nd privileges intensified, and the entire population was required to be registered as Hutu, Tutsi, or Twa. The single basis of this racial classification that the authorities were obliged to use was cattle ownership—people with ten or more cows were Tutsi, those with fewer were Hutu. A form of identification card was distributed to each person marked with his or her designated group. The identity cards made it virtually impossible for Hutus to become Tutsis, and permitted the Belgians to perfect the administration of an apartheid system rooted in the myth of Tutsi superiority (Gourevitch 56). These same identification cards would also tell modern-day killers whom to kill and whom to spare. When the Belgian missionaries went to Rwanda, they set up schools close to the Hutus and educated them. They encouraged the Hutu’s aspirations for political change. The Hutu became Western-educated and Christian-converted. They used this tool to get rich and enhance themselves socially. In the late 1950s, the Belgians reversed their preferences and inverted the hierarchy. They decided to rule through the Hutu, instead of the Tutsi, because the Hutu were more educated and made up 85% of the Rwandan population. Hutu political activists then started calling for majority rule and a social revolution. Then, in 1959, after Hutu political activist Mbonyumutwa was attacked and beaten up by Tutsi political activists, Belgian troops presided over a bloody uprising in which many Tutsi were slaughtered, had their homes torched, and/or were driven out of Rwanda by roving bands of Hutus (Gourevitch 59). Throughout the 60s, 70s, 80s, and mid-90s, it was this same sort of systematic political violence used against Tutsi to maintain Hutu power. Eventually, the Hutu wanted the Tutsi out of Rwanda. The social revolution had begun. This same social revolution in Rwanda between the Hutu and Tutsi was, thus, the beginning and a key factor of the b...
