Rwanda: Ethnic amnesia as a cover for ethnocracy, and why this is dangerous
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Abstract
In Rwanda, before the 1959 "Hutu revolution", the royal court and nearly all functions in the “indigenous” political, administrative and judicial system were occupied by Tutsi. When this situation was increasingly challenged by emerging Hutu leaders from the mid-1950s, it became necessary for the Tutsi elites to stress Rwanda’s “centuries-old national unity” and deny the reality of ethnic discrimination. Ethnocratic rule attempted to hide itself under the guise of an absence of ethnicity, or at least its visible face. Likewise in Burundi, a country with a similar ethnic layout, references to ethnicity were outlawed, particularly under the rule of then president Jean-Baptiste Bagaza, while Tutsi elites heavily dominated the public and private sectors. Proxies were used to identify ethnic belonging in schools, and Hutu were discriminated against in national exams. A similar phenomenon can be observed in Rwanda today: this situation is rhetorically represented in exactly the same way as it was in the 1950s. While Tutsi represent 10-15% of the population, their elites occupy a disproportionate share of state and other functions. This paper demonstrates this empirically.
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References
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