WHO ARE THE BATWA PEOPLE?

The term ‘twa’ is often used by the Bantu people of sub-Saharan Africa to refer to those hunters and gatherers people who kept relationship with their tradition lands, and/or about people who have very low status. The focus hare is on the social, economic and political status of the Batwa.

The social status of the Batwa in Rwanda is characterised by discriminatory practices and marginalization. The Batwa are disadvantaged and remain poorly integrated into Rwandan society. They are regarded as abnormal and inferior people; it is said that ‘they are looked upon as stupid, without intelligence, unable to realise or to do a given thing or objective, a person with whom we cannot share, whom we cannot get married to… Mutwa is an individual good only for work and bad work at that...’.

The Batwa are socially discriminated against on the basis of their ethnicity:

‘They can neither eat nor drink with their neighbours; they are forbidden to enter their houses and are not permitted to have sexual partners other than from their own ethnic group. The Batwa communities live on the outskirts of other people’s settlements. Even sitting down with a Mutwa would be considered as an insult or a dishonour to the friends and family of any Hutu or Tutsi who agrees to do so. If an individual non-Mutwa should sympathise with the Batwa and become their friend, his peers will treat him as ridiculous or mentally disturbed.’

The inferior social position attached to the Batwa can be easily detected in some proverbs and jokes used by other ethnic groups. One can cite, for example, the following negative expression ‘Nta bwenge bw’umutwa’, which means ‘a Twa is devoid of intelligence’. The expression: ‘Uri umutwa’, ‘you are a Twa’, is a common insult, which actually means ‘a person of no reason.’ Therefore, the Batwa are perceived as backward, dirty, unintelligent and lazy.

The Senate Commission in charge of Social Affairs, Human Rights and Social Issues published the ‘Report on the Conditions of Some Rwandans Disadvantaged Throughout History’(the senate report), widely understood to be focused on Batwa. This report highlighted that ‘some people still have the attitude of despising Batwa, of not seeing them as genuine human beings, and they address them in words stimulating discrimination’. In May 2009, the HRC also stated that members of the Batwa community are victims of marginalization and discrimination. The Projet d’ Intégration et de Développement des Pygmées notes that it is unimaginable that in the 21st century we could see a group of humans being socially marginalised to this extent.

The Batwa are also subject to economic marginalisation. Traditionally, the Batwa, economically speaking, were semi-nomadic, hunters and gatherers. It is the government that forced them to be agriculturalists. In the modern era, widespread subsistence and commercial agriculture, national parks and tourism development have forced the Batwa to leave the remaining areas of forest, which they occupied. It is known that after being evicted from the forest areas in order to create room for agriculturalists and wildlife parks, more than 85 per cent of the Batwa become landless. The Batwa’s once-respected hunter-gatherer life style is no longer allowed.

They are forbidden from hunting or collecting food in their traditional forests. Unable to access their ancestral lands and practice traditional activities, the majority of the Batwa continue to make pottery as their principal activity, which has become a ‘loss making’ activity. Their skills are not considered very ‘marketable’ in modern society. Furthermore, the UNPO has noted the exclusion and discrimination of the Batwa from certain development programs and the detrimental effects of some of those programs on them. In addition to their absence in decision-making, discrimination is the main reason preventing the Batwa from development and, enjoying other aspects of modern society. Presently the Batwa constitute the poorest and most economically marginalized ethnic group in Rwanda.

Furthermore, generally speaking, the Batwa play a limited role in Rwandan political affairs. Of course, in the wake of the political emancipation of the Rwandan population, the Batwa were relatively politically active. In 1960, some of them took the initiative to form a political party known as AREDETWA. The party aimed at improving the position of the Batwa and enhancing their level of political participation. However, it died a silent death in 1962. It merged into PARMEHUTU, the main Bahutu political party that had taken the lead after the monarchy. Since 1980, the Batwa have been neglected in the political discourse. They do not have any political party to represent them, as well as to protect and promote their civil and political rights. Given their relative lack of representation in decision making bodies, the Batwa have attempted to organise themselves into groups to persuade the government to recognise their right to be represented in governmental decision-making bodies. They worked with civil society organisations to advocate their political interests. In this regard, they formed the Association for the Democratic Restoration of the Twa (APSB) and the Association for the Integrated Development of the Marginalized Groups in Rwanda (ADIGMAR) that focused on the Impunyu (forest Batwa).

From the foregoing, it is clear the Batwa have been subordinated to social, economic and political exclusion. It is important to note that, in Rwanda, as it is the case everywhere in the world, the social, economic and political status of Batwa is highly influenced by education, which remains very low, poor and far below the national average. Lack of education is, therefore, the main factor leading to Batwa’s poverty, hunger, marginalization and discrimination in their social and political life. The big problem for many Batwa, however, in relation to education, is not only the inferior schooling or complete formal education, but also the content and objective of education made available to them. While the education may have been intended to help the Batwa to improve their status, it became a tool of forced assimilation and adversity affected their traditional knowledge.

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