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Leader: Major General Juvenal Habyarimana (President).
Economy: GNP per capita $260 (1982) Monetary Unit: Rwandan Franc
Main export: Coffee
Main import: Petroleum
People: 5.5 million (1982)
Culture: Religion: Roman Catholic, with residual traditional
religions in which the witchdoctor still plays a part.
Language: Kinyarwanda. French and a little Swahili
Ethnic Groups: Bahutu (82 per cent), Batutsi (15 per
cent), Batwa (pygmy - three per cent).
Health: Infant mortality: 110 per thousand live births.
Percentage of population with access to drinking water:
48 (urban) 55
(rural)
Source: State of the World’s Children 1985.
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At
first sight, Rwanda seems a bountiful country. Known as the land
of a thousand hills, its high altitude and cool climate have largely
spared it from disease. Rainfall is reliable and crops from potatoes,
cassava and beans to bananas (most of which are turned into beer)
grow in patchwork abundance almost everywhere. The luscious scenery
varies dramatically from the volcanic habitat of the mountain gorilla
in the north to the Western lakes and golden plains of the Akagera
game reserve in the east. The people are warm and friendly - whether
you are walking in the countryside or bartering for bananas in the
market, brightly dressed women with babies on their backs and children
by their sides will extend a hand and ask ‘Muraho - how are
you?’
But there is tension below the surface. The influx of escapees from
Uganda has increased the pressure on land in this country which is already the most
densely populated in Africa. Rwanda’s population is set to double in twenty years and
with the exception of two gameparks and one forest reserve there is no uninhabited land
left.
Successive Five Year Plans have emphasised the goal of self-sufficiency
in food production. But rises in agricultural output have resulted not from
intensification but from cultivating more land. Marshes have been reclaimed and woodlands
cleared for farmland. But deforestation is leading to a severe shortage of fuelwood and
the overworked soil is yielding less and less.
The pastoralist Tutsi tribe used to wield the power before the advent
of colonial masters Germany (until 1916) followed by Belgium. Then in 1959 the majority
tribe, the Hutu, rose against their rulers. The Mwami (kings) fled and by 1962 Rwanda was
independent, governed by Hutu. But bloody conflict has repeated itself through recent
years, and relations between the two major ethnic groups (the pygmies being dismissed with
contempt) remain delicate.
President Habyarimana, who seized power in a bloodless coup in 1973,
has made repeated calls for unity. He has tried to coax foreign investors, wary of the
country’s volatility, with generous terms. Returned unopposed in elections in 1979
and 1980, he has helped develop an export market for coffee, now grown by almost half the
peasants. And in the domestic arena he has backed the setting up of health and nutrition
centres all over the country to improve the general standard of living.
But whether the benefits of aid will reach the poorest people is of
course uncertain. Grass roots development workers are wary of the large projects which
bring perks to officials and middlemen but which squeeze out the smaller initiatives and
which do not involve Rwanda’s peasants. President Habyarimana has now been in power
for 11 years, but the period ahead looks stormy.
Sue Surkes
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