The century-long struggle of the Tutsi in Africa’s Great Lakes

After reading the article Never again or never without gain: Belgium's cartographic crimes against Africa by Kelly Mutesi on March 7, 2025, my thoughts returned to the 1950s and the plight of the Tutsi people in the Great Lakes Region of Africa. ALSO READ: The devil you feed: How the West fuels genocide ideology in DR Congo Mutesi reminded us that Belgium's colonial strategy had one objective: relentless exploitation. The Modus Operandi? Erasure, identity manipulation, and violence – turning the blood of the Congolese people into the gold that lined European treasuries. If Congolese were killed merely for failing to meet rubber collection quotas, there was an even stronger reason for colonialists to eliminate the Tutsi: they were considered a threat to the greedy exploitation of the African continent's wealth, making them more undesirable. Some Europeans including Richard Kandt and White Priest Alphonse Brard had already expressed the desire to eliminate the Tutsi on the continent. I explained this in my article Revising the roots of anti-Tutsi ideology. According to both writers, the crime of the Tutsi was their power. Because of this power, the colonizers feared being defeated by them as they had been defeated in Ethiopia, thus connecting the Tutsi's origin with the strong Empire of Ethiopia that defeated the Italians. ALSO READ: What are the motivations of Burundi’s military intervention in South Kivu? To neutralize the power of the Tutsi, so-called scientists developed the Hamitic and Bantu theory, portraying the so-called Bantu as indigenous people whose land was invaded by Hamitic outsiders. Among these so-called scientists were individuals like Joseph Verloet, mentioned by Mutesi, who documented the presence of the Tutsi on his maps. Yet, they were later erased from Belgian administrative records. She notes that this erasure was a calculated erasure—rendering a people invisible on paper while they remained visible in flesh. This deletion was deliberate. The colonial project concerning the Tutsi sought not only to remove them from maps but to erase their very existence. This chillingly echoes the genocidal rhetoric in Rwanda: the Tutsi would be eliminated, and anyone wishing to see them would have to visit a museum. The ideology of Tutsi elimination was already taking root in the 1950s, supported by some European intellectuals, religious figures, and political leaders. Belgian authorities, with the backing of the Catholic Church, agreed to conduct the initial “trial” of this ideology in their colony of Rwanda. The Tutsi faced discrimination not only in Rwanda but throughout the entire region. The suffering of the Tutsi in Uganda under Milton Obote’s rule is well documented. By chance, his government was overthrown by Idi Amin Dada, who prevented their expulsion. However, when Obote returned to power in 1979, the expulsion was carried out in 1982. ALSO READ: 80-year-old Congolese reflects on lifetime of injustice, attacks in DR Congo What of the Hema in DR Congo’s Ituri Province? They are persecuted simply for resembling the Tutsi. Like other Tutsi populations in the region, they faced discrimination from the Congolese state and nationalists, who labelled them as outsiders to Ituri. The Congolese Tutsi in Rutshuru and Masisi, North Kivu, have endured discrimination since 1958. The plight of the Banyamulenge in South Kivu is now known worldwide. Similarly, the Tutsi of Burundi suffered after the assassination of President Melchior Ndadaye. The only country that fully integrated them was Tanzania, thanks to President Julius Kambarage Nyerere’s pan-Africanist policies. In all these countries, Tutsi were branded as Hamites, foreigners, and invaders. The Congolese Tutsi were told to return to Rwanda; Tutsi in Uganda under Obote were told to leave; and those from Rwanda and Burundi were told they should trace their origins back to somewhere in Ethiopia. In 1994, the genocidal regime in Rwanda carried out a genocide against the Tutsi. In just 100 days, more than one million Tutsi were killed. The Rwandan Patriotic Army (RPA), led by President Paul Kagame, ended the genocide by defeating the genocidal forces, who then fled into DR Congo, where their campaign of genocidal ideology continues—countered today only by the AFC/M23 rebellion. When will the suffering of the Tutsi in the Great Lakes Region finally end? I do not know when, but I know without a shadow of doubt that the time is closer than many imagine.

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The century-long struggle of the Tutsi in Africa’s Great Lakes