For more than a century, Hutu and Tutsi in Africa’s Great Lakes region have been described as two distinct ethnic groups, and sometimes even as separate races.

But the history is more complicated.

The identities existed before European colonial rule, but they did not always carry the rigid meaning they acquired later. Colonial rule, particularly in Rwanda and Burundi, changed how they were classified and understood, helping turn social distinctions into fixed ethnic categories. Those identities were later drawn into struggles over political power, land and belonging.

The consequences are still felt today, particularly in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), where questions of identity and citizenship remain tied to conflict.

Genocide in Rwanda

By the early 1990s, tensions between Hutu and Tutsi had become central to Rwanda’s political crisis.

In 1994, they culminated in the genocide against the Tutsi. Between 800,000 and one million men, women and children were massacred during the 100 days that followed, primarily Tutsi civilians and moderate Hutu, according to the United Nations International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda.

Hutu ethnonationalist leaders, government forces and militias, including the Interahamwe, were among those responsible.

The killings followed years of political tension and a civil war between Rwanda’s Hutu-led government and the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), a Tutsi-led rebel movement headed by Paul Kagame.

On the evening of April 6, 1994, a rocket attack brought down a plane carrying Rwandan President Juvenal Habyarimana and Burundian President Cyprien Ntaryamira as it approached Kigali. Both presidents were killed.

Who fired the rocket remains disputed.

The following day, killings began across Rwanda. The genocide ended in July, when the RPF defeated the government and took control of the country.

But the violence did not stop at Rwanda’s borders.

The Burundian Civil War

Burundi had experienced its own cycles of political violence involving Hutu and Tutsi since independence.

The crisis deepened in October 1993, when President Melchior Ndadaye, a Hutu and Burundi’s first democratically elected president, was killed during a military coup attempt.

A United Nations fact-finding mission documented the coup and the violence that followed. Tens of thousands of people were killed, and large numbers were forced to flee their homes.

Burundi subsequently descended into a civil war that lasted more than a decade.

Eastern Congo: A region in turmoil

Across the border, the DRC was facing its own political and security problems.

The aftermath of Rwanda’s genocide added another layer.

When the RPF took control of Rwanda in 1994, about two million Rwandans fled the country. More than one million refugees were in what was then Zaire by the end of that year, many of them in camps in the east.

Among those who crossed the border were members of the former Rwandan army and the Interahamwe militia. Some later reorganised and launched attacks against the new Rwandan government from Congolese territory.

The arrival of refugees and armed groups helped turn the aftermath of the genocide into a wider regional crisis.

But eastern DRC’s conflicts have never been only about Hutu and Tutsi. Land, citizenship, political power, control of territory and natural resources have also played major roles.

To understand why the identities became so politically charged, it is necessary to look at how they developed.

Who are the Hutu and Tutsi?

To explore that history, we spoke to people from the region who have studied its politics and society: Burundian journalist and political researcher Innocent Muhozi, Congolese researcher Alex Mvuka, Rwandan researcher and historian Tom Ndahiro, and Congolese politician Thomas Luhaka.

Their accounts point to societies that were more fluid before colonial rule than the later Hutu-Tutsi divide might suggest.

In Rwanda and Burundi, communities were organised around kingdoms, clans, land, cattle and political relationships.

Hutu were generally associated with farming, while Tutsi were more closely associated with cattle ownership and herding. Twa communities were also part of these societies.

But the boundaries were not always fixed.

In Burundi, Muhozi says the kingdom was ruled by an elite known as the Ganwa, which he describes as neither Hutu nor Tutsi. Hutu, Tutsi and Twa were all part of the wider society, he says.

Social position could also change.

Muhozi says wealth, cattle ownership and political standing could influence how a person was regarded. In some circumstances, he says, a Hutu could become regarded as Tutsi.

The point is not that Hutu and Tutsi identities did not exist before colonialism. They did.

Rather, they did not always have the fixed meaning they acquired later.

The roots of division

Colonial rule changed the way those identities were understood and administered.

Rwanda and Burundi came under German colonial rule in the late 19th century. After World War I, Belgium took control of both territories. The DRC was also under Belgian rule.

Innocent Muhozi says Belgian rule had profound consequences for Rwanda and Burundi.

“The colonial history influence has been a very big disaster for Burundians,” he says.

He argues that Belgian authorities imposed their own interpretation of the country’s history through institutions, such as schools.

“They brought schools and started teaching history and geography,” Muhozi says. “The influence of that colonial ideology and this ideology of dividing people has been instilled in society through education.”

Other European powers were also carving up Africa at the same time.

Between late 1884 and early 1885, representatives of European powers gathered in Berlin to establish rules governing their competing claims on the continent. The conference became a major milestone in the European partition and colonisation of Africa.

The borders and systems established during the colonial period would outlast colonial rule.

Colonial anthropology

European anthropologists developed theories about the supposed racial origins of the Hutu, Tutsi and Twa.

In Rwanda, some European writers portrayed the Tutsi as migrants from elsewhere, particularly from the north, rather than as an indigenous population.

Tom Ndahiro says these ideas influenced the way Belgian authorities classified Rwanda’s population.

In 1933, the Belgian administration conducted a census in Rwanda and later introduced identity cards that classified people as Hutu, Tutsi or Twa, according to Ndahiro.

The categories were no longer simply part of a complicated social system. They had become part of the administration of the state.

Muhozi describes the resulting legacy as a “legacy of division”.

Belgian rule, he says, increasingly encouraged people to define themselves through the Hutu-Tutsi divide.

The effects also reached beyond Rwanda and Burundi. Population movements and colonial borders left communities with shared linguistic and cultural ties living on different sides of what became international boundaries.

Eastern DRC dilemma

That history is particularly important in eastern DRC, where questions of identity and belonging remain deeply contested.

Alex Mvuka links the presence of Hutu and Tutsi communities in modern-day DRC to longstanding population movements and migration during the colonial period.

He says Tutsi communities were already living in North Kivu before the Berlin Conference. He also says the Belgian administration later moved Kinyarwanda-speaking people, including Hutu and Tutsi, from Rwanda and Burundi to parts of eastern Congo as migrant labourers.

Those movements became part of a much larger dispute over who has the right to claim the region as home.

More than a century later, Tutsi communities in eastern DRC continue to face accusations that they do not belong in the country.

Luhaka rejects that argument.

“Among them, there are three main sociological groups, the Hutus, the Tutsis, and they all speak Kinyarwanda, and all are Congolese,” he says.

But Luhaka blames what he describes as the “collapse of the Congolese state” and “Rwanda’s agenda” for worsening hate speech and instability in eastern Congo.

Rwanda disputes Kinshasa’s account of the conflict.

Kigali says armed groups operating from Congolese territory, particularly the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR), remain a security threat.

Kinshasa, meanwhile, accuses Rwanda of backing M23, the armed group that has seized territory in eastern DRC. Rwanda has denied supporting M23.

Why does their history still shape the Great Lakes region?

The legacy of the Hutu-Tutsi divide did not end when the genocide against the Tutsi ended.

The movement of people across borders, the presence of armed groups and unresolved disputes over identity and political power carried the consequences of the genocide into neighbouring countries.

The FDLR emerged partly from armed and political networks that fled Rwanda after the genocide. The group has remained active in eastern DRC, although its strength and areas of operation have changed over time.

Rwanda has repeatedly pointed to the FDLR as a security threat and accused successive Congolese governments of supporting or tolerating the group. The Congolese government has denied supporting it.

At the same time, Kinshasa has accused Rwanda of supporting M23, which has fought Congolese forces and taken control of major areas in the east. Rwanda has denied the accusation.

But the region’s conflicts cannot be explained by Hutu and Tutsi alone.

Land disputes, citizenship, political power, control of territory, competition over resources and the weakness of the Congolese state have all contributed to instability.

Identity becomes especially powerful when those disputes turn into arguments over who is Congolese and who is not.

In eastern DRC, those arguments can affect political rights, access to land and personal security, while also fuelling hate speech and deepening existing tensions.

That is why the history of Hutu and Tutsi continues to matter across the Great Lakes region.

The identities existed before colonial rule. But colonial administrations changed how they were classified and used those categories in governing society. Political leaders later made the identities central to struggles over power.

War and displacement carried those disputes across borders.