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Alexis Kagame
Alexis Kagame (15 May 1912 – 2 December 1981) was a Rwandan philosopher, linguist, historian, poet and Catholic priest. His main contributions were in the fields of ethnohistory and "ethnophilosophy" (the study of indigenous philosophical systems).
As a professor of theology, he carried out wide research into the oral history, traditions and literature of Rwanda, and wrote several books on the subject, both in French and Kinyarwanda. He also wrote poetry, which was also published.
Kagame was also active in the political field, and was seen by some European scholars as the intellectual leader of Tutsi culture and rights under the colonial system starting in the 1940s.
Kagame was born in Kiyanza - Buliza Rwanda, in actual Murambi Sector, Rulindo District, Northern Province, to a long line of court historians. His family had high status in the kingdom of Rwanda, being of the ruling Tutsi class, and also belonging to a group called Abiru, the traditional ministers in the court of the Mwami. At the time of his birth, Rwanda was a German colony, but the Mwami still had considerable power as the colonial authorities ruled indirectly through him. When the area passed to Belgium, some in his family converted to Catholicism. After attending a missionary primary school, Kagame studied in the Minor Seminary of Kabgayi from October 1928 to 1933. He continued his studies at Nyakibanda Regional Seminary and was ordained a priest in 1941. During this time, he was also the editor of an important Catholic newspaper, Kinyamateka, in the 1940s and 1950s (The National University of Rwanda has a nearly complete run of Kinyamateka). In 1950, he became the first African to gain membership in the Institut Royal Colonial Belge.
A turning point came in 1952, when he wrote Le Code des Institutions Politiques de Rwanda (in support of his friend King Mutara III Rudahigwa), which was a defense of the Rwandan system of rule by clientage. The colonial regime, which was trying to break up Rwandans' linkages through clientage, found this threatening to their efforts to control the kingdom and pressured his bishop into reposting him to Rome. While there, he studied at the Gregorian University and took his doctoral degree in philosophy. He also became a member of "Les Prêtres Noirs", a group of African Theology students who wanted to employ Christianity as a basis for African nationalist aspirations.
After returning to Rwanda in 1958 he became a teacher at the Catholic seminary and a prominent member of the independence movement which, despite his identification with the Tutsi monarchy, may have saved him during the Belgian-led Hutu uprising in 1959. He later became one of the first professors at the new National University of Rwanda (1963) and visiting professor at the University of Lubumbashi.
Kagame collected a large number of very important oral documents from high Rwandan functionaries of the pre-colonial Rwandan administration, but he published only summaries and interpretations of them, not the full accounts, because he'd promised his informants to wait to do that until they died. The European Catholic clergy and the Belgian colonial administration heartily disliked his research, writing, and politics because they seemed at odds with their post-war project to end the Rwandan royal system in favor of a modern republican system that they could, they hoped, influence more readily. As a result, the church and state at various times censored his publications either by stopping publication or cutting sections out of publications. Ten numbered paragraphs are missing from Alexis Kagame, Un Abrégé, 2:335-336. Furthermore, his 1945 transcript of the Rwandan kings' esoteric code was felt so dangerous to Belgian interests that the colonial military confiscated it, and it was only published in 1964 by Belgian scholars who at the time denied it was Kagame's, though they later admitted it was. Kagame was put under house arrest at times by the colonial military administration to limit his political influence.
Following Rwandan independence, he became a strong advocate for the Africanization of Christianity, maintaining that missionary attitudes were still prevalent.
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Alexis Kagame
Alexis Kagame (15 May 1912 – 2 December 1981) was a Rwandan philosopher, linguist, historian, poet and Catholic priest. His main contributions were in the fields of ethnohistory and "ethnophilosophy" (the study of indigenous philosophical systems).
As a professor of theology, he carried out wide research into the oral history, traditions and literature of Rwanda, and wrote several books on the subject, both in French and Kinyarwanda. He also wrote poetry, which was also published.
Kagame was also active in the political field, and was seen by some European scholars as the intellectual leader of Tutsi culture and rights under the colonial system starting in the 1940s.
Kagame was born in Kiyanza - Buliza Rwanda, in actual Murambi Sector, Rulindo District, Northern Province, to a long line of court historians. His family had high status in the kingdom of Rwanda, being of the ruling Tutsi class, and also belonging to a group called Abiru, the traditional ministers in the court of the Mwami. At the time of his birth, Rwanda was a German colony, but the Mwami still had considerable power as the colonial authorities ruled indirectly through him. When the area passed to Belgium, some in his family converted to Catholicism. After attending a missionary primary school, Kagame studied in the Minor Seminary of Kabgayi from October 1928 to 1933. He continued his studies at Nyakibanda Regional Seminary and was ordained a priest in 1941. During this time, he was also the editor of an important Catholic newspaper, Kinyamateka, in the 1940s and 1950s (The National University of Rwanda has a nearly complete run of Kinyamateka). In 1950, he became the first African to gain membership in the Institut Royal Colonial Belge.
A turning point came in 1952, when he wrote Le Code des Institutions Politiques de Rwanda (in support of his friend King Mutara III Rudahigwa), which was a defense of the Rwandan system of rule by clientage. The colonial regime, which was trying to break up Rwandans' linkages through clientage, found this threatening to their efforts to control the kingdom and pressured his bishop into reposting him to Rome. While there, he studied at the Gregorian University and took his doctoral degree in philosophy. He also became a member of "Les Prêtres Noirs", a group of African Theology students who wanted to employ Christianity as a basis for African nationalist aspirations.
After returning to Rwanda in 1958 he became a teacher at the Catholic seminary and a prominent member of the independence movement which, despite his identification with the Tutsi monarchy, may have saved him during the Belgian-led Hutu uprising in 1959. He later became one of the first professors at the new National University of Rwanda (1963) and visiting professor at the University of Lubumbashi.
Kagame collected a large number of very important oral documents from high Rwandan functionaries of the pre-colonial Rwandan administration, but he published only summaries and interpretations of them, not the full accounts, because he'd promised his informants to wait to do that until they died. The European Catholic clergy and the Belgian colonial administration heartily disliked his research, writing, and politics because they seemed at odds with their post-war project to end the Rwandan royal system in favor of a modern republican system that they could, they hoped, influence more readily. As a result, the church and state at various times censored his publications either by stopping publication or cutting sections out of publications. Ten numbered paragraphs are missing from Alexis Kagame, Un Abrégé, 2:335-336. Furthermore, his 1945 transcript of the Rwandan kings' esoteric code was felt so dangerous to Belgian interests that the colonial military confiscated it, and it was only published in 1964 by Belgian scholars who at the time denied it was Kagame's, though they later admitted it was. Kagame was put under house arrest at times by the colonial military administration to limit his political influence.
Following Rwandan independence, he became a strong advocate for the Africanization of Christianity, maintaining that missionary attitudes were still prevalent.