Editor, RE: "Genocide seeds were planted by colonial powers” (The New Times, January 7).

The seeding of the Genocide against the Tutsi was a Catholic Church-Belgian colonial power condominium effort in which the Church was the clear senior partner with closer influence among the Rwandan population following their destitution of King Yuhi V Musinga and his replacement with the Church’s own choice Rudahigwa who then rewarded the Church by dedicating the country to Christ, and facilitating the mass conversion of Rwandans to the foreign religion.

Not that that helped him or his country the moment he started agitating for independence or for greater social equity among his people with such policies as the abolishment of uburetwa, ubuhake and the ‘kugabana’ or livestock; policies which the Church and their colonial sidekicks painted as ‘communist’ and fought—in reality because they tended to bridge and even eradicate the artificial divisions among Rwandans that the Church and the colonial power had sown and worked to deepen (divide and rule) to make their better facilitate their hold over a newly divided people. MK