Banyarwanda

Banyarwanda (Kinyarwanda – plural: Abanyarwanda, singular: Umunyarwanda; literally "those who come from Rwanda") actually means the people of Hutu, Tutsi and Batwa. Some lived on the present territory of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) before colonization, while others have migrated from neighboring Rwanda in waves. They live in the provinces of North Kivu and South Kivu, Democratic Republic of Congo. There are 1 million Banyarwanda in Uganda. They live in Western Uganda; Umutara and Kitara are the centers of their pastoral and agricultural areas.

The Banyarwanda, through their language of Kinyarwanda, form a subgroup of the Bantu peoples, who inhabit a geographical area stretching east and southward from Central Africa across the African Great Lakes region down to Southern Africa. Scholars from the Royal Museum of Central Africa in Tervuren, building on earlier work by Malcolm Guthrie, placed Kinyarwanda within the Great Lakes Bantu languages. This classification groups the Banyarwanda with nineteen other ethnic groups including the Barundi, Banyankore, Baganda and Bahunde.

The Banyarwanda are descended from a diverse group of people, who settled in the area through a series of migrations. The earliest known inhabitants of the African Great Lakes area were a sparse group of hunter gatherers, who lived in the late stone age. They were followed by a larger population of early Iron Age settlers, who produced dimpled pottery and iron tools. These early inhabitants were the ancestors of the Twa, a group of aboriginal pygmy hunter-gatherers who remain in the area today. Between 700 BC and 1500 AD, a number of Bantu groups migrated into the territory, and began to clear forest land for agriculture. The forest-dwelling Twa lost much of their habitat and moved to the slopes of mountains. Historians have several theories regarding the nature of the Bantu migrations; one theory is that the first settlers were Hutu, while the Tutsi migrated later and formed a distinct racial group, possibly of Cushitic origin. An alternative theory is that the migration was slow and steady, with incoming groups integrating into rather than conquering the existing society. Under this theory, the Hutu and Tutsi distinction arose later and was a class distinction rather than a racial one.

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