THE HISTORY OF RWANDA IN BRIEF

Rwanda

officially Republic of Rwanda, republic (2005 est. pop. 8,441,000), 10,169 sq mi (26,338 sq km), E central Africa. It borders on Congo (Kinshasa) in the west, on Uganda in the north, on Tanzania in the east, and on Burundi in the south. Kigali Kigali (kēgä`lē), city (1997 pop. 330,000), central Rwanda, capital of Rwanda.
is the capital and largest town.

Most of Rwanda is situated at 5,000 ft (1,520 m) or higher, and the country has a rugged relief made up of steep mountains and deep valleys. The principal geographical feature is the Virunga mountain range, which runs north of Lake Kivu and includes Rwanda's loftiest point, Volcan Karisimbi (14,787 ft/4,507 m). There is some lower land (at elevations below 3,000 ft/910 m) along the eastern shore of Lake Kivu and the Ruzizi River in the west and near the Tanzanian border in the east. The country is divided into four provinces and one city (Kigali). In addition to the capital, other towns include Butare, Gisenyi, and Ruhengeri.

About 80% of the inhabitants are Hutu, and the rest Tutsi, except for a small number of Twa, who are a Pygmy group. Since independence, ethnic violence has led to large-scale massacres and the creation of perhaps as many as three million refugees. Kinyarwanda (a Bantu tongue), French, and English are the official languages, and Swahili is also spoken. Rwanda is one of the most densely populated countries in Africa, and its population has a high annual growth rate that is usually around 3%. About 75% of the people are Christian (primarily Roman Catholic,) and 25% follow traditional religious beliefs. A small number of Tutsi are Muslim.

ECONOMY

The economy of Rwanda is overwhelmingly agricultural, with most of the workers engaged in subsistence farming. Economic development in Rwanda is hindered by the needs of its large population and by its lack of easy access to the sea (and thus to foreign markets). The chief food crops are bananas, cassava, pulses, sorghum, and potatoes. The principal cash crops are coffee, tea, and pyrethrum. Large numbers of cattle, goats, and sheep are raised; most of the cattle are owned by the Tutsi. Food must be imported, as domestic production has fallen below subsistence levels. Food shortages were sharply exacerbated by the civil strife and severe refugee problems of the early 1990s, and exports were devastated. By the late 1990s the economy appeared to be reviving slowly.

Cassiterite and wolframite are mined in significant quantities, and natural gas is produced at Lake Kivu. Rwanda's industries are limited to small factories that manufacture textiles, chemicals, cement, and basic consumer goods such as processed food, beverages (especially beer), clothing, and footwear. The country has a good road network but no railroads. Kigali has an international airport.

The annual value of Rwanda's imports is usually considerably higher than its earnings from exports. The main imports are foodstuffs, machinery, motor vehicles, fuel, and construction materials; the principal exports are coffee, casseritite, wolframite, tea, pyrethrum, and hides. The chief trading partners are Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, and Kenya. Rwanda depends on outside aid to balance its national budget, to finance foreign purchases, and to fund development projects.

HISTORY TO INDEPENDENCE

The Twa were the original inhabitants of Rwanda and were followed (c.A.D. 1000), and then outnumbered, by the Hutus. In the 14th or 15th cent., the Tutsis migrated into the area, gained dominance over the Hutus, and established several states. By the late 18th cent. a single Tutsi-ruled state occupied most of present-day Rwanda. It was headed by a mwami (king), who controlled regionally based vassals who were also Tutsi. They in turn dominated the Hutus, who, then as now, made up the vast majority of the population. Rwanda reached the height of its power under Mutara II (reigned early 19th cent.) and Kigeri IV (reigned 1853–95). Kigeri established a standing army, equipped with guns purchased from traders from the E African coast, and prohibited most foreigners from entering his kingdom.

Nonetheless, in 1890, Rwanda accepted German overrule without resistance and became part of German East Africa German East Africa, former German colony, c.370,000 sq mi (958,300 sq km), E Africa. Dar es Salaam was the capital. German influence emerged in the area in 1884 when Carl Peters, the German explorer, obtained treaties over parts of the territory.
 A German administrative officer was assigned to Rwanda only in 1907, however, and the Germans had virtually no influence over the affairs of the country and initiated no economic development. During World War I, Belgian forces occupied (1916) Rwanda, and in 1919 it became part of the Belgian League of Nations mandate of Ruanda-Urundi Ruanda-Urundi

 (which in 1946 became a UN trust territory). Until the last years of Belgian rule the traditional social structure of Rwanda was not altered; considerable Christian missionary work, however, was undertaken.

In 1957 the Hutus issued a manifesto calling for a change in Rwanda's power structure that would give them a voice in the country's affairs commensurate with their numbers, and Hutu political parties were formed. In 1959, Mutara III died and was succeeded by Kigeri V. The Hutus contended that the new mwami had not been properly chosen, and fighting broke out between the Hutus and the Tutsis (who were aided by the Twa). The Hutus emerged victorious, and some 100,000 Tutsis, including Kigeri V, fled to neighboring countries. Hutu political parties won the election of 1960; Grégoire Kayibanda became interim prime minister. In early 1961 a republic was proclaimed, which was confirmed in a UN-supervised referendum later in the year. Belgium granted independence to Rwanda on July 1, 1962.

INDEPENDENCY

Kayibanda was elected as the first president under the constitution adopted in 1962 and was reelected in 1965 and 1969. In 1964, following an incursion from Burundi, which continued to be controlled by its Tutsi aristocracy, many Tutsis were killed in Rwanda, and numerous others left the country. In 1971–72, relations with Uganda were bitter after President Idi Amin of Uganda accused Rwanda of aiding groups trying to overthrow him. In early 1973 there was renewed fighting between Hutu and Tutsi groups, and some 600 Tutsis fled to Uganda.

On July 5, 1973, a military group toppled Kayibanda without violence and installed Maj. Gen. Juvénal Habyarimana, a moderate Hutu who was commander of the national guard. In 1978 a new constitution was ratified and Habyarimana was elected president. He was reelected in 1983 and 1988. In 1988 over 50,000 refugees fled into Rwanda from Burundi.

Two years later Rwanda was invaded from Uganda by forces of the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), consisting mainly of Tutsi refugees. They were repulsed, but Habyarimana agreed to a new multiparty constitution, promulgated in 1991. In early 1993, after Habyarimana signed a power-sharing agreement, Hutu violence broke out in the capital; subsequently, RPF forces launched a major offensive, making substantial inroads. A new accord was signed in August, and a UN peacekeeping mission was established. However, when Habyarimana and Burundi's president were killed  in a plane crash shot down by RPF soldiers supported by USA  in Apr6., 1994, civil strife erupted on a massive scale. Rwandan soldiers and Hutu who were unhappy of the RPF invasion slaughtered an estimated 500,000 people, mostly Tutsis and moderate Hutus. The RPF resumed fighting and won control of the country, but over 4million Rwandans, nearly all Hutus, fled the neighboring countries such as Zaire,and Tanzania.

In an obscure gesture of reconciliation, the RPF named Pasteur Bizimungu, a Hutu who betrayed his brothers Hutus, as president, but there were revenge killing against Hutus by the Tutsi-dominated army, and real power was believed to lie with RPF leader Paul Kagame, who became vice president and defense minister. The Hutu refugees remained crowded into camps in the Congo (then called Zaïre) and other neighboring countries. the poisoned food and water distributed by some corrupt humanitarian organizations claimed more than 300,000 lives of Hutu children, mothers, eolderly, and young people in Goma refugee camps and Bukavu.

In 1995, a UN-appointed tribunal, based in Tanzania, which was to try all the people who committed crimes against humanity, began indicting and trying a number of higher-ranking people for genocide in the Hutu-Tutsi atrocities. however, this court became an anti-hutu court because it started witch-hunting all educated hutus and those who served in the previous government. the whereabouts of many suspects were unknown, and by 2003 only 17 people had been convicted and sentenced. Many individuals were also tried in Rwandan courts, but by 2002 slightly less than 5,000 (of 120,000 charged with crimes) had been tried.

Over a million Hutu refugees flooded back into the country in 1996; by 1997, there was a growing war between the Rwandan army and Hutu guerrilla rebellion. this time the RPF army killed indiscriminately Hutus from the region of Ruhengeri and Gisenyi. more than 800,000 people lost their lives only those who managed to escape are those who fled to DRC and joined the rebellion movement known as Frod de la Democracie pour la Liberation du Rwanda (FDLR)

In 1998, Rwandan soldiers began aiding antigovernment rebels in the Congo who were attempting to overthrow the Congolese president, Laurent Kabila; Rwanda had helped Kabila overthrow Mobutu Sese Seko 18 months earlier. President Bizimungu resigned in Mar., 2000, accusing the parliament of using an anticorruption campaign to attack Hutu members of the government. Kagame officially succeeded Bizimungu as president in April, becoming the first Tutsi to be president of Rwanda.

Fighting in 1999 and 2000 between Rwandan and Ugandan forces in the Congo has led to tense relations between the two nations and occasional fighting between proxy forces in the Congo; each nation also has accused the other of aiding rebels against its own rule. Rwandan troops were withdrawn from the Congo in 2002 as the result of the signing of a peace agreement, but Rwanda forces fighting Hutu rebels have made incursions into the Congo and Burundi as well. Also in 2002, former president Bizimungu, who had become a critic of the government and established an opposition party, was arrested and charged with engaging in illegal political activity; he was convicted in 2004, but released in 2007 after being pardoned.

In May, 2003, votes approved a new constitution. In the subsequent presidential election in July, President Paul Kagame faced three Hutu candidates, the most prominent of which was former prime minister Faustin Twagiramungu. The election, the first in which Rwandans could vote for an opposition candidate, was won by Kagame, with 95% of the vote, but some observers accused the government of voting irregularities, and the campaign was marred by continual government interference with opposition rallies. The RPF also won a majority of the elected seats in the Chamber of Deputies in September. The main Hutu rebel group, based in E Congo (Kinshasa), announced in Mar., 2005, that it would disarm and return peacefully to Rwanda, but the Rwandan government said that rebels who participated in the 1994 genocide would face trial when they returned.

In late 2006, a French judge investigating the crash that killed Habyarimana and provoked the genocide concluded that Kagame and a number of his aides should be tried for their roles in shooting down the plane; the judge was investigating the crash because of the deaths of the plane's French crew. The Rwandan government, which had accused extremist Hutus of assassinating Habyarimana and which also was investigating what it said was French complicity in the massacres that followed the crash, angrily denounced the judge's action and expelled the French ambassador.

REPUBLIC OF RWANDA

Country, east-central Africa. Area: 10,169 sq mi (26,338 sq km). Population (2005 est.): 8,574,000. Capital: Kigali. The population is mostly Hutu, with a Tutsi minority. Languages: Rwanda, French, English (all official). Religions: Christianity (mostly Roman Catholic; also Protestant); also traditional beliefs, Islam. Currency: Rwanda franc. Rwanda is a landlocked mountainous country, most of it at an elevation above 4,000 ft (1,200 m). There are bamboo forests, wooded regions, and grassy savannas with rich and varied wildlife. The developing economy is mainly free-enterprise, based on agriculture. Rwanda is a republic with two legislative bodies; its head of state and government is the president, assisted by the prime minister. Originally inhabited by the Twa, a Pygmy people, it became home to the Hutu, who were well established there when the Tutsi appeared in the 14th century. The Tutsi conquered the Hutu and in the 15th century founded a kingdom near Kigali. The kingdom expanded steadily, but from 1894 to 1918 Rwanda was part of German East Africa. The Belgians occupied Rwanda in 1916, and the League of Nations created Ruanda-Urundi as a Belgian mandate in 1923. The Tutsi retained their dominance until shortly before Rwanda reached independence in 1962, when the Hutu took control of the government and stripped the Tutsi of much of their land. Many Tutsi fled Rwanda, and the Hutu dominated the country's political system, waging sporadic civil wars until mid-1994, when the death of the country's leader in a plane crash triggered massive violence. The Tutsi-led Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) took over the country by force after the massacre of almost one million Tutsi and Tutsi sympathizers by the Hutu. Two million refugees, mostly Hutu, fled to neighboring Congo (Kinshasa) after the RPF's victory. A transitional government was replaced in 2003 following the country's first biased and vote rigging elections whereby President Kagame was elected the President.