The heroic figure of Mwami Kigeri Rwabugiri, king of Rwanda, dominates the history of the later nineteenth century in the Lake Kivu region, not only for Rwanda but for virtually all the neighboring countries to which he turned his attention.His prominence can be accounted for as much by his almost mythical association with other events as by his own heroic exploits. In the broadest terms, the arrival of Rwabugiri on Ijwi shattered the relative peace and stability of the sixty years previous; it was also the culmination of a succession struggle already under way.At the same time, it was a harbinger of the turmoil that was to accompany the introduction of colonial rule not long afterward.While the Rwandan sources on Rwabugiri are very rich, sources from neighboring regions often provide the historian with much additional detail as well as corroborative evidence to add to the Rwandan sources. For example, through their close contact with him, the people of Ijwi vividly recall Rwabugiri’s exploits in the area, even a century later. This text, intended as a case study in Rwabugiri’s military and administrative techniques, reconstructs the historical process of Rwabugiri’s conquest and administration of Ijwi through oral accounts narrated on the island.

Rwabugiri’s interest in Ijwi spanned his reign; his first attack on Ijwi was one of his earliest military expeditions, and twenty-five years later, he died not far from Ijwi during a campaign to the west. Rwabugiri himself arrived on the island during the 1870s, and he was to return often until his death in 1895. For the Bany’Iju (the people of Ijwi), the Rwabugiri period is best remembered through the personalities involved in the dynastic struggles on Ijwi associated with Rwabugiri’s invasion. In the present discussion, however, these internal factions and their social effects will be covered only insofar as they affected Rwabugiri’s aims, military tactics, and administrative organization. 

Ijwi: The Geographical and Historical Situation 

Ijwi is an island of some forty kilometers in length, located in Lake Kivu on the eastern boundary of Zaire, just to the west of Rwanda. Currently numbering about fifty thousand, its population is today divided into two political and administrative units, along the lines of a long-standing cleavage whose origins were adroitly used by Rwabugiri in his conquest of the island. Although politically, geographically, and historically distinct from the peoples on the mainland, the Bany’Iju comprise a part of the Havu-speaking peoples living in several different kingdoms on the islands and peninsulas in Lake Kivu as well as on the mainland west of the lake. The present ruling dynasty established itself on the island in the early nineteenth century, bringing a short-lived political unity to the whole of Ijwi for the first time. Throughout the nineteenth century, Ijwi Island, under in-dependent Havu rulers, served as a buffer and intermediary between an increasingly powerful Rwanda and her neighbors to the west of Lake Kivu.

Strategically, Ijwi was of great importance to Rwabugiri. It bordered on several states to the west, including the Shi states. In addition, to the east it faced the shoreline of Kinyaga, a rich province of Rwanda speakers that at that time had been only nominally integrated into the Rwandan polity. The kings of Ijwi also controlled the smaller islands and some of the peninsulas to the west, which may well have been used as staging areas for Rwabugiri’s attacks against Mpinga and Irhambi.Historically, there were many close ties between Ijwi and Rwanda, derived from population movements, commercial bonds, and political relations. Many of the clans on Ijwi, particularly those on the eastern shore, originally immigrated from western Rwanda during the eighteenth century. Sometimes they sought political refuge; more often they were driven out of Rwanda by famine or localized land shortages and drawn to Ijwi by the relative security of dependable rains and a long growing season. Once established on Ijwi, these early settler groups kept close contact with their homelands in Rwanda through personal ties, and especially through marriage ties.

Commercial ties were also strong. Before the arrival of the Havu kings, these contacts resembled those between a commercial colony and metropolitan power, not with the Rwandan court, but with the various population centers in western Rwanda. While Ijwi did not offer complementary goods for trade, the favorable agricultural climate (and the slightly different agrarian calendar) provided agricultural surpluses sufficient for a limited but socially important external commerce with neighboring areas. Growing out of personal and social contacts inRwanda—but by no means confined to these—commerce often took place through institutionalized channels of “friendship” formalized by rituals of blood brotherhood.

It was primarily through such friends in Rwanda that the Bany’Iju obtained cattle in a bugabire relationship, the principal mechanism of cattle transfer be-tween Rwanda and Ijwi. In return for animals (cattle and goats), the Bany’Iju sent agricultural goods on a continuing (but not very regular) basis to their friends in Rwanda. The donor of the animal had the right to claim about one out of every four offspring of the livestock given. There were apparently few other obligations placed on the Muny’Iju recipient of livestock; in any case, it was virtually impossible to enforce agricultural gifts to Rwanda. Although the Bany’Iju usually found it expedient to continue such gifts, enabling them to obtain more cows later, they unanimously refer to such gifts as voluntary expressions of friendship, like the hospitality they receive from friends in Rwanda. In addition to serving as the major social mechanism of commerce, these cattle relationships between Ijwi and Rwanda also contained important (but imperfectly defined) political overtones. Engaged in by Bany’Iju of all social levels, they served as the major political ties between the two countries. With the establishment of the present dynasty on the island, the Ijwi settlements became increasingly independent of their Rwandan homelands. Meanwhile from its historical centers to the east, the Rwandan court was extending its influence and administration westward toward the lake, altering the nature and significance of cattle contracts in the area—for court clientship differed from the friendship alliances of Ijwi client patterns. With these two developments, the political nature of the bugabire relations between the two areas assumed greater significance, at least in the eyes of the Rwandans. So did the ambiguity of this relationship.

On Ijwi, though expressed in many different forms (through cattle, goats, or land), bugabire was and is viewed primarily as an alliance: the two parties referred to each other as “friends.”Aside from the sharing of the increase, there were no formalized obligations, although sometimes food and beer were exchanged; moreover, it was a relationship often associated with blood brotherhood.3 Even today, between Bany’Iju and most Rwandans there is little confusion over the significance of this form of cattle transfer contracted between close personal friends. Rwandans from Kinyaga understand the bugabire relationship, describe it in the same terms as the Bany’Iju, and distinguish between that relation and the relations undertaken within Rwanda. But in central Rwanda, particularly at the Rwandan court, the cattle contract seems to have been understood differently. Although sometimes engaged in between equals or for reasons of personal friendship, the cattle transfer was more often undertaken in a hierarchical relationship, motivated by political considerations and symbolizing (or recording) the social inequality between the two parties.Under such an agreement, (most commonly called ubuhake), different terms of reference were employed for the two parties involved, and the obligations of the recipient were formally defined and strictly enforced. In areas such as Kinyaga, such a transfer of cows also became an important instrument of political domination,5 and Rwandans no doubt looked on it as such with regard to Ijwi.

Thus a significant conceptual difference appears between the Rwandan court and Ijwi over the interpretation of the political element involved in cattle transfer. On Ijwi it was looked on as alliance; in Rwanda, most probably as subordination. From the point of view of the Rwandan court, subordination of the Ijwi kings was ensured by gifts of cattle, while the agricultural goods from Ijwi were looked on as a confirmation of the suzerainty of Rwanda over Ijwi.Thus for the Rwandan court the right to expect agricultural goods from Ijwi became a demand of tribute payments coupled with the eventual duty to enforce them in case of any “insurrection” (i.e., nonpayment). Such external ties (with Rwanda) were instrumental in the establishment of Ijwi’s present dynasty following its secession from the parent line on the (Zaire) mainland. During his youth, Mwendanga, the first king of Ijwi, had frequent access to the Rwandan court through his maternal grandfather, a favorite of Mwami Yuhi Gahindiro, the grandfather of Rwabugiri. Mwendanga probably established bugabire ties with important men in Rwanda, influential at the court. He married at least two wives given him by Gahindiro, and had many ties and friends in Rwanda. In addition, certain sons of the Ijwi king may also have lived some of their youth with important Rwandans.Kabego, Mwendanga’s successor, sent at least two of his sons to Rwanda, where both were eventually killed. At about this time, Kabego ceased sending gifts to the Rwandan court, though it is unclear whether this cessation was the cause or the effect of the deaths of his sons at the Rwandan court.

This rupture of a historical relationship appears to have been the determining factor in Rwabugiri’s decision to attack Ijwi. His original aims were limited: to gain revenge on Kabego and to reestablish the clientship status that, in the eyes of the Rwandan court, had previously characterized Ijwi’s relationship with Rwanda.

The Resources Available to Rwabugiri

Rwabugiri did not lack resources to effect these aims. First, within Rwanda itself, he had at his disposal an effective military organization, including herds to feed the men, heavy forced logistical support by the Hutu class, the material and political means to reward the valorous in battle, and a cosmology of social values, often expressed through lyric poetry, praising individual soldiers as well as glorifying Rwanda the warrior state and its invincible king, Rwabugiri. Secondly, there were on Ijwi a substantial number of Rwandan immigrants, some of them recent arrivals. Not all of these would come to the support of a Rwandan invader —many were undoubtedly political refugees—but probably some would have been sympathetic to Rwabugiri’s designs toward Ijwi. The information they could provide was a potential resource of great value to Rwabugiri, whose tactics depended so heavily on the internal cleavages of the island.

But Rwabugiri did not depend entirely or even mainly on the force of a superior military organization or on underground intelligence. He was also a gifted tactician, well able to employ feints and the knowledge of terrain, although in the case of Ijwi (as in other campaigns in Bushi and Buhunde) he did commit some major blunders, and the primary explanation for his eventual success must be sought in other factors. Above all, his mastery at encouraging and exploiting political cleavages on the island provided him with his most important re-source—the mounting succession struggle among the sons of Kabego, in anticipation of the aged king’s imminent death. It is to this decisive internal conflict that we must now turn in order to understand the subsequent events of Rwabugiri’s invasion of the island.

Internal Divisions on Ijwi

Each of the first three kings of the present dynasty on Ijwi witnessed a succession struggle of severe proportions near the end of his reign. In each case the weaker party sought assistance from outside, usually from his maternal uncles; in each case they looked to a different source of support: to Irhambi, to Rwanda, or to the colonial power. The central figure in the succession struggle during Kabego’s reign was Nkundiye, a son of one of the later of Kabego’s many wives.

Nkundiye’s ambitions had been earlier reflected in his continuing poor relations with his brothers. He had driven one of them from a hill neighboring hisown, thus consolidating his hold on an important political center in the south-ern part of the island. He may also have instigated or encouraged the death of another brother, Rugina, who lived on an island west of Ijwi. Rugina’s full brother, Ndogosa, had injured another half-brother in a quarrel. The maternal uncles of the injured party, who lived on the mainland west of Ijwi, then took vengeance by attacking and killing Rugina, the eldest son of Kabego. Some informants imply that it was Nkundiye who guided them to Rugina; both Rugina and Ndogosa could have been viewed as threats to Nkundiye’s succession bid, although Rugina was at that time the more vulnerable. Nkundiye’s actual involvement in the death of Rugina is not yet clearly established from the data, but the strong implications to this effect testify to the popular assessment of Nkundiye’s ambitions and the means he was capable of using to achieve them.

Nkundiye’s mother was from a family in Kinyaga, Rwanda, and he was without close maternal relatives on Ijwi. Furthermore, his ruthlessness had lost him popular support as well as the support of his brothers and the royal family. He had few political resources with which to fuel his succession bid, except out-side assistance. He therefore appears to have settled on a policy of overthrowing Kabego rather than taking part in a struggle among brothers after Kabego’s death. In the event, he was attracted to the acknowledged power of Rwabugiri in Rwanda, who had by that time already launched his first attack against Kabego.

By ignoring the historical relationship of the kings of Ijwi to those of Rwanda, Kabego had incurred the wrath of Rwabugiri, resulting in the first unsuccessful attack against the island kingdom early in Rwabugiri’s reign. The enmity between the two kings played into Nkundiye’s hands, and he sought to turn it to his own advantage. Kabego’s act gave Rwabugiri the will to attack Ijwi, to reestablish the clientship relation of Ijwi to Rwanda; Nkundiye’s search for political and military support gave Rwabugiri an important means for carrying out this will to revenge. Their ambitions dovetailed nicely. Although both Nkundiye’s mother and his wife were from Rwanda, there is at present no evidence that either woman or their families acted as intermediary between Rwabugiri and Nkundiye. Nevertheless, it was known that Rwabugiri sought to launch another attack against Kabego, and it seems that, seeking a means to his own ends, Nkundiye offered Rwabugiri tactical assistance. More important, he apparently offered to reestablish the client relationship with Rwanda once Rwabugiri had helped him to power.

But Nkundiye was not the only member of the royal line seeking to usurp power. There was another rift in the royal family, of which Rwabugiri also took advantage. This rift was based on both genealogical distance from the throne andon geographical divisions of the island. Mwendanga, the first king, had delegated his son, Balikage, as his representative to the northern part of the island, referred to as Malambo. The successor to Mwendanga, Kabego, maintained authority as king over the entire island but left considerable power in the hands of Balikage’s son, Tabaro, rather than redistributing the power among his own sons. By the end of Kabego’s reign, Tabaro had effectively consolidated his power in the north while still nominally recognizing Kabego as the ultimate authority; Tabaro made no move toward independence until after the death of Kabego. These then were the major lines of cleavage within the royal family that were important to Rwabugiri’s attack on Ijwi.

The First Attack on Ijwi

Rwabugiri’s first attack on Ijwi was launched from Nyamasheke and from Nyamirundi, the long finger of land reaching out from Kinyaga almost to touch the southern tip of Ijwi.The peninsulas of western Rwanda had had long-standing demographic, marital, and commercial contacts with Ijwi. This social interchange between the two countries was dramatically demonstrated at the time of Rwabugiri’s attacks.

Mugogo lived near the northern tip of Nyamirundi. Women from his family had married for two successive generations with a family on Ijwi, and his sons had received fields on Ijwi near their “brothers” of the same clan. As Rwabugiri prepared for the attack, several men from Nyamirundi, including Mugogo, came to Ijwi to ask their daughters to return temporarily to Nyamirundi and thus to escape the imminent battle. Mugogo’s daughter refused to return to Nyamirundi but promised to flee to a secure place on Ijwi if she were given warning of the attack; and thus a system of signals was set up. Mugogo built a house on the northern tip of Nyamirundi (clearly within sight of Ijwi across one kilometer of water), which he burned shortly before Rwabugiri launched his attack, to warn the Bany’Iju. Mugogo and a neighbor who had helped him build the house were later killed by Rwabugiri for their treasonous demonstration of family solidarity.

But the Havu had at any rate been warned several weeks in advance and had massed several armies from the south (armies from the north did not take part) along the southern rim of Ijwi. Men from the extreme south were able to continue cultivation in their fields during the day while descending to sleep on the lakeshore at night. Those from farther away had their families bring them food or were fed by brothers or friends closer to the scene of the impending battle.

When the attack came, it was launched in a dual thrust. The main body of Rwandans set out before dawn from the eastern shore of Nyamirundi and directed their attacks to the southeastern shore of Ijwi, above the eastern angle of the island. Slightly later a smaller, faster thrust was made across the narrowest straits, apparently in an attempt to gain a foothold on the island and circle be-hind the defending troops. But with their advance warning, and aided by the ter-rain in the east (which offered only a few suitable landing areas on the steep lakeshore), the Bany’Iju were able to prevent the Rwandans from consolidating any firm position on the island. The fiercest fighting, however, raged on the lake, near the second, faster, thrust from the south. Here, too, advance warning was important for massing the necessary canoes. But the deciding factor, and one apparently overlooked or discounted by Rwabugiri, was the superior seaman-ship of the Havu, by which they were able to disperse the main body, preventing any concentrated attack by the first group and completely overwhelming the second group, inflicting many casualties on the Rwandans. With their mastery over the lake and daring courage, as the battle is described on Ijwi, the Bany’Iju were able to overcome the force of Rwandan numbers and repulse the attack from Rwanda.

Following this first attack on Ijwi, a considerable amount of time—perhaps more than a decade—lapsed before Rwabugiri sent a second expedition against Ijwi. During that time Rwabugiri’s armies had seasoned considerably with much experience, and his strategies and objectives had been refined. He was now also better able to capitalize on the internal divisions of the island. Fresh from his expedition in Buhunde (the “Butembo” expedition), he constructed a new capital at Rubengera (near present-day Kibuye), which was to remain his major residence in western Rwanda. Rubengera was far from Ijwi, and Rwabugiri thus deprived the Bany’Iju of the rapid advance warning they had received from Nyamirundi in the earlier contest.

The second Rwandan attack, launched near Rubengera, crossed a wide expanse of water to arrive at Malambo, the vulnerable back door to Ijwi. Because this northern part of the island was not fully under Kabego’s control, Rwabugiri profited from Tabaro’s considerable autonomy and his neutrality, or even partiality toward, the Rwandans.Also, this time Rwabugiri was able to use the canoes to his advantage, giving himself greater mobility and latitude of choice for the attack against the less maneuverable land armies of the Bany’Iju. It was here, say the Bany’Iju of the south, that Nkundiye advised Rwabugiri to attack. And it was here that Rwabugiri this time made good his attack.

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https://uk.amateka.net/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/kivu.pnghttps://uk.amateka.net/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/kivu-150x150.pngBarataHistory of kingsSocial & cultureThe heroic figure of Mwami Kigeri Rwabugiri, king of Rwanda, dominates the history of the later nineteenth century in the Lake Kivu region, not only for Rwanda but for virtually all the neighboring countries to which he turned his attention.His prominence can be accounted for as much by his...AMATEKA