Martin Henry APRIL 1994 was a particularly busy month on the African continent. South Africa was busy with its first multi-racial elections which formally ended apartheid. In the Great Lakes region of east-central Africa one of the great tragedies of human history was getting under way in Rwanda. Over the next three months anywhere between 500,000 and 800,000 people were massacred in one of the world's worst cases of genocide.
Why did neighbours, friends and family members turn against each other so savagely? Racism, exacerbated by colonialism, played a leading role in the dreadful machete work of the genocide. Rwanda has three ethnic groups: the original Twa, now a tiny minority of under one per cent. The majority Hutus. And the Tutsis who colonised the area hundreds of years ago and constitute about 15 per cent of the population - before the genocide directed against them.
The Tutsi minority, mostly herders, for centuries dominated the Hutu, who were farmers. In the European colonial scramble for Africa, the Germans colonised Rwanda and neighbouring Burundi. When Germany was defeated in World War I, The League of Nations gave Belgium control over the territory. The United Nations gave Belgium trusteeship over the country after the second World War.
CIVIL WAR
In 1959, a civil war broke out and the Hutus brought an end to Tutsi domination. Many Tutsis went into exile, mostly to neighbouring Uganda. Belgium's trusteeship formally ended in 1962 and Rwanda became independent under Hutu leadership. In 1963, Tutsi exiles invaded Rwanda. The unsuccessful coup attempt sparked off a large-scale massacre of Tutsis, one of many in a history of bitter ethnic conflict. Juvenal Habyaramana took power in a bloodless coup in 1973 In 1990, the Tutsi-led Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) invaded Rwanda from Uganda. Three years later, the Hutu-dominated Rwandan government and the Tutsi rebels agreed to establish a multiparty democracy and to share power. But President Habyaramana, facing strong pressure from his Hutu supporters, was reluctant to implement the agreement.
On April 6, 1994, President Habyaramana went to neighbouring Tanzania for peace talks where he agreed to speed up the transition to democracy. On the way back his plane was shot down by unknown assailants and both he and the Burundian president aboard were killed. Within an hour of the crash, radical Hutus erected barricades in the capital Kigali and the systematic slaughter began. The killing was easy. All Rwandans were required to carry identification cards bearing an ethnic identity. The killing squads knew their targets. UN peacekeepers present in the country to monitor the peace accord were ordered into barracks. French and Italian troops evacuated foreigners and departed. Moderate leadership in the coalition government were slaughtered early. Machetes had been quietly stockpiled by extremist Hutus in Habyaramana's own government, and killer squads recruited for the 'final solution' to the threat of Tutsi dominance.
The long-standing tensions between Hutus and Tutsis masters were exacerbated by colonial policy. European civil servants and missionaries were proponents of the Hamitic thesis. According to this view, everything of value in Africa had been introduced by the Hamites, a branch of the Caucasian race. This hypothesis found special favour with racist Europeans since it allowed for linking physical characteristics with mental capacity. Hamites supposedly born to be leaders, in principle, had the right to a history and a future almost as noble as that of their European cousins. In Rwanda, the Hamites were the Tutsis who were already in a position of dominance and who had some Caucasoid features.
In 1935 Belgium introduced a discriminatory national identification based on ethnicity. The Church, as a vital part of the colonial system, was very much a party to the system of discrimination. Monsignor Leon-Paul Classe, the Vicar Apostolic to Rwanda, wrote to Georges Mortehan, the Belgian Resident Commissioner in 1927, to say, "If we want to be practical and look after the real interest of the country we shall find a remarkable element of progress with the Mututsi youth. Ask the Bahutu whether they prefer to be given orders by uncouth persons or by nobles and the answer will be clear: they will prefer the Batutsi, and quite rightly so. Born chiefs, the latter have a knack of giving orders. Here lies the secret of how they managed to settle in this country and hold it in their grip.
Responding to what he regarded as "hesitations and foot-dragging of the colonial administration", Monsignor Classe issued a stern warning three years later. "The greatest harm the government could possibly inflict on itself and on the country would be to do away with the Mututsi caste. Such a revolution would lead the country straight into anarchy and towards a viciously anti-European communism. Far from achieving progress, this will annihilate any action taken by the government for the latter would be deprived of auxiliaries who are born capable of comprehension and obedience. As a rule, we cannot possibly have chiefs who'd be better, more intelligent, more active, more capable of understanding the idea of progress and even more likely to be accepted by the population, than the Batutsi". The Hutu chiefs and deputy-chiefs were removed and replaced by Tutsi. The possibilities of most Hutu were further limited by the discrimination introduced in the Church schools, which was the dominant educational system during the colonial period. Tutsi became increasingly enrolled in mission schools and, generally, Hutu received only the education required for manual work.
The rebel Tutsi army, the RPF, captured Kigali in July 1994 and terminated the butchery. Current President Paul Kagame was a rebel army leader. At 10th anniversary commemoration he said, "God forbid, but if a similar situation was to occur anywhere else- when that duty calls to protect people who are caught up in a genocide, please enlist us, we will be available to come and fight to protect those who will be targeted." God forbid, but if history repeats itself, Kigame's forces may not have to leave the Rwanda/Burundi area to find anti-genocidal engagement.
Martin Henry is a communication specialist.
