Initially, the ubuhake contract stipulated that Hutus were entitled to use Tutsis cattle in exchange for service, be it personal or military.
[citation needed] At the summit of this feudal pyramid was the mwami, or Tutsi king, who was regarded as being of divine ancestry.
The ubuhake and uburetwa systems were condoned by the European colonialists of Rwanda and Burundi, Germany and later Belgium, who supported the Tutsi aristocracy in order to maintain control.
The continued promotion of a single ethnic group became politically difficult for Belgium in the postwar period, however.
A hereditary king (called the kabaka) and a landed nobility provided a structure similar to those in northern Rwanda at the time of the arrival of European explorers.