Rwanda A German colony in east Africa from 1899, it became a Belgian
League of Nations Mandate in 1919 and a
UN trust territory in 1946. The colonial authorities ruled through the power structures that had been in place since the sixteenth century, whereby the majority of the population from the Hutu (Bahutu) tribe (90 per cent of the population) were ruled by an aristocratic and landowning elite of the Tutsi tribe (9 per cent of the population). In 1959 a Hutu uprising, in which thousands of Tutsis were massacred and around 150,000 fled, signalled the end of the Tutsi monarchy. Elections in 1961 were won by the party of the Hutu Emancipation Movement, whose leader, G. Kayibanda, became the first President upon independence in 1962. Frequent attacks by Tutsi rebels from neighbouring Burundi resulted in the dissolution of the economic and currency union with that state in 1964.
In 1973, a bloodless coup brought General Juvénal Habyarimana (b. 1937, d. 1994) to power, a moderate Hutu who attempted to bring about a reconciliation between the Hutu and the Tutsi. This was made more difficult by the country's intense poverty and an increasing inability of the agricultural system to sustain a rapidly growing population in what was already Africa's most densely populated country. Growing competition for scarce resources, heightened by rival farming traditions (cattle farming by Tutsis, arable farming by Hutus), nurtured Hutu resentment against century-long Tutsi domination. This was fuelled by Tutsi memory of the 1959 massacres by Hutus.
In 1990 the Rwanda Patriotic Front (RPF) consisting of Tutsi rebels exiled in 1959 invaded the northern part of the country. A
UN-brokered peace settlement was achieved in 1993, whereupon Habyarimana also announced the democratization of the country. His death in a plane crash on 6 April 1994 sparked off a civil war which led to a genocide which in world history was perhaps only surpassed by the massacre of Jews in the
Holocaust during World War II. Within weeks, around 500,000 people were brutally murdered or killed in action, mostly by the Hutu army. The Tutsi RPF won control over the capital on 4 July 1994, and over most of the country within two weeks thereafter, when the RPF declared an end to its military activities. The fear of reprisals from the advancing RPF led to the flight of over three million (mostly Hutu) refugees into the neighbouring countries, out of a total population of 7.2 million. It is estimated that over 100,000 Hutus were killed by Tutsis, mostly belonging to the RPF.
A peace agreement was negotiated in Arusha, whereupon Tutsi and Hutu representatives created a transitional parliament with a power-sharing executive. In 2000 Paul Kagame became President, and in 2001 local elections were held for the first time after the war. Despite this gradual return to political stability, reconciliation was challenged by the fate of 120,000 prisoners accused of atrocities in the genocide. Moreover, even after the Arusha agreement Hutu militias used their bases in neighbouring Democratic Republic of Congo to attack army bases largely controlled by Tutsis. As a result, the Rwandan army became engaged in operations in neighbouring Congo, which drained the scarce public funds of one of the world's poorest countries. In 2000, the
IMF and
World Bank cancelled over 70 per cent of Rwanda's foreign debts.
Burundi
