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The Kingdom of Rwanda was a Bantu kingdom in modern-day Rwanda, which grew to be ruled by a Tutsi monarchy. [1] It was one of the oldest and the most centralized kingdoms in Central and East Africa. [2] It was later annexed under German and Belgian colonial rule while retaining some of its autonomy.
A traditional Tutsi wrist guard (igitembe) In the Rwanda territory, from the 15th century until 1961, the Tutsi were ruled by a king (the mwami). Belgium abolished the monarchy, following the national referendum that led to independence.
The Tutsi monarchy used the land distribution system of uburetwa to centralise control of the lands in most of Rwanda in a system called igikingi. Only the northwest of Rwanda, where Hutu land owners refused to submit, were not part of igikingi. The two dominant ethnic groups in both Rwanda and Burundi are the Tutsis and Hutus.
Tutsi refugees also fled to the South Kivu province of the Congo, where they were known as Banyamalenge. In 1960, the Belgian government agreed to hold democratic municipal elections in Ruanda-Urundi. The Hutu majority elected Hutu representatives. Such changes ended the Tutsi monarchy, which had existed for centuries.
On 28 January 1961, in the coup of Gitarama during what was dubbed the Rwandan Revolution by the Belgian-favored Hutu extremist party Parmehutu, the Belgian colonial overseers abolished the monarchy and Rwanda became a republic [10] (retroactively approved by a Hutu led referendum held on 25 September of the same year). [11]
The brutal counter-insurgency and imposition of new Tutsi overlords after Ndungutse's defeat also led to long-lasting resentments against the monarchy and Tutsi in general among northerners, with researcher Tharcisse Gatwa questioning whether the pro-government forces' brutality truly succeeded in pacifying the region's population.
Rwanda has previously said the authorities in DR Congo were working with some of those responsible for the 1994 Rwandan genocide against ethnic Tutsis and moderate Hutus.
1969 stamp celebrating the Rwandan Revolution, depicting a peasant raising the red-yellow-green Rwandan flag.. The Rwandan Revolution, also known as the Hutu Revolution, Social Revolution, or Wind of Destruction [1] (Kinyarwanda: muyaga), [2] was a period of ethnic violence in Rwanda from 1959 to 1961 between the Hutu and the Tutsi, two of the three ethnic groups in Rwanda.