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The Bahutu Manifesto

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Description

The Bahutu Manifesto was once penned at a volatile moment within the history of Rwanda. Though the genocide of the 1990s was once still far off, the Manifesto reveals that the seeds were already sown. In 1957, the Hutus were enjoying a reversal of fortune on the expense of the Tutsis, invoking the best of the ‘majority’ to rule the country. The international community, which had been favoring the Tutsis on the expense of the Hutus, accepted the arguments of “Hutu Power” as a proper application of democratic thinking. The Bahutu Manifesto was once signed, with others, by the soon to be first elected president, Grégoire Kaybanda.

There is only one problem: even as elevating the principles of democracy, all parties involved retained the racial thinking that had been brought by the colonialists, who on the time (c. 1890-1930s) had themselves been saturated in scientific racism (eugenics).  In an ominous foreshadowing of what would come about forty years later, The Bahutu Manifesto urged that identity cards still contain which race anyone belonged too.  Beginning around 1994, these identity cards would turn into death warrants for hundreds of thousands Tutsis in Rwanda.

The Bahutu Manifesto has a more optimistic feel about it, reflecting the rising fortunes of the Hutu authors.  Though bloodshed would soon follow, the Manifesto gives insight into the historically essential period of Rwandan history, before some of the blood would be spilled.

This edition is an English translation out of the French original.

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