu neighbours wore, a finer heart was beating.” The effects were clear: “Tutsi privilege in colonial Rwanda set all Tutsi apart from all Hutu.” 26 This brings us to the distinction between the two major tribal groups. Belgian colonisers, as the missionaries before them, clearly believed that the Tutsi were of a higher ethnic status than the Hutus or the Twas. Myths of their origin circulated, taking form in the claim that Tutsis originated from Ethiopia and were the descendants of Ham, the son of Noah, who according to Genesis, was cursed after he had seen his drunken father naked. Whilst the Tutsis were considered Hamites, the Hutu were simple Bantus. 27 The attitude towards the Hutus by the whites is appropriately represented in the words by a Belgian administrator who claimed that the Hutu was ‘less intelligent’ and ‘more simple’. 28 Prunier discusses the impact this had on the tribal groups in terms of what they believed of themselves. He states that: “if we combine these subjective feelings with the objective political and administrative decisions of the colonial authorities favouring one group over the other, we can begin to see how a very dangerous social bomb was
21 René Lemarchand, Rwanda and Burundi (New York: Praeger Publishers, 1970), p.72. 22 Prunier, The Rwanda Crisis, p. 11.
23 Ibid., p. 28. 24 Ibid, p. 26.
25 Catharine Watson, Virginia Hamilton, and U.S. Committee for Refugees, Exile From Rwanda: Background to an Invasion (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Committee for Refugees, 1991), p. 4. 26 Prunier, The Rwanda Crisis, p. 98. 27 Mahmood Mamdani, When Victims become Killers: Colonialism, Nativism and the Genocide in Rwanda, (Princeton: Princeton UP, 2001), p. 79. 28 Prunier, The Rwanda Crisis, p. 11.
61
Made with FlippingBook HTML5