Within a year after the arrival of the German explorers at Kageyo, the great Mwami Kigeli IV Rwabugiri had died, and had been succeeded by one of his sons, who had been chosen by the abiru according to time-honored custom, and who reigned under the name Mibambwe IV Rutarindwa. There was intense dissatisfaction at court, however, as the new monarch was not considered to be an entirely suitable choice, particularly at a time when foreign encroachment on Rwandan soil loomed large on the socio-political landscape.

    Long before the notion of democracy ever appeared on the shores of Africa, however, there existed the small southeastern kingdom of Rwanda, originally confined to the open savanna between Lake Victoria and Lake Kivu, and whose modern roots as a sovereign and independent nation date back to the 13th century. Rwanda constituted a triple exception in Africa, for she was a true nation-state. Comprised of three different and yet interrelated groups- the Twa, the Hutu and the Tutsi- the Kingdom of Rwanda was not the random patchwork creation of some European colonial power which had simply imposed its will on a collection of tribes and/or regions, but rather a true nation in every sense of the word. In addition, and despite the artificial distinctions later introduced by colonial imperialists determined to divide and conquer her, the three groups that comprised her population together constituted one unique and identical ethnicity, that of the Banyarwanda, or "people of Rwanda."

    The first signs of a human presence in the area now known as Rwanda date from about 1000 BC, and archaeologists have there discovered the remains of a civilization that had mastered both the production of iron and of pottery. The area was originally populated by Pygmy tribes, ancestors of the Twa, and it was early in the first millennium BC that the Tutsi (originally from the areas north of Rwanda) and the Hutu (originally from the areas south of Rwanda) initially migrated to this beautiful and fertile land of rolling hills, open plains and large, crystalline lakes.

    While little is known about the many individuals who reigned over the people of Rwanda as king, or mwami (plural abami), during the ages that preceded the arrival of European explorers in the mid-19th century, a considerable amount of information is available about the rôle of the mwami in Rwandan society. Thanks to the collection of rituals and protocols known as the Gakondo, first passed on by means of oral tradition, and later committed to writing after the coming of the Europeans, it is possible to acquire a strong appreciation of the nature and primacy of the king in the Rwandan state, and to gain important insights into the absolutely pivotal rôle occupied by the monarch in the life of the nation and of the people at large.