1959–1962: (Rwanda’s Bloody Road to Independence — The 1959 Hutu Uprising Against the Tutsi Monarchy, Belgian Authorities Managing the Transition to Hutu Rul…

1959–1962: (Rwanda’s Bloody Road to Independence — The 1959 Hutu Uprising Against the Tutsi Monarchy, Belgian Authorities Managing the Transition to Hutu Rule, Parmehutu Sweeping Elections in 1960, the Tutsi Monarchy Abolished in 1961, Independence in 1962, and the Ethnic Tensions That Would Culminate in the 1994 Genocide): There was trouble in Rwanda, where the run-up to independence was dominated by growing tensions between Tutsi and Hutu — the colonial ethnic engineering described in earlier chapters now bearing its bitter fruit. A Hutu uprising against the Tutsi monarchy in 1959 involved a great deal of bloodshed, brought under control only by Belgian authorities who now sought to manage the transition to majority Hutu rule. In local elections held in 1960, Parmehutu, the principal Hutu political party, swept the board, and the following year the Tutsi monarchy was abolished. Parmehutu took Rwanda to independence in 1962, though ethnic tensions continued in the years to come — indeed, it was the apparent threat that the Tutsi were aiming to seize power again that sparked the horrific massacre of both Tutsi and their perceived Hutu friends in 1994. In neighboring Burundi, the Tutsi retained power from independence until 1993. The categories that German and Belgian administrators had rigidified into fixed racial hierarchies had become the fault lines along which a nation would tear itself apart.