This act was further confirmed by a decision of the League of Nations in 1923, which permitted the Belgian occupiers to administer the nation as a colonial protectorate. Yuhi V Musinga retained his throne, however, as the Belgian authorities recognized that it was far more prudent to try to rule the country through him than to attempt to impose a régime of direct foreign rule. For his part, the mwami, effectively powerless to resist the will of the increasingly demanding Europeans, endeavored to retain as much of his royal prestige and authority as possible, and to somehow shield his people from the harsh realities of foreign control.

As Belgium was also a deeply Roman Catholic nation, however, there were  several aspects of the situation which were to prove a great boon to the spiritual life of Rwanda. Conversions of the Rwandan people to Catholicism continued at a healthy rate, and several schools were established by the Church to further educate the growing population of Christian faithful. The modernization and expansion of the infrastructure also moved firmly ahead under Belgian tutelage, providing the    means to join once-remote areas of the country to its administrative centers, thus fostering a greater sense of national unity, even under the watchful eye of the foreign authorities. The French language was introduced in schools and soon came to occupy an important place in the public life of the nation, as did Roman Catholic culture and the veneration of Christian saints, both of which were widespread by the early 1930s.

Many of these innovations did not sit well at all, however, with the more traditional elements of the Rwandan Royal Court, and Mwami Yuhi Musinga himself resolutely refused to be baptized a Roman Catholic. In fact, there exists a letter from the great king to one of his daughters, in which he excoriates her most vehemently for converting to Christianity. During the course of this rather lengthy missive, he bitterly calls down imprecations on her, stating at one point that he would summon the “Thunder God of our ancestors to strike [her] down as a punishment.”

The growing tensions between the mwami and the colonial authorities came to a head on November 12, 1931, when he was suddenly and summarily deposed by the Belgian powers, supposedly because of his inability to cooperate with his subordinate chiefs, but also as a direct result of his staunch refusal to adopt the Roman Catholic faith. He was immediately replaced by his son, who was to reign under the name of Mutara III Rudahigwa until his death in 1959. Yuhi Musinga was exiled to Kamembe, near the border of the Congo, where he eventually died in 1944.

Mutara III Rudahigwa was a man of an entirely different stripe from his sometimes austere and decidedly more traditionalist father. Also possessed of a regal and commanding presence, he was a Roman Catholic catechumen, and had been educated in mission schools. He was crowned King of Rwanda on November 16 of the same year, and was soon to win the genuine respect and admiration, both of his own people and of the foreign authorities. At the same time, however, the Belgian colonial administration undertook to further divide and dominate the local populations through a practice of racial identification, eventually imposing in the 1930s the use of ID cards artificially designating citizens as either Tutsi, Hutu or Twa. The introduction of this device into the organic and largely harmonious social fabric of the nation of the Banyarwanda would come to have hateful and disastrous consequences in the coming decades, and would eventually lead directly to one of the greatest crimes against humanity committed in the 20th century.

Mwami Mutara III Rudahigwa and King Baudoin of Belgium

The ever-popular Rwandan monarch, more and more committed to his growing faith in Christ, and to the performance of his sacred duty as mwami, celebrated his marriage to a beautiful young Christian Rwandan, Rosalie Gicanda, on January 13, 1942. On October 17 of the following year, Mwami Mutara III Rudahigwa, under the sponsorship of Belgian Governor General Pierre Rycksmans, became the first king of Rwanda ever to be baptized a Roman Catholic Christian. He took the baptismal names of Charles-Léon-Pierre, and was followed in his full conversion by the vast majority of his chiefs and sub-chiefs, who were also consecrated to faith in the Lord, and who in turn helped spread further the Gospel of Christ throughout the nation.

Firmly committed to social justice, in 1945 King Mutara called for the abolition of the feudal land system known as the ubuhake, which he characterized as “unfair,” and which was eventually eliminated completely in 1954. He further insisted that the Belgian colonial administration reluctantly accept the abolition of unpaid labor on public works projects, most frequently executed under physical duress. Although resisted by the foreign machine, this move was universally popular throughout the land, and led to an even greater appreciation of the efforts of the mwami to relieve the burdens of his people.

Spurred by his strong faith in the teachings of Jesus, on October 27, 1946, H.M. Mwami Mutara III Rudahigwa officially consecrated the Kingdom of Rwanda to Christ the King, further cementing its ties to both the Church and to the worldwide community of the faithful. Earlier in the same year, Rwanda had become a territory under the supervision of the United Nations, despite the continued presence and direct control of the Belgians. Further inspired by his deep faith in Christ, in 1949 the mwami declared his strong opposition to the chicote, or public corporal punishment of adult males, who were frequently beaten by colonial authorities in the presence of their families. This move caused great discontent among the Belgian administration, who increasingly began to worry about potential effects of the growing regional and international prestige of the popular monarch.

 In 1955, the King of Belgium named seasoned administrator Jean-Paul Harroy Governor General of Rwanda-Urundi. The growing tension between the mwami, who was firmly determined to follow his conscience as a devout Christian and to right the wrongs largely imposed by the foreign occupiers, made a showdown increasingly inevitable, if not ultimately desirable. In 1956, Mwami Mutara officially demanded of the United Nations a swift end to the Belgian occupation, as well as total independence for his tiny kingdom. In addition, the Supreme Council of Rwanda requested that chiefs and sub-chiefs thenceforth be chosen by election, rather than by royal appointment. This demand was later repeated at the beginning of 1959, at the same time as a further request for a precise timetable for the accession of the country to full independence and autonomy.

Although many recognized the growing severity of the rift that had developed between the Mwami, resolutely dedicated to furthering the welfare of his people under the sacred banner of Christ the King, and the Belgians, eager to retain their hold on the physical resources of the nation, few could have foreseen the extent and consequences of the drama that was to be played out in July of 1959. On Friday, July 24, 1959, King Mutara traveled to Usumbura, from whence he planned eventually to journey to New York to put the case for Rwandan independence before the United Nations. The day after his arrival there, the mwami requested a shot of penicillin from Dr. Vinck, a Belgian stand-in for his his personal physician, whom he had seen earlier in the day. The doctor administered a dose of about 1 million units of megacillin, and during the course of a brief conversation with Vinck following the shot, the King collapsed and died, apparently struck down by a massive cerebral hemorrhage.

Despite claims that this tragic event was the result of some kind of medical anomaly, many believed that the increasingly troublesome mwami had simply been eliminated under orders from Brussels by means of a foul assassination rather thinly disguised as a clinical “accident.” This hypothesis is further strengthened by testimony from his half-brother and successor, H.M. Kigeli V Ndahindurwa, who affirms that Mutara “wanted to go to New York, to ask the UN to grant full independence to Rwanda. In Usumbura, where a replacement for his usual physician had given him an injection before the voyage, he collapsed upon leaving the medical office. Shock, infection, heart attack? We are assured that it was an accident, but I know that my brother had never been sick, and that no autopsy was ever performed.”

The Rwandan nation was devastated. Deep mourning spread throughout the land of the Banyarwanda, and the sudden and unforeseen disappearance of this great mwami, truly a shepherd of his people, struck savagely into the psycho- emotional heart of the grieving population. Equally tragic was the fact that this hero of the people had passed away with no male descendants, thus leaving the matter of the succession an open question. Thus began a race against time and circumstances, bravely sustained to ensure that the sorrowing Rwandan homeland should not fall even further under the control of the Belgian administration at this critical juncture in her history. Providence, favoring the right over the might, would supply a genuine blessing in the person of her next ruler, but his ability to positively influence events in this increasingly fragile kingdom would be tragically short-lived.