Molders of Mud: Ethnogenesis and Rwanda's Twa

Abstract

When discussing the politics of ethnicity in Rwanda, most authors discount the role of Twa. Because the latter are Rwanda's least numerous ethnic group, the tendency is to dismiss their importance. This dismissal may seem justified in instrumental terms, but it is not true in symbolic terms. Twa were the first of Rwanda's three ethnicities to suffer stigmatization, and this predated European colonialism by several centuries. If we think about ethnicity according to an instrumentalist model, placing primary causal weight on social rather than cultural factors, we misconstrue how Rwanda's pre-colonial opposition of disgust vs. esteem provided fertile grounds for later European biological determinism. Practices of avoidance in commensality, marriage, and other activities – called ‘kuneena batwa’ – lie at the heart of this opposition. This paper traces its processual development, demonstrating that it is incorrect to think of Rwandan ethnicity either in purely instrumentalist terms or in simple binary cultural terms.

Keywords:

• Rwanda
• Twa
• ethnogenesis
• symbol
• disgust

Notes

According to official Rwandan census figures before the genocide of 1994, Hutu comprised 89% of the population, Tutsi 10%, and Twa 1%. Some people claim that after 1962, many Tutsi concealed their ethnicity and had their national identity cards marked ‘Hutu’.

‘It is nevertheless certain that in the light of Rwandans’ genetic diversity, an almost exclusive endogamy prevailed for a very long time among Twa and elite Tutsi. There is no doubt that Rwandans during the twentieth century really were composed of three biologically distinct populations and that whatever scenario one employs to explain this fact, these differences were so marked that they must have a historicity computed in millenia rather than centuries'.

‘Even if the samples leave something to be desired as some social science scholars believe, the results are valid. In fact, the data allow for several different but equally plausible interpretations. Only further genetic studies will allow us to evaluate and select among them. The practice of cross-cousin marriage was common and quite old, for the term umubyaara “cross-cousin” derives from kubyaara “to engender”’.