Revolution in Africa - Rwandan (Hutu) Revolution

As I had predicted, about a post or two ago, there have been quite a few revolutions within Africa, very much as a result of the impact of colonialism and imperialism. I am quite glad now actually as the intial research I did regarding imperialism has become somewhat relevant to my investigation. Imperialism is big, there isn't usually a modern history topic that you can't link it to.

After some research regarding the many African revolutions that took place, including the Algerian revolution, the three Egyptian revolutions and Somali revolutions (which seem to be the most prominent), I've come to the conclusion that it will be best for me to investigate the Rwandan revolution (or the Hutu revolution) as it is pretty much the prelude to the Rwandan genocide which is fairly well known, and fairly well written about. I've already found plenty of books on it and hopefully some more when I visit the state library on friday. I've checked through a few books and whilst they tend to focus on the genocide, there are still great portions of information, providing the context behind this 'crime against humanity', which of course is, the Rwandan revolution.

I found this revolution particularly interesting as alluded to above, the political system and the society that came from this 'revolution' resulted in genocide and civil war a few years later. Not only this but it is argued that this particular revolution didn't really enforce much change. Mahmood Mamdani in his book When Victims Become Killers: Colonialism, Nativism, and the Genocide in Rwanda states that "While the Hutu revolution of 1959-1962 had managed to transform the state, its impact on society had been superficial". I felt this quote was extremely important here as its basically saying that formally, there was a change in leaders and a change in the ethnic group that ran the country, there was little transformation in the social change that had occurred in the sense that there was still an 'inferior' race being exploited. Whilst it was indeed the case that there was a shift in power and a different race of people obtained this power, society was not that much different, and so does this then constitute a 'revolution'. A chronology of Rwanda's history is pasted below:

The revolution in Rwanda was not the usual revolution either. Rwanda prior to 1959 was under control by the Belgians (yeah they had part of Rwanda too, they were also notably good at exploiting and being nasty to the natives, then again a lot of Europeans tended to do that...), however there was a system of monarchy where Belgians had the ultimate power, but those who officially exercised the power were the Rwandans. However, the bigger issue is that there were two 'races' of people in Rwanda, the Tutsi's and the Hutu's. The Belgians handed power to the Tutsi's and basically hailed them as the superior race because of their skin colour, and allowed for even graver exploitation of the Hutu's, making them slaves etc. But, you know, being Europeans, the Belgians thought they'd make things worse by formally segregating the two races, setting up the foundation of the 'Rwandan Genocide. This occurred in 1935 when the Belgians handed out identity cards labelling each individual 'Tutsi', 'Hutu', 'Twa' or 'Naturalised'. This formal segregation caused a lot of issues and could be considered a factor influencing this particular revolution.

A postage stamp featuring Grégoire
Kayibanda - celebration of Rwanda's
independence and republic

The revolution occurred essentially when the Hutu got really annoyed with being at 'the bottom', so decided they'd upturn the entire thing by throwing a revolution, removing Beligian control and wreaking revenge on the Tutsi, or at least some kind of 'revenge'. After much struggle, the Hutu gained control of Rwanda, a number of points however should be made from this.

• The most prominent figure of this revolution was Grégoire Kayibanda who was the first elected president of Rwanda - He replaced the Tutsi monarchy with a republican form of government, and asserted Hutu power (another pro Hutu figure to look into may be Joseph Gitera)
• The Tutsi monarchy were expecting to gain full control after being given independence from the Belgians, seeing that the Hutu were growing in force and numbers, they too were pushing for independence - this is a rather interesting point as both powers were pushing for independence, however what seemed to distinguish the two was that the Hutu were fighting for a republic, and the Tutsi were fighting for a monarchy 
• In 1957 the Bahutu manifesto was completed, a document written by Hutu scholars which formally label the Hutu and the Tutsi as two separate races, it also encouraged the transfer of Tutsi power to the Hutu - here we have a formal text, a piece of writing that played an active role in this revolution. 

Whilst I am unsure i'll be able to find many historians commenting collectively on this revolution in comparison with other more prominent revolutions such as the French or American revolution, it does offer an example, where there was an interesting shift of power in the sense that not only was it an overthrow of monarchy, but also a bid for independence from the Belgians. I hope to do further research, more so into the factors of this revolution, but am glad that I have made a decision regarding which revolution to choose.