Word: bahutu
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...Bahutu-Watutsi quarrel reached its peak late in 1963, when Watutsi warriors raided Rwanda in bands called inyenzi (cockroaches). The irate Bahutu responded by chopping off the legs of thousands of Watutsis and floating the remains down the Ruzizi River...
Actually, the crime may have been rooted in a blood feud between two warring tribes. In the hands of Burundi police was Gonsalve Muyenzi, 24, a Watutsi tribesman, a refugee from neighboring Rwanda, and thus a sworn enemy of Ngendandumwe, who happened to be a member of the Bahutu tribe. For centuries the Bahutu had served the towering Watutsi aristocrats (some measure 7 ft. or more) as cattle-tending serfs on the alpine slopes of the former Belgian colony Ruanda-Urundi. Independence, in 1962, established a tribal equality of sorts, but both Bahutu and Watutsi quickly sought more than that...
Assassin Muyenzi may well have aimed to reverse matters and cut a Bahutu down to size. As Acting Premier Pie Masumbuko said: "No one in his right mind would think for a minute that the U.S. embassy was involved in the assassination. Some say the Chinese killed the Premier. I say no." With that the government arrested as accomplices former Premier Albin Nyamoya, a vehement Watutsi irredentist, and 23 other Watutsi tribesmen...
Hatreds rooted in a tribal past bloomed into butchery as the Bahutu of Rwanda set out to eliminate their former Watutsi masters. Poisoned arrows zipped through the Congo's Kwilu province in the latest chapter of that sad nation's four-year history. In the Sudan, black secessionists battled the Arab government of Dictator Ibrahim Abboud. And last week, in Gabon, mobs hurled stones and bottles at the French troops who had restored bold, autocratic President Leon Mba to power last month after an abortive, 42-hour coup...
...weak is the Congolese control of its borders that last week 3,000 spear-wielding Watutsi tribesmen exiled in the Congo's eastern reaches mounted an attack on their neighboring homeland, Rwanda, out of revenge for the recent genocidal slaughter there of thousands of Watutsi by the ruling Bahutu tribe. They were driven back by the Belgian-officered Rwanda army at a cost of 300 Watutsi dead...