Alexis Kagame (May 15, 1912 – December 2, 1981) was a Rwandan philosopher, linguist, historian, poet and Catholic priest. His main contributions were in the field of "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 his own Rwanda poetry, which was also published.
Kagame was also active in the political field, and was seen from the 1940s as the intellectual leader of Tutsi culture and rights under the colonial system.[1]
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Kagame was born in Kiyanza, Rwanda, 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 historians in the court of the Mwami (king). 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, his family converted to Catholicism. After attending a missionary school, he studied at Nyakibanda Regional Seminary and was ordained a priest in 1941. During this time, he was also the editor of a Catholic newspaper. In 1950, he became the first African to gain membership in the Institut Royal Colonial Belge (later called the Académie Royale des Sciences d'Outre-Mer).
A turning point came in 1952, when he wrote Le Code des Institutions Polititiques de Rwanda (in support of his friend King Mutara III), which was a defense of the Tutsi feudal system. The colonial regime found this disturbing 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 Theology students who wanted to employ Christianity as a basis for African nationalist aspirations.[2]
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 Hutu uprising in 1959. He later became one of the first professors at the new University of Rwanda (1963) and visiting professor at the University of Lubumbashi. Following Rwandan independence, he became a strong advocate for the Africanization of Christianity, maintaining that missionary attitudes were still prevalent.
He died in 1981, while on a visit to Nairobi.
According to Claudine Vidal, Kagame's overarching goal was the creation of a constitutional monarchy.[3] Kagame studies portrayed a pre-colonial Rwandese society in which ubuhake cattle clientship created a harmonious society that allows easy social mobility. He eventually partnered with Belgian anthropologist Jacques Maquet, who reworked Kagame's thesis into highly influential academic works. Subsequent academic research largely disproved the Kagame-Maquet depiction of an idyllic pre-colonial society by taking into account the degrading uburetwa land contract. Uburetwa was largely ignored by Maquet, whose research relied upon Kagame's manuscripts.[4] Kagame's depiction of an stable, socially progressive nation, as well as his maps showing expansive territorial influence, were used by the Rwandan Patriotic Front in the late 1990s to justify their rule and invasion of the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo.[5]
His international linguistic reputation rests mainly on two works:
In these works, Kagame attempts to demonstrate that the structure of the Bantu languages reveals a complex ontology that is uniquely African in nature. Critics charge that he is imposing Aristotelian concepts on something that is non-logical. In other words, that language structure was not consciously designed but, rather, developed randomly over a long period and therefore is the cause, not the effect, of the way people think.[6]
He also wrote several books of poetry and translated the Bible into the Kinyarwanda language.