Marriage, Family & Kinship

  Tutsi family.

Social status is very important in both Rwanda and Burundi. Signs of status include a person's posture, body movements, and way of speaking. Upper-class people are supposed to act with dignity and not show their emotions.

In the past, most people had arranged marriages to someone of the same social class. Today, Tutsi may choose the person they will marry.  When there is a marriage the Groom gives money to the bride's family. 

Group activities are more common than dating in couples. However, some young Tutsis in the cities practice Western-style dating and go out to nightclubs.

Tutsi mother and her child. 

Tutsi and Hutu families are patrilineal (the family name is passed on by males). In the past, marriage in Rwanda and Burundi was based on the relations between the two families. Today most Tutsis choose the person they will marry. When a baby is brought into the world they have a naming ceremony on the seventh day. 

Intertribal Relationships
In these married couples, for example, one partner is drawn from the Hutu tribal group and the other from the Tutsi group. Fighting between these two ethnic factions has been the trigger for genocidal campaigns in both Rwanda and Burundi during the past years. The animus against such mixed marriages is so great that the United Nations created a special refugee camp for these families for fear they would be attacked by other refugees. 

Forced marriage or group sexual slavery
Some Tutsi women chose to stay with Hutu men who forced them to marry them during the genocide. They built these men up for not doing them any harm, despite the killings they might have committed of other Tutsi families. Rape, as well as the killings and torture of family members, kept these women in a form of coerced slavery. In terms of sexual slavery, Human Rights Watch reported in 1996 that "women were subjected to sexual slavery and held collectively by a militia group or were singled out by one militia man, at checkpoints or other sites where people were being maimed or slaughtered, and held for personal sexual service. The militiamen would force women to submit sexually with threats that they would be killed if they refused."

Hutu Tutsi families head for U.S., fleeing prejudice at home-CNN article. 

http://articles.cnn.com/1998-11-27/world/9811_27_tanzania.immigration_1_refugee-camp-rwanda-and-burundi-tutsi-group?_s=PM:WORLD

Kinship
Modern-day genetic studies of the Y-chromosome suggest that the Tutsi are largely of Bantu extraction(80% E1b1a, 15% B, 4% E3). Paternal genetic influences associated with the Horn of Africa and North Africa are few (1% E1b1b), and are ascribed to much earlier inhabitants who were assimilated. The Tutsi, in general, demonstrate a close genetic kinship with neighboring Bantu populations, particularly the Hutu.

References:

BBC News Africa
    2011 Rwanda: How the Genocide happened. Electronic document,
           http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-13431486, 
           accessed November 13, 2012

Nyankanzi, Edward L. 

     1997 Tutsi. Electronic document, 

             http://www.everyculture.com/wc/Brazil-to-Congo-Republic-of/

             Tutsi.html#b, accessed November 13, 2012.

Sail, Nancy

    2012 Women under siege: Rwanda. Electronic document,

             http://www.womenundersiegeproject.org/conflicts/profile/rwanda,

             accessed November 13, 2012

Tangient LLC
    2012 Tutsis. Electronic document, 
             http://kjhtutsis.wikispaces.com, accessed November 13, 2012