AllAfrica.com, Africa
June 27 2005
The Spread of the Genocide Ideology Within the Great Lakes Region:
Challenges for Rwanda
The New Times (Kigali)
OPINION
June 27, 2005
Brig. Gen. Frank K. Rusagara
Kigali
………….Continuation .
4) The RPF/A’s Anti-racist struggle
In the period after the overthrow of Idi Amin in Uganda in 1979, the
Rwandan refugees in the country were scapegoated and at times blamed
for the excesses of the Idi Amin regime. And when the National
Resistance Movement started the guerrilla campaign in 1981, President
Obote blamed Rwandans for supporting Museveni who derogatorily was
being referred to as a Rwandan and therefore a refugee or alien.
Come 1982, Rwandan refugees in Uganda alongside some Kinyarwanda
speakers in the country were expelled, thereby disenfranchising the
latter. These Rwandan refugees and Uganda Rwandaphones found
themselves stranded and were refused entry into Rwanda by the
Habyarimana Government. This provoked a new sense of Rwandan
nationalism within the region. In the meantime, the Habyarimana
regime tightened its noose around the Tutsi in Rwanda, the perennial
enemies of the regime. Thus the “racial” hatred within Rwanda
deepened under government orchestration with continued Tutsi pogroms.
Against this background the Rwanda Patriotic Front was formed to end
the discrimination and gain back their natural, inalienable rights as
Rwandan citizens, even if it meant use of force. The continued
pogroms in and outside Rwanda led to the RPF gaining in strength and
membership. It also led to the RPF resolve to end the regional
conspiracy and menace against the Rwandans through armed struggle,
beginning with the October 1990 RPF invasion of Rwanda.
It was with this invasion, however, that the Habyarimana regime felt
persuaded to put in place a genocidal machinery that was informed by
the entrenched racial ideology against the Tutsi. In time, with the
other RPF struggles to prevent Tutsi killings, there would come into
being the 1993 Arusha Peace Agreement between the Government of
Rwanda and the RPF, which was brokered by the International community
within the Great Lakes context to prevent further bloodshed.
Arusha was an African initiative in which both the OAU and several
African states played a central role. The president of Tanzania was
the facilitator of the process. But western nations were involved as
well, including just about every party that should have some
presence. The OAU was instrumental not only in bringing the parties
to the bargaining table, but also in setting an agenda that addressed
the imagined root causes of the conflict.
In a series of separate negotiations, most of the major issues were
tackled: the establishment of the rule of law and a culture of human
rights; power sharing in all public institutions; the transitional
arrangements that would obtain until elections were held; the
repatriation of refugees; the resettlement of internally displaced
persons; and, the integration of the two opposing armies.
The Arusha Protocol III on military integration was the most
difficult part of the negotiations, as it was based on ethnically
perceived quotas that would still ensure the Hutu domination of the
military. For instance, the RPF/A were allotted 40% of the men in the
military, and the FAR 60% on the understanding that the former were
Tutsi and the latter Hutu. This illustrates how the root cause of the
conflict, that is, the constructed racism, was not addressed, but
used as part of the solution by allotting quotas to the supposed
different people and parties.
Thus, the Arusha Peace Agreement could not prevent the 1994 Rwanda
genocide that led to over one million people dead. That is despite
the warning of Colonel Theoneste Bagosora, the Rwanda Government
chief negotiator, about the “apocalypse deux” after the signing of
the Agreement. The aftermath of that “apocalypse”, also saw the
massive exodus of 2.5 million Rwandan refugees into the region.
Alongside, the refugees was the fleeing genocidaire Government that
in exile would only rekindle the latent “racial” divisions in the
already fragile Great Lakes Region.
5) Post-genocide Rwanda in the DRC
As the situation unfolded, the genocidal forces continued their
“racial” mission in the Kivus with the complicity of the Mobutu
government and the French collaboration through the Turquoise
arrangement. There followed UN resolutions in which it was
acknowledged that the Interhamwe and ex-FAR were a menace in the DRC
and continued their genocide ideology, as illustrated in the killing
of the Tutsi in the Kivu region. The targeted Congolese Tutsi fled to
Rwanda in 1995 and 96 and settled in Gisenyi Prefecture. When the
insurgency broke out in Rwanda in 1997 and 98, these Congolese Tutsi
and their Rwandan brethren were targeted by the ex-FAR and
Interahamwe insurgents.
At the same time, the 2.5 million Rwandan refugees in the Kivus were
held hostage by the genocidaire military, who converted humanitarian
assistance into military hardware to destabilize the new government
in Rwanda. This called for preemptive attacks on the ex-FAR and
Interahamwe bases in the refugee camps in 1996. It resulted in the
repatriation of the 2.5 million Rwandan refugees and the eventual
overthrow of Mobutu. Laurent Desiré Kabila was installed the new
President of Zaire in May 1997.
Despite the propping up of Kabila as an ally in Rwanda’s intention to
neutralize the genocidaire forces, Kabila reneged on “a gentleman’s
agreement” and turned around to support the Interahamwe and ex-FAR.
This resulted into increased insurgency operations in North and
Western Rwanda in the years 1997 and 1998, taking advantage of the
security vacuum created by the increased Rwanda Patriotic Army
deployment in the DRC. In August 1998, the RPA relaunched into
Eastern Congo to deny the insurgents in the North and Western Rwanda
a rear base and supply of arms from Laurent Kabila.
Meanwhile, the same security concerns predicated on the racist
paradigm in the genocide ideology of the ex-FAR and the Interahamwe
reappeared under Laurent Kabila’s sponsorship, this time pleading a
Tutsi/Hima (Rwanda/Uganda) conspiracy against his regime. This
“racist” interpretation found sympathy with President Mugabe of
Zimbabwe, himself a professed victim of white racism, and, as Mamdani
would say, informed his “conservative nationalism” that saw the
replacement of the “settler prerogative” with the “native
prerogative” demonstrated in the current Zimbabwe land policy.
However, the Zimbabwean opposition saw Mugabe’s intervention in Congo
as a ploy to scapegoat his domestic problems while pleading
pan-Africanism.
Mugabe used his position as the Chairman of the SADC Military
Commission to draw into the conflict countries that included Namibia
and Angola. In the case of Angola, however, their involvement was
subject to Laurent Kabila denying Jonas Savimbi of UNITA a rear base
in Congo. The conflict, pitting Uganda and Rwanda on one side, and
all the above countries on the other, led to the Lusaka Peace
Agreement of July 1999. Some of the provisions in the agreement
included the withdrawal of all foreign troops from Congo.
6) Regional Peace Initiatives
In the case of the Rwanda, the Rwanda Defense Forces’ withdrawal was
subject to the disarmament, demobilization, re-assemblement and
repatriation (DDRR) of the ex-FAR and the Interahamwe. Implementation
of the agreement stalled, leading to Rwanda’s unilateral withdrawal
in October 2002. This means that the issue of the ex-FAR and the
Interahamwe and their genocidal racist ideology remains unresolved,
as they continue to receive unqualified support from President Joseph
Kabila, who took over from his assassinated father.
South Africa, being a regional power with economic interests in the
Congo, has of late become a dominant actor in the Great Lakes
conflict system. Unfortunately, in pursuing its national interests
South Africa is blind to the racist paradigm within the region’s
conflict system as exemplified by the ex-FAR and Interahamwe bigotry
with complicity from Kabila.
South Africa fails to grasp that the false racial paradigm in the
Great Lakes Region, unlike in Zimbabwe and South Africa, is not as it
used to be in black against white and vice versa, but an enduring
colonial construct of false white (Tutsi) against Negroid Bantu
(Hutu) black, as typified by the perpetual nationality debate in the
DRC.
Likewise, the current Burundi peace process which is facilitated by
the former Vice President, Jacob Zuma, ironically recognizes the
Tutsi and Hutu as separate institutions (i.e. political parties,
quotas in the military, etc) and therefore antagonistic parties in
the conflict. This is predicated on the wrong premise that this is a
civil war between the Hutu and Tutsi, when it really is a power
struggle between elites thriving on the ignorance of the Burundi
masses and peasantry.
Challenges for Rwanda
This Hutu-Tutsi dichotomy entails the security dilemma in Burundi and
the region through the balkanization and institutionalization of the
political life along the unsustainable racial constructs, which find
expression in the current political parties and quotas in the
national army in Burundi. How can a sectarian Hutu or Tutsi party or
army serve national interests? It can only be a recipe for continued
antagonisms and conflict locally and in the region. A clear example
of this is the recent massacres of the Congolese Tutsi in Gatumba
Refugee Camp in Burundi by the FNL/PALIPEHUTU party militia. Our
experience in Rwanda is that the Tutsi genocide may not have
happened, had it not been for the sectarian Hutu military that
planned and executed it. This genocide has continued to be a
challenge for Rwanda.
The challenges for Rwanda, however, are both internal and external,
and are defined by the genocide ideology. But these internal and
external challenges are intertwined in the solution for Rwanda and
the region. In other words, charity must begin at home, which means
that regional integration must be preceded by national integration.
The Rwandan genocide entailed disintegration and collapse of the
state, leaving the Government with no resources to address the
socio-economic concerns of the population – a population that was
desperately wretched and polarized by the very act of the genocide.
The complexity and peculiarity of the Rwandan genocide was that it
was between close relatives, in which siblings set on each other and
neighbour killed neighbour.
Contrasting it to the Holocaust or the Armenian genocide, the Germans
decimated the Jews and the Turks the Armenians. In both of these
cases there was a socio-cultural difference between the victims and
perpetrators, as opposed to Rwanda which had none whatsoever between
its people.
While the Armenian and Jewish survivors found a solution by going
home or finding place to run to, the Rwandans had nowhere else to go
and had to live with each other. Given that dilemma, it was through
the dynamism of the Rwandan heritage, that a homegrown solution had
to be found in the Gacaca as a re-integration mechanism.
Through this all-inclusive process of intra-community mediation,
Rwanda is being re-born through reconciliation predicated on truth
and justice. This will ensure the unity of a people, in whose
strength, even the external challenges such as those posed by the
unrepentant Interahamwe and their cohort genocidaires will be
checked.
To achieve that national unity and re-integration, the Gacaca as a
people-driven process will provide the renaissance or rebirth of the
nation in the aftermath of colonialism and the genocide. To this end,
there is a six step approach in the Gacaca’s overall strategy.
These are “the coming out with the truth among the stakeholders;
” the administration of justice;
” dispelling any perceptions of impunity;
” the collective ownership of the tragedy;
” reconciliation through the concept of intra-community conflict
mediation; and,
” socio-economic and political development, both at the individual
and national level.
In this entire process, the truth forms the basis of success of the
six step Gacaca strategy towards national integration. There are some
truths, foremost of which is the truth about the unity of the Rwandan
nation. It is this truth that has all along eluded Rwandans and many
Rwanda scholars, since the coming of the colonialists. It has been
about the Rwandan identity and how Rwandans historically related to
each other. It includes the truth about their social relations and
the alleged “historical wounds” that continue to impact on the
current social discourse. It is also the truth about the social
categorization of Rwandans into different races. There is also the
truth about colonial reconstruction of the Rwandan society that
forced Rwandans into their own self-denial as one people, their
heritage and historical social institutions.
These distortions of the truth form the bedrock of the colonial
racist ideology that informed the Rwandan genocide. Unless, and
until, we understand these complexities of the truth, reconciliation
and re-integration may not be possible in Rwanda.
Regionally, it remains the same that unless the truth of the Rwandan
genocide and the racist ideology behind it is understood, it will
continue to pose a challenge not just for Rwanda, but for the region
and the world at large. The fact that the Interahamwe genocidaires
can find sanctuary in the region underlies the manifest indifferences
and complicity to the genocide ideology in the region.
Conclusion
If Rwanda could sell the genocide ideology to the region, so can
Rwanda sell its example of national unity and re-integration. Rwanda
has started by “de-racializing” its society and being
all-integrative, so that citizenship is not based on descent but
residence. In other words, you are citizen of Rwanda because you say
so. Rwanda therefore is a microcosm of what an integrated Great Lakes
Region could be.
That is our hope and, I believe, the very reason for this forum.
This article was based a presentation at the just concluded Amani
Forum Regional Conference on the Causes and Consequences of the
Rwanda Genocide on 18th June, 2005.
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