History of Rwanda Timeline

Mutara made many changes; in 1954 he shared out the land between the Hutu and the Tutsi, and agreed to abolish the system of indentured servitude (ubuhake and uburetwa) the Tutsis had practised over the Hutu until then.

In 1957, Grégoire Kayibanda wrote the 'Hutu Manifesto', articulating Hutu grievances against Tutsi dominance and shaping the emerging ethnic politics of the country.

In reaction to rising Hutu movements, in 1959 the Tutsi formed the UNAR party, lobbying for immediate independence for Ruanda-Urundi based on the existing Tutsi monarchy.

In July 1959, when the Tutsi Mwami (King) Mutara III Charles died following a routine vaccination, some Tutsi thought he had been assassinated, heightening tensions.

In November 1959, Tutsis tried to assassinate Kayibanda, contributing to the eruption of the revolution later that year.

Image source: Grégoire Kayibanda

The revolution of 1959 marked a major change in political life in Rwanda. In 1960, the Belgian government agreed to hold democratic municipal elections in Ruanda-Urundi. Such changes ended the Tutsi monarchy, which had existed for centuries.

Image source: Rwandan Revolution

On 25 September 1961, a referendum was held to establish whether Rwanda should become a republic or remain a kingdom; voters chose a republic.

A convergence of anti-colonial and anti-Tutsi sentiment resulted in Belgium granting national independence. On 1 July 1962, Belgium, with UN oversight, granted full independence to the two countries of Ruanda-Urundi.

Between 1961 and 1962, Tutsi guerrilla groups staged attacks into Rwanda from neighboring countries. In 1963, a Tutsi guerrilla invasion from Burundi unleashed another anti-Tutsi backlash by the Hutu government; their forces killed an estimated 14,000 people. Following more violence in 1964, the government suppressed political opposition.

Unsettled ethnic and political tensions were worsened when Defence Minister Major General Juvénal Habyarimana, who was also Hutu, seized power on July 5, 1973.

Image source: Juvénal Habyarimana

In 1975, President Habyarimana formed the National Revolutionary Movement for Development (MRND) whose goals were to promote peace, unity, and national development. A new constitution making the country a totalitarian one-party state under the MRND was approved in a referendum in December 1978. Habyarimana was re-elected in 1983 and again in 1988, each time as sole candidate.

Image source: National Revolutionary Movement for Development

Responding to public pressure for political reform, President Habyarimana announced in July 1990 his intention to transform Rwanda's one-party state into a multi-party democracy.

In 1990, the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), a rebel group composed of 10,000 Tutsi refugees from previous decades of unrest, invaded the country from their base in Uganda, starting the Rwandan Civil War. After three years of fighting and multiple cease-fires, the government and RPF signed the Arusha Accords in August 1993 to form a power-sharing government, a plan which immediately ran into problems.

On April 6, 1994, the airplane carrying President Juvénal Habyarimana of Rwanda and Cyprien Ntaryamira, the Hutu President of Burundi, was shot down near Kigali. The assassination was the catalyst for the 1994 genocide, in which hundreds of thousands of Tutsis and some moderate Hutus were killed, including Prime Minister Agathe Uwilingiyimana.

Image source: Rwandan genocide

Between July and August 1994, Kagame's Tutsi-led RPF troops first entered Kigali and soon thereafter captured the rest of the country, ending the genocide. After taking control, Kagame formed a government of national unity headed by a Hutu president, Pasteur Bizimungu.

Image source: Rwandan Civil War

When the French withdrew in August 1994, administration of internally displaced persons camps was taken over by UNAMIR and aid organizations. By early 1995, the Kibeho IDP camp was the largest in Rwanda, containing between 80,000 and 100,000 people.

Image source: Kibeho massacre

To protect the country against Hutu Interahamwe forces that had fled to Eastern Zaire, RPF forces invaded Zaire in 1996 following talks by Kagame with US officials. The invasion disbanded the camps and replaced the Congolese president as a result of the First Congo War. In 1997, Kabila captured Kinshasa and became president of Zaire, renaming it the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Image source: First Congo War

In northwest Rwanda, Hutu militia members killed three Spanish aid workers and three soldiers and seriously wounded one other on January 18, 1997.

With Kabila's success in the Congo, he no longer desired an alliance with the Tutsi-RPF Rwandan army and Ugandan forces, and in August 1998 ordered both out of the DRC. In the great conflict between 1998 and 2002, Congo was divided into three parts, with multiple opportunistic Mai Mai militias springing up. Laurent Kabila was assassinated in 2001 and succeeded by his son Joseph Kabila. Rwandan RPF troops finally left Congo in 2002.

Image source: Second Congo War

When Bizimungu became critical of the Kagame government in 2000, he was removed as president and Kagame took over the presidency himself. Bizimungu was arrested in 2002 for treason, sentenced to 15 years in prison, but released by presidential pardon in 2007.

Image source: Paul Kagame

Since 2000, the Rwandan government has expressed interest in transforming the country from agricultural subsistence to a knowledge-based economy, with plans for high-speed broadband across the entire country. Vision 2020 aimed to achieve a service-based society by 2020 with a significant middle class.

The community-based Gacaca courts, established to try those involved in the 1994 genocide, officially concluded in June 2012 after processing hundreds of thousands of cases.

Image source: Gacaca court