Rwanda has a rich oral history which was maintained primarily by members of the Rwandan royal court. According to its history, the founder of Rwanda’s ruling dynasty, Abanyiginya, was not born naturally like other humans, but was born from an earthenware jar of milk. The grandmother of Rwandans lived in heaven with Nkuba(thunder) who was given the secret of creating life. He made a small man out of clay, coated him with his saliva, and placed him in a wooden jar filled with fresh milk and the heart of a slaughtered bull. The jar was constantly refilled with fresh milk. The end of nine months the man took on the image of Sabizeze. When Sabizeze learned of his origin, he was angry that his mother had revealed the secret and decided to leave heaven and come to earth. He bought with him his sister Nyampundu, his brother Mututsi, and a couple of Batwa. Sabizeze was welcomed by Kabeja who was of the Abazigaba clan and king of the region (in the present-day Akagera national park). Sabizeze then had a son named Gihanga who was to find the kingdom of Rwanda. A Rwandan historian, Alexis Kagame, estimates the Gahinga ruled as king of Rwanda in the late 10th or early 11th century.
Before the arrival of Europeans, Rwandans believed they were the centre of the world, with the grandest monarchy, the greatest power and the highest civilization. Their king or mwami was the supreme authority and was magically identified with Rwanda. There was a strong belief that if the ruling monarch was not the true king, the people of Rwanda would be in danger. The well-being of Rwanda was directly linked to the health of the king. When he grew old, Rwanda’s prosperity was compromised. Only when the ageing ruler died and a new, stronger king was enthroned did the country re-stabilize. The centralized control by the king was balanced by a very powerful queen mother and a group of dynastic ritualists, the abiiru. Queen mothers could never come from the same family clan as the king and rotated among four different family clans. The abiiru, who were also drawn from four different clans, could reverse the King’s decisions if they conflicted with the magical Esoteric Code, protected and interpreted by the abiiru. They also governed the selection and installation of a new king. Any member of the abiiru who forgot any part of his assigned portion of the Esoteric code was punished severely. Members of the abiiru and other custodians of state secrets who revealed the secrets of the royal court were forced to drink igihango , a mixture containing a magical power to kill traitors or anyone who failed in his duty. While the king could order the death of a disloyal member of the abiiru, he was required to replace the traitor with a member from the same family clan.
Rwanda’s dynastic drums, which could be made only by members of one family clan from very specific trees with magical elements, had the same dignity as the king. The genitals of the enemies of Rwanda killed by the king hung from the drum. The capture of a dynastic drum from an enemy country normally signified annexation, with the group whose drum was stolen losing all faith in itself. This tradition is shared among all Bantu-speaking peoples in Africa. When Rwanda’s royal drum Rwoga was lost to a neigbouring kingdom by King Ndahiro II Cyaamatare in the late 15th century, Rwanda was devastated. Rwoga was eventually replaced by Karinga, the last dynastic drum, when King Ruganzu II Ndori regained Rwanda’s pride through his military exploits. The fate of Karinga is unknown. It is reported to have survived the colonial period, but disappeared soon after Rwanda’s independence. The origin of the division between Tutsis and Hutus is still being debated, but oral history portrays a feudal society with one group, the Tutsi or cattle herders, occupying a superior status within the social and political structure, and the other group, the Hutus or peasant farmers, serving as the serfs or clients of Tutsis chief. The hunter-gatherer Twa were potters and had various functions at the royal court for example, as dancers and music makers.
The complex system known as ubuhake provided for protection by the superior partner in exchange for services from the inferior: ubuhake agreements were made either between two Tutsis, or between a Tutsis and a Hutu. While ubuhake was a voluntary and revocable private contract between two individuals, with subjects able to switch loyalty from one chief to another, a peasant could not easily survive without a patron. Cattle could be acquired through Uhuhake as well as by purchase, fighting in a war, or marriage. A Hutu who acquired enough cattle could thus become a Tutsi and might take a Tutsi wife, while a Tutsi who lost his herds or otherwise fell on hard times might become a Hutu and marry accordingly. A patron had no authority over a client who had gained cattle, whether Hutu, Tutsi or Twa. Whereas Hutu and Tutsi could and did sometimes switch status, a Twa seldom became a Tutsi or Hutu. In the rare instances when this did occur, it would be because the King rewarded a Twa for some act of bravery by granting him the status of a Tutsi. He would then be given a Tutsi wife and a political post within the royal court. Meanwhile the three groups spoke the same language (Kinyarwanda, a language in the Bantu group), lived within the same culture and shared the same recent history.
Rwandan nobles were experts in cattle breeding and an entire category of poetry was devoted to the praises of famous cows. Cattle were bred for their beauty, rather than utility. Between AD 1000 and 1450 herders in the great lakes region invented no fewer than 19 words for the colourful patterns of their animals’ hides. As elsewhere in Africa, cattle were closely associated with wealth and status.
AD1000-1894 whatever the exact timespan may have been, Rwanda (or the larger part of it) was ruled over by a sequence of Tutsi monarchs, each with his various political skirmishes, battles and conquests. Oral tradition shows us a colourful bunch of characters for example, Ndahiro II Cyaamatare who catastrophically lost the royal drum, Mibambwe II who organized a system of milk distribution to the poor, ordering his chiefs to provide jugs of Milk three times a day, and Yuhi III Mazimpaka, the only king to compose poetry and to go mad. From the 17th century onwards the rulers seem to have become more organized and ambitious, using their armies to subjugate fringe areas. The royal palace was by then at Nyanza and can still be seen, carefully reconstructed. The mwami was an absolute monarch, deeply revered and seen to embody Rwanda physically. The hierarchy beneath him was complex and tight-knit, with different categories of chief in charge of different aspects of administration. His power covered most of Rwanda, although some Hutu enclaves in the north, northwest and southwest of the country clung to their independence until the 20th century. The country was divided into a pyramid of administrative area, in ascending order of size, from base to apex, these were the immediate neighbourhood, the hill, the district and the province. And through this intricate structure ran the practice and spirit of ubuhake, the master client relationship in which an inferior receives help and protection in return for services and allegiance to a superior.
Beneath the mwami, power was exercised by various chiefs, each with specific responsibilities, land chiefs responsible for land allocation, agriculture and agricultural taxation, cattle chiefs stock raising and associated taxes, army chiefs (security) and so on. While Hutus might take charge at neighbourhood level, most of the power at higher administrative levels was in the hands of Tutsis. Since our only source of information about these early days is oral tradition, which by its nature favours the holders of power, we cannot be certain to what extent the power structure was accepted by those lower down the ladder, to what extent they resented it and to what extent they were exploited by it. But, whether harsh, benevolent or exploitative or possibly all three, it survived, and is what the Europeans found when they entered this previously unknown country. Rwanda had remained untouched by events unfolding elsewhere in Africa. Tucked away in the centre of the continent, the tiny kingdom was ignored by slave traders, consequently Rwanda is one of the few African countries that never sold its people, or its enemies, into slavery. There is no record of Arab traders or Asian merchants, numerous in other parts of east and central Africa, having penetrated its borders, with the result that no written language was introduced and oral tradition remained the norm until the very end of the 19th century. The kingdom of Rwanda was isolationist and closed to foreigners also to many Africans until the 1890’s. The famous American explorer, Henry Stanley, attempted to enter several times and did penetrate as far as Lake Ihema in 1874, but was then forced to retreat under arrow attack. Trade with neigbouring countries was extremely limited and Rwanda had no monetary system.