60 years after the UN Convention - Dag Hammarskjöld Foundation

182 development dialogue december 2008 – revisiting the heart of darkness
were taken up by the colonial state as collaborators to rule, administer
and exploit in its name. The Hamitic hypothesis is important
because it constructed Tutsis as an alien, conquering race, not even
African, as opposed to Hutus who were characterised as indigenous,
the sons and daughters of the soil. This idea of the Tutsi as racially
distinct foreigners, as invaders, was later taken up by Hutu nationalism
and helped to sharpen the hatred and inform the fear and distrust
felt towards Tutsi.
Belgian colonial rule 20 was signifi cantly more oppressive and exploitative
than that of the Germans. The brunt of this exploitation was
born by the Hutu peasantry. 21 The demands of the colonial government
for forced labour for building roads and railway lines, clearing
bush, planting trees for reforestation and growing export crops were
passed on by Belgian administrators to Tutsi chiefs who then used
their discretionary powers to enforce these measures. With unfettered
control over the Hutu peasantry under Belgian rule, the Tutsi
elite became rapacious, increasing both tribute payments and demands
for labour service. 22 Hutu who failed to comply with the demands
of Tutsi chiefs were severely beaten or were denied access to
land, a sanction that spelt disaster for any peasant. This intensifi ed
exploitation impoverished the Hutu peasants and left them vulnerable
to famine during years of poor harvests. 23 The eff ect of colonial rule
was to harden patron-client relationships of the pre-colonial era into
ones of out-and-out exploitation.
Besides solidifying the identities of Hutu and Tutsi into caste-like racial
categories colonial rule removed the fl exibility and safety valves
that had blunted social confl ict in the pre-colonial Rwandan state.
Firstly, the Belgians removed all Hutus from the state bureaucracy,
20 With the outbreak of World War I, Belgian troops occupied Ruanda-Urundi which in
1923 became a mandated territory of the League of Nations administered by Belgium.
21 While the Belgians continued to rely on the Rwandan monarchy and its Tutsi
bureaucracy to collect taxes, recruit forced labour and maintain social order, they
ruled more directly through their own administrators, not hesitating to curb the
powers of the mwami and his bureaucracy.
22 Labour service typically increased by more than 50 per cent from one in fi ve days
to two in six days. Tutsi chiefs required, amongst other things, that Hutu work in their
fi elds, build houses for them, collect fi rewood, fetch water or act as night watchmen.
23 Some Tutsi chiefs were even able to confi scate Hutu clients’ possessions or part of
their crops with impunity. Conditions deteriorated to the extent that tens of thousands
of Hutu fl ed to Uganda in the 1920s, preferring to work on plantations there than face
the exploitation of Tutsi chiefs back home.