THE CAUSES OF TRIBAL HATRED, WHO BENEFITS THIS HATRED? WHY ARE AFRICANS SO COMMITTED TO IT? COULD THIS BE WHAT IS CALLED BLIND AMBITION?
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THOU SHALT KILL
First the colonialists took a united nation with a common culture and language and split
it down the middle on the basis of a mythical racial divide.
Then post-independence regimes converted this legacy into an institutionalised ideology of hatred. As Rwanda marks the eighth anniversary of the 1994 genocide, NDAHIRO TOM of the National Human Rights Commission names the demons who paved the way to that cruel April *
There are no more devils left in Hell; they are all in Rwanda,” a priest told one of the many foreign journalists who were in Rwanda during the 1994 genocide.
The orgy of murder in Rwanda remains profoundly unfathomable to most journalists and their readers around the world as if the gates of Hell had literally opened and for 100 horrible days unleashed a howling mob of pitiless demons on a helpless world.
In ancient Mesopotamia too, disastrous events were attributed to the evil influence of the demons, whose number was almost without limit. The only defence against them was sorcery. But to exorcise such a demon, the sorcerer had first to name it.
The causes of the Rwanda genocide are not difficult to identify. The names of the demons are the country’s post independence rulers who, with foreign support, perpetuated a colonial legacy.
But where were the angels? Who invited the devils into Rwanda and locked up the angels in heaven? Why did the world ignore the cries for help from the more than a million people victimised for over 35 years by the racist policies that culminated in the genocide?
Millennia of migration and cultural interaction had made Rwanda a nation hundreds of years before the advent of colonialism. As in all societies, there were divisions and differences based on modes of existence, which were in constant flux, but not on any notion of inferiority or superiority of any of the groups. Rwandans shared a national language, lived in the same
villages, intermarried, and believed in the same “Imana y’I Rwanda,” the national God.
After the Berlin Conference in 1884, Rwanda, like most of the rest of Africa, came under colonial rule. Missionaries and explorers, most of whom subscribed to 19th century notions of racist superiority that justified slavery and Christian evangelisation, flooded into Rwanda.
They developed myths that altered the national identity. Tutsis, whose occupation was said
to have been cattle keeping, were labelled descendants of the Aryan or Caucasoid race; and Hutus as cultivators were designated a Negroid or Bantu race. The colonialists decided, without of course bothering to consult them, that the former were “foreigners” from somewhere in the north of Africa and the latter the original inhabitants of the area.
Initially, the emphasis was on group differences based on physical appearance, accompanied by notions of superiority and inferiority. According to the establishment, heredity biology determined the two predominant Rwandan groups. It was taken for granted that behaviour, habits, attitudes and beliefs are determined before one is born. In the colonial schools and
administrative system, Hutus were excluded in favour of a few Tutsis. These discriminatory policies furthered the colonialists’ exploitative interests to the detriment of the future Rwanda.
Nor was colonial racism in Rwanda just a Hutu/Tutsi affair. The Islamic faith was systematically suppressed. The Islamophobia of the establishment comes out vividly in the letter Bishop Joseph Hirth wrote to the Superior General of the Congregation of White Fathers on January 25, 1910, justifying a plan to establish a missionary post in the would-be capital of Rwanda, Kigali. He stated that he did not want people there he considered to be the “worst elements”. According to his successor, Bishop Leon Classe, the “worst elements” were none other than Muslims. In his letter to the Superior General of April 28, 1911, he described Muslims as “immoral, and a source of misery and instability to inhabitants of commercial and administrative centres.” [P. Rutayisire, La Christianisation du Rwanda (1900-1945). Edition
Universitaires Fribourg, 1987 p. 24]
In the early 1930s, depending on the number of cows one had, new “ethnic” groups were introduced. If a man had less than 10 cows on census day, he became “Hutu,” and if he had more, he automatically was taken to be a “Tutsi.” This was the first invitation to the devils.
In 1959 a new definition of Rwandans emerged. In a pastoral letter “in the name of love,” Catholic Bishop Andr Perraudin grouped Rwandans into “races.”
Nazism, stamped out in Europe, had arrived in the tropics. Tropical Nazism was officially implemented in identity cards, entrenched in schools and offices through quotas, and later glorified as a shining example of Western democracy and order. Rwanda’s identity was thus transmuted, and as a direct result, the country was divided, ruined and destroyed.
By now, the establishment had done a cynical flip-flop and Hutus were in favour. The Catholic Centre at Kabgayi, the residence of Bishop Perraudin, was used to spread Hutu propaganda. [African Newsletter, Research Centre on Socio-Political Information in Brussels, February 5,1960.] The report of the international commission of inquiry on the November 1959 unrest in Rwanda also clearly noted: “The Belgian authorities exercised a decisive impact on the evolution of unrest in certain chiefdoms, in the north of Rwanda, practically no Tutsi household was saved. The resistance organised by the Tutsi leadership was quickly suppressed by military action undertaken by the Belgian government.” The revolutionaries’ slogan at that time was “Long live Belgium,” and as of 1960 they declared they wanted 25 years more under colonial rule.
The racist mayhem perpetrated in the so-called Hutu revolution, assisted by missionaries, Belgian administrators and the army, saw the first wave of African refugees in their thousands streaming from Rwanda into neighbouring countries themselves still under colonial rule. Throughout the early 1960s, while Tutsis were being massacred and expelled, the “international community” maintained a studious silence, despite its physical presence in
Rwanda in the form of the United Nations observers.
After independence, Rwandans continued to be schooled to be submissive. They went along with the colonial definition of who they should be, how they should behave and what they should think of themselves. Through schools, institutes of higher learning, churches and the media, “intellectual” ideologues (including priests) developed and multiplied all sorts of pejorative stereotypes inherited from the colonialists to describe the Hutu and Tutsi.
So a Hutu was, according to where you stood, a Bantu, a good Christian, pro-white, an aborigine, an authentic Negro, a docile worker, a simplistic small-Negro, a victim of oppression, a slave, vulgar/lowly, indigenous, a serf, a cultivator, a peasant and a beast of burden.”
On the other hand, a Tutsi was branded a Hamite, a Communist, anti-white men, the white man’s rival, the white man’s cousin, lazy, a cockroach, intelligent/cunning, a giant, an oppressor, a noble lord, an invader, feudal, a cattle-keeper, an aristocrat born to rule.”
This is how post-independence governments continued the colonial legacy of racism and division in Rwanda. Their first priority was the consolidation of hate and methods of eliminating their “enemies.” The false theory promulgated by the missionaries and colonial administration that the Tutsi had grossly exploited the Hutu for centuries continued to mould Hutu comprehension of Rwandan history and eventually became the primary ideological justification for genocide.
The former president of Rwanda, Pasteur Bizimungu, says: “Quite interestingly, since 1959, when the cover-up strategy relegated the Tutsis to underclass status, some Hutus have developed an aristocratic mentality. It is in this connection that some leaders today consider co-operation with Tutsis a form of abasement since the Tutsis are perceived as the underdogs. Since 1959, the theory developed is that the Hutus are born to rule. All these stereotypes, which are still being repeated and which have had an unprecedented impact on the people of Rwanda, are rubbish” [opening speech at a seminar on Joint Evaluation of Emergency Assistance to Rwanda, September 10, 1996].
Indeed, the hate-schemes had become regular and systemic. It had become a virtue to make them public, as for example in the “10 Hutu commandments” published in Kangura magazine No. 6 of December 10, 1990:
“One, every Muhutu should know that a Mututsi woman, wherever she is, works for the interest of the Tutsi ethnic group. As a result, we shall consider a traitor any Muhutu who marries a Tutsi woman; befriends a Tutsi woman; employs a Tutsi woman as a secretary or a concubine.
“Two, every Muhutu should know that our Hutu daughters are more suitable and conscientious in their role as woman, wife and mother of the family. Are they not beautiful, good secretaries and more honest?”
The third commandment exhorted the Bahutu women to be vigilant and try to bring their husbands, brothers and sons back to reason; and the fourth reminded every Muhutu, “Know that every Mututsi is dishonest in business” his only aim is the supremacy of his ethnic group. As a result, any Muhutu who does the following is a traitor: makes a partnership with Batutsi in business; invests his money or the government’s money in a Tutsi enterprise; lends or borrows money from a Mututsi; and, gives favours to Batutsi in business (obtaining import licenses, bank loans, construction sites, public markets, etc.)”
The fifth, sixth and seventh commandments respectively advocated that: All strategic positions, political, administrative, economic, military and security, be entrusted to Bahutu; that the education sector (school pupils, students, teachers) must be majority Hutu; and the Rwandans Armed Forces should be exclusively Hutu.
The eighth expounded on the “lessons” of the October 1990 war, which were that no member of the military should marry a Tutsi; and that the Bahutu should stop having mercy on the Batutsi.
The ninth commandment compelled the Bahutu, wherever they were, to be concerned with the fate of their Hutu brothers. And for that matter, the Bahutu inside and outside Rwanda must constantly look for friends and allies for the Hutu cause, starting with their Bantu brothers; must constantly counteract the Tutsi propaganda; and, must be firm and vigilant against their common Tutsi enemy.
The tenth decree, affirmed that the “social revolution of 1959, the Referendum of 1961, and the Hutu Ideology, must be taught to every Muhutu at every level. Every Hutu must spread this ideology widely. Any Muhutu who persecutes his brother Muhutu for having read, spread and taught this ideology is a traitor.”
This commandment was the inspiration for Bikindi Simon’s abhorrent song, “nanga abahutu batibuka” (I hate Hutus who do not remember). This song dominated the airwaves of Radio T l vision Libre des Mille Collines (RTLM), which was instrumental in inciting hatred before and during the genocide (See story on page 3). The composer was recently indicted by the
International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR).
The language of the “Ten Commandments” was intended to prepare the grounds for genocide in a predominantly “Christian” country. Such articles of faith-cum-instructions reflected an ethnocentric theory made public. Many were official policies for decades.
From then, various state-sponsored news media overtly called for the killing of Tutsis. There are many areas in Rwanda today where you find few or no survivors, because individuals killed their husbands/wives and children for lack of “required purity.” Others were involved or conspired in the killing of their parents, brothers, sisters and other close relatives thought to
have betrayed some of the “Hutu Commandments.”
In his letter dated September 21, 1992, the Army Commander, Colonel Deogratias Nsabimana, was forwarding a document prepared and signed by a committee of 10 officers giving a “contemporary” definition of the term “enemy.” According to this document, which was intended for the widest possible dissemination, the enemy fell into two categories, namely, “the primary enemy” and the “enemy supporter.” The primary enemy was defined as “the extremist Tutsi within the country or abroad who are nostalgic for power and who have never acknowledged and still do not acknowledge the realities of the Social Revolution of 1959, and who wish to regain power in Rwanda by all possible means, including the use of weapons.”
On the other hand, the document clarified that the enemy supporter was “anyone who lent support in whatever form to the primary enemy.” It also stated that the primary enemy and their supporters came mostly from social groups comprising, in particular, “Tutsi refugees,” “Tutsi within the country,” “Hutus dissatisfied with the current regime,” “Foreigners married to Tutsi women” and the “Nilotic-Hamitic tribes in the region.”
This identification of “primary enemy” and “enemy supporter” led to yet another way of categorising an individual as a Tutsi. This time, the Interahamwe militia were the ones deciding who was a Tutsi. As Prof William Schabas says, “In Rwanda, the Belgian colonisers had defined ethnic Tutsis as those possessing a certain number of cattle. The determinations were made 60 or 70 years ago, then inscribed on identity cards, and passed from parents to children according to customary rules. In 1994, individuals were Tutsis if the interahamwe militia said they were.” [W. Schabas, The Genocide Convention at Fifty, Special Lecture, International Institute of Human Rights-Strasbourg, July 9, 1999].
Ordinary persons accepted the army’s definition of the enemy. A prosecution witness, who has confessed his participation in the genocide, last year told the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) that they killed Tutsis because it was “a period of war,” and that they were fighting against the Tutsi who were their “enemies.” “We were fighting the Tutsi and also their accomplices. Civilians were the ones targeted but even Tutsi soldiers were killed,” he said. [Internews, Cyangugu Trial, September 17, 2001]
On the November 22, 1992, Dr Mugesera Leon, now a fugitive from justice, in Canada, made a speech in which he was equally unambiguous about the targeted group in the 1994 genocide. He publicly urged the Hutu to destroy the Tutsi and return them to their mythical ancestral home “via the short cut of the Nyabarongo River,” which feeds into the rivers of the Nile watershed. In that speech, Mugesera, a PhD graduate from Canada who worked with the ruling party MRND and the Ministry for the Family and Promotion of Women, mobilised the business community “to finance operations aiming to eliminate the (Tutsi) people.” And, he remarked, “The fatal error of 1959 was in letting them get away.” He sounded like the Nazi Marshal von Rundstedt who regretted that one of the “great mistakes of 1918 was to spare the civil life of the enemy countries.” The aim of this annihilator was “to always keep the number of Germans at least double the numbers of the peoples of the contiguous countries!”
ENDS
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