Rwanda: 1954-1864 Decade: The Untold Story

Historical narratives told us that Rwanda was formed from the conquest of Hutu chiefdoms by Tutsi conquerors who established a unified kingdom under the rule of a king -the Mwami. For several centuries the Mwami ruled as an absolutist monarch in a socially feudal system based on serfdom (Ubuhake) by " Tutsi masters" at one side and exploited Hutu common mortals at the other side. In early 1950s, the serfdom system was abolished by the Mwami Mutara III Rudahigwa, followed by the Hutu struggle for the abolition of the feudal system itself and its replacement by democratic institutions, governed by the rule of law.

Ultimately, the Hutu struggle culminated into the so called "1959 Socio-Political Revolution", the proclamation of Rwanda as a Republic on January 25, 1961 and its Independence on July 1st, 1962. More recently in 1994, mass massacres, rightly referred to as genocide, took place in Rwanda, which officially claimed hundreds of thousands of lives. Across the border, killings of several millions of Congolese since 1996 are linked to this 1994 tragedy in Rwanda.

My purpose here is not to write a History of Rwanda. I am not an historian. Then, what am I going to say and why? I simply want to share with the young generation my own experience of the decade 1954-1964, reporting events as I lived them, not from the "hearsay" or from "read for you" stance.