Hutu

Pierre Nkurunziza • Juvénal Habyarimana Olivier Rukundo • Victoire Ingabire Umuhoza
Total population
11.5 million
Regions with significant populations
Rwanda, Burundi, Democratic Republic of the Congo
Languages
Rwanda-Rundi, French
Religion
majority: Christianity, minority: Islam
Related ethnic groups
Tutsi, Twa

The Hutu /ˈhuːtuː/, also known as the Abahutu, are an ethnic group in Central Africa. They mainly live in Rwanda, Burundi and the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, where they form one of the principal population elements alongside the Tutsi and the Twa.

Demographics[link]

The Hutu are the largest of the three main population divisions in Burundi and Rwanda. According to the Central Intelligence Agency, 84% of Rwandans and 85% of Burundians are Hutu, with Tutsis the next largest ethnic group at 15% and 14% of residents in Rwanda and Burundi, respectively.^[1][2] The Twa pygmies, the smallest of the two countries principle populations, also share language and culture with the Hutu and Tutsi. However, they are distinguished by a considerably shorter stature.^[3][4]

Origins[link]

A traditional Hutu throwing knife.

The Hutu are believed to have first emigrated to Central Africa from West Africa in the great Bantu expansion.^[5] Various theories have emerged to explain the purported physical differences between them and their fellow Bantu-speaking neighbors, the Tutsi. One such thesis, largely based on oral tradition, posits that the Tutsi experienced some admixture with or were partially descended from migrants of Caucasoid stock, who usually were said to have arrived in the Great Lakes region from the Horn of Africa and/or North Africa. These pastoralists were then reckoned to have established aristocracies over the sedentary Hutu and Twa. Through intermarriage with the local Bantus, the herders were gradually assimilated culturally, linguistically and racially.^[6]

An alternate theory is that the Hutu and Tutsi originally belonged to the same Bantu population, but were artificially divided by German and then Belgian colonists so that the Tutsi minority could serve as local overseers for Berlin and Brussels. The latter view has received support among proponents of Rwandan national unity, but has been criticized as an attempt at historical revisionism.^[7][8]

Still others suggest that the two groups are related but not identical, and that differences between them were exacerbated by Europeans,^[9] or by a gradual, natural split, as those who owned cattle became known as Tutsi and those who did not became Hutu.^[4] Mahmood Mamdani states that the Belgian colonial power designated people as Tutsi or Hutu on the basis of cattle ownership, physical measurements and church records.^[10]

Language[link]

Hutus speak Rwanda-Rundi as their native tongue, which is a member of the Bantu subgroup of the Niger–Congo language family. Rwanda-Rundi is subdivided into the Kinyarwanda and Kirundi dialects, which have been standardized as official languages of Burundi and Rwanda. It is also spoken as a mother tongue by the Tutsi and Twa.

Additionally, many Hutu speak French, the other official language of Rwanda and Burundi, as a lingua franca.

Genetics[link]

Modern-day genetic studies of the Y-chromosome suggest a close ethnic kinship between the Hutu and other neighboring Bantu peoples, particularly the Tutsi. Like the Tutsi, the Hutu largely belong to the E1b1a haplogroup (83%), which is associated with the Bantu expansion from West Africa. A minority carry the E2 (8%), B (4%), E1b1b (3%) and R1 (1%) clades.^[5]

[...]generations of gene flow obliterated whatever clear-cut physical distinctions may have once existed between these two Bantu peoples -- renowned to be height, body build, and facial features. With a spectrum of physical variation in the peoples, Belgian authorities legally mandated ethnic affiliation in the 1920s, based on economic criteria. Formal and discrete social divisions were consequently imposed upon ambiguous biological distinctions. To some extent, the permeability of these categories in the intervening decades helped to reify the biological distinctions, generating a taller elite and a shorter underclass, but with little relation to the gene pools that had existed a few centuries ago. The social categories are thus real, but there is little if any detectable genetic differentiation between Hutu and Tutsi.^[11]

Post-colonial history[link]

Hutu and other Rwandan children in Virunga National Park.

The Belgian-sponsored Tutsi monarchy survived until 1959, when Kigeli V was exiled from the colony (then called Ruanda-Urundi). In Burundi, Tutsis, who are the minority, maintained control of the government and military. In Rwanda, the political power was transferred from the minority Tutsi to the majority Hutu.^[12] In Rwanda, this led to the "Social revolution" and Hutu violence against Tutsis. Ten of thousands of Tutsis were killed causing many Tutsis to flee to neighboring countries, such as Burundi, Uganda and expanding the Banyamulenge Tutsi ethnic group in the South Kivu region of the Belgian Congo. Later, Tutsis in exile from Burundi invaded Rwanda, causing Rwanda to close its border with Burundi.

In Burundi, a campaign of genocide was conducted against Hutu population in 1972,^{[13][14][15][16][17]} and an estimated 100,000 Hutus died.^[18][18] In 1993, Burundi's first democratically elected president and also a Hutu, Melchior Ndadaye, was assassinated by Tutsi officers, as was the person constitutionally entitled to succeed him.^[19] This sparked a period of civil strife between Hutu political structures and the Tutsi military, in which an estimated 500,000 Burundians have died.^{[citation needed]} There were indiscriminate mass killings first of Tutsis, then of Hutus; of these, the former have been described as genocide by the United Nations International Commission of Inquiry for Burundi.^[20]

While Tutsi remained in control of Burundi, the conflict resulted in genocide in Rwanda as well.^[21] A Tutsi rebel group, the Rwandan Patriotic Front, invaded Rwanda from Uganda, which started a civil war against Rwanda's Hutu government in 1990. A peace agreement was signed, but violence erupted again, culminating in the Rwandan Genocide of 1994, when Hutu extremists killed^[22] an estimated 800,000 Rwandans, mostly Tutsis.^[23] About 30% of the Twa population of Rwanda also died in the fighting.^[24] At the same time, the Rwandan Patriotic Front took control of the country and is still the ruling party as of 2012^[update]. Burundi is also currently governed by a former rebel group, the Hutu CNDD-FDD.

As of 2006, violence between the Hutu and Tutsi had subsided, but the situation in both Rwanda and Burundi was still tense, and tens of thousands of Rwandans were still living outside the country (see Great Lakes refugee crisis).^[1]

See also[link]

• Burundi Civil War
• History of Burundi
• Rwanda Civil War
• History of Rwanda

References[link]

This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (January 2011)

Laurent-Désiré Kabila
A bust of Laurent Kabila being installed in the town of Bukavu, 2011.
President of the Democratic Republic of the Congo
In office May 17, 1997 – January 18, 2001
Preceded by	Mobutu Sese Seko (as President of Zaire)
Succeeded by	Joseph Kabila
Personal details
Born	(1939-11-27)November 27, 1939 Baudouinville, Belgian Congo
Died	January 18, 2001(2001-01-18) (aged 61) Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of the Congo
Political party	AFDL
Spouse(s)	Sifa Mahanya
Children	Joseph Kabila (b. 1971)
Profession	Rebel leader, President
Religion	Christianity[which?]

Laurent-Désiré Kabila (November 27, 1939 – January 18, 2001) was President of the Democratic Republic of the Congo from May 17, 1997, when he overthrew Mobutu Sese Seko, until his assassination by one of his bodyguards on January 18, 2001. He was succeeded by his son Joseph eight days later.

Early life[link]

Kabila was born to a member of the Luba tribe in Baudoinville, Katanga Province, (now Moba, Tanganyika District) in the Belgian Congo. His father was a Luba and his mother was a Lunda. He studied political philosophy in France and Serbia at the University of Belgrade, and later attended the University of Dar es Salaam in Tanzania.^[1]

Congo Crisis[link]

When the Congo gained independence from Belgium on June 30, 1960 and the Congo Crisis began, Kabila was a "deputy commander" in the Jeunesses Balubakat, the youth wing of the Patrice Lumumba-aligned General Association of the Baluba People of Katanga (Balubakat), actively fighting the secessionist forces of Moise Tshombe. Within months, Lumumba was overthrown by Joseph Mobutu, and in 1962, Kabila was appointed to the provincial assembly for North Katanga and was chief of cabinet for Minister of Information Ferdinand Tumba. He established himself as a supporter of hard-line Lumumbist Prosper Mwamba Ilunga. When the Lumumbists formed the Conseil National de Libération, he was sent to eastern Congo to help organize a revolution, in particular in the Kivu and North Katanga provinces. In 1965, Kabila set up a cross-border rebel operation from Kigoma, Tanzania, across Lake Tanganyika.^[2]

Che Guevara assisted Kabila for a short time in 1965. Guevara had appeared in the Congo with approximately 100 men who planned to bring about a Cuban style revolution. In Guevara's opinion, Kabila (then 26) was "not the man of the hour" he had alluded to, being too distracted. This, in Guevara's opinion, was the reason that Kabila would show up days late at times to provide supplies, aid, or backup to Guevara's men. The lack of cooperation between Kabila and Guevara led to the revolt being suppressed that same year.^[3] In Guevara's view, of all of the people he met during his campaign in Congo, Kabila was the only man who had "genuine qualities of a mass leader" but castigated him for a lack of "revolutionary seriousness". After the failure of the rebellion, Kabila turned to smuggling gold and timber on Lake Tanganyika. He also ran a bar in Tanzania.^[4]

In 1967, Kabila and his remnant of supporters moved their operation into the mountainous Fizi-Baraka area of South Kivu and founded the People's Revolutionary Party (PRP). With the support of the People's Republic of China the PRP created a secessionist Marxist state in South Kivu province, west of Lake Tanganyika. The mini-state included collective agriculture, extortion and mineral smuggling. The local military commanders were aware of the PRP enclave and reportedly traded military supplies in exchange for a cut of the extortion and robbery profits. By the late 1970s and early 1980s, Kabila had amassed considerable wealth and established houses in Dar es Salaam and Kampala. The PRP state came to an end in 1988 and Kabila disappeared and was widely believed to be dead. While in Kampala, Kabila reportedly met Yoweri Museveni, the future president of Uganda. Museveni and former Tanzanian President Julius Nyerere later introduced Kabila to Paul Kagame, who would become president of Rwanda. These personal contacts became vital in mid-1990s, when Uganda and Rwanda were looking for a Congolese face for their intervention in Zaire.^[5]

War and presidency[link]

Flag of the Democratic Republic of the Congo used by Kabila

Kabila returned in October 1996, leading ethnic Tutsis from South Kivu against Hutu forces, marking the beginning of the First Congo War. With support from Uganda, Rwanda, and Burundi, Kabila pushed his forces into a full-scale rebellion against Mobutu as the Alliance of Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Congo-Zaire (ADFL). By mid-1997, the ADFL had made significant gains. Following failed peace talks, Mobutu fled into exile on May 16. The next day, from his base in Lubumbashi, Kabila proclaimed himself president, suspended the Constitution, and changed the name of the country from Zaire to the Democratic Republic of the Congo. He made his grand entrance into Kinshasa on May 20, officially commencing his term as president. Kabila had been a committed Marxist, but his policies at this point were a mix of capitalism and collectivism. While some in the West hailed Kabila as representing a "new breed" of African leadership, critics charged that Kabila's policies differed little from his predecessor's, being characterised by authoritarianism, corruption, and human rights abuses. Kabila was also accused of self-aggrandizing tendencies, including trying to set up a personality cult, with the help of Mobutu's former Minister of Information, Dominique Sakombi Inongo.

By 1998, Kabila's former allies in Uganda and Rwanda had turned against him and backed a new rebellion of the Rally for Congolese Democracy (RCD), the Second Congo War. Kabila found new allies in Angola, Namibia, and Zimbabwe, and managed to hold on in the south and west of the country and by July 1999, peace talks led to the withdrawal of most foreign forces.

Assassination[link]

Kabila was shot during the afternoon of January 16, 2001 by one of his bodyguards, Rashidi Kasereka, who was killed as he attempted to flee the scene. His assassination was part of a failed coup attempt^{[citation needed]}. Kabila may have been alive when he was flown to a hospital in Zimbabwe after he was shot; the Congolese government confirmed that he had died there on January 18. One week later, his body was returned to Congo for a state funeral and his son, Joseph, became president eight days later.

Aftermath[link]

The investigation into Kabila's assassination led to 135 people being tried before a special military tribunal. The alleged ringleader, Colonel Eddy Kapend (one of Kabila's cousins), and 25 others were sentenced to death in January 2003, but not executed. Of the other defendants 64 were jailed, with sentences from six months to life, and 45 were exonerated. Some individuals were also accused of being involved in a plot to overthrow his son. Among them was Kabila's special advisor Emmanuel Dungia, former ambassador to South Africa. Many people believe the trial was flawed and the convicted defendants are innocent.^[6][7]

References[link]

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Laurent-Désiré Kabila

• Kabila's obituary from The Independent newspaper^{[dead link]}
• Kabila Legacy by Human Rights Watch
• Retracing Che Guevara's Congo Footsteps by BBC News, November 25, 2004
• DR Congo pays tribute Lumumba and Kabila^{[dead link]} Jan 2010

v t e President of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (list) Republic of the Congo (1960–1971) Joseph Kasa-Vubu • Antoine Gizenga (rebel) Republic of Zaire (1971–1997) Joseph Mobutu/Mobutu Sese Seko Democratic Republic of the Congo (1997–present) Laurent-Désiré Kabila • Joseph Kabila