Thirty years ago, the Rwandan Patriotic Front, a predominantly Tutsi armed group, took over Kigali, Rwanda’s capital city – and soon after, the country’s governance. This victory occurred amid a horrific genocide masterminded by a Hutu-dominated regime. Rwanda’s main ethnic groups are the Hutu, who make up a majority of the population, and the Tutsi.
Since 1994, the Rwandan Patriotic Front – led by Paul Kagame, who was first elected president in April 2000 – has been at the country’s helm. Kagame is expected to extend his rule in the July 2024 elections. The law allows him to serve two more five-year terms.
We are researchers who study political representation in post-conflict contexts. We recently sought to understand to what extent Rwanda has managed to overcome the fault lines that got it to a dark place in 1994. In recent research, we looked at how the country has fared in managing the fissures in society that led to the violence.
