Mamdani - A Breif History of Genocied

7/25/2019 Mamdani - A Breif History of Genocied

1/23

W.E.B. Du Bois Institute

A Brief History of GenocideAuthor(s): Mahmood MamdaniSource: Transition, No. 87 (2001), pp. 26-47Published by: Indiana University Presson behalf of the W.E.B. Du Bois InstituteStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3137437 .

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2/23

(I

Position

RIEF

ISTORY

O

GENO IDE

Mahmood

Mamdani

No one can

be sure how

many

people

were

slaughtered

in

Rwanda

in

1994.

In

one hundred

days,

a

group

of

military

and civilian

leaders

organized

the coun-

try's Hutu majority to eliminate its Tutsi

minority. They

killed

many

Hutu,

as

well:

anyone

who showed

reluctance

to

perform

what

was considered

to

be his

or

her national

duty

became

a

target.

But

whereas

these

Hutu

were murdered as

individuals-butchered

for their beliefs

or

their

actions-the

Tutsi

were mur-

dered because

they

were

Tutsi.

This is

why

the

killings

of

more than

half a

mil-

lion Rwandan Tutsi between March and

July

of

1994

must

be called

genocide.

The

genocidal

impulse

may

be

as old

as

organized

power.

In the

Hebrew

Bible,

Moses

obeyed

God's

command

to

exterminate

a

foreign people:

Avenge

the children

of Israel

of the

Midianites:

afterward

halt thou

be

gathered

unto

thy

people.

And

Moses

spake

unto

the

peo-

ple,

saying,

Arm some

of

yourselves

unto

the

war,

and let

them

go against

the Mid-

ianites,

and

avenge

the LORD

of Midian.

...

And

they

warred

against

the Midian-

ites,

as the LORD

commanded

Moses;

and

they

slew

all the

males

(Num.

3I:2-3,

7).

While

the

impulse

to

destroy

an en-

emy is ancient, the technology of geno-

cide

is

constantly evolving.

The Nazi

Holocaust

was a state-of-the-art

mass

extermination.

Jews

were branded

for

the

purpose

of identification and sub-

jected

to

experimentation

by

Nazi

doc-

tors.

The

killing

took

place

in industrial

compounds

where the

killers-the at-

tendants-simply sprinkled

Zyklon-B

crystals

into the

gas

chambers.

The

whole genocidal apparatus functioned

with

bureaucratic

efficiency.

The Rwandan

genocide,

on

the

other

hand,

was rather old-fashioned.

It was

carried

out with

machetes

rather

than

chemicals;

street

corners,

living

rooms,

and churches

became

places

of death.

Whereas

Nazi

Germany

made

every

at-

tempt

to isolate

those

most

guilty

of its

crimes

from their

victims,

the

Rwandan

genocide

was

a

much more

intimate af-

fair. It was carried out

by

hundreds of

thousands

of

people

and witnessed

by

26

TRANSITION

ISSUE 87

Pierre-LaurentSanner


3/23

?

r?jrr

?P'4,rfl

I ,r

;t


4/23

millions. A

Rwandan

government

min-

ister I met in

I997

contrasted

the

two

horrors: In

Germany,

he

said,

the

Jews

were taken

out of

their

residences,

moved to

distant,

faraway

ocations,

and

killed

there,

almost

anonymously.

In

Rwanda,

the

government

did not kill. It

prepared

the

population,

enraged

it

and

enticed

it.Your

neighbors

killed

you.

As it

happens,

the

Germans had devel-

oped

their

technique

in

Africa.

In

1904,

German Southwest Africa-the terri-

tory

that would

ultimately

become

Namibia-faced a

political

crisis.

The

future of the

colony

seemed

suddenly

precarious;

the

Herero,

a

small

agricul-

tural people numbering some eighty

28 TRANSITION ISSUE 87

Musinga,

king

of the

Rwandan

Tutsi,

c. 1916

Rwanda-Burundi

Information

ervice


5/23

thousand,

had taken

up

arms

to

defend

their

and

and cattle

against

German

et-

tlers.

The

governor

of

the

territory

at-

tempted

to

negotiate

with

the

Herero,

but

his subordinates

persuaded

Kaiser

Wilhelm

II to

replace

him. General

Lothar

von

Trotha,

he Kaiser s

hoice,

observed

hat

the

views

of

the Governor

ndalso

afew

old

Africa

ands

n the

one

hand,

nd

my

views

on theother,ifer ompletely.heirstwanted

to

negotiatefor

ome

ime

already

nd

regard

the

Herero

ation

s

necessary

abour

mater-

ialfor

thefuture

evelopment

f

the

country.

I believe

hat he

nation

ssuch

hould e

an-

nihilated,r,

f

thiswas

not

possible

y

tacti-

cal

measures,

ave

to be

expelled

rom

the

country y operative

eans

nd

urther

de-

tailed

reatment.

his

will be

possible

f

the

water-holes

. .

are

occupied.

he constant

movement

f

our

troops

will enable

us

tofind

the small

groups

of

the

nation

who

have

movedback

westwards

nd

destroy

hem

grad-

ually....

My

intimate

knowledge

of

many

central

African

tribes

Bantu

and

others)

has

everywhere

onvinced

me

of

the

necessity

hat

the

Negro

does not

respect

reaties

but

only

brute

orce.

Under

Trotha s

command,

German

infantry

and

artillery opened

an offensive

againstthe insurgents.As the Herero fled

the German

assault,

every

avenue

of es-

cape

was

blocked,

save

one:

the southeast

route,

through

the Kalahari

Desert. Their

journey

across the

desert

was a

death

march:

almost

80

percent

of

the Herero

perished.

This was

not

an

accident,

as a

gleeful

notice

in Das

Kampf,

the official

publication

of

the German

general

staff,

attests:

Missionaries

at

the

court of

King

Musinga,

c. 1916

Rwanda-Burundi

Information

Service


6/23

Tutsi

man

R.

Bourgeois

Congopresse

30

TRANSITION ISSUE 87


7/23

No

efforts,

o

hardships

were

spared

n order

to

deprive

he

enemyof

his

last reserves

f

re-

sistance;

like

a

half-dead

animal

he

was

huntedfrom

water-hole

o water-hole ntil

he

became

lethargic

ictim

of

the

nature

of

his

own

country.

The desert

was

to

complete

he

work

of

the German

arms:

he annihilation

f

the Herero

people.

Lest

the reader

be

tempted

to dismiss

Trotha

as a

monster

from

the lunatic

fringe

of

the German

officer

corps given

a free

hand

in

a distant

and

unimportant

colony,

it should

be noted

that

the

gen-

eral

had a

distinguished

record.

In

I900

he

had been

involved

in

suppressing

the

Boxer

Rebellion

in

China,

and

he was a

veteran of

pacification

campaigns

throughout

the colonies that

would be-

come

Rwanda,

Burundi,

and

Tanzania.

General

Trotha

often

boasted

of

his own

prowess

in colonial

warfare.

The exer-

cise of

violence

with crass terrorism

and

even with

gruesomeness

was

and is

my

policy,

he

wrote.

I

destroy

the

African

tribes

with streams

of blood

and streams

of

money.

The

surviving

Herero

were rounded

up

and

placed

in

camps

run

by

mission-

aries in conjunction with the German

R.

P

Vatn

Overschlelde

B.

army.

Overworked

and

hungry, suscepti-

ble

to diseases such

as

typhoid

and

small-

pox,

many

more

Herero

perished

in the

camps.

Herero

women

were

taken

as sex

slaves

by

German

soldiers.

When

the

camps

were closed

in

19o8,

the remain-

ing

Herero were distributed

among

set-

tlers as

laborers.

Henceforth,

all

Herero

over the age of seven were required to

wear

a metal

disc

around

their

neck

The extermination

of the

Herero

in 1904

was the

first

genocide

of

the twentieth

century.

It was

in the

Herero

concentration

camps

that

the German

geneticist

Eugene

Fischer first

investigated

the

science

of

race-mixing.

bearing

a labor

egistration

umber.

The

practice

continued

until

the FirstWorld

War,

when the German

army

ost South-

west Africa.

The extermination

f

the

Hererowas

the first

genocide

of

the

twentieth

cen-

tury,

and its

connection

to the

Jewish

Holocaust

is difficult to

ignore.

When

Trotha

ought

o

diffuse

esponsibility

or

the genocide,he accused he missionsof

A BRIEF

HISTORY

OF GENOCIDE

31


8/23

,..

4 *

'IQ ,f

Ir

*1

inciting

the Herero with

images

of

the

bloodcurdlingJewish history

of the

Old

Testament.

And it was

in the Herero

concentration

camps

that

the

German

geneticist

Eugene

Fischer

first investi-

gated

the science of

race-mixing,

ex-

perimenting

on both the Herero and the

half-German

children

born to

Herero

women. Fischer

argued

that the Herero

mulattos

were

physically

and

mentally

inferior

to their German

parents.

Hitler

read Fischer's

book,

The

Principle

f

Hu-

man

Heredity

and

Race

Hygiene

(I92I),

while he

was in

prison.

The Fiihrer

eventually

made Fischer

rector of the

University

of

Berlin,

where he

taught

medicine. One

of his

prominent

students

was

Josef

Mengele,

who would run

the

gas chambers at Auschwitz.

In

fact,

the

genocide

of the

Herero was

simply

an extreme instance

of the

gen-

eral

tendencies of colonialism.

The his-

tory

of

European

colonies is

rife with

massacresand forced

marches,

conscript

labor and

expulsions.

Colonial

powers

often

stopped

at

nothing

to subdue

their

restive

populations;

annihilation was

always

an

option.

The reverse-the extermination

of

colonizers

by

natives-never

came

to

pass,

although

it

always

hovered on the

horizon as a historical

possibility.

(The

Mau Mau rebels

in

colonial

Kenya

be-

came African heroes because

they

dared

to kill

whites.)

Nobody

understood the

genocidal

impulse

better

than Frantz

Fanon, the Martinican-born

psychoan-

32

TRANSITION

ISSUE 87

The Rwandan

royal

family,

c.

1916

Rwanda-Burundi

Information

Service


9/23

alyst

and

Algerian

freedom

fighter.

For

Fanon,

native violence was not

simply

destructive;

t was also a kind of

affirma-

tion of life and

dignity.

For

he

knows

that he

is not

an

animal,

Fanon

wrote

in

The Wretched

of

the Earth

(1961),

and it

is

precisely

when he realizeshis human-

ity

that he

begins

to

sharpen

the

weapons

with which

he

will secure

its

victory.

Writing

at

the

height

of the

anticolonial

struggle,

Fanon

distinguished

between native violence and

settler

vio-

lence.

Native

violence,

he

insisted,

was

the violence of

yesterday's

victims,

peo-

A BRIEF

HISTORY

OF

GENOCIDE 33

The court of

King

Musinga,

c. 1916

Rwlanda-Burundi

Infornmation

ervice


10/23

A Hutu man makes

a

ritual

offering

of

beer to his Tutsl

master

and

receives a

cow

in return. To

celebrate,

the

Hutu

man dances

before

the

animal.

Pol

Laval,

Rwanda-

Bururndi

nformation

Service

pie

who had cast aside

their

victimhood

to become masters

of their

own

lives:

He

of

whom

they

have never

stopped aying

that the

only

language

he understandss that

offorce,

decides o

give

utterance

byforce

....

The

argument

he nativechooses as been

ur-

nished

by

the

settler,

nd

by

an ironic

turning

of the tables t is the nativewho now affirms

that

the colonialist nderstands

othing

ut

force.

For

Fanon,

proof

of the native's

human-

ity

consisted not in the

willingness

to kill

settlers,

but in the

willingness

to risk his

or

her life.

The colonized

man,

he

wrote,

finds his freedom

in and

through

violence. If the outcome was death, the

34

TRANSITION

ISSUE 87


11/23

killing

of settlers

by

natives,

that was

nevertheless derivative utcome:

Thesettler's ork s to

make ven

dreams

f

liberty

mpossiblefor

he native.

he

native's

work s to

magine

ll

possible

methodsfor

e-

stroying

he ettler .. For he

native,

ife

can

only pring p again

out

of

the

rotting

orpse

of

the

ettler....For hecolonized

eople,

his

violence,

ecause

t

constitutesheir

nly

work,

invests heir haracterith

positive

nd

cre-

ativequalities. hepracticefviolence inds

them

ogether

s

a

whole,

ince ach ndivid-

ualforms

violent ink n the

great

hain,

part

of

the

greatorganismf

violencewhich

has

surged pwards

n

reactiono thesettler's

violencen the

beginning.

On the

day

of

reckoning,

Trothawould

be

answered

n kind.

From the

beginning,

colonialism

pre-

sented

itself as a

civilizing

mission-

what

Kipling

called the

white man's

burden. The

Western colonial

project

aimed to

create

a new

society

by

build-

ing

modern citiesand

states,

ntroducing

Western aw.

Under

direct

colonial

rule,

the law

distinguished

civilized

minor-

ity

from

a

not-yet-civilized

majority,

iv-

ing rights

to

the

minority

while disen-

franchizing

he

majority.

nd

yet

whether

rulers

or

ruled,Westerners

r

non-West-

erners,

all those

subject

o

the

power

of

the

statewould

live within the

realmof

civic law.This

had the

unintendedcon-

sequence

of

racializing

olonial

society,

making

race the

primary

difference

be-

tween colonizer

and

colonized,

collaps-

ing

all

other

differences in

its

binary

logic.

Sooner or later,everycolonial

power

discovered that this

racial

dichotomy

tended

to foster racial

solidarity

among

colonial

subjects.

So the

colonial

powers

dismantled the

single

legal

universe of

direct

rule,

employing

instead

a

system

of

indirect rule.

In so

doing

they

created a

series of

parallel

universes:

non-natives

continued to

have

rights

in

the realm of

civic

law,

as under direct

rule,

but

natives

were

to

be

governed differently.

Each

ethnic

group

was now said to have

its

own set of customary laws, to be en-

forced

by

its

own native

authority -

its chief-in

its own

home

area.

n

this

way,

the

aggregate

category

native

was

legally

abolished,

and different

kinds

of

natives were

created. The

political

aim

was to

fracture he

native

population

into

ethnic

groups.

With each

group gov-

erned

through

its own

customary

law,

a

plural legal

order

produced

plural po-

litical identities; these identities were said

to stem from

tribes, cultures,

and

tradi-

tions

that

predated

the

colonial en-

counter.

This shift to indirect

rule

signi-

fied a

retreat from colonization's

original

project

of

civilization: the

natives were

to

remain

natives,

forever

proscribed

from

the

realm of

civil law.

As

political

identities,

race

and ethnic-

ity

involved

different

types

of

claims.

Race claimed

to reflect

civilization

and

development,

whereas

ethnicity

claimed

to

reflect

culture

and habit.

Civilization

was

a

world of

rights;

culture,

a world

of

custom.

The

distinction

between

race

and

ethnicity

was meant to

capture

the

difference

between

the

non-indigenous

and the

indigenous:

whites had

a

race,

and it

stood

atop

the

pyramid

of civi-

lization;

ethnicity

represented

the

diver-

sity

of

uncivilized native

peoples.

In this

way

the colonial state endeav-

A

BRIEF

HISTORY OF

GENOCIDE

35


12/23

ored to

supplant

the

political question

of

native

rights

with the

anthropological

question

of native character.But the un-

breachable

divide

between

colonizer

and

colonized

was not the

only dichotomy

of

indirect rule.

Anyone

resident

on

the ter-

Under

colonialism,

the distinction

between

race and

ethnicity

was meant

to

capture

the

difference between

the

non-indigenous

and the

indigenous:

whites had

a

race,

and it

stood

atop

the

pyramid

of

civilization;

ethnicity

represented

the

diversity

of uncivilized

native

peoples.

ritory

at

the

beginning

of coloniza-

tion-usually,

sometime

in

the

I88os,

during

the

scramble for Africa-was

generallyconsidered a native.Those who

came after

were treated as

resident

aliens,

strangers.

In

Uganda,

for

example,

the

colonial state

recognized

the

ethnic

iden-

tities

of

the

Baganda,

the

Banyankole,

the

Acholi,

and

so on. But

the

Asians,

who

had

been

brought

over from

India

by

the

imperial

British East

Africa

Company

to

build the

railway,

were a race.

By

making

a distinction

between

the

indigenous and non-indigenous, the state

created a

middle

ground

between colo-

nizer and colonized.

Alongside

the

mas-

ter

race,

the

law

constituted

subject

races;

while

full

citizenship

in the

colony

was

reserved for

members of the

master

race,

the

subject

races were

virtual or

partial

citizens.

Though

subject

to

discrimina-

tion,

they

were

still

considered

part

of

the world

of

rights,

of civil

law. The sub-

Tutsi

boy

ject

races

were

integrated

into

the

ma-

Romain Baertsoen

chinery

of colonial

rule as

agents

and ad-

ministrators

in

both the

public

and

pri-

vate

sectors.

And

as

such,

they

came

to be

seen as both

instruments

and beneficia-

ries of

colonialism,

even as

civil

law cod-

ified their second-class

citizenship.

The

so-called

subject

races

of

colonial

Africa were

many.

Besides

the Asians of

East and South

Africa,

there were the

Coloureds of South

Africa,

the

Arabs

of

Zanzibar,

and the Tutsi of Rwanda and

Burundi.

Historically

and

culturally,

these

groups

had little in common. The

Asians

obviously

had

their

origins

else-

where,

but the

question

of what distin-

guished

other

subject

races

from

indige-

nous

people

was

more

complex.

In

Zanzibar,

Arab

was

a kind of catchall

identity,

denoting

both

those with Arab

ancestry

and

those with

ties

to Arab cul-

ture. And South

Africa's

Coloureds

were

identified

by

their

mixture,

through

their

ancestral links to Asia, Africa, and Eu-

rope.

The

Tutsi,

on

the other

hand,

were

wholly

indigenous

to

Africa. So the

colonial

designation non-indigenous

needs

to

be understood as

a

legal

and

po-

litical

fiction,

not a historical

or

cultural

reality.

The

postcolonial

struggle

forjustice-for

redress

of colonial

wrongs-raised

a ba-

sic

question:What

is a settler?

The term

did not invoke

a

legal

category:

colonial

laws had

spoken

only

of

natives and

non-natives.

Settlerwas a libel

that natives

hurled back

at the beneficiaries

of colo-

nial rule.

As

different forms

of national-

ism

emerged-narrow

or

inclusive,

cultural

or

political,

reactionary

or

pro-

gressive-each

form

arrived

at a differ-

ent

understanding

of

what

a settler was.

Was the settler

experience

based on im-

36

TRANSITION

ISSUE

87


13/23

'i

~~

~ ~

.

~

?

~?

i

, ,

~

. .

~

~

x ,

_

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~,;

. .

.,

.,

' ,

,~

~

.;

3i

~ ~

i

i

i

.'~.

~,~'?~'?

?

1

r' ...?.i~'

~

?:iL~ ; ?

~

?

?

?7?

~~~

.

.... ?

-

~~

~ ~,

r;i J '??I

~ ~i'

~. .??~

~

?~,~

?~ ~~~

,

~ /

~,

,~

,

I__ _? ? ? I I_? I? j

Llul

?r:? ?. II

?

-'?r? ,

1(\r.r I'?\

?;-,,* ' C *i

?????-??_

1

?\. ,1

- ?1?-?

I?,

t

_i.

,

r

1-

: ?? ;:t ?-?;

I:-I' ii

?n

I ..?rJ'n

? _,?

?; 5 ?r,

r? *


14/23

L 7

e~

Tutsi

girl

Pol Laval

Rwanda-Burundi

Information

ervice

g

r


15/23

migration,

or on

conquest?

Was

every

non-native a settler?If settlers had come

into

being

through

conquest

and

owed

their existence to a state

that

enforced

settler

prerogative,

then

the

abolition

of

that

prerogative-and

the

state

that en-

forced it-would also abolish

settler

and

native

as

political

identities. But if

settlers

were

created

by migration,

then

nothing

less than

repatriation

would re-

solve the

settler

question.

The situation was inherently unstable.

By establishing

these

infinitesimal dis-

tinctions

in

law,

the

colonial

state

created

an

array

of

indigenous

and

non-indige-

nous

identities.

In

postcolonial

Africa,

as

in

colonial

Africa,

these identities were

the fault

lines

along

which

political

vio-

lence

exploded.

The

violence

started

with

colonial

pacification,

which

took

on

genocidal

proportions

when settlers

set out to appropriate native land-as

with the Herero of

southern Africa. But

political

violence continued

during

the

anticolonial

struggle, although

the

initia-

tive shifted from

the settler

to

the native.

While it

has

been

widely

noted

that the

most

violent anticolonial

struggles

took

place

in

the colonies with the

largest

set-

tler

populations

(like

Kenya,

Rhodesia,

and

Angola),

few

have

noted

that

Africa's

worst

postindependence

violence

has tar-

geted

the former

subject

races: the

Tutsi

in

Rwanda

in

1959,

the

Arabs in

Zanz-

ibar

in

I963,

the Asians

in

Uganda

in

I972-and,

once

again,

the

Tutsi in

Rwanda in

1994.

I visited

Rwanda a

year

after the

geno-

cide. Ntarama is

about

an

hour

and a half

by

car from the

capital, Kigali,

on a dirt

road

going

south toward the Burundi

border.

I

arrived

at

a

village

church made

of

brick,

roofed with iron sheets. Out-

side

there

was a wood and bamboo

rack

bearing

skulls. On the

ground

were

as-

sorted

bones,

collected and

pressed

to-

gether

inside

sacks,

sticking

out of

the

torn cloth. Ntarama is

perhaps

the most

famous,

and

the

most

visited,

of Rwanda's

killing

fields;

the

church has become

a

starting point

for the

growing

number

of

people

who come to

Rwanda to

try

to

understand.

Inside

the

church,

wooden

planks

were

placed

on

stones

as

makeshift

benches.You could see a

pile

of

belong-

ings-shoulder

sacks,

tattered

clothing,

a

towel,

a wooden

box,

a

cooking

pot,

plastic

mugs

and

plates,

straw mats

and

hats.

Then

bones,

entire

skeletons,

all

caught

in

the

posture

in

which

they

had

died. Even

a

year

after

the

genocide,

the

air stank of blood and earth and rotten

clothes-a vicious

human mildew.

The

church wall

was

still covered

with old

posters. They

reminded

me of

the ex-

hortations

I had

seen under

other radi-

cal

governments

in

the Third

World.

One

read,

Journee

Internationale de

Femme -

International

Women's

Day.

Below

it,

in

boldface:

EGALITE. PAIX.

DEVELOPPEMENT.

I

was

introduced to a man

called

Cal-

lixte

who had

survived the

massacre at

Ntarama. He wore

sandals made

of

rub-

ber

sliced

from

worn-out

automobile

tires;

his

clothes were

old,

but

not

torn.

On

the seventh of

April,

in

the

morn-

ing, they

started

burning

houses,

he ex-

plained.

Only

a few

were

killed.

The

burning

pushed

us

to this

place.

We

thought

this was

God's

house;

no one

would

attack us here.

On the

seventh,

eighth, up

to the

tenth,

we were

fight-

A

BRIEF

HISTORY OF

GENOCIDE

39


16/23

ing them. We were using stones. They

had

pangas,

spears,

hammers,

grenades.

On

the

tenth,

their numbers

increased.

On the

fourteenth,

we were

pushed

in-

side the church.

The

church

was attacked

on the fourteenth and the fifteenth. The

actual

killing

was on the fifteenth.

On

the

fifteenth,

they brought

Pres-

idential Guards.

They

were

brought

in

from

neighboring

areas o

support

Inter-

ahamwe.

Here,

there

were

women,

chil-

dren,

and old men. The

men had formed

defense units outside.

I

was

outside. Most

men died

fighting.

When our

defense was broken

through,

they

came and killed

everyone

here. After

that,

they

started

hunting

for

those

hiding

in the hills.

I ran

to

the

swamp

with some others.

Who took

part

in

the

killing?

I

asked.

In my sector, Hutu were two-thirds,

Tutsi one-third.

There were about

5,ooo

in

our

sector. Of

the

3,500

Hutu

all the

men

participated.

There were

prominent

leaders who would

command.

The rest

followed.

Had there been

marriages

between

Hutu and Tutsi

in

Ntarama?

Too

many.

About one-third of

Tutsi

daughters

were married to Hutu.

But

Hutu

daughters

married to Tutsi

men

were

only

i

percent:

Hutu didn't want to

marry

their

daughters

to

Tutsi who were

poor.

And

it was

risky,

because the Tutsi

were discriminated

against-Tutsi

men

didn't want

to

give

their

daughters

where there

was no

education,

no

jobs.

Prospects

were

better

for

Tutsi

daughters

marrying

Hutu men.

They

would

get

better

opportunities.

Callixte

spoke

without

emotion;

his

40

TRANSITION

ISSUE

87

Funeral or the

king,

1959

Vansinay,

Rwanda-Burundi

Information

ervice


17/23

Female mlienjbers

of the

royal court,

1957

H.

Goldstein,

Congopresse

voice

remained

steady

and

calm

throughout

our conversation.

I

wondered

whether

this

was because he had related

the

story

many

times before. Tutsi women mar-

ried to Hutu

were killed.

I know

only

one who survived. The administration

forced Hutu

men

to

kill their Tutsi wives

before

they

killed

anyone

else,

to

prove

they

were

true Interahamwe.

One

man

tried to refuse. He

was told

he must

choose between the

wife

and himself.

He chose to save his own

life. Another

Hutu man rebuked

him for

killing

his

Tutsi

wife.

That

man

was also

killed.

Kallisa,

the man who was forced to

kill

his

wife,

he is in

jail.

After

killing

his

wife,

he became a convert.

He

began

to

dis-

tribute

grenades

all around.

*

* m

Colonial Rwanda was a halfway house

between

direct and indirect

rule,

com-

bining

features of both.

Customary

laws and native authorities were es-

tablished

alongside

civic law and civic

authorities. But the native authorities

in

charge

of the

Hutu were

Tutsi rather

than

Hutu.

That

is,

indirect

rule

in

Rwanda established the Tutsi as

a

distinct

race. Thus the colonial state in

Rwanda

engendered polarized racial identities

among indigenous people,

not

plural

ethnic identities.The colonized

popula-

tion

was

split

n

two,

with the

majority,

the

Hutu,

opposed

to

both

Belgians

and

Tutsi.

Why

was Rwanda

different?The

an-

swers lie buried

in

the recesses

of

the

racistmind. Africa

roper,

he

philoso-

pher Hegel

said,

hasremained-for

all

purposes

of connection with the rest of

the

world,

shut

up;

it is

the

gold-land

In

the

church

at

Ntarama,

you

could see a

pile

of

belongings-shoulder

sacks,

tattered

clothing,

a

towel,

a

wooden

box,

a

cooking

pot,

plastic

mugs

and

plates,

straw

mats and

hats. Then

bones,

entire

skeletons,

all

caught

in the

posture

in

which

they

had died.

Even

a

year

after the

genocide,

the air stank

of

blood and earth and rotten clothes.

compressed

within itself-the land of

childhood,

which

lying beyond

the

day

of

conscious

history

s

enveloped

n

the

darkmantleof

Night.

But the

more

Europeans

ot

to know

Africa,

he

less tenablebecame the no-

tion that the Saharamarkedthe limit

A BRIEF

HISTORY OF GENOCIDE

41


18/23

Presentation of

the royal cow

herd,

1939

From

Societe,

culture et

pouvoir

politique

en

Afrique

interlacustre:

Hutu et

Tutsi de

l'ancien

Rwanda

by

P

Kanyamachumbi

(Kinshasa,

emocratic

Republic f

the

Congo:

Editions

Select)

between

night

and

day-between

bar-

barism and civilization.

Europeans

en-

counteredconsiderable

vidence of or-

ganized

ife

on the

continentbefore heir

arrival.That

evidence

sometimes came

in

the form of

ruins,

ike the

Sudanese

pyramids

or the

stone walls at

Great

Zimbabwe.

It also came

in

the form of

highly

developed

African

societies like

the

Kingdom

of

Rwanda,

whose

politi-

cal

history

stretchedback

hundredsof

years.Rwandabelied the racistconvic-

tion that the nativeshad no

civilization

of their own.

The

colonialists'

explanation-the

Hamitic

hypothesis -was

ingenious:

every

sign

of

progress

n the Dark

Continentwastaken

as

proof

of the civ-

ilizing

nfluenceof an

alienrace.Ancient

Egypt,Ethiopia,

Rwanda: ll

these were

the work of an

ancient

European

race,

the children

of

Ham-Noah's

son,

in

the Hebrew

Bible. The Hamites were

taken to be black-skinnedCaucasians;

42

TRANSITION ISSUE 87


19/23

they

wanderedacross

he African

conti-

nent andruledovertheirracial

nferiors,

the black-skinned lacks. n

1870,

at

the

Vatican

I

council,

a

group

of

cardinals

called for a mission to

centralAfrica n

order o rescue

hapless

Hamites

caught

amidst

Negroes,

to

alleviate the an-

tique

malediction

weighing

on

the

shouldersof the

misfortunateHamites

inhabiting

he

hopelessNigricy.

In

Rwanda,

he

Europeans

dentified

therulingTutsiasHamiticandtheHutu

as

Bantu- real Africans who

served

the Tutsi. Of

course,

the Hamitic

hy-

pothesis

failed to resolve

some

glaring

contradictions.

While the term was in-

troduced

by linguists

o

describe

he lan-

guages

of

the

Hamitic

peoples,

he Tutsi

spoke

Kinyarwanda

Rwandan),

Bantu

language.

And

although

he notion

of

a

Hamitic

race

implied

a

shared

pheno-

type-tall, thin,with aquilinenoses and

coppery

skin-the

speakers

f Hamitic

languages

included the

blond-haired,

blue-eyed

Berbersof

north

Africa.The

greatest

difficulty,perhaps,

was

that the

Hamites were

supposed

to be

cattle-

herding

pastoralists,

nlike the

agricul-

turalistBantu.

But

by

the second

half of

the

nineteenth

century,

many

Tutsi

ived

just

like their

Hutu

neighbors,

without

cattle,

working

the land

under Tutsi

overlords.

While

numerous

African

peoples

were

identified as

Hamites-indeed,

three of

the

precolonial

political

entities

that

became

Uganda

were

considered

Hamitic

kingdoms-Rwanda

was the

only

colony

where

Hamitic

ideology

came to

be the

law of the

land.

The for-

eignness

of the

Tutsi

was

institutional-

ized

by

a series

of

reforms hat

embed-

ded the Hamitic

hypothesis

in the

Belgian

colonial state. This set the

Tutsi

apart

from

other so-called

Hamites in

Africa;

it also

ruptured

the

link between

race and color in Rwanda.

Between

1926

and

I937,

the

Belgian

authorities

made

Tutsi

superiority

the

basis

of

changes

in

political,

social,

and

cultural

relations.

Key

institutions

of the

pre-colonial

Rwandan state were

disman-

tled. In the

process,

power

was

central-

ized;Western-style

schools were

opened,

and admission was largely limited to

Tutsi.

Tutsi received an

assimilationisted-

ucation:

they

were

taught

in

French,

in

preparation

for

administrative

positions

in

the colonial

government.When

Hutu

Europeans

encountered

considerable

evidence of

organized

life

in

Africa

before

their arrival. The

Kingdom

of

Rwanda

belied

the racist conviction that the natives had

no

civilization of their

own.

were

admitted,

they

received a

separate

curriculum,

taught

in

Kiswahili.

(The

graduates

of the

French-language

cur-

riculum

were

called

Hamites. )

The

underlying

message

was

that

Hutu

were

not destined

for

citizenship.

*

*

*

In

the

I950s,

as

the

struggle

for

decolo-

nization

raged

across the

African

conti-

nent,

Rwandan

society began

to

splinter.

While

the Tutsi

agitated

for

indepen-

dence-and a

Tutsi state

without

Bel-

gian

masters-the Hutu

made

increas-

ingly

strident

demands

for

social

reform.

A

new

political

elite

emerged

from

the

ranks of

those

who

had

been

branded

with a

subject identity,

and

they

made

their

suffering

a

badge

of

pride:

Hutu

A

BRIEF

HISTORY OF

GENOCIDE

43


20/23

Power

The

revolution

of

1959

brought

this

Hutu elite

to

power,

and

in

1960,

Rwanda achieved

independence.

Those

of

the

Tutsi elite

unable

or

unwilling

to

live under Hutu

rule were murdered

or

sent into exile.

The Hutu state

responded

to

guerrilla

attacks

mounted

by

Tutsi ex-

iles

with violence

against

Tutsi

who

re-

mained

within the

country,

thus

pushing

a second

group

into exile.

(Many

of

this

second

group

went

to

Uganda.)

Where

the Hamitic

hypothesis

had enforced

Tutsi

supremacy,

the

new

Hutu

regime

heralded

an

egalitarian

social revolution:

democracy,

majority

rule,

and Hutu

Power came

to seem

synonymous.

De-

fending

the

revolution

from

Tutsi

sub-

version became

the sine

qua

non of

Rwandan

politics.

In

the

1950s,

as the

struggle

for

decolonization raged across the African

continent,

Rwandan

society began

to

splinter.

A

new

political

elite

emerged

from

the

ranks of the

socially oppressed

with

a new

slogan:

Hutu

Power

The

promise

of

1959

quickly

turned

sour:

the

revolutionary

state

had

repu-

diated inegalitarian colonial

rule with-

out

changing

the

institutional

identities

that

underpinned

it. Instead of

forging

a

way beyond

natives

and

settlers,

1959

wedded

Rwanda's

future

to the

political

identities

that had

been

constructed

un-

der colonial

rule.

The

revolution

re-

versed

"settler

privilege"-replacing

Tutsi chiefs

with

Hutu-without

re-

forming

the

concentrated

power

of the

native

authority.

It

did introduce

local

elections,

thereby

making

Hutu func-

tionaries accountable to their

popula-

tions.

But after

1972,

the radical

govern-

ment of

the Second

Republic

eliminated

the local elections and re-created

the

colonial

authority-defined,

now,

not

only

as

"customary"

but also as "revolu-

tionary."

These

were

the

organs

of

power

that orchestrated and

organized

the mass

slaughter

of the

genocide.

* * *

The dilemma of postgenocide Rwanda

lies

in

the chasm that divides

the Hutu

majority

from

the Tutsi

minority.

The

minority

demands

justice,

the

majority

calls for

democracy

and the

two

de-

mands

seem

irreconcilable. Irreconcilable

because ever

since the colonial

period,

violence

has

been motivated

by

a mutual

fear

of victimhood.

Every

round

of

per-

petrators

has

justified

the use of violence

as the only effective guarantee against

being

victimized

yet again.

The contin-

uing tragedy

of Rwanda

is that each out-

break of

violence

only

creates

another

set of victims-turned-killers.

In

the

political

vocabulary

of the

African Great

Lakes

region,

the

search

for

a form of

governance

that

can

guar-

antee both

justice

and

democracy

in

countries

torn

by

civil

war has come

to

be

known

as the search for

a "broad

base."

In countries with

a

history

of bit-

ter

fragmentation,

where

no

political

movement

could marshal

a

consensus,

coalition

government

came to

be seen

as

inevitable.

The

practice

of the broad

base

made

a clear distinction

between

means

and

ends.

All

political

movements-

whether

monarchist or

"tribalist,"

even

when identified

with a brutal

dictator-

ship

such as that

of

Idi Amin-were

welcomed into the broad base, provided

44

TRANSITION

ISSUE

87


21/23

they

renounced

violence

as a means

for

attaining

their

objectives.

For the

Tutsi-led

regime

in

today s

Rwanda,

achieving

the

broad base would

mean a

radical

proposition: making

a dis-

tinction

between

proponents

of Hutu

Power and

perpetrators

of the

genocide.

While the

ideology

of Hutu Power was

broad and contradictory, born of the

hopes

of

the

1959

revolution,

the

ideol-

ogy

of the

genocidaire

s a

narrow

alle-

giance,

coalesced

by desperation.

True,

the latter is

born of the

former,

yet

this

child

of

adversity

cannot be confused

with

its

parent.

Hutu Power reconciled

itself to

living

in

the

polarized

world of

Hutu and

Tutsi,

but the

genocidaire

ooked

for a final

solution

in

the

physical

elimi-

nation of the Tutsi. The necessary dis-

tinction

is one

between ends and

means,

A

BRIEF HISTORY

OF GENOCIDE

45

Pol

Laval,

Rwanda-Burundi

Information

Service


22/23

politics and ideology-between those

proponents

of Hutu Power

willing

to

give

up

violence

and those

not

willing

to do so.

The former

would be

invited

into the broad

base;

the latter

would not.

Ultimately,

the Rwandan

government

may

need to

recognize

that

the central

conclusion

it has

drawn from

the

history

of Rwanda

since

independence-that

the

only possible

peace

between

Tutsi

and Hutu is an

armed

peace-is

short-

sighted. t is anarticleof faith hatpower

is the

precondition

for survival.

But

Rwanda s

Tutsi

leadership

may

have to

consider

he

oppositepossibility:

hat he

prerequisite

o

cohabitation,

econcilia-

tion,

and a common

political

future

might

indeed

be to

give up

its

monop-

oly

on

power.

Like the Arabsof

Zan-

zibar,

r

even the

whites of South

Africa,

the Tutsi

of Rwanda

may

also

have to

learn that-so

long

as Hutu and Tutsi

46

TRANSITION

ISSUE 87

Romain Baertsoen


23/23

exist

as

political

identities-relinquish-

ing power may

be a surer

guarantee

of

survival than

holding

on to it.

After

all,

if

Rwanda

was the

genocide

that

happened,

then South Africa

was

the

genocide

that didn't:

just

as a tidal wave

of violence

engulfed

Rwanda

in

1994,

South Africa held elections

marking

the

peaceful

transition to a

post-apartheid

era.

If

some seer

had

said,

in the late

I980s,

that there would

be

a

genocide

in

one of these two places, I wonder how

many

people

would have been able to

predict

which it would

be.

* * *

The

genocide

weighs

heavily

on the

minds

of Tutsi survivors. And it's true

that

neither the Arabs of Zanzibar nor

the

whites of South Africa have suffered

genocidal

violence like the Tutsi

of

Rwanda. To find historical parallels to

this

situation,

where an

imperiled

mi-

nority

fears

to

come

under the thumb

of

a

guilty majority yet

again-even

if

the

thumbprint

reads

democracy -we

must

take

leave

of Africa. For

only

in

the erst-

while

settler

colonies

of

the New World

do

we have a

comparable history

of vi-

olence-a

history

that has

rendered the

majority guilty

in the

eyes

of victimized

minorities.

Such, indeed,

has been the af-

termath of

genocide

and

slavery:

the

genocide

of

indigenous

populations

in

the

Americas,

as in

Australia and New

Zealand,

and the

slavery

of

Africans

in

the

Americas.

If

we are to

go by

these

experiences,

we

have to admit that the

attainment of

enlightenment by

guilty

majorities

has been a

painfully

slow

process.

If the Nazi

Holocaust was

testimony

to the crisis of the

nation-state in Eu-

rope,

the Rwandan

genocide

is testi-

mony

to

the crisis of

citizenship

in

post-

colonial Africa.But if the Nazi Holocaust

breathed life into the Zionist demand

that

Jews

must have

a

political

home,

a

nation-state of their

own,

few have ar-

gued

that the

Rwandan

genocide

war-

rants the

establishment of a

Tutsi-land

in

the

region.

Indeed,

Europe

solved its

political crisis by exporting it to the

Middle

East,

but

Africa has no

place

to

export

its

political

crisis.

Thus,

the Tutsi

demand for a state

of

their

own

can-

not-and should

not-be met.

In

Rwanda,

as

elsewhere,

a

conflict can

end

only

when

the

victor reaches

out to

the

vanquished.

In

Rwanda,

as

elsewhere,

this

process

of

reconciliation

begins

when

both

groups

relinquish

claims to

Few have

argued

that

the Rwandan

genocide

warrants

the

establishment of a

Tutsi-land in

the

region.

Indeed,

Europe

solved

its Jewish

crisis

by

exporting

it

to the

Middle

East,

but Africa has no

place

to

export

its

political

crisis.

victimhood, embracing

their

identity

as

survivors.

In

this

sense,

survivor doesn't

just

refer to

surviving

victims-as it

does

in

the

rhetoric of the

Rwandan

govern-

ment.

In a

Rwanda

that has

truly

tran-

scended the racial

divisions of

colonial-

ism,

survivor will

refer to

all those who

continue to be

blessed

with life

in

the af-

termath of a civil

war.

Documents

Mamdani - A Breif History of Genocied