Of the three main social groups, the Hutus, the Tutsis and the Twas, the Twa people were the first to establish themselves in Rwanda. The Hutus are believed to have emigrated from the Congo Basin and they were well established by the time the Tutsis came in the 15th century. They came from northern regions and conquered the area. Tutsi kings became the rulers of Rwanda. A feudal system was imposed and the Hutus became serfs, subject to the rule of the Tutsi leaders.
During World War I, Belgium occupied Rwanda and afterward became a territory of Belgium. In 1958, the Belgians forced the Tutsi leaders to give up their feudal system. The following year, violence erupted due to Hutu protests because of social, political, and economic inequality. The king fled the country along with 200,000 Tutsis. In January, 1961, a republic formed in Rwanda and elections held. Because of the overwhelming number of Hutus compared to the other classes, the Hutus won a large majority of seats in the National Assembly. In 1962, Belgium granted Rwanda their independence.
Despite this step in the correct political direction, civil unrest would soon follow. In 1962, a large army of the exiled Tutsis returned in an attempt to take over the government. However, this simply led to the massacre of thousands of Tutsis. Periodic ethnic violence ensued, continuing off and on for over three decades. Unfortunately, a large scale massacre of hundreds of thousands of Tutsi people occurred in 1994 and the Hutus were accused of genocide by the UN Secretary-General, Boutros Boutros-Ghali.
A cease-fire was declared in July of 1994 and thousands of refugees returned to Rwanda. By 1996, UN forces had withdrawn and thousands more refugees were forced out of their camps to return to Rwanda. This unfortuantely led to more ethnic violence by militant Hutus, killing thousands of Rwandans. Now, the three ethnic groups are living amongst each other, trying to get along in peace.
The Rwandan history has largely been based on warfare between different classes of people, mostly due to injustices forced upon the lower classes. Thousands, maybe even millions of people were senselessly slaughtered because people felt above other. Superiority is the cause of many of the ills seen within our recent history and this should urge us currently to reflect on what has happened. We can see hierarchical societies all around the globe and even within our own country, but we need to do our best to move away from having unequal social levels. In short, we need to learn from the past.
Rwanda has historically been a very poor country, but the genocide destroyed the economy even further. The government spent a lot of money on the war, plus one tenth of their total population died. Since then, the economy has recovered slightly, but they are still a long way from their pre-genocide status. Rwanda's Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is $1,300 per capita and their budget is $365 million. These numbers are dwarfed by the economy of the United States, which has a GDP per capita of $42,000 and a budget of well over a trillion dollars.
The economy of Rwanda is based mostly on agriculture, with much of the population relying on subsistence farming to support themselves. Economic growth has been nearly impossible for them because they lack enough food to feed their own country, let alone growing enough to sell to other countries. Rwanda's attempts to increase revenue from exports has been stymied by many different factors. Beverages which they export suffer from low prices, depriving the country of money that could be brought in. They have also tried to diversify by growing non-traditional foods to export, but they lack adequate transportation infrastructure within the country.
CIA World Fact Book: Rwanda, March 29, 2006 [Internet]. Available from http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/rw.html, retrieved April 12, 2006
People Pledge Union: Talking About Genocide-Genocides, [Internet]. Available from http://www.ppu.org.uk/indexa.html, retrieved April 12, 2006