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Tutsi Social Identity in Contemporary Africa

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 November 2008

Tony Waters
Tony Waters
Affiliation:
c/o Tanganyika Christian Refugee Service/Lutheran World Federation, Box 159, Ngara, Tanzania
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Extract

The literature pointing out that ethnic groups are a social construction has a particular salience in discussion of identity in both East and Central Africa. As numerous authors have noted, there are in fact few linguistic, phenotypical, or social differences between Hutu and Tutsi. Indeed, as all acknowledge, there has been substantial intermarriage, particularly in Rwanda. Nevertheless, as recent events in Rwanda and Burundi illustrate, the presumably ‘socially constructed’ differences between Hutu and Tutsi have become a legitimated reason for murdering one's neighbours. But although cited as the cause of the civil war by virtually every Rwandan, as well as the Western and Tanzanian press, I am also impressed by the fact that at different times and places being ‘Tutsi’ means very different things. My own observations in the Benaco refugee camp for ‘Hutu’ illustrate how quickly and drastically such seemingly ‘fixed’ identities can change.

Type
Africana
Information
The Journal of Modern African Studies , Volume 33 , Issue 2 , June 1995 , pp. 343 - 347
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1995

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References

1 Local accounts in Ngara and Karagwe, Tanzania, describe two separate groups of Tutsi. First, there are refugees from Rwanda in resettlement villages that were initially established for those who fled during the 1958–61 civil war (at least 26,000 returned to Rwanda between June and December 1994). Ironically, one of the villages was used as a transit camp for Hutu refugees from Burundi during February and March 1995. A second group of local Tutsi include those who are descended from the former chiefly families along the Rwanda and Burundi borders with Tanzania.

See Moffet, J. P., ‘A Raft on the Malagarsi’, in Tanganyika Notes and Records (Dar es Salaam), 12 1943,Google Scholar for details about the Tutsi living in the ‘wetlands’ east of Burundi in the 1940s; Scherer, J. H., ‘The Ha of Tanganyika’, in Anthropos (Fribourg, Switzerland), 58, 1958, pp. 841–904;Google ScholarBrain, James L., ‘The Tutsi and the Ha: a study in integration’, in Journal of Asian and African Studies (Leiden), 8, 1973, pp. 39–49;CrossRefGoogle ScholarChubwa, P., who describes Tanzanian Tutsi in Waha: Historia na Maendeleo (Tabora, TMP Book Department, 1986);Google Scholar and Mabala, Leo Basu, Watusi, Mila na Desturi (Paramiho, Benedictine Publications, 1988).Google Scholar

2 Brain, loc. cit. Few authors seem to be aware of Brain's discussion of how Tutsi ethnicity in Tanzania disappeared as a significant social category in the 1960s.Google Scholar

3 Malkki, Liisa, ‘Purity and Exile: transformations in historical-national consciousness among Hutu refugees in Tanzania’, Ph.D. dissertation, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, 1989,Google Scholar and Sommers, Mark, ‘Hiding in Bongoland. Identity Formations and the Clandestine Life for Burundi Refugees in Urban Tanzania’, Ph.D. dissertation, Boston University, 1994.Google Scholar

4 Scherer, loc. cit. and Chubwa, op. cit.

5 Moffet, loc. cit. and Scherer, loc. cit.

6 Moore, Barrington, Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy: lord and peasant in the making of the modern world (Boston, 1966);Google ScholarSkocpol, Theda, State and Social Revolutions: a comparative analysis of France, Russia, and China (Cambridge, 1979);CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Goldstone, Jack A., Revolution and Rebellion in the Early Modern World (Berkeley, 1991).Google Scholar