The making of a Nation State

Rwanda as a nation was made by Rwandans themselves. It was not European imperialist powers who made it just like most of the African States we have today. This enterprise of making a Nation-State of Rwanda was not done at once. It was an intellectual thought of few Rwandans based on their existing families to expand their domain and make a country in which to live and where their descendants will live. Those people first constructed a strong family based on myth and beliefs and symbols as well as the basic infrastructure of the economy of that country. Some foreign ideologies have preached that in Rwanda, those who governed the country were foreigners and late comers who mixed with the local Bantus, eventually conquered them. This idea contradicts itself. Where in history do the powerful invading people adopt the culture of the conquered? How about themselves? When Europeans came to our countries, they were few, but very powerful, why didn’t they adopt our culture, language and belief. In any case, if these few Rwandans came from elsewhere and could adopt local culture and made it theirs, it is obvious that they were humans, that they did not harbor a sense of discrimination whatsoever. Second lie, how can a herdsman and his animals go to look for cultivated farms to graze? It is well known that a good herdsman goes to the forest where there is good and unlimited pasture. Logically, the herdsman is needed by the farmer cultivator who is on the lookout for animal products such as milk and manure. These are real facts. The first family to have the Rwandan Nation-State was ABASINDI where the ABANYIGINYA came from. The ABASINDI were descendants of Yuhi I Musindi I son of Kanyarwanda I Gahima I. That was approximatively in 1157-1180. That time in Europe, they were, also, struggling to build the infrastructure of their Nation-States using the same means, e.g families, religious beliefs mostly borrowed from the Asian Middle East States. Those Rwandans built a strong base of the leadership of the Rwandans nation-state. They gave a name RWANDA and they decided to expend it by force just like anywhere else by that time. The European imperial power invaded Africa; Rwanda was twice as larger as it is today. In 1884-1885 when European powers converged at the Berlin Conference in Germany they partitioned Africa the way they wished and then they came down to the field. They divided the African cake amongst themselves since they had the might of the gun. In 1910 the Germans, the British and the Belgians partitioned our country, Rwanda into three portions, a bigger part was left with Germans, the other bigger one was given to Belgians (that is Kivu), and the other one to British-Uganda. Rwanda, which was bigger then was left as a concentration camp. But the characteristics that mark a nation were not gone. Though the European power tried to erase some characteristics such as the language, they were unsuccessful. However, they were able to eradicate other forms of our cultural heritage and beliefs by introducing their religions, beliefs and political culture. kaikipata@yahoo.com