Ruanda: Unterschied zwischen den Versionen

*Carney, J. J. (2012) Beyond Tribalism: The Hutu-Tutsi Question and Catholic Rhetoric in Colonial Rwanda. Journal of Religion in Africa 42 (2012) 172-202. Abstract: "Post genocide commentaries on colonial Rwandan history have emphasized the centrality of the Hamitic Hypothesis in shaping Catholic leaders’ sociopolitical imagination concerning Hutu and Tutsi identities. For most scholars, the resulting racialist interpretation of Hutu and Tutsi categories poisoned Rwandan society and laid the groundwork for postcolonial ethnic violence. This paper challenges the simplicity of this standard narrative. Not only did colonial Catholic leaders possess a complex understanding of the terms ‘Hutu’ and ‘Tutsi’, but the Hutu-Tutsi question was not the exclusive or even dominant paradigm of late colonial Catholic discourse. Even after the eruption of Hutu-Tutsi tensions in the late 1950s, Catholic bishops and lay elites continued to interpret the Hutu-Tutsi distinction in a wide variety of ways. Catholic attitudes and the escalation of Hutu-Tutsi tensions stemmed more from contextual political factors than immutable anthropological theories, however flawed." ... "After World War II the United Nations appointed an international trusteeship to oversee Rwanda and Burundi, exhorting Belgium to devolve further power to local elites. In response, Belgium announced a ten year development and devolution plan in 1952, opening prospects for democratic elections. In turn, Mwami Mutara announced the abolition of uburetwa (forced labor) and ubuhake (patron-client relationships), two vestiges of Rwanda’s precolonial society. In this sense Mutara embraced the political modernization of Rwanda, describing the 1953 decree establishing Rwanda’s Superior Council as ‘introducing democratic principles in the functioning of our institutions . . . posing the foundations for the transformation of a feudal

Rwanda into a modern state’ (Dejemeppe 1954). Reacting to Belgium’s and Mutara’s decisions, missionaries and indigenous Catholic journalists exhorted Catholics to join and shape Rwanda’s evolving ‘march for progress’ (Rapport du Vicariat 1951; Volker 1952; Dejemeppe 1954). In practical terms this meant replacing Rwanda’s ancestral customs with Western economic, political, and human rights standards, closely associating the building of the Christian kingdom with the furthering of democracy and the resolution of Rwanda’s social problems (‘Pour le progrès’ 1952, 524-537). In this vein, Kayibanda argued that the Rwandan Christian’s task in the 1950s was to challenge ‘barbarous mentalities’ which cloaked themselves in the language of the ‘sacred custom of the country’ (Kayibanda 1954d, 343).

The Hutu journalist and former Catholic seminarian Aloys Munyangaju agreed, calling his readers to the ballot boxes and celebrating the suppression of ubuhake as ‘the beginning of democracy’ (Munyangaju 1954, 155-156).

Even the White Fathers began rewriting the history of Belgian occupation through the lens of elevating the common masses out of feudal oppression. Here Christianity emerged as an ethical faith that encouraged fraternity

between all men, respected the rights of each human person, and supported social justice for the peasantry (‘Le Manifeste de la J.O.C.’ 1951; ‘Contrat et Travail ’ 1950; ‘Leçons de Morale Sociale’, 1951; ‘Le Ruanda-Urundi,’ 1954). ...light of Rwanda’s postcolonial history, what seems most surprising in this literature is the absence of Hutu-Tutsi discourse. The Hutu évolué Kayibanda offers a telling example. As coauthor of the 1957 Bahutu Manifesto, founder of the Mouvement Social Muhutu, leader of the Parmehutu political party, and president of the First Republic between 1962 and 1973, Kayibanda served as the intellectual godfather of the Hutu nationalism that dominated Rwanda