DIVIDE AND RULE

I WAS BORN IN 1965 and raised in Gitesi Commune, Kibuye Prefecture, which is today referred to as the district of Karongi in the Western Province of Rwanda. Gitesi is an attractive city on the eastern shore of Lake Kivu, well known because of the beauty of its landscape, the sparkles of its waves, and the lushness of its islands. I grew up in a family of seven children — three sisters, three brothers, and me. I was baby number six. My family lived much the same as the average Rwandan family of the day. We were subsistence farmers. Corn, beans, peas, and potatoes or sweet potatoes were our daily main meal.

There was never a time in my life when ethnicity was not a dominant part of my existence, or the existence of any Rwandan of my generation. All Rwandans were mandated to carry a national ID card with them at all times. The most important piece of data on the card consisted of three words: Hutu, Tutsi, or Twa — the three native ethnic groups of our land. Two of the three words were crossed out. The one word remaining defined your total experience in Rwanda, much like a caste system, though, during my lifetime, far more evil. This, I had no choice but to accept. The sorts of tactics Hitler had used, with his various colored cloth badges sewn onto the clothing of citizens his Third Reich viewed unfavorably, had always been a part of my daily living. I knew no other way.

The Twa were the first indigenous people of Rwanda. Better known to the world as "pygmies," they are the least numerous in terms of population, and politically, they have been dealt with indifferently on the whole.

It has been said that the Hutu and the Tutsi of Rwanda are different ethnic groups, yet even something as simple and basic as this is open to debate. The physical differences between the two are often negligible due to generations of intermarriage. They also share a common language. There are no significant or relevant religious differences. Gerald DeGroot, a professor of history at the University of St. Andrews, wrote in the April 28, 2008, Christian Science Monitor, "those labels, 'Tutsi' and 'Hutu,' were meant to define the number of cows a family owned" — nothing more, despite anthropological theories that they were, indeed, different tribes. "During [Rwanda's] colonial period [particularly after World War I], the Belgians turned those otherwise fluid divisions into rigid ethnic identities as part of a strategy of divide and rule." Unfortunately, the "divide and rule" attitude continued even after the Europeans were gone, but DeGroot's basic premise, repeated by many other Western academics, is questioned by us Rwandans. I asked people older than me about it and none confirmed this theory about cows. During much of Rwanda's history, Tutsi lived by their cows, while Hutu tended to farm. But no one ever said those who had cows were Tutsi and those without cows became Hutu. To be Tutsi or Hutu was a designation given at birth based on your father's ethnicity.

According to a 1991 census, Rwanda was 90 percent Hutu, 9 percent Tutsi, and 1 percent Twa. I am Tutsi. Thus, I spent my entire life as a minority; and worse yet, because of when I lived during my formative years in Rwanda, I was part of an oppressed minority.

During my lifetime, a culture of strategic disenfranchisement and dehumanization was entrenched among our nation's leaders, even down to our schoolteachers. As children in school, we Tutsi were asked to stand up separately, while the Hutu were sitting down. Or Hutu were asked to stand up while the Tutsi were told to stay down. While this did not cause anyone physical harm, it followed the classic pattern of how genocide breeds. Step one is classification: "us" versus "them." In my native Rwanda, I was "them."

In 1962, a few years prior to my birth, Rwanda became an independent nation, no longer a colony of Belgium. Just like in America, the 1960s were a time of social revolution in my country, though I was far too young to comprehend it. Beginning in 1959 and continuing throughout my lifetime, unrest between Hutu and Tutsi was a major part of our rebirth as a nation ruled solely by Rwandans. That year, 1959, marked the real beginning of upheaval, the throwing off of the shackles of Belgian colonialism, which finally culminated in full Rwandan independence in 1962. But a large portion of the rallying cry among the Hutu in our nation was that, in their opinion, the Tutsi were seen as an extension of the Belgians, and in freeing themselves of Belgium, Hutu had to take out their frustrations on all Tutsi. This was the wreckage of the Belgian-sponsored ethnic divisionism and its Indialike caste system imposed upon us. Belgians could return to their own nation unscathed, but we Tutsi unfairly bore the full brunt of Hutu fury.

We Tutsi suffered greatly during those days. Some Tutsi were killed, while others were driven out of the land of their birth. Still others left voluntarily, hoping to keep one step ahead of those who would mean them harm. Because I was so young, whatever I came to discover about this time I learned from schools or from what I was told by my parents. Some of my father's family was killed during those days, while others fled to Congo — later known as Zaire, and later still known as the Democratic Republic of the Congo — but I never got to know them.

I witnessed true violence against my family for the first time at the age of eight. It was in 1973 and I was in the third grade. We had early release from school, and our teachers didn't tell us why we had to leave early.

When we arrived home, all the Tutsi men had gathered together to protect their homes. Women and children were asked to go hide in the bushes. Some men gathered on the nearby hill of Gitwa to watch assailants coming from far away toward our neighborhood. That is one of the things that stuck in my childhood memory — that the really bad people who meant us the most harm were strangers to us, rather than the people we saw every day. Our closest neighbors, the Hutu who lived in the same village with us, were less violent toward us. Perhaps that is what happens once people actually get to know one another.

A group of Hutu armed with machetes and spears overran our village. The Tutsi men soon went into the bushes when they saw the attack was so overwhelming and cruel that they could not put up adequate resistance. All night we could only see the...