Rwanda History Fact Sheet - About Rwanda

The Kingdom of Rwanda was formed around the 15th Century. Rwanda was ruled by a king, or Mwami, who served as the absolute head of government.
Although there was a dominant class system, with Tutsi in most positions of leadership, the labels “Hutu’” and “Tutsi” were fluid, and intermarriage was frequent.

Rwanda was ruled by two colonial powers. The Germans administered the country from 1884-1914, before Belgium was given a League of Nations mandate in 1918.
Belgian rule formalised previously fluid groups of Hutu and Tutsi. Belgium decided that all positions of power should be occupied by Tutsi men.
Belgian conceptions of race were heavily influenced by contemporary racialist “science’, which included theories that Tutsi were of “Hamitic or even “Semitic” origin.
In the 1930s, the government made all Rwandans register their ethnicity, and introduced identity cards which distinguished Hutu, Tutsi and Twa.
Rwanda gained independence on 1st July, 1962.

In the Rwandan Revolution of 1959, a “Hutu Power” movement emerged, which came to dominate Rwandan politics after independence.
These Hutu regimes consistently used genocidal violence to maintain their power. Some of the most prolific massacres were in 1963, 1973 and 1991-3.
In 1991, a group of Rwandan refugees (the RPF) in Uganda attacked the army, starting the Rwandan Civil War. A ceasefire was reached with the Arusha Accords in 1993.

The genocide against the Tutsi began on 7th April 1994, and ended on 15th July 1994. Some Rwandans refer to it as the “100 days“, as that was its exact length.
The killings began after a plane containing President Juvénal Habyarimana, and Burundian President Ntaryamira, crashed on 6 April.
There is some controversy over the downing of the plane. In 2006, the French government launched an investigation into the RPF . In 2012, however, a ballistic report found that the missile was fired from a camp containing Habyarimana’s own soldiers, suggesting that Hutu extremists carried out the attack.
It is unclear how many people died during the 100 days – as no systematic counting was conducted. Most academic estimates range from 500,000 to 1.2 million.
Bill Clinton stated that his inaction in Rwanda was his biggest “personal failure“.