W.E.B.

Du Bois Institute

A Brief History of Genocide

Author(s): Mahmood Mamdani
Source: Transition, No. 87 (2001), pp. 26-47
Published by: Indiana University Press on behalf of the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3137437 .
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(I

Position

BRIEF

HISTORY

GENOCIDE

OF

MahmoodMamdani

Pierre-Laurent Sanner

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 country'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
Tutsi were muror their actions-the
dered because they were Tutsi. This is
why the killings of more than half a million 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:
afterwardshalt thou be gathered unto thy
people. And Moses spake unto the people, saying,Arm some of yourselves unto
the war, and let them go againstthe Midianites, and avenge the LORD of Midian.
... And they warred against the Midian26

TRANSITION

ISSUE

87

ites, as the LORD commanded Moses;

and they slew all the males" (Num.
3I:2-3,

7).

While the impulse to destroy an enemy is ancient, the technology of genocide is constantly evolving. The Nazi
Holocaust was a state-of-the-art mass
extermination. Jews were branded for
the purpose of identification and subjected to experimentation by Nazi doctors. The killing took place in industrial
compounds where the killers-the attendants-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 attempt to isolate those most guilty of its
crimes from their victims, the Rwandan
genocide was a much more intimate affair. It was carried out by hundreds of
thousands of people and witnessed by

"?

r?jrr

?P'4,rfl

I ,r
;t

Musinga,
king of the
RwandanTutsi,
c. 1916
Rwanda-Burundi
Service
Information

millions. A Rwandan government minister I met in I997 contrasted the two

horrors:"In Germany,"he said,"the Jews
were taken out of their residences,
moved to distant, faraway locations, 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."

28

TRANSITION ISSUE 87

As it happens, the Germans had developed their technique in Africa. In 1904,

German Southwest Africa-the territory that would ultimately become
Namibia-faced
a political crisis. The
future of the colony seemed suddenly
precarious; the Herero, a small agricultural people numbering some eighty

thousand,had taken up armsto defend

theirlandandcattleagainstGermansettlers.The governorof the territoryattempted to negotiate with the Herero,
but his subordinatespersuadedKaiser
Wilhelm II to replace him. General
Lotharvon Trotha,the Kaiser'schoice,
observedthat

movementof our troopswill enableus tofind

the small groups of the nation who have
movedbackwestwardsand destroythemgradually....

My intimate knowledge of many

centralAfricantribes(Bantu and others)has

everywhereconvincedme of the necessitythat
the Negro does not respecttreatiesbut only
bruteforce.

Under Trotha's command, German

andalsoafew old
theviewsof theGovernor
Africahandson theonehand,andmyviews infantry and artilleryopened an offensive
Thefirstwanted against the insurgents.As the Herero fled
ontheother,difercompletely.
sometimealreadyandregard the German assault,every avenue of esto negotiatefor
labourmater- cape was blocked, save one: the southeast
theHereronationas necessary
of thecountry. route, through the KalahariDesert. Their
ialforthefuturedevelopment
I believethatthenationassuchshouldbean- journey across the desert was a death
nihilated,
or,if thiswasnotpossibleby tacti- march: almost 80 percent of the Herero
haveto be expelledfrom the perished. This was not an accident, as a
cal measures,
meansandfurtherde- gleeful notice in Das Kampf,the official
countryby operative
will bepossibleif the publication of the German general staff,
This
treatment.
tailed
The constant attests:
. . . areoccupied.
water-holes

Missionaries at
the court of
KingMusinga,
c. 1916
Rwanda-Burundi
Information Service

Tutsi man
R. Bourgeois,
Congopresse

30

TRANSITION

ISSUE

87

R. P Vatn

P B.
Overschlelde

No efforts,no hardshipsweresparedin order

to deprivethe enemyof his last reservesof resistance; like a half-dead animal he was
huntedfromwater-holeto water-holeuntil he
becamea lethargicvictimof the natureof his
own country.The desertwas to completethe
workof the Germanarms:the annihilationof
the Hereropeople.
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 general 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 become Rwanda, Burundi, and Tanzania.
General Trotha often boasted of his own
prowess in colonial warfare."The exercise of violence with crassterrorism 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 missionaries in conjunction with the German

army.Overworked and hungry, susceptible to diseasessuch as typhoid and smallpox, 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 remaining Herero were distributed among settlers 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.

number.The
bearinga laborregistration
the
FirstWorld
until
continued
practice
War,when the Germanarmylost Southwest Africa.
The exterminationof the Hererowas
the firstgenocide of the twentiethcentury,and its connection to the Jewish
Holocaust is difficult to ignore.When
for
Trothasoughtto diffuseresponsibility
the genocide,he accusedthe missionsof

A BRIEF HISTORY OF GENOCIDE

31

,..

4 *

'IQ ,f

Ir
,
*1

The Rwandanroyal
family, c. 1916
Rwanda-Burundi
Information Service

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 investigated the "science" of race-mixing, experimenting 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 Principleof Human 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.

32

TRANSITION

ISSUE

87

In fact, the genocide of the Herero was

simply an extreme instance of the general tendencies of colonialism. The history 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 became African heroes because they dared
to kill whites.) Nobody understood the
genocidal impulse better than Frantz
Fanon, the Martinican-born psychoan-

The court of
King Musinga,
c. 1916
Rwlanda-Burundi
InfornmationService

alyst and Algerian freedom fighter. For

Fanon, native violence was not simply
destructive;it was also a kind of affirmation of life and dignity. "For he knows
that he is not an animal,"Fanon wrote in
The Wretchedof the Earth (1961), "and it
is precisely when he realizes his 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 violence. Native violence, he insisted, was
the violence of yesterday'svictims, peo-

A BRIEF HISTORY OF GENOCIDE

33

A Hutuman makes
a ritual offering of
beer to his Tutsl
master and
receives a cow
in return. To
celebrate, the
Hutuman dances
before the animal.
Pol Laval,RwandaBururndi
Information
Service

understands
thatthecolonialist
nothingbut

pie who had cast aside their victimhood

to become masters of their own lives:

force.

He of whom they have neverstoppedsaying

that the only languagehe understandsis that
offorce,decidestogive utterancebyforce ....
The argumentthe nativechooseshas beenfurnishedby the settler,and by an ironicturning
of the tablesit is the nativewho now affirms

For Fanon, proof of the native'shumanity 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

killing of settlers by natives, that was

neverthelessa derivativeoutcome:
Thesettler's
workis to makeevendreamsof
thenative.Thenative's
libertyimpossiblefor
workis to imagineallpossiblemethodsfor
destroyingthesettler... Forthenative,lifecan
onlyspringup againoutof therottingcorpse
ofthesettler....Forthecolonized
people,this
it
because
constitutes
theironlywork,
violence,
investstheircharacter
withpositiveandcreativequalities.
Thepractice
of violencebinds
themtogether
as a whole,sinceeachindividualformsa violentlinkin thegreatchain,a
partof thegreatorganism
of violencewhich
hassurgedupwards
in reaction
to thesettler's
violencein thebeginning.
On the day of reckoning,Trothawould
be answeredin kind.

From the beginning, colonialism presented itself as a civilizing missionwhat Kipling called "the white man's
burden."The Western colonial project
aimed to createa new society by building modern citiesand states,introducing
Westernlaw.Under directcolonialrule,
the law distinguisheda civilizedminority froma not-yet-civilizedmajority,giving rights to the minority while disenAndyet whether
franchizingthe majority.
rulersor ruled,Westerners
or non-Westerners,all those subjectto the power of
the statewould live within the realmof
civic law.This had the unintendedconsequence of racializingcolonial society,
makingrace the primarydifferencebetween colonizer and colonized,collapsing all other differences in its binary
logic.
Sooner or later,every colonialpower

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 enforced by its own "native authority"its chief-in its own "home area."In this
way, the aggregate category "native" was
legally abolished, and different kinds of
natives were created. The political aim
was to fracturethe native population into
ethnic groups. With each group governed through its own "customary law,"
a plural legal order produced plural political identities; these identities were said
to stem from tribes, cultures, and traditions that predated the colonial encounter. This shift to indirect rule signified a retreatfrom 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 ethnicity 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 civilization; ethnicity represented the diversity of uncivilized native peoples.
In this way the colonial state endeav-

A BRIEF HISTORY OF GENOCIDE

35

ored to supplant the political question of

native rights with the anthropological
question of native character.But the unbreachable 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.

Tutsi boy
Romain Baertsoen

ritory at the beginning of colonization-usually, sometime in the I88os,

during the scramble for Africa-was
generally considered a native.Those who
came after were treated as resident aliens,
strangers. In Uganda, for example, the
colonial state recognized the ethnic identities 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 colonizer and colonized. Alongside the master 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 discrimination, they were still considered part of
the world of rights, of civil law. The subject races were integrated into the machinery of colonial rule as agents and ad-

36

TRANSITION

ISSUE

87

ministrators in both the public and private sectors.And as such, they came to be
seen as both instruments and beneficiaries of colonialism, even as civil law codified 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 elsewhere, but the question of what distinguished other subject races from indigenous 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 culture. And South Africa's Coloureds were
identified by their mixture, through their
ancestral links to Asia, Africa, and Europe. 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 political fiction, not a historical or cultural
reality.

The postcolonial struggle forjustice-for

redress of colonial wrongs-raised a basic 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 colonial rule. As different forms of nationalor inclusive,
ism emerged-narrow
cultural or political, reactionary or progressive-each form arrived at a different understanding of what a settler was.
Was the settler experience based on im-

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Pol Laval,
Rwanda-Burundi
Service
Information

L7
~e~I

,r

migration, or on conquest? Was every border. I arrived at a village church made

of brick, roofed with iron sheets. Outnon-native a settler? If settlers had come
into being through conquest and owed side there was a wood and bamboo rack
their existence to a state that enforced bearing skulls. On the ground were assettler prerogative, then the abolition of sorted bones, collected and pressed tothat prerogative-and the state that en- gether inside sacks, sticking out of the
forced it-would
also abolish "settler" torn cloth. Ntarama is perhaps the most
and "native" as political identities. But if famous, and the most visited, of Rwanda's
settlers were created by migration, then killing fields; the church has become a
nothing less than repatriation would re- startingpoint for the growing number of
solve the settler question.
people who come to Rwanda to try to
The situation was inherently unstable. understand.
Inside the church, wooden planks
By establishing these infinitesimal distinctions in law, the colonial state created were placed on stones as makeshift
an array of indigenous and non-indigebenches.You could see a pile of belongnous identities. In postcolonial Africa, as ings-shoulder sacks, tattered clothing,
in colonial Africa, these identities were a towel, a wooden box, a cooking pot,
the fault lines along which political vioplastic mugs and plates, straw mats and
lence exploded. The violence started hats. Then bones, entire skeletons, all
with colonial pacification, which took
caught in the posture in which they had
on genocidal proportions when settlers died. Even a year after the genocide, the
set out to appropriate native land-as
air stank of blood and earth and rotten
with the Herero of southern Africa. But clothes-a vicious human mildew. The
political violence continued during the church wall was still covered with old
anticolonial struggle, although the initia- posters. They reminded me of the extive shifted from the settler to the native. hortations I had seen under other radiWhile it has been widely noted that the cal governments in the Third World.
most violent anticolonial struggles took One read, "Journee Internationale de
place in the colonies with the largest set- Femme"- International Women's Day.
tler populations (like Kenya, Rhodesia,
Below it, in boldface: "EGALITE. PAIX.
and Angola), few have noted that Africa's DEVELOPPEMENT."
worst postindependence violence has tarI was introduced to a man called Calgeted the former subject races:the Tutsi lixte who had survived the massacre at
in Rwanda in 1959, the Arabs in ZanzNtarama. He wore sandals made of rubibar in I963, the Asians in Uganda in ber sliced from worn-out automobile
once again, the Tutsi in tires; his clothes were old, but not torn.
I972-and,
Rwanda in 1994.
"On the seventh of April, in the morning, they started burning houses," he explained. "Only a few were killed. The
I visited Rwanda a year after the genoburning pushed us to this place. We
cide. Ntarama is about an hour and a half thought this was God's house; no one
by car from the capital, Kigali, on a dirt would attack us here. On the seventh,
road going south toward the Burundi
eighth, up to the tenth, we were fight-

A BRIEF HISTORY OF GENOCIDE

39

Funeralfor the
king, 1959
Vansinay,
Rwanda-Burundi
Service
Information

ing them. We were using stones. They

had pangas, spears, hammers, grenades.
On the tenth, their numbers increased.
On the fourteenth, we were pushed inside the church. The church was attacked
on the fourteenth and the fifteenth. The
actual killing was on the fifteenth.
"On the fifteenth, they brought Presidential Guards. They were brought in
from neighboring areasto support Interahamwe. Here, there were women, children, 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.

40

TRANSITION

ISSUE

87

"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

Female mlienjbers
of the royal court,
1957
H. Goldstein,
Congopresse

voice remainedsteadyand calm throughout

our conversation. I wondered whether
this was because he had related the story
many times before. "Tutsi women married 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 distribute grenades all around."
* * m

Colonial Rwanda was a halfway house

between direct and indirect rule, combining features of both. "Customary
laws" and "native authorities" were established 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 colonizedpopulation was splitin two, with the majority,
the Hutu, opposedto both Belgiansand
Tutsi.
Why was Rwandadifferent?The answers lie buried in the recessesof the
racistmind."Africaproper,"the philosopher Hegel said,"hasremained-for all
purposesof connectionwith the restof
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.
compressedwithin itself-the land of
childhood,which lying beyond the day
of conscioushistoryis envelopedin the
darkmantleof Night."
But the more Europeansgot to know
Africa,the less tenablebecame the notion that the Saharamarked the limit

A BRIEF HISTORY OF GENOCIDE

41

Presentation

of

the royal cow

herd, 1939
FromSociete,
culture et pouvoir
politique en Afrique
interlacustre:Hutu et
Tutsi de l'ancien
Rwanda by
P Kanyamachumbi
(Kinshasa,Democratic
Republicof the Congo:
EditionsSelect)

between night and day-between barbarismand civilization.Europeansencounteredconsiderableevidence of organizedlife on the continentbeforetheir

arrival.That evidence sometimes came
in the form of ruins,like the Sudanese
pyramidsor the stone walls at Great
Zimbabwe.It also came in the form of
highly developed Africansocieties like
the Kingdomof Rwanda,whose political history stretchedback hundredsof
years.Rwandabelied the racistconvic-

42

TRANSITION

ISSUE

87

tion that the nativeshad no civilization

of their own.
The colonialists' explanation-the
"Hamitichypothesis"-was ingenious:
every sign of "progress"on the Dark
Continentwastakenasproof of the civilizinginfluenceof an alienrace.Ancient
Egypt,Ethiopia,Rwanda:all these were
the work of an ancient Europeanrace,
the children of Ham-Noah's son, in
the Hebrew Bible. The Hamites were
taken to be black-skinnedCaucasians;

they wanderedacrossthe Africancontinent andruledovertheirracialinferiors,

the black-skinnedblacks.In 1870, at the
VaticanI council, a group of cardinals
called for a mission to centralAfricain
orderto rescue"haplessHamitescaught
amidst Negroes," to alleviate "the antique malediction weighing on the
shouldersof the misfortunateHamites
inhabitingthe hopelessNigricy."
In Rwanda,the Europeansidentified
the rulingTutsias Hamiticandthe Hutu
as Bantu-"real Africans"who served
the Tutsi. Of course, the Hamitic hypothesis failed to resolve some glaring
contradictions.While the term was introducedby linguiststo describethe languagesof the Hamiticpeoples,the Tutsi
spokeKinyarwanda(Rwandan),a Bantu
language.And althoughthe notion of a
Hamitic race implied a sharedphenotype-tall, thin,with aquilinenoses and
copperyskin-the speakersof Hamitic
languages included the blond-haired,
blue-eyed Berbersof north Africa.The
greatestdifficulty,perhaps,was that the
Hamites were supposed to be cattleherdingpastoralists,unlike the agriculturalistBantu.But by the second half of
the nineteenthcentury,manyTutsilived
just like their Hutu neighbors,without
cattle, working the land under Tutsi
overlords.
While numerous African peoples
were identified as Hamites-indeed,
threeof the precolonialpoliticalentities
that became Uganda were considered
Hamitic kingdoms-Rwanda was the
only colony where Hamitic ideology
came to be the law of the land.The foreignness of the Tutsi was institutionalized by a series of reformsthat embedded 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 dismantled. In the process, power was centralized;Western-style schools were opened,
and admission was largely limited to
Tutsi. Tutsi received an assimilationisteducation: 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 curriculum were called "Hamites.") The
underlying message was that Hutu were
not destined for citizenship.
* * *

In the I950s, as the struggle for decolonization raged across the African continent, Rwandan society began to splinter.
While the Tutsi agitated for independence-and a Tutsi state without Belgian masters-the Hutu made increasingly 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

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 attacksmounted by Tutsi exiles with violence against Tutsi who remained 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. Defending the revolution from Tutsi subversion 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 repudiated inegalitarian colonial rule without 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 under colonial rule. The revolution reversed "settler privilege"-replacing
reTutsi chiefs with Hutu-without
forming the concentrated power of the
native authority. It did introduce local
elections, thereby making Hutu func-

44

TRANSITION

ISSUE

87

tionaries accountable to their populations. But after 1972, the radical govern-

ment of the Second Republic eliminated

the local elections and re-created the
colonial authority-defined,
now, not
as
but
also
as
"revoluonly "customary"
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 demands seem irreconcilable.Irreconcilable
because ever since the colonial period,
violence has been motivated by a mutual
fear of victimhood. Every round of perpetrators hasjustified the use of violence
as the only effective guarantee against
being victimized yet again. The continuing tragedy of Rwanda is that each outbreak 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 guarantee 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 bitter 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 movementswhether monarchist or "tribalist," even
when identified with a brutal dictatorship such as that of Idi Amin-were
welcomed into the broad base, provided

Pol Laval,
Rwanda-Burundi
Information Service

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 radicalproposition: making a distinction 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 genocidaireis a narrow allegiance, 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
looked
for a final solution in the physical elimination of the Tutsi. The necessary distinction is one between ends and means,
A BRIEF HISTORY OF GENOCIDE

45

Romain Baertsoen

those
politics and ideology-between
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-

46

TRANSITION

ISSUE

87

sighted.It is an articleof faiththatpower

is the precondition for survival. But
Rwanda'sTutsi leadershipmay have to
considerthe oppositepossibility:thatthe
prerequisiteto cohabitation,reconciliation, and a common political future
might indeed be to give up its monopoly on power. Like the Arabsof Zanzibar,or even the whitesof SouthAfrica,
the Tutsi of Rwanda may also have to
learn that-so long as Hutu and Tutsi

exist as political identities-relinquishing 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 minority 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 erstwhile settler colonies of the New World
do we have a comparable history of violence-a history that has rendered the
majority guilty in the eyes of victimized
minorities. Such, indeed, has been the aftermath 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

If the Nazi Holocaust was testimony

to the crisis of the nation-state in Europe, the Rwandan genocide is testimony to the crisis of citizenship in postcolonial 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 argued that the Rwandan genocide warrants 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 cannot-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 government. In a Rwanda that has truly transcended the racial divisions of colonialism, "survivor"will refer to all those who
continue to be blessed with life in the aftermath of a civil war.

process.

A BRIEF HISTORY OF GENOCIDE

47