Flower in the Gun Barrel Tutsi was defined as a Tutsi if he owned more than ten cows. A Hutu owned less than ten cows and usually worked in the fields. Creating an ethnic class and empowering the Tutsi as "upper class" created hatred and jealousy between these newly imposed "tribes". In 1959, the Belgians left Rwanda and Hutus quickly took over the government. There was a series of battles between the Hutu and the Tutsi between 1959 and 1994, during which Tutsis would often take sanctuary in churches in order to survive. Knowing this, the Hutu government in 1994 forged partnerships with several Catholic
Tutsi closely related to each other than to faraway groups. There are essentially two groups of Tutsi in the Congo (DRC). There is the Banyamulenge that live in the southern tip of South Kivu. They are descendants of migrating Rwandan, Burundian and Tanzanian pastoralists. And secondly there are Tutsi in North Kivu and Kalehe in South Kivu - being part of the Banyarwanda (Hutu and Tutsi) community. These are not Banyamulenge. Some of these Banyarwanda are descendants of people that lived long before colonial rule in Rutshuru - on what's currently Congolese territory. Others migrated or were "transplanted" by the Belgian