Tiny, poor, and landlocked, Rwanda is nestled between Burundi, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), and Tanzania in the Great Lakes region of Africa. The country known as the “land of a thousand hills” is slightly smaller than the U.S. state of Maryland and home to twice as many people—roughly 12.3 million, making it the most densely populated country on the continent. Rwanda’s population is divided among three main ethnic groups: Hutu (90 percent), Tutsi (10 percent), and Twa (less than 1 percent). For centuries, the country was ruled by a Tutsi monarchy. It became a German colony in 1899 and later a mandate and then trust territory of Belgium prior to gaining independence in 1962.
Ethnic tensions escalated during the decade before independence, culminating in a bloody uprising of Hutus against Tutsi dominance that lasted from 1959 to 1961. The violence continued after independence, as Tutsi forces invaded Rwanda in 1963, and the Hutu—now in power—responded by massacring between ten and fifteen thousand Tutsi. By 1975, Rwanda had become a one-party state, led by President Juvénal Habyarimana, a Hutu who had come to power in 1973 in a bloodless coup.
In July 1990, amid the return to multiparty politics sweeping sub-Saharan Africa, Habyarimana, who was then in his third term in office, announced his intention to move Rwanda toward a multiparty system. In October 1990, however, the RPF (then made up mostly of Tutsi refugees in Uganda) invaded Rwanda, sparking a civil war. Beginning in July 1992, the RPF and the Rwandan government entered into negotiations in Arusha, Tanzania, eventually reaching an agreement that called for the establishment of a transitional power-sharing government by September 1993. That deadline was never met, and by February 1994 the country was roiling with street violence as the transitional period dragged on. Two months later, on 6 April 1994, the jet carrying Habyarimana and Burundian president Cyprien Ntaryamira back from Tanzania was shot down over Kigali, killing all aboard and triggering the hundred-day genocide against the Tutsi.
The genocide—an extreme manifestation of the instability that often accompanies political transitions—stemmed from the lethal mix of three factors: 1) the transition toward multiparty democracy; 2) a bipolar ethnic structure, which is difficult to manage anywhere; and 3) the fact that the RPF was essentially a Tutsi movement, which made it easy for the genocidal regime to portray all Tutsi as RPF allies or accomplices—and therefore as “enemies”—when hostilities resumed.
Despite Rwanda’s repeated bouts of ethnic conflict and the civil war that had raged on and off from 1990 to 1993, the outside world had paid little attention to this before the genocide. But after the killing of up to a million people (mostly Tutsis, but also Hutus killed for political or criminal reasons, or massacred by the RPF), the international community finally took notice. Today, however, there are two radically opposing views of Rwanda—one that hails its visionary leadership, economic progress, market-oriented policies, empowerment of women, and reforms in education, health, and agriculture, and another that condemns its autocratic rule, human-rights abuses, persecution of the Hutu majority, and growing inequality and rural poverty.
Elections as a Means of Consolidation. From its first days in power, the RPF unilaterally imposed its will on the country while formally adhering to the power-sharing formula inscribed in the 1993 Arusha peace accords between the RPF and the Habyarimana government. The RPF, having defeated the government forces and put an end to the genocide (with little external support other than from Uganda), had free rein to ignore constitutional limitations and exercise power as it pleased. It did so willingly, knowing that it would stand no chance in an open political contest. By August 1995, the transitional national-unity government ceased to exist. The Hutu prime minister, Faustin Twagiramungu of the Democratic Republican Movement (MDR), resigned and left the country along with other cabinet members (including a Hutu RPF minister) in protest of the closing of political space, gross human-rights violations, and partisan appointments in the administration and judiciary.
This was just the tip of the iceberg. Many politicians, civil servants, judges, and military officers who had stayed on or returned after the RPF’s victory were threatened or became disillusioned, and they fled the country in growing numbers beginning in early 1995. At first, it was mainly Hutu who were leaving. But disillusioned Tutsi soon followed, particularly genocide survivors who increasingly felt like second-class citizens marginalized by the RPF. At the same time, the RPF was pushing a “Tutsification” of the country. While officially rejecting ethnic discrimination and even the notion of ethnicity, the RPF reserved access to power, wealth, and knowledge to Tutsi elites. By the end of the 1990s, the RPF had consolidated its power, and the country was ruled by an increasingly authoritarian regime.
