UbuhakeUbuhake is the name given to the social order in Rwanda and Burundi from approximately the 15th century to 1958. It has been frequently compared to European feudalism. Based on cattle distribution, it was, however, a much smaller system than the one of uburetwa, which affected a much larger segment of the population and was based on land distribution. The Tutsi monarchy used the land distribution system of uburetwa to centralise control of the lands in most of Rwanda in a system called igikingi.
BanyarwandaThe Banyarwanda ( Banyarwanda are a Bantu ethnolinguistic supraethnicity that comprises the dominant ethnic groups of Rwanda, namely the Hutu, Tutsi and Twa among others. The Banyarwanda are also minorities in neighboring Burundi, DR Congo, Uganda, Tanzania, and Kenya. Although the ethnic make-up of Burundi is similar to that of Rwanda, Banyarwanda is a political neologism used solely in Rwanda since the 1990s in order to mitigate ethnic division within the country following the Rwandan Civil War and the 1994 Rwandan genocide.
Genocidal massacreThe term genocidal massacre was introduced by Leo Kuper (1908–1994) to describe incidents which have a genocidal component but are committed on a smaller scale when they are compared to genocides such as the Rwandan genocide. Others such as Robert Melson, who also makes a similar differentiation, class genocidal massacres as "partial genocide". In his book Blood and Soil, Ben Kiernan states that imperial powers have often committed genocidal massacres to control difficult minorities within their empires.
Hema peopleThe Hema people or Bahema (plural) are an ethnic group of Nilotic origin who are concentrated in parts of Ituri Province in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo. The Hema are a Nilotic ethnic group, related to the Banyoro, Batooro, Bakiga, Basongora, Bahororo, Baruuli and Banyankore. They were historically pastoralists and migrated into Ituri from modern-day Uganda in the early 19th century, making them one of the last groups to settle in the region.
Democratic Forces for the Liberation of RwandaThe Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (Forces démocratiques de libération du Rwanda, FDLR) is an armed rebel group active in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo. As an ethnic Hutu group opposed to the ethnic Tutsi influence, the FDLR is one of the last factions of Rwandan rebels active in the Congo. It was founded through an amalgamation of other groups of Rwandan refugees in September 2000, including the former Army for the Liberation of Rwanda (ALiR), under the leadership of Paul Rwarakabije.
TwaThe Twa (also Cwa, or Batwa plural and Mutwa singular) are a group of indigenous African Pygmy (Central African foragers) tribes. It is often supposed that the Pygmies were the aboriginal inhabitants of the forest before the advent of agriculture. Vansina argues that the original meaning of the (Proto-Bantu) word *twa was "hunter-gatherer, bushpeople", alongside yaka used for the western (Mbuti) pygmies (Bayaka). As the Twa developed into full-time hunter-gatherers, the words were conflated, and the ritual role of the absorbed aboriginal peoples was transferred to the Twa.
