Johann Hari on Tracy Kidder, Strength In What Remains:
Nobody quite knows where the terms Hutu and Tutsi originated, or how. When European colonialists—first the Germans, then the Belgians—arrived in this part of Africa in the late 19th century, they found there was a division in the society between two tribes, but it didn’t seem to mean much. Hutus and Tutsis had a shared language, religion, and culture and frequently intermarried. But the colonizers didn’t have many troops, so they needed to divide the population in order to rule over it. They appointed the Tutsis as their aristocratic class to manage the rest and concocted a racist myth to justify it. They claimed the Tutsis were a “lost” Caucasian tribe that had come from somewhere else—probably Ethiopia—and “civilized” the native Hutus.
Is this the most disgusting thing you’ve read in many a moon. Least I didn’t know. But is it surprising? Not.
When my brother was a little boy, he misheard, as children will, that idiomatic phrase about inevitability, about sad and rueful predictability.
By now, to me, his words sounds just about right.
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And then Belgium’s final act upon decolonization was to reverse the power structure, giving Hutus dominance over the Tutsi, which they resented and outnumbered. So much guilt to go around and so little accountability. This is such a tearful subject but Rwandan’s are into forgiveness and reconciliation and since the identification cards denoting the tribes are gone they should never see another genocide, the country is thriving and its legislature is run by women.
Thanks for bringing me up on the history.
Colonization: one of the original sins.
[...] mighty in their own time. What a colossal [...]