By Alex Mvuka
Abstract
This paper explores the rationale behind the ‘Hamitic/Bantu race’ hypothesis proposed by European anthropologists and its role in influencing racial divisions in the 1994 genocide in Rwanda. It will evaluate to what extent these ideas played a role in reconstructing Tutsi and Hutu ethnic identities and have legitimised violence against Congolese Tutsi in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). The Hamitic hypothesis and myths around a so called ‘Bantu race’ built on the work of Seligman and Speke, framed Tutsi and Hutu as separate racial groups. According to Speke, the “Tutsi were the descendants of Ham, the son of the Biblical Noah, and therefore ‘superior’ to the Hutu, who were simply regarded as ‘Negroes’. During the colonial period of the 19th century this theory was generally accepted by European missionaries, administrators and intellectuals. It reinforced views that everything of high value in Africa was brought by Hamites, the descendants of Ham. These ideas generated perceptions that Tutsi were the rightful ruling elite and racially different from the ‘primitive’ Hutu. In Africa’s Great Lakes region (DRC, Burundi and Rwanda), this Hamitic theory was used to distinguish between ‘Hamites’, the Tutsi and other ‘Nilotics’ like the Maasai, who were seen as descendants of the Ethiopian Galla people, and an ‘inferior’ race of non-Tutsi “negroes” the colonialists called ‘Bantus’. Within this narrative the Tutsi were cast as ‘invaders’ who had ‘stolen’ the country from the indigenous ‘Bantu race’. The paper uses a discursive approach to examine the influence and implications of these racial theories and how they have contributed to current understandings of race and cultural differences in the Great Lakes Region of Africa. It argues that these mythical histories, inherited from the colonialists and taught in schools throughout Africa’s Great lakes region, carry the germs of racial division between ethnic groups in the area and continue to be used as cause and justification for ethnically based violence.
Introduction
To understand the tragic events of the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda and ongoing conflicts in the DRC, it is important to situate them within a wider, context of violence or genocidal conflicts in the region (Mathys, 2017). Widespread violence throughout central Africa may itself be more fully comprehended if examined through both historical and geographical lenses. Pre-colonial racial theories, colonial (mis)management of ethnic identity and continuing cross-border migrations all affected the decisions and outcomes of the 1884 ‘scramble for Africa’ by the European powers (Meridith, 2013). The wide-ranging impact of inaccurate western discourses on race and culture may be undermined but their significance is unknown to and underestimated by many commentators.
The division of people by ethnicity is not an effective means to understanding them. The differences between cultural groups are not deeply rooted and can often be seen as based on temporary circumstances (Muzuri, 2007). Rwanda, specifically, and the Great Lakes region, generally, were used by colonial administrations as a field for racial experiments (Chretien, 2004). Literature suggests that ethnic antagonism in Rwanda was a result of a deep-rooted and long-lasting perception of ‘differences’ between ethnic groups, which allowed for artificial constructions to be established as a ‘reality’ (Muzuri, 2007). The situation becomes significantly more complex when colonial misconceptions are instrumentalised by post-colonial state institutions and involve present day rival political factions. The appropriation of colonial mind-set in a post-colonial era is not just an African phenomenon. Colonial divisions based on religious identity continues to divide the people of Ireland (Storey, 1998) and in Sri Lanka, Tamils and Sinhalese continue to be divided along ethnic/linguistic lines fifty years after independence (Bowen, 1996).
The idea of a hierarchy of races was common in 19th century Europe. The ‘Hamitic hypothesis’ (Seligman, 1930; Speke, 1863; Sanders, 1969; Eltringham, 2006) provided detail to a hierarchical system dividing the races of Africa. They conceived two basic races in sub-Saharan Africa, a ‘Bantu race’ and a race of “Hamitic” people. This division became a tool to reinforce ethnic differences in Rwanda and in the eastern DRC (Chretien, 2004). The anthropological and historical scholarship of the 19th century proposed the term ‘Hamites’ to differentiate a Caucasian-looking section of the African population from the “Negro” inhabitants of the sub-Saharan Africa (Sanders, 1969). This paper explores the impact of this theory on conceptions of race and the claims that it became one of the drivers of ethnic hatred which led to the genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda, and of a continued legitimatization of violence perpetuated against Congolese Tutsi (Mathys, 2017) in the eastern DRC today.
Misconceived ideas on race devised by 19th century Europeans (Baisley, 2014) were used to classify Hutu and Tutsi identities in Rwanda and regions beyond its borders. During the post-colonial era this essentially false division fuelled the dehumanisation[1] of Tutsi people (Chretien, 2004). Similar, legitimatised ‘othering’ characterised the violence seen as in Bosnia (Temoney, 2017). This paper will reflect on the role of colonial and contemporary narratives in justifying the division of diverse central African communities into two categories: either Hutu versus Tutsi in Rwanda, or Congolese Tutsi versus the so-called ‘Bantu’ in the DRC. The analysis will go on to cast doubt on the existence of a ‘Bantu race’ and any specific links with indigeneity[2] in Africa.
Although the Hamitic hypothesis has been largely rejected as a European racist fantasy (Eltringham, 2006), contemporary scholarly debates continue to reproduce related analyses referring for example to the ‘Bantu race’ and further reinforcing the idea of ‘natives and settlers’ (Jakson, 2006). Such ideas prepared the ground for the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, and remain active today, serving to frame the ongoing violence in DRC (Baisely, 2014). In Burundi, as Lemarchand (1997) noted, racist caricatures of divisions in Burundian society were based on a similar Hamitic myth. The fact that these misconceptions are perpetuated needs to be recognised, understood and addressed and current manifestations of superior/ inferior, invader/indigenous, settler/settled African populations will be examined.
This paper uses a discursive approach (Taylor, 2001) to analyse these racial theories and their related influence. Such an analytical framework will assist in exploring the construction of meanings ascribed to these mythical beliefs and ideologies. In this case, the “accuracy” of a discourse is not the most important issue but how productive it is, what responses they help construct and the political implications of these constructs. We refer to ‘narratives’ in the context of different but related interpretation of the myths. The analysis will therefore provide a proposed explanation of these myths while exploring the development, processes and modern uses or impact of a particular mythical and largely unknown ideology.
The Hamitic Hypothesis
Early European colonisers expected to find savages in Africa. Many were however, surprised to ‘discover’ that various communities in central Africa could be compared to those of countries they saw as ‘civilized’ (Martens, 2000). The reality seemed contrary to preconceived notions of the primitive and it became clear that another story was needed to justify feelings of European pre-eminence. The Hamitic hypothesis supplied this need. Several European scholars, agents, explorers and missionaries in the nineteenth century (see Niyonkoru, 1997; Chretien, 2004, Muzuri, 2007) propagated a philosophical and apparently Scientific’ discourse which we would now see as racist. According to this hypothesis, Hamites were Africa’s pastoralists and cattle herders (Sanders, 1969:34; Baisley, 2014:48). The idea of a division between “Ordinary Negroes” and “Superior blacks” (Hamites) was placed, through education and literature, in the minds of most central African people (Chretien, 2004).
Policy, action and aims in colonial times were often Biblically led. The Hamitic hypothesis arises from the contemporary reading of the Bible which, in the book of Moses, Genesis 9:18-27, refers to the descendants of Noah’s three sons: Shem, Japheth and Ham populating the world after the flood. According to the hypothesis, Shem gave rise to Arabs and Jews (Shemites or Semites), Japheth was associated with Europeans (Yafites) and ultimate superiority, and Ham with Black Africans (the Hamites) (Sanders, 1969).
Genesis 9:18-27 “Noah drank a wine from his vineyard, he became drunk and lay uncovered inside his tent. Ham, the father of Canaan, saw his father naked and told his two brothers outside. But Shem and Japheth took a garment and laid it across their shoulders; then they walked in backward and covered their father’s naked body. Their faces were turned the other way so that they would not see their father naked. When Noah awoke from his wine and found out what his youngest son had done to him, he said,
“Cursed be Canaan!
The lowest of slaves will he be to his brothers.”
He also said, “Praise be to the LORD, the God of Shem!
May Canaan be the slave of Shem. May God extend Japheth’s territory;
may Japheth live in the tents of Shem, and may Canaan be the slave of Japheth”
According to the book of Moses (Genesis, 10: 26) Ham had four sons: Kush, Mizraim, Put, and Canaan. Canaan became victim of Ham’s “wrongdoing” and his progeny were ‘cursed’ and became slaves of Noah’s other sons. However, it seems that the curse was neither directed to Ham himself nor his other sons: Put, Mizrahim (Egyptians) and Kush (Ethiopians) or “people of Saba, Havilah, Sabtan, Raamah and Dedan” as suggested by Genesis 10:7.
Noah’s curse on Canaan had implications for the whole of Africa. The story was used to confirm the idea that the Hamites (including the Egyptians) were not “Negroes” but civilized ‘Caucasians in black skin’ (Eltringham, 2006) who had the role of ‘civilizing’ the Negroes (Mamdani, 2001). “Negroes”, the ‘descendants of Canaan’, were regarded as non-civilized, the ‘sons of the cursed’. Blacks therefore became grouped into two categories: those considered as ‘superior’ and spared from a curse (“Hamites”) and those who were seen as ‘inferior’ and cursed (“Negroes”).
Biblical interpretations of phenomena were common throughout 19th century Europe. The Bible was rarely seen as a collection of myths to explain the realities of the world but understood alongside the emerging discipline of science. An association between “Negroes” and ‘the cursed son of Ham’ also appeared in records of Jewish oral tradition in the sixth century (Mamdani, 2001). Formulated in the Babylonian Talmud around 600 A.D (Rekdal, 1998), it laid a foundation that legitimised a slave trade (Sanders, 1969) and granted theological justifications for slavery and the Dutch colonisation of South Africa (Jackson, S. 2006). These theories resulted in many seeing black people as another species, separate from the rest of the human race.
Tradition held that the Hamites originally lived in Egypt. They were believed to have lived along the Nile Valley and the Red Sea, (Chretien, 2004:14) and shared a history with the ‘Kushites’ (one of Ham’s older sons) living in Mesopotamia and North Nile region. It was believed that the Hamites had moved through a series of migrations towards the south into an African continent already inhabited by native and primitive ‘Negroids and bushmen’, bringing with them what was viewed as sophisticated advancements (Rekdal, 1998).
From the Curse of “Black African” to “Bantu inferiour” race
Racism was taught deep into the 20th century. In his Races of Africa, for example Seligman (1966:100), notes “the incoming Hamites were pastoral “Europeans” arriving wave after wave – better armed as well as quicker witted than the dark agricultural Negroes”. Through the acceptance of such ideas, racist conjecture became used by the very people it was designed to subjugate, to justify political violence in both Rwanda and eastern DRC. In Rwanda, many current anthropologists now reject the idea that Hutu and Tutsi are distinct ethnic groups (Malvern, 2000) et al. They argue that initial colonial divisions of peoples into tribes used social class or economic status to guide them. Therefore, a high-status Hutu could be designated a Tutsi or a poor Tutsi could be classified as a Hutu (Eltringham, 2004; Mamdani, 1996; Mamdani; 2001; Muzuri, 2007).
These distinctions appeared to have started with an English colonial researcher, John Hanning Speke, (1863), in his writing on the ‘discovery’ of the Kingdom of Baganda (Bugandan) in Uganda. Speke is most remembered for his involvement in ‘discovering’ the source of the Nile and was a former army officer engaged in expeditions. Like many of the period, Speke came up with hypotheses on race and culture that were grounded in conjecture. Speke theorized that Tutsi were a superior race, different from other natives. His work led to a common conclusion that “it was impossible for ‘savage negroes’ to have attained such high levels of political and religious organisation” (Melvern, 2000:8) that travellers observed in central Africa. Such attitudes toward certain groups throughout the European Empires and colonies were standard. Examples throughout western literature of the 19th and 20th centuries demonstrate the prevalence of these racial driven judgements: the Malays as opposed to the Chinees (Chee-Beng, 1997), the south Indians versus the north Indians, the aborigines, native Americans, south American ‘Indians’ as opposed to the white settler.
The differences between “ethnic groups” became a major interest of colonial scholars. To reinforce the idea of “racial hierarchy”, colonial anthropologists conducted morphological tests measuring the nose, chest and heights of both the Hutu and Tutsi people in Rwanda. The outcomes of these tests suggested that the Tutsi had an intelligence and ‘refinement of feeling’ which was ‘rare among primitive people’ (Melvern, 2000:8) and that they possessed more ‘European’ facial features (Mamdani, 2001). The strong evidence of ‘civilisation’ believed to exist among the ‘Batutsi people’ (Tutsi), was attributed to pastoral practice which resembled the life of the Ethiopian Galla and the Egyptians (Brankamp, 2014). The Tutsi of central Africa were therefore viewed as ‘conquerors’ hailing from Egypt or the Horn of Africa.
For the missionaries, the Tutsi were believed to be as intelligent as the Semites (Jews) (Chrétien, 2004). A Belgian doctor wrote “the Batutsi (Tutsi) are Hamites, most probably of Semitic origin….. they are tall, possessed straight nose…. they appear to be distant, reserved, polite……the rest of the population of Bantu are Bahutu (Hutu), Negroes, possessing all characteristics: large nose and lips…they display a childish character, are both timid and lazy and often very dirty” (Sasserath, 1948:27).
Europe’s fascination with these hypotheses was largely based on associating the physical features with superior mental abilities. The pseudoscientific study of phrenology was entirely based on the idea that the shape of the head and its various bumps and characteristics could describe and account for character, behaviour and ability. The Tutsi were viewed as possessing such qualities (Prunier, 1995; Eltringham, 2006). The Bahutu (Hutu) on the other hand were defined as displaying very typical “Bantu” features: generally short and thick-set with big heads (Prunier, 1995:6) and without self-control. It was suggested that the Hutu (the majority of whom were agriculturalists) were of the ‘primitive Bantu race’ (Niyonkuru, 1997) and indigenous or autochthons. This hypothesis reinforced the idea that Tutsi were not only non-native or indigenous (autochthons) but “those who came from somewhere” and ‘invaders’, and of a ‘superior race’; a classification which resulted from the pseudo-scientific tests and terms (Prunier, 1995).
A heightened consciousness of social class shifted western thinking towards the categorisation of those who ‘occupied’ the central African land first. Exclusive terms such as “native, settlers, invaders, conquerors or foreigners” were commonly used throughout the literature and conversation of the colonial powers. Such myths were not just a construction of academic theory but became a statement of ideology, a myth which motivated actions (Rekdal 1998). As a result, in the Belgian Congo and Rwanda racial identity cards were issued in 1931, stating whether the bearer was Hutu or Tutsi, largely determined by stereotypical physical features (Malvern, 2000). These cards separated the financially and politically better off Tutsi from the poorer Hutu farmers. As demonstrated later in the paper, such policies were also implemented by the post-colonial Hutu-led regime and made the genocide ‘successful’. In Africa’s Great Lakes region, including Uganda under British rule, the colonial strategy was to dominate via local intermediaries used as transmission agents. Their policy of ‘divide and rule’ was highly effective (Chretien, 2004).
The myth of “Bantu” indigeneity
The Hamitic hypothesis gradually shifted from its biblical origins. European missionaries suggested that a Hamite ‘invasion’ had dominated the indigenous “Negro Bantu” and established a superior civilization (Chretien, 2004). Such ‘explanations’ were repeated and taken for granted, becoming accepted truth. They fitted apparent ethnic divisions in central Africa as European enlightenment philosophies spread and the European slave trade declined. Furthermore, during Napoleon’s Egyptian Campaign, his accompanying archaeologists, found evidence of civilizations of ancient Africa which challenged common perceptions of the continent as a ‘savage’ or primitive place (Sanders, 1969, 524-528). As a result, colonial authorities and scholarly enterprise became fascinated with, and gained from, a racial theoretical approach, which distinguished, between Africans (‘Bantu) and Hamites (Brankamp, 2014). Though in effect not very different from the Biblical approach, the developing colonial mindset was based more on the racialisation of different groups by lifestyle (agriculturalist versus cattle herders) and physical feature.
For colonialist and explorer Bantu became a convenient classification of African people. Despite its linguistic nature, the term was used by Oscar Bauman, one of the first European explorers to arrive in Burundi (Chretien, 1968) recognised that the people he met were linguistically Bantu. Another layer of differentiation was established when Bauman referred to the Watutsi as Wahima[3] categorising them as ‘Hamites’, whereas the Wahutu (Hutu) agriculturalists were called Bantu or negro, even though Bantu languages were spoken by both agriculturalists and pastoralists. Although there are many other groups of pastoralists in the region, the Tutsi alone were excluded from the Bantu definition. Based on pre-colonial racial theories, narratives, discourses and myths rather than genealogy, colonial settlers perpetuated divisions between these two ethnic groups living side by side. External categorisation led to internal prejudice and dissent.
Categorising people by language is problematic. Flemish missionary Placide Tempels’ ‘Bantu Philosophy’ (Okafor, 1982) and “Les Grandes lignes des Migrations Bantoues’ written by A, Moeller (1936), a former colonial administrator in the Congo provides a more nuanced analysis. Differentiated characteristics are described regarding different Bantu languages – before people were grouped into tribal and territory-based categories (Muzuri, 2007). Vansina (1979) shows how languages change over time and lose some elements from their original context and even back in 1907, Johnson (1907) stated that, it was practically impossible to confirm that a ‘Bantu race’ existed. Suggesting the existence of a ‘Bantu race’ on the basis of language was as misleading as claiming that Semitic or Indo-European languages defined the race of their speakers.
Hutu and Tutsi have the same language (Talaja, 2001) They also share many features of a common culture. A deterministic association of Bantu language with a “Hutu race” by excluding Tutsi is contradictory. Even if Tutsi had adopted the ‘Kinyarwanda’ (or Kirundi in Burundi) language, of ‘the Hutu’, this would mean that the so-called ‘Hamites’, the ‘superior race and powerful’, would have abandoned their own language and adopted a new one from the ‘Hutu race’ which they subjugated. If this hypothesis were accepted, the ‘sophistication and intelligence’ ascribed to the Tutsi’s would have acculturated the so called ‘Hutu race’. It is very rare for an immigrant population in a position of power, pride and prestige to abandon their ‘language’ and promote a ‘dialect’ of an indigenous population (Niyonkoru, 1997). Maquet (1961:12) suggests that a “lack of linguistic link in the question of tribal differences is so important that it hampers any attempts at historical reconstruction”.
For speculative theories to be credible, they should be based on credible linguistic scientific evidence. Chretien and Vanacker (1987) argue that there must be knowledge of historical and comparative linguistics to demonstrate whether there are links between the current Kinyarwanda (in case of both Rwanda and the DRC) or Kirundi and ancient Egyptian languages, Amharic, Oromo or Somali. Classing Bantu as a ‘culture’, does not fit the usual definitions of culture. Beyond common language, cultures include social organisation, traditions, religion, norms and political manifestation of spiritual life, (Niyonkuru, 1997).
Applying the ‘Hamitic hypothesis and Bantu race’
“Ethnicity is never what it seems. What looks to the profane like ancestral atavism others identify as a typically modern phenomenon, anchored in the impact of colonial rule” (Le Marchand, 1999:4)
Historical and unscientific divisions of race have had disastrous consequences. At the end of the 20th century, the ‘Hamitic and Bantu race’ myths discussed above, culminated in intense and practical application with significant consequences for ethnic relations in both Rwanda and Burundi. In the 1960s, scholars relied on Seligman’s work and applied the ‘Hamitic hypothesis’ to understand the background of Rwanda (Baisley, 2014).
The colonial regimes saw the power structures of Rwanda from the perspective of the racial divisions outlined in previous paragraphs (Jackson, 2006; Mamdani, 2001). In Rwanda, on the one hand, the Belgian colonialists initially favoured the Tutsi especially in the recruitment of indigenous political authorities. This mythology influenced assumptions of a sophisticated leadership amongst the Watutsi (Tutsi). On the other hand, colonial administrators (using strategy of dividing and ruling) considered mobilising the “dominated Hutu” to rebel against the Tutsi monarchy, at the same time as relying on a Tutsi ‘ruling class’, to enforce colonization” (Martens, 2000),
The ‘Hamitic hypothesis’ was a key inspiration of the Hutu revolution in 1959 (Brankamp, 2014). In that year thousands of Tutsis were killed in genocidal violence (Melvern, 2000), publicly abused and accused of being ‘henchmen’ and supporters of the colonial authorities and advocates of the ‘Hamitic-feudalist’ hegemony (Mamdani, 1996 :12). In Burundi too, the same myths were adopted, formalised, and championed by the Parti pour la libération du peuple Hutu (PALIPEHUTU) political party (Lemarchand, 1999).
The idea that Hutus were hereditary ‘owners’ of the land was well received by the Hutu. Their sense of having been usurped translated into a logic of extremism and extermination. Such views empowered efforts to return the area to a ‘pre-Tutsi country’ (Hintjens, 2001), and these ideas were taught in schools and seminaries (Baisley, 2014) in Rwanda. Consequently, in the immediate post-colonial period ‘Hamitic and Bantu race’ constructions in Rwanda influenced a process of re-writing history. This promoted the idea that there were three ethnic groups which moved to Rwanda: Batwa (Twa) being the first inhabitants, followed by the Hutu, and then the Tutsi. The teaching went further, as Ndahiro (2001) suggests, to label the Tutsi as Nilotic or even descendants of Aryans, whereas Hutu belonged to the Bantu race.
Rwandan and Congolese Tutsi became increasingly seen as ‘foreigners’ from Abyssinia[4], and the Hutu were promoted as the original inhabitants. During the Hutu presidency of Gregoire Kayibanda in Rwanda, new social political structures were established in favour of the Hutu (Prunier, 2010). The colonial ethnic identity card policy was reinforced (Brankamp, 2014; Malvern, 2000, Eltringham, 2006) and the Hutu Emancipation Movement Party (Parti du Mouvement de l’Emancipation Hutu, PARMEHUTU) was established. Demand for independence was from both Belgian and Tutsi rule – the PARMEHUTU manifesto declared:
‘at the heart of the [Racial Native] problem is a double colonialism. The Muhutu must suffer the domination of the Hamite and the European… [I]t is a problem of the political monopoly of one race, the Mututsi.’ (Eltringham, 2004:20).
In her ethnographic study, mythical histories of Burundian refugees in Tanzania, Malkki (1995:152) refers to the thoughts and expressions of Hutu refugees in the context of the Hamitic/Bantu myths:
‘In the past our proper name was Bantu. We are Bantus. “Hutu” is no tribe no nothing! Kihamite is the national language of the Tutsi. Muhutu is Kihamite word…which means servant. We are no Hutu we are Abantu (Human beings), Hutu is the name that the Tutsi gave us.
Malkki does not specify whether the Tutsi so called ‘invaders’ and ‘conquerors’ spoke the ‘Ki-Hamite’ language when they arrived in the Great Lakes region of Africa. It is also not clear how such racialisation of Hutu and Tutsi could have led the ‘native’ and ‘indigenous’ Hutu to reject their authentic name and adopt instead a ‘Bantu race’ as ‘their’ ethnic identification.
It is not clear whether the aboriginal Batwa had another language when the Hutu found them in Rwanda. If that was the case, and cultural and language assimilation was influenced by indigenous ethnic groups, both the Tutsi and Hutu could have assimilated aspects of Batwa language and culture. Notions of Hutu supremacy and assertions of indigeneity went not only so far as to deny the Tutsi of any identity whatsoever and to dehumanise them.
Genocide and conflict
The racial myths discussed above ultimately resulted in the 1994 Rwanda genocide (Brankamp, 2014, Baisley, 2014). They continued to be expressed in conspiracy theories that claimed plans to establish a Hima-Tutsi empire[5] (Ndahiro, 2016). Kangura wrote:
‘…there is indeed a diabolical plan prepared by the Tutsi …. a systematic extermination of the Bantu population as well as to establish a Nilotic/Hima empire which will extend from Ethiopia, Douala and to the source of the Nile river. And from Gabon to Lesotho going through the vast basins of the Kongo, the Rift Valley of Tanzania…down to the Cape and the Drakensberg Mountains….What are the Bantu peoples waiting for to protect themselves against the genocide that has been so carefully and consciously orchestrated by the Hamites thirsty for blood and for barbarian conquests and whose leaders dispute the golden medal of cruelty with the Roman emperor Nero” (Chretien et al.’ 1995:169)
Kangura’s ideas mobilised “Bantu” allies in the region. For example, in 1998, when the second civil war broke out, opposing the DRC forces (FARDC) and former rebels of the Congolese Rally for Democracy (RCD), President Laurent Desire Kabila used the same conspiracy theory to gain support from other African heads of state (Jackson, 2006). Robert Mugabe’s response was based on his belief that there were indeed plans for a Tutsi-Hima empire. Similarly, Angolan support and intervention in the DRC was inspired by the concept of “Bantuness” and concerns over potential Nilotic hegemonies in the region (Jackson, 2006).
The rhetoric of ethnic cleansing is always menacing. Kangura’s (1993) Ten Commandments of Bahutu seeks external alliances with neighbouring countries – the “brothers of Bahutu” – asserting that the “Bantu’ race was conducting a legitimate war to free themselves from Tutsi domination. A ‘famous’ propagandist speech by a senior Rwanda politician, Leon Mugesera, urged the Hutu to kill their Tutsi ‘enemies’ and find a short cut to send Tutsi bodies ‘back’ to Abyssinia via the river Nyabanyarongo (which flows through Rwanda to the river Nile via Lake Victoria) (Brankamp, 2014). During the Holocaust in Nazi Germany, or the ‘ethnic cleansing’ of Serbs, in the former Yugoslavia, similar dehumanising language was employed (HWR 1992). In Rwanda extreme terms such as ‘cockroaches’ and ‘snakes’ were aimed at the destruction of the Tutsi. The metaphor ‘chopping trees’ (Brankamp, 2014:4) was used to illustrate what should happen and the familiar language of ‘invaders’ and ‘outsiders’ peppered genocide propaganda by Radio Télévision Libre des Mille Collines (RTLM), the main Rwandan radio broadcaster (Brankamp, 2014).
The role of myth in Eastern Congo’s current conflict
Expanding the sense of threat is a common tool of the leaders of genocide. Finding allies in was a key motivation for genocide propagandists and the Hutu/Bantu myths became an instrument of manipulation. For example, Kangura magazine in December 1993, listed the countries to be included in a planned Tutsi/Hima Empire: “Burundi, Djibouti, Ethiopia, Rwanda, Somalia, Uganda and Eastern DRC (Ndahiro, 2016).
The speeches of genocide protagonists were echoed in the media. RTLM ordered the extermination of the Tutsi (Baisley, 2014). Such broadcast orders were rapidly followed by concrete acts in the capital, Kinshasa, and throughout the country. In Kinshasa, killings of Tutsis were carried out in full view of the media (Reliefweb, 2002). Even today a political ideology based on the exclusion of the Congolese Tutsi as ‘outsiders’ remains widespread. Below, I would like to provide a brief historical background to the ongoing ethnic identity conflict in the eastern Congo.
Historically, in the DRC, the Belgian administration ruled through a system devised by the British, known as indirect rule, which was seen to prevent resistance from local populations. Consequently, there was the creation of two types of citizenship: the national (civic) and ethnic (customary) (Mamdani, 2001). The former was racialised whereas the latter was ethnicised[6] (Mamdani, 2001). In the North Kivu region, colonial authorities dealt mainly with the local- political structures to impose territorial control on the region and its people (Muzuri, 2007). As a result of colonial land management policies, the land in Eastern Congo became collectively managed by customary chieftaincies, which defined individual rights to ethnic based citizenship (Muzuri, 2007) and eventually a community’s right to customary authority. Power over rights to civic citizenship defined whether an individual or group belonged to the nation. However, physical features seem as factor influencing rights to civic rights. This has led to the exclusion of ‘Rwandophones’, largely the Tutsi, as full citizens.
The above issue became more complex when it comes to question of ‘native rights. These are about whether a community/ethnic group is associated to a recognised customary authority (chefferies). As result, the debate turned to ‘foreign’ versus ‘indigenous’, between autochthonous and allochthonous (Jackson, 2006) and became a major source of tensions between local ethnic groups. The notion of ‘native rights’ became more important than ‘civic rights’ and, as a result, Congolese Tutsi were considered newcomers and outsiders (‘invaders’) and denied native rights and political identity. Without native rights Tutsi and others had difficulties accessing or owning land or being accepted as Congolese nationals.
The rhetoric of political and armed groups in the DRC continues to promote racial divisions. Consequently, many militia groups, referred as Mai Mai, in eastern Congo consider Congolese Tutsi as ‘non-autochthonous’ or ‘invaders’ with no rights to sources of livelihood or access land claimed to belong to ‘indigenous’/‘Bantu’ people (Huggins, 2010). In South and North Kivu, Tutsi, are viewed as Nilotes or Semites (Hiernaux 1965, Sanders 1969). These ideas are not new. For example, two years after the 1994 Rwanda genocide, senior government authorities in Zaire (today’s DRC) announced that the Banyamulenge (Congolese Tutsis located in South Kivu) had six-days to leave the country and ‘return where they come from” (Ruhumbika, 2001). Zairian’s government efforts to implement this played a role in the 1996 Congo war. In 1998, Laurent Kabila mobilised the population to exterminate all Tutsi (he referred to them ‘invaders’) wherever they were in Congo (Refworld, 1998; Ruhimbika, 2001). This campaign was supported by his foreign affairs Minister Abdulaye Yerodia Ndombasi who declared that Congolese Tutsi were ‘scum, vermin and foreigners’ and must be ‘methodically eradicated and with determination’ (Mujyambere, 2020:165). Ndombasi’s calls were effective. Thousands of Banyamulenge and other Tutsis were systematically killed across the country. Currently, in the eastern Congo, there are many cases of selective killings of the Congolese Tutsi and hate speech directed towards them (UN, 2019, Ndahinda and Mugabe, 2022). Incitement to commit genocide continues against this group by a coalition of local militias groups using narratives similar to those of 1994 Rwanda. “Unless the Banyamulenge return to Rwanda or Egypt, where they came from generations ago, the plan is to exterminate them” (Amjambo Africa, 2020:2). Perpetrators of violence communicated via an elderly woman who was held as hostage in a village in eastern of Congo[7] as recently as May 2020.
Native and non-native are central concepts to the Congolese nation. This division allows the majority ‘Bantu race” rights of occupation of Congolese land. Congolese Tutsi are deemed “an unknown ethnic group and foreign migrants’’ (Mathys, 2017) regardless of current understandings of migrations of African people (Talaja, 2011). Racial ideologists even today argue for the forcible return of Tutsi to somewhere in North Africa but do not push the logic further and advocate the forcible return of Hutu to Cameroon.
Countering the myths by another myth?
A Belgium-based Burundian Tutsi academic, Professor Jean Bwejeri, at the Havila Institute, has initiated a movement of ‘judaising’ Tutsi based on Biblical theory (Genesis 2:10). Bwejeri could be viewed as a modern era John Hanning Speke. He rejects the “Hamitic Hypothesis” and argues that it has ‘falsified’ both the history and geographical boundaries of Tutsi civilisation (Eltringham, 2006). According to Bwejeri, based on the books of Zaphaniah, 3:10, Amos, 9:7; and Jeremiah, 44:1, Havila[8] represents the area occupied by the Tutsi (Burundi, Rwanda, South and North Kivu and Shaba) (Bwejeri, 1999). Therefore, Bwejeri insists that the Tutsi (Batutsi) are originally descendants of Ethiopia in the time it was still known as Kush. Thus, insisting that the Tutsi are Kushitic, Hebraic and Jews by birth. Bwejeri suggests that the traditions of the Tutsi display the ‘true nature of Hamitic identity or more precisely Kushitic and therefore Pharaonic and Ethiopian’ (Eltringham, 2006:440). It seems that Bwejeri supports Seligman’s (1913) ideas of ‘Hamitic Egyptians’ and ‘Hamitic Ethiopians’, as he believes that Tutsi, similarly to Jews, are monotheists, a religious idea which emerged under the reign of Egyptian king Akhenaten[9] in the fourteenth century B.C.E (Bwejweri, 2001). His argument is that the Tutsi (as part of the Biblical Exodus) moved in the direction of the Southern region (Great Lakes region of Africa, also referred by Bwejeri as “Havila”)
In the Great Lakes region of Africa, on the one hand, Bwejeri’s theories have been received by the Tutsi with concerns and fears as seem to promote ethnocentric ideas in an already fragile region.
Bwejeri (2001) argues that the Tutsi have a shared culture with the Jews and that Tutsi law is similar to the laws set out in Deuteronomy, 7:3-4. On the other hand, many Congolese Tutsi in South Kivu, whose Christian lives are highly influenced by Old Testament stories (De Lorenzo, 2001), find Bwejeri’s ideas quite plausible. Bwejeri even states that the term ‘Banyamulenge’ means the son of King Menelik I, or “BENE- MELEKH” though this contradicts more widely accepted interpretations that Banyamulenge is a combination of two linguistic elements “Banya” = people of, and Mulenge = Hill.
Bwejeri’s arguments are not unique in the Africa’s Great Lakes Region. For instance, Rekdal, (1998) shows that the Iraqw people in northern Tanzania claim that their historical origin connects them to Iraq. Their claims go far beyond the phonological similarity between Irak and Iraqw in order to support the linkage. Such views have received scholarly attention and add to a long history of misinformation and lack robust scholarship using pseudo-science in poorly understood cultural contexts. Given the lack of political education and the fragile circumstances of a historically persecuted people, pseudointellectual claims gain ground quickly.
Conclusion
The ‘Hamitic/Bantu’ conflation fits all characteristics referred to by Huggins as ‘myth’ (Huggins, 2010). This paper has outlined the genesis of a series of related myths, and their construction of Tutsi and Hutu/’Bantu’ as separate racial groups. It has demonstrated how the theories evolved in the pre-colonial era and re-surfaced regularly through colonial and post-colonial periods in the Great Lakes region in general, and in Rwanda and eastern DRC especially. These myths were used to ‘normalise’ violence and as a tool to portray the Tutsi as ‘invaders’ and the Hutu or ‘Bantu’ as ‘‘natives’ (Baisely, 2014). Such poisonous misconceptions have served as drivers of the 1994 Rwanda genocide and continue to play an important role in conflict in eastern Congo.
European ethnocentrism and racist responses were inspired and buttressed by these myths. by have been revised and have shifted to a new life as the origin myth of an African people (Rekdal, 1998). The colonial authorities’ intention to spread the Hamitic hypothesis was political rather than biological according to Mamdani (1996). This hypothesis implied that the Tutsi had no “customary” home, unlike other ethnic groups. This paper argues that while the ‘Hamitic and Bantu racial’ mythical ideologies have generally been rejected, in wider scholarship or academic discourse, remain prolific in popular political rhetoric in the Great Lakes region. As Marthys (2017) demonstrates, the myths and related manipulation of ethnicity-based identities acted as catalysts of violent events against the Tutsi in Rwanda, the DRC and Burundi. The racist radio campaign via RTLM during the 1994 genocide in Rwanda “created the condition and environment in which the “Tutsi of the present’ became the same” (Kimani, 2007:112). As Brankamp, (2014) argues, by referring to the enemies (Tutsi) as having ‘Hamite’ origins, those leading propaganda against the Tutsi were able to historicise contemporary animosity. The historical colonial pseudo-scientific legacy is still strong in this region so tracing the historical origins of this is important to understand what is going on.
The paper has questioned the use of the term ‘Bantu’ to describe or delimit a race. The analysis reflected on the original context as well as questioning whether there could be a ‘Bantu’ culture. As demonstrated, the term ‘Bantu’ refers to a collection of African languages and not a culture or racial group. The term also refers to a group of people speaking related languages in central southern African area (from Cameroun to southern part of Africa) (Chretien, 2010). A culture or ethnic group cannot be defined only by its language, many other social factors which must be considered (Niyonkuru, 1997). Myths continue to legitimise violence in the DRC, currently mobilising allies that believe they are part of a ‘Bantu’ alliance versus Congolese Tutsis.
The Hamitic ideologies and related myths are ‘exploited’ as instrument and language of dehumanisation, exclusion and discrimination. Various factions national armed groups in eastern Congo, perceiving themselves as indigenous ‘Bantu’, see their pursuit of violence as ‘legitimate’ actions against the conquerors ‘Nilo-Hamitic’ people (Congolese Tutsi). While this historic theory based on Hamitic hypothesis has been rejected, it continues to expand on the basis of Tutsi and Hutu or Tutsis and other ethnic groups in the DRC.
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NOTES
[1] A process of denying the humanity of the Tutsi a right which reduced them to sub-humans or animals or snakes. Gill and Niens (2014) suggests that committing atrocious acts dehumanizes the opponent in order to be able to eliminate them. The opponent is seen as a thing, a monster, something or someone that as a threat must be eliminated. It is significant that the Rwandan Hutus called their fellow Tutsis “cockroaches”, Crusaders called the infidels “dogs” and the Holy Inquisition called disobedient women “witches”. The language of violence is riddled with terms that establish differences between humans and other beings indicating that they are, at best, subhuman.
[2] Autochthons or natives. In local context, it is also referred to those who ‘have not be subject to migration’
[3] A term associated with various cattle herding people in the modern Uganda especially the Banyankole people in Southern Uganda. However, the term is also used to refer to a specific clan of mainly Tutsi. Some scholars have often linked Tutsi to Wahima (Bahima). Such assumed link is exploited to develop a conspiracy theory about a ‘Hima’ and Tutsi empire in the Great Lakes Region.
[4] The area relating to contemporary Ethiopia, or the historical name for the Ethiopian empire
[5] The myth was originally created by a Rwanda Minister (Leon Mugesera) and the Rwanda Army (before the genocide). An anti-Tutsi propaganda was created to promote an idea that a ‘network’ of Tutsi (extending from the horn of Africa, Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi and the DRC) plan to establish an empire dominated by ‘people’ of ‘their’ (Tutsi like) kind. Such conspiracies were mainly developed as the Rwanda Patriotic Front (FRF) rebellion was gaining influence in Rwanda before the genocide.
[6] Both racialisation and ethicising refer to the process of ascribing ethnic or racial identities to a relationship, social practice, or group that did not identify itself as such
[7] Testimony recorded in an official letter from the Banyamulenge community leaders to the UN
[8] A centre aimed at creating a link between Jewish in the diaspora. The name is used to describe an area in central Africa which is believed to be located in South of Ethiopia (in this case being the Great Lakes region).
[9] Akhenaten, known before the fifth year of his reign as Amenhotep IV, was an ancient Egyptian pharaoh of the 18th Dynasty who ruled for 17 years and died perhaps in 1336 BC or 1334 BC