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The Tutsi ( ), also called Watusi, Watutsi or Abatutsi (), are an ethnic group established primarily in Rwanda and Burundi. They are a Bantu languages-speaking people and the second-largest of three main ethnic groups in Rwanda and Burundi, the other two being the Hutu and Twa.
Historically, the Tutsi were Pastoralism and filled the ranks of the warrior caste. Before 1962, they regulated and controlled Rwandan society, which consisted of Tutsi aristocrats and Hutu commoners under a clientship structure. The Tutsi occupied the dominant positions in the sharply stratified society and constituted the ruling class.
The Tutsi also derive a significant amount of their ancestry from the Eastern Sudanic (a long-extinct Nilo-Saharan group). The Sog were agro-pastoralists who entered Rwanda and Burundi in 2,000 BC, mostly settling in southern Rwanda and to the east and west of the Ruzizi River. According to Ehret, they spoke a Kir-Abbaian language that was related to, but distinct from, Nilotic and Surmic languages. The Western Lakes Bantu languages spoken by the Tutsi have many , such as the word for cow (inka), which originally meant "cattle camp" in the Sog language, demonstrating their contribution to Tutsi pastoralism.
Central Sudanic likely form another part of the ancestry of the Tutsi. Central Sudanic farmers and herders entered Rwanda and Burundi in 3000 BC, and some of their cultural practices have remained following their assimilation by the Bantu. For example, in Central Sudanic–speaking societies, women are kept away from cattle. Among the Tutsi (and the neighbouring Hima people to the north), women are strictly forbidden to milk cows (especially Menstrual cycle women).
The definition of "Tutsi" has changed through time and location. Social structures were unstable throughout Rwanda, even during colonial times under Ruanda-Urundi. Generally, the Tutsi elite or aristocracy was distinguished from Tutsi commoners.
When the Belgian colonial administration conducted censuses, it identified the people throughout Rwanda-Burundi according to a simple classification scheme. The "Tutsi" were defined as anyone owning more than ten cows (a sign of wealth) or with the physical features such as a longer, thin nose, high cheekbones, or being over six feet tall, all of which are common descriptions associated with the Tutsi.
In the colonial era, the Tutsi were hypothesized to have arrived in the Great Lakes region from the Horn of Africa, in accordance with the Hamitic hypothesis.International Institute of African Languages and Cultures, Africa, Volume 76, (Oxford University Press., 2006), pg 135.
Tutsi are considered by some to be of Cushitic origin, although they do not speak a Cushitic language, and have inhabited the same areas for 400 years, leading to considerable intermarriage with Hutu in the area. Due to the history of intermingling and intermarrying of Hutu and Tutsi, some ethnographers and historians believe that the Hutu and Tutsi cannot be called distinct ethnic groups.Philip Gourevitch,
Paternal genetic influences associated with the Horn of Africa and North Africa are few (under 3% E1b1b-M35), and are ascribed to much earlier inhabitants who were assimilated. However, the Tutsi have considerably more haplogroup B Y-DNA paternal lineages (14.9% B) than do the Hutu (4.3% B).
... generations of gene flow obliterated whatever clear-cut physical distinctions may have once existed between these two Bantu peoples – renowned to be height, body build, and facial features. With a spectrum of physical variation in the peoples, Belgian authorities legally mandated ethnic affiliation in the 1920s, based on economic criteria. Formal and discrete social divisions were consequently imposed upon ambiguous biological distinctions. To some extent, the permeability of these categories in the intervening decades helped to reify the biological distinctions, generating a taller elite and a shorter underclass, but with little relation to the gene pools that had existed a few centuries ago. The social categories are thus real, but there is little if any detectable genetic differentiation between Hutu and Tutsi.Joseph C. Miller (ed.), New Encyclopedia of Africa, Volume 2, Dakar-Hydrology, Charles Scribner's Sons (publisher).
In Burundi, meanwhile, a ruling faction known as the ganwa emerged and quickly assumed effective control of the country's administration. The ganwa, who relied on support from both Hutu and Tutsi populations to rule, were perceived within Burundi as neither Hutu nor Tutsi.
Rwanda was ruled as a colony by Germany from 1897 to 1916, and by Belgium from 1922 to 1961. Both the Tutsi and Hutu had been the traditional governing elite, but both colonial powers allowed only the Tutsi to be educated and to participate in the colonial government. Such discriminatory policies engendered resentment.
When the Belgians took over, they believed the areas, which were formerly under German colonial control, could be better governed if they continued to identify the different populations as they had been previously identified. In the 1920s, the Belgian authorities required the population to identify with a particular ethnic group and the authorities classified them accordingly in censuses.
In 1959, Belgium reversed its stance and allowed the majority Hutu to assume control of the government through universal elections after independence. This partly reflected internal Belgian domestic politics, in which the discrimination against the Hutu majority came to be regarded as similar to oppression within Belgium stemming from the Flemish-Walloon conflict, and the democratisation and empowerment of the Hutu was seen as a just response to the Tutsi's domination. Belgian policies wavered considerably during this period leading up to the independence of Rwanda and Burundi.
Accessed 14 May 2025 Since the 2000 Arusha Accords, Burundi's Tutsi minority shares power in a more or less equitable manner with the Hutu majority. Traditionally, the Tutsi held more economic power and controlled the military.International Commission of Inquiry for Burundi (2002)
These Tutsi communities in exile gave rise to Tutsi rebel movements. The Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), mostly made up of exiled Tutsi living in Uganda, attacked Rwanda in 1990 with the intention of taking back power for the Tutsi. The RPF had experience in organised irregular warfare from the Ugandan Bush War and received support from the Ugandan government. The initial RPF advance was halted by a lift of French arms to the Rwandan government. Attempts at peace culminated in the 1993 Arusha Accords.
The agreement broke down after the assassination of the Rwandan and Burundian presidents, triggering a resumption of hostilities and the start of the Rwandan genocide of 1994, in which the Hutu killed an estimated 500,000–600,000 people, mostly Tutsi. 500,000–800,000 is the range of scholarly estimates listed on the third page of the paper. Victorious in the aftermath of the genocide, the Tutsi-led RPF came to power in July 1994.
Under their holy king, Tutsi culture traditionally revolved around administering justice and government. They were the only proprietors of cattle, and sustained themselves on their own products. Additionally, their lifestyle afforded them plenty of leisure time, which they spent cultivating the high arts of poetry, weaving, and music. Due to the Tutsi's status as a dominant minority vis-a-vis the Hutu farmers and the other local inhabitants, this relationship has been likened to that between lords and serfs in feudal Europe.]]
According to British historian John Fage, the Tutsi are serologically related to Bantu and Nilotic peoples populations. This in turn rules out a possible Cushitic origin for the founding Tutsi-Hima ruling class in the lacustrine kingdoms. However, the royal burial customs of the latter kingdoms are quite similar to those practised by the former Cushitic Sidama states in the southern Gibe region of Ethiopia. By contrast, Bantu populations to the north of the Tutsi-Hima in the mount Kenya area such as the Agikuyu were until modern times essentially without a king (instead having a stateless age set system which they adopted from Cushitic peoples) while there were a number of Bantu kingdoms to the south of the Tutsi-Hima in Tanzania, all of which shared the Tutsi-Hima's chieftaincy pattern. Since the Cushitic Sidama kingdoms interacted with Nilotic groups, Fage thus proposes that the Tutsi may have descended from one such migrating Nilotic population. The Nilotic ancestors of the Tutsi would thereby in earlier times have served as cultural intermediaries, adopting some monarchical traditions from adjacent Cushitic kingdoms and subsequently taking those borrowed customs south with them when they first settled amongst Bantu autochthones in the Great Lakes area. However, little difference can be ascertained between the cultures today of the Tutsi and Hutu; both groups speak the same Bantu languages.The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica. "Tutsi"
Accessed 14 May 2025 The rate of intermarriage between the two groups was traditionally very high, and relations were amicable until the 20th century. Many scholars have concluded that the determination of Tutsi was and is mainly an expression of class or caste, rather than ethnicity. Burundians and Rwandans have similar languages, Kirundi and Kinyarwanda. English, French and Swahili serve as additional official languages for different historic reasons, and are widely spoken by both Burundians and Rwandans as a second language.
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