Revival and Reconciliation: The Anglican Church and the Politics of Rwanda

Abstract

Rwanda has many names. It is often referred to in recent years as the “Singapore of Africa” for its intense urbanization and investment in the telecommunications industry and, in a more romantic vein, the “Land of a Thousand Hills” or the “Switzerland of Africa” because of its steep, mountainous topography. Prior to independence in 1959, it was the Belgian Protectorate of Ruanda- Urundi. When European colonialists arrived in the late nineteenth century, they found a smaller kingdom of Ruanda ruled by the Nyiginya Dynasty, perhaps amounting to no more than half to two- thirds of the area of the current state. Regardless of the name, Rwanda is a tiny country, one of the smallest in Africa, most closely approximating in size the U.S. state of Vermont or the European nation of Belgium. Ironically, the word itself, “Rwanda,” means “the surface occupied by a swarm or a scattering,” semanti cally suggestive of a “large space.”1