The Rwandan Genocide: The Weight of Identity (Part 2)

Rwanda's colonial history illustrates the deep scars left by systematic racial classification imposed by Belgian authorities, which created long-lasting divisions that led to cycles of violence. The episode highlights the origins of this categorization, the varied responses from the Rwandan populace, and the harsh realities shaping the relationships between groups defined by arbitrary metrics. 

• Examination of Rwanda's racial classification systems 
• The role of Belgian authorities in defining ethnic identities 
• Daily consequences of segregation in education and markets 
• Psychological ramifications of colonial race categories 
• Rise of the Hutu Revolution and its violent implications 
• Shift in power dynamics post-colonial rule

Chapters

• 0:02 Colonial Racial Classification in Rwanda
• 5:04 Belgian Colonial Legacy in Rwanda

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:02

Imagine yourself in a colonial administrative office in Nianza, rwanda. The year is 1933. The room is thick with cigarette smoke and the scratching of fountain pens. The line of people stretches out the door and down the street. Each person waits to be measured, categorized and given the piece of paper that will define not just their fate but their children's fate and their children's children. A Belgian administrator adjusts his calipers. A young Rwandan man sits stiffly in the wooden chair before him. The administrator measures his nose length, his skull shape, his height. He makes careful notes on the ledger. Too tall for a Hutu, he mutters to himself. Hmm, nose, not quite right for a Tutsi. He frowns, consult his racial classification manual and measures again. The young man's entire future hangs on these measurements. Will he be classified as a Tutsi with access to education and administrative positions, or a Hutu forever marked as part of the subordinate race? His grandfather was a wealthy Hutu who stood to become Tutsi through the traditional social mobility system. His father married a Tutsi woman. Social mobility system. His father married a Tutsi woman. But none of that matters now. All that matters is the cold metal of the calibers and the arbitrary numbers of the Belgian's men. With a single stamp, a life is categorized, an identity fixed, a future determined. The young man looks at his new identity card. He is now officially and irrevocably Hutu. The administrator is already calling for the next person in line.

Speaker 1: 1:57

You know how they say you can't understand someone until you walk a mile in their shoes. Well, I'd argue you can't understand a nation until you've walked through its history, not just the highlight reel or the sanitized version you find in textbooks. I mean really getting into its DNA, those defining moments that shaped everything that came after, those moments where paths were chosen, where decisions were made in palaces and backrooms and city streets that changed the course of millions of lives. I'm your host, paul, and this is Double Helix Blueprint of Nations, where we unravel the genetic code of countries to their most transformative moments. Think of it like ancestry testing, but for entire nations who dig deep into the historical DNA, finding those crucial moments that made countries who they are today. Between 1916 and 1962, belgian authorities in Rwanda would play a deadly game of racial anthropology, creating a stew of resentment and hatred that would have terrible consequences and would echo through the decades. Last time we explored how pre-colonial Rwanda maintained a complex social system where the categories of Hutu and Tutsi were fluid and based on wealth, occupation and status. Today we'll see how European colonizers took that system and quite literally set it in stone, or at least in government-issued ID cards.

Speaker 1: 3:39

Let me introduce you to Maurice Simon, the Belgian administrator who oversaw this transformation in Nianza. In his personal letters from 1933, recently discovered in Brussels archives he writes with disturbing pride about creating what he calls scientific order from African chaos. Reading his meticulous notes today, you get the impression of a man who would have been equally happy organizing a particularly aggressive library card catalog system. Instead he was categorizing human beings. The Belgian system of racial classification would have been almost comical if it hadn't been so catastrophic. Their scientific methods included measuring nose length. The longer the nose, the more tootsie you wear. Apparently, checking height, tootsie were supposedly taller. Counting cattle own more than 10 cows, you're probably tootsie. And looking at facial features, whatever that means, I should note here that actual anthropologists of the time were already pointing out how absurd this all was. As one French researcher wrote in 1925, the Belgians had managed to create racial categories that would confuse even the most determined Nazi theorists. But Belgian administrators weren't interested in scientific accuracy. They were interested in creating a system that they could control.

Speaker 1: 5:04

Let me take you to a secondary school in Boutare in 1936. The Belgian Catholic missionaries who run it have divided their students into two groups. The Tutsi students take classes in administration, french and advanced mathematics. The Hutu students learn agricultural techniques and basic arithmetic. A young Hutu student named Joseph Guitera, who would later become a significant political figure, by the way, writes in his journal they teach us that we are born to dig, while others are born to think. When I read my books at night, my mind seems to work just fine.

Speaker 1: 5:45

The Belgian colonial machine didn't just classify people, it created entirely separate paths through the life of those in classifications. By 1940, they had established different schools for Hutu and Tutsi children, different job opportunities, different legal rights, different tax obligations, even different churches in some areas. In a Catholic mission in a school in Kapkaji in 1937, fr Pierre Blom is instructing a group of fellow missionaries on their role in what he calls the scientific organization of Rwanda. The church's leadership with colonial administration went far beyond just running schools. They were actively helping to reshape Rwanda's social DNA. They were actively helping to reshape Rwanda's social DNA. Our task, fr Blom explains to his colleagues, is to help our Belgian friends bring order to chaos, he pulls out a series of charts showing the racial characteristics of Hutu and Tutsi children. The missionaries not appreciatively at his blend of pseudoscience and religious authority. None of them seem to notice, or perhaps care about, the irony of using Christian ministry to enforce racial segregation. By 1938, this racial reorganization had literally become architectural In the construction site of the new Church of Nianza. The building plans show separate entrances for Hutu and Tutsi worshippers. Even God, it seems, was being recruited into the Belgian system of racial classifications.

Speaker 1: 7:21

But perhaps nothing illustrates the transformation of Rwandan society better than what happened to its markets. Picture yourself in Butaira's central market in 1940, where once trading relationships crossed all social boundaries. Now strict new regulations determine who can sell what to whom. A Tutsi cattle trader named Emmanuel Rukiba later recalled my father used to tell me how he could once trade with anyone. Now there were forms to fill out, permissions to seek, categories to declare. The Belgians turned commerce into racial questions.

Speaker 1: 8:01

In the Colonial Administrative Office in Ruhengary in 1941, we find a perfect example of how the system perpetuated itself. A young Hutu clerk named Gabriel Muhosi is processing applications for trading licenses. He finds one from a Tutsi merchant who wants to open a shop In the old days. He writes in his diary that evening. I would have judged this man by his character and abilities. Now I must first check his race, then his region, then his political reliability. We have learned to see each other through the Belgian eyes.

Speaker 1: 8:37

Let me share a story that captures how deeply these changes had penetrated Rwandan society. It's 1942 and we're at a family gathering in Gisenji. A grandmother is explaining to her grandchildren why they can no longer play with the neighbor's children. But they are friends. When child protests, the Belgian administrator says they're different. The grandmother replies, her voice heavy with something between resignation and disbelief. And now somehow they are.

Speaker 1: 9:10

This transformation wasn't just political. It was also psychological, social and deeply personal. You know what's particularly ironic about all this? The Belgians were so obsessed with their racial categories that they actually created the very racial divisions they claimed to have discovered. As one elderly Roandan said, before the Belgians, we knew who was Hutu and who was Tutsi, but we had to think about it After them. We couldn't think about anything else.

Speaker 1: 9:39

The 1940s brought a new wrinkle to Rwanda's racial drama. World War II was raging in Europe and suddenly Belgian's colonial administrators found themselves enforcing racial theories uncomfortably familiar to those of the Nazis that they were fighting back at home. Did this give them pause? Make them reconsider their methods, maybe? Well, if you're betting on colonial officials having a moment of self-awareness, I've got some disappointing news for you. Instead, they doubled down. By 1945, they had created what one administrator proudly called the most comprehensive racial documentation system in Africa. Every Rwandan was required to carry an ID card listing their racial category. These cards would later become death warrants during the 1994 genocide, but in the 1940s they were seen as a triumph of colonial efficiency.

Speaker 1: 10:37

Let me take you to a moment that captures this bureaucratic madness perfectly. It's 1947, and a man named Rangomwa is standing before a colonial review board in Kitarama. His father was classified as Tutsi, but his mother's family was Hutu. Under traditional Rwandan custom, this wouldn't have been an issue. Identity followed the father's line, but the Belgians had created such rigid categories that they literally spent three days debating his case. The transcript of these proceedings reads like a particularly dark comedy. One official argues that his nose is quote sufficiently Tutsi-like, while another insists his height is problematically Hutu. A third measures his skull with calipers and declares the results ambiguous. Meanwhile, rangonwa, who just wants to renew his trading license, sits there while colonial officials debate whether his facial features correspond to their racial handbooks.

Speaker 1: 11:34

But the impact of these classifications went far beyond individual indignities. By 1950, they had fundamentally reshaped Rwandan society. The Catholic Church, always eager to help with colonial administration and, believe me, will have plenty to say about their role later had created separate religious youth movements one for Tutsi children, focused on leadership, another for Hutu youth emphasizing manual labor and Christian obedience. Let me share a story that illustrates just how deeply these divisions had penetrated. In 1952, a Tutsi father brought his son to enroll at a prestigious colonial school in Kigali. The boy's identity card classified him as Tutsi, but he was shorter than the Belgian height standards for his quote-unquote race. The school administrator actually suggested that perhaps there had been an error on the birth certificate, as if being tall was a more reliable indicator of Tutsi identity than one owns family history.

Speaker 1: 12:36

By the mid-1950s, the Belgian colonial system had created something unprecedented in Rwandan history a society where every person's opportunities, education and future were determined by what was written in a small piece of paper in their pocket. You know those dystopian nobles where your entire life is decided by some arbitrary classification system. Well, welcome to Rwanda in the 1950s, where reality was given fiction a run for its money. There's a specific moment that captures this transformation. It's 1956, and we're in a classroom at the Nyakibanda Seminary. A young Hutu seminarian named Gregoire Kayibanda is giving a history lecture Now.

Speaker 1: 13:24

Kayibanda would later become Rwanda's first president, but at this moment he's just a frustrated teacher trying to explain Rwanda's past to his students. According to the Belgians, he tells them, our history begins when a superior race of Tutsi descended from Ethiopia to rule over us primitive Hutu. He pauses looking at his students, interesting how this theory appeared exactly when Europeans needed to justify putting one group over another, isn't it? The seminary students laugh, but it's a bitter laugh. They're part of a new phenomenon Educated Hutu who have mastered the colonizer's language and logic, only to turn it against the system. The Belgians had created schools like Nyakibanda to train low-level Hutu clerks and assistants. Instead they were inadvertently creating revolutionaries. You have to appreciate the irony here.

Speaker 1: 14:20

The Belgian colonial system was so focused on measuring noses and skulls that they completely missed the growing political consciousness right under those carefully measured noses. By 1957, the consciousness found its voice in what became known as the Bahutu Manifesto. Now, political manifestos are rarely light reading, but this one was particularly spicy. Signed by nine Hutu intellectuals, including our friend Kayibanda, it essentially said hey, if you're going to insist that we're different races, maybe the majority race should have a say in running the country. The colonial authorities were shocked. The Tutsi elite were outraged. Both had become so invested in the racial hierarchy that they couldn't imagine it being challenged. It's a bit like building an elaborate house of cards and being surprised when someone points out that cards aren't actually meant to be load-bearing structural elements. The manifesto landed like a bomb in Rwanda's political landscape. A Tutsi counter manifesto quickly appeared, arguing that Rwanda had been harmonious before colonialism, conveniently forgetting that pre-colonial harmony had still meant Tutsi dominance. The Belgian administrators watched this debate with growing alarm. As one official wrote in his report, we may have succeeded too well in teaching them to think in racial terms. The Belgian's carefully constructed racial hierarchy was about to collapse, but not before claiming its first victim.

Speaker 1: 15:54

It is now November 1st 1959, a date that would later be celebrated as the start of the Hutu revolution, though like most revolutions, it began with violence. In Hitarama province, a group of young Tutsi royalists attack Dominique Mbonyumutungwa, a prominent Hutu sub-chief. Now, political violence wasn't exactly new in Rwanda, but this was different. Within hours, words of the attack spread through the hills faster than a piece of particularly juicy gossip at a village wedding. Their response was immediate and devastating. Hutu bands began attacking Tutsi authorities, burning homes and forcing families to flee. Remember all those careful Belgian racial classifications? Well, now they were being used for a purpose that their creators hadn't intended identifying targets for revenge. A Belgian administrator wrote in his journal that week. We spent years teaching them that they were different peoples. Now they are acting like different peoples at war. I can almost hear the surprise Pikachu phase in the writing. Who could have guessed that telling people that they were inherently different and one group was oppressing the other might lead to conflict or right anyone with a basic common sense? The violence followed a pattern that would become tragically familiar in Rwanda's future. First local authorities were targeted, then homes were burned and finally entire families fled.

Speaker 1: 17:26

Between November 1959 and March 1960, more than 20,000 Tutsis sought refuge in neighboring countries. The first wave of refugees would later become known as the 59ers. Colonel Guy Logiste, the new Belgian special resident sent to restore order, made a calculated decision. Looking at the demographics and reading the political winds, he decided to side with what he saw as the inevitable Hutu revolution. The revolution is like a wind, he wrote in his reports. Better to bend with it than break trying to resist it, though I suspect that thousands of Tutsi refugees might have some thoughts about what was actually breaking.

Speaker 1: 18:08

By early 1960, rwanda's decades-old social hierarchy had been turned upside down. Hundreds of Tutsi chiefs and sub-chiefs were replaced by Hutu administrators. The monarchy was effectively powerless. A new political party, the Parmehutu, led by our old friend Gregoire Kayibanda from seminary, was rising to dominance. The transformation of Rwanda between 1959 and 1960 was dizzying. Imagine flipping a social pyramid upside down while simultaneously setting it on fire. That's basically what happened. By mid-1960, the Belgian administrators who had spent decades meticulously building their racial hierarchy were watching it collapse like a particularly ill-conceived Jenga tower.

Speaker 1: 18:55

Let me take you to a specific moment that captures this transformation. It's June 1960, and we're in a local government office in Butade. A Hutu administrator is sitting behind a desk that just months ago belonged to a Tutsi chief. He's using the same stamp, the same forms, even the same racial classification system that was once used against his people. Talk about historical irony. It's like inheriting your oppressor's furniture and deciding to keep using it. But here's the tragic part the revolution against racial privilege wets itself's shape by racial thinking. Parmehutu's slogan became Rubanda Nyawinshi we are the majority people.

Speaker 1: 19:41

The same colonial categories that had justified Tutsi dominance were now being used to justify their exclusion, as one Parmehutu leader declared in a speech that summer, their exclusion, as one Parmehutu leader declared in a speech that summer. We are not fighting against individual Tutsi, but against their racial supremacy. If that logic sounds familiar, well, history has an unfortunate way of recycling its warped ideas. By late 1960, belgium was preparing to wash its hands of the whole situation. After decades of carefully constructing Rwanda's racial powder keg, they were now backing away with all the graves of someone who had just accidentally started a fire at a dinner party.

Speaker 1: 20:22

The final Belgian census of 1960 provides a haunting snapshot of this moment. In their neat colonial handwriting, administrators recorded 120,000 Tutsi refugees have fled the country. Nearly all local Tutsi authorities have been replaced. The monarchy was effectively powerless and yet, incredibly, they were still carefully noting people's racial categories on official forms. All habits, it seems, die hard, even when they're actively killing people. This is where we have to leave Rwanda for today. Poised on the edge of independence, his colonial categories now harden into political identities that would shape everything that followed, the Belgian architects of this system were preparing to depart, leaving behind a nation permanently marked by their racial theories. Next time, on Double Helix, we'll follow Rwanda through independence and onto its first republic. We'll see how Grégoire Cayibanda, the former seminary teacher, turned revolutionary, transforms into Rwanda's first president, and we'll watch as the promise of revolution curdles into a new kind of oppression, setting the stage for cycles of violence that would eventually culminate in 1994. Until then, thank you for listening and we'll see you soon © transcript Emily Beynon.