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 between 1959 and 1994. Yet as lay editor of L’Ami between 1953 and 1955, Kayibanda did not write on the Hutu-Tutsi question. When he spoke of the ‘feudal mentality’ infecting the wealthier classes, he did not label this mentality ‘Tutsi’ (Kayibanda 1954). His famous 1954 manifesto, ‘Marching towards Progress’, reads like a paean for interracial and intraclass collaboration on the pressing social issues of the day. Significantly, such social issues were never framed in Hutu-Tutsi terms (Kayibanda 1954d). And even after taking over the editorship of Kinyamateka, the popular Kinyarwanda-language Catholic newspaper, Kayibanda’s social critiques did not incorporate Hutu-Tutsi language until well into 1957 (Rutayasire 2009, 16-17). Similarly, Hutu-Tutsi language does not dominate the White Fathers’ political commentaries in the early 1950s. Brief anthropological studies in Catholic newspapers focused on the categories of clan and family; interracial analysis centered not on Hutu and Tutsi categories but rather on white-black divisions in Belgian Congo and apartheid South Africa (Nkongori 1951; Pauwels 1953; ‘Problèmes sociaux’ 1952). Nor did the Hutu-Tutsi distinction dominate the White Fathers’ more classified political reflections. For example, an anonymous October 1952 study of Rwandan politics described the Rwandan mentality as ‘characterized by duplicity, xenophobia, and a lack of scruples in choosing means to an end’ (‘Pro Memoria’ 1952). One should note that the labels here are national rather than ethnic. Even a later advocate of Hutu emancipation like André Perraudin rarely alluded to an explicit Hutu-Tutsi problem in the early 1950s. To be sure,Perraudin wrote in his 1952 seminary report of wanting to ‘foster a more forthright fusion between subjects of the different races and vicariates’, attributing Nyakibanda Major Seminary’s recent tensions to ‘the human tendency of people of the same ethnic group to come together’ (Rapport Annuel 1952). Yet subsequent language implies that Perraudin was referring to tensions between Rwandans, Burundians, and Congolese rather than between Hutu and Tutsi."