Ethnic Groups in Rwanda - Post-colonial Framework

Post-colonial Framework

As Belgium’s era of colonial dominance over Rwanda drew to a close during the 1950s, the Hutu and Tutsi, as racial identities, had been firmly institutionalized. Manipulative racial engineering by the Belgians, and the despotic practices of the Tutsi chieftains they empowered, helped drive together the disparate Rwandan sub-classes under the “Hutu” moniker. When the Belgians were to finally leave Rwanda in the early years of the 1960s, the politics of racial and ethnic division remained. And in the following decades, regimes under both Hutu ultra-nationalists and moderate conciliators would demonstrate how the labels of Hutu and Tutsi could be molded and twisted to fit political expediency.