A Brief History of Genocide

Author(s): Mahmood Mamdani

Source: Transition , 2001, No. 87 (2001), pp. 26-47
Published by: Indiana University Press on behalf of the Hutchins Center for African
and African American Research at Harvard University

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/3137437

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 (I Position

A BRIEF HISTORY OF GENOCIDE

Mahmood Mamdani

ites, as the LORD commanded Moses;

No one can be sure how many people
and
were slaughtered in Rwanda in 1994. Inthey slew all the males" (Num.
3I:2-3, 7).
one hundred days, a group of military
While the impulse to destroy an en-
and civilian leaders organized the coun-
emy is ancient, the technology of geno-
try's Hutu majority to eliminate its Tutsi
minority. They killed many Hutu,cide
as is constantly evolving. The Nazi
Holocaust
well: anyone who showed reluctance to was a state-of-the-art mass

perform what was considered to beextermination.

his Jews were branded for
or her national duty became a target.the
Butpurpose of identification and sub-
whereas these Hutu were murdered as jected to experimentation by Nazi doc-
individuals-butchered for their beliefs tors. The killing took place in industrial
or their actions-the Tutsi were mur- compounds where the killers-the at-
dered because they were Tutsi. This tendants-simply
is sprinkled Zyklon-B
crystals into the gas chambers. The
why the killings of more than half a mil-
lion Rwandan Tutsi between March and whole genocidal apparatus functioned
July of 1994 must be called genocide. with bureaucratic efficiency.
The genocidal impulse may be as old The Rwandan genocide, on the other
as organized power. In the Hebrew hand, was rather old-fashioned. It was
Bible, Moses obeyed God's command to carried out with machetes rather than
exterminate a foreign people: "Avenge chemicals; street corners, living rooms,
the children of Israel of the Midianites: and churches became places of death.
afterward shalt thou be gathered unto thy Whereas Nazi Germany made every at-
people. And Moses spake unto the peo- tempt to isolate those most guilty of its
ple, saying, Arm some of yourselves unto crimes from their victims, the Rwandan
the war, and let them go against the Mid- genocide was a much more intimate af-
ianites, and avenge the LORD of Midian. fair. It was carried out by hundreds of
Pierre-Laurent Sanner
... And they warred against the Midian- thousands of people and witnessed by

26 TRANSITION ISSUE 87

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 "?

r?jrr

I ,r
;t

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Musinga,
king of the
Rwandan Tutsi,
c. 1916

Rwanda-Burundi

Information Service

millions. A Rwandan government min-

ister I met in I997 contrasted the two
As it happens, the Germans had devel-
horrors: "In Germany," he said, "the Jews
oped their technique in Africa. In 1904,
were taken out of their residences, German Southwest Africa-the terri-
moved to distant, faraway locations, and
tory that would ultimately become
killed there, almost anonymously. In
Namibia-faced a political crisis. The
Rwanda, the government did not kill. It
future of the colony seemed suddenly
prepared the population, enraged it and
precarious; the Herero, a small agricul-
enticed it.Your neighbors killed you."
tural people numbering some eighty

28 TRANSITION ISSUE 87

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thousand, had taken up arms to defend movement of our troops will enable us tofind

their land and cattle against German set- the small groups of the nation who have
tlers. The governor of the territory at- moved back westwards and destroy them grad-

tempted to negotiate with the Herero, ually.... My intimate knowledge of many

but his subordinates persuaded Kaiser central African tribes (Bantu and others) has
Wilhelm II to replace him. General everywhere convinced me of the necessity that
Lothar von Trotha, the Kaiser's choice, the Negro does not respect treaties but only
observed that brute force.

the views of the Governor and also afew old
Africa hands on the one hand, and my views
on the other, difer completely. The first wanted
to negotiatefor some time already and regard
the Herero nation as necessary labour mater-
ialfor thefuture development of the country.
I believe that the nation as such should be an-
nihilated, or, if this was not possible by tacti-
cal measures, have to be expelled from the
country by operative means and further de-
Under Trotha's command, German
infantry and artillery opened an offensive
against the 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
Missionaries at
march: almost 80 percent of the Herero the court of
perished. This was not an accident, as a King Musinga,
gleeful notice in Das Kampf, the official c. 1916

tailed treatment. This will be possible if the publication of the German general staff, Rwanda-Burundi

water-holes . . . are occupied. The constant attests: Information Service

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Tutsi man

R. Bourgeois,
Congopresse

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 R. P Vatn
Overschlelde P B.

No efforts, no hardships were spared in order army. Overworked and hungry, suscepti-
to deprive the enemy of his last reserves of re- ble to diseases such as typhoid and small-
sistance; like a half-dead animal he was pox, many more Herero perished in the
huntedfrom water-hole to water-hole until he camps. Herero women were taken as sex
became a lethargic victim of the nature of his slaves by German soldiers. When the
own country. The desert was to complete the camps were closed in 19o8, the remain-
work of the German arms: the annihilation of ing Herero were distributed among set-
the Herero people. tlers as laborers. Henceforth, all Herero
over the age of seven were required to
Lest the reader be tempted to dismiss wear a metal disc around their neck
Trotha as a monster from the lunatic
The extermination of the Herero in 1904
fringe of the German officer corps given
a free hand in a distant and unimportant was the first genocide of the twentieth
colony, it should be noted that the gen-
century. It was in the Herero
eral had a distinguished record. In I900
he had been involved in suppressing the concentration camps that the German
Boxer Rebellion in China, and he was a
veteran of "pacification campaigns" geneticist Eugene Fischer first
throughout the colonies that would be- investigated the "science" of race-mixing.
come Rwanda, Burundi, and Tanzania.
General Trotha often boasted of his own bearing a labor registration number. The
prowess in colonial warfare. "The exer-practice continued until the First World
cise of violence with crass terrorism and War, when the German army lost South-

even with gruesomeness was and is mywest Africa.

policy," he wrote. "I destroy the African The extermination of the Herero was
tribes with streams of blood and streams the first genocide of the twentieth cen-

of money." tury, and its connection to the Jewish

The surviving Herero were rounded Holocaust is difficult to ignore. When
up and placed in camps run by mission- Trotha sought to diffuse responsibility for
aries in conjunction with the German the genocide, he accused the missions of

A BRIEF HISTORY OF GENOCIDE 31

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 ,..

4 * 'IQ ,f

Ir ,

The Rwandan royal

family, c. 1916
In fact, the genocide of the Herero was
Rwanda-Burundi Testament." And it was in the Herero
Information Service
simply an extreme instance of the gen-
concentration camps that the German
eral tendencies of colonialism. The his-
geneticist Eugene Fischer first investi-
tory of European colonies is rife with
gated the "science" of race-mixing, ex-
massacres and forced marches, conscript
perimenting on both the Herero and the
labor and expulsions. Colonial powers
half-German children born to Herero
often stopped at nothing to subdue their
women. Fischer argued that the Herero
restive populations; "annihilation" was
"mulattos" were physically and mentally
always an option.
inferior to their German parents. Hitler The reverse-the extermination of
read Fischer's book, The Principle of Hu-
colonizers by natives-never came to
man Heredity and Race Hygiene (I92I),
pass, although it always hovered on the
while he was in prison. The Fiihrer
horizon as a historical possibility. (The
eventually made Fischer rector of the
Mau Mau rebels in colonial Kenya be-
University of Berlin, where he taught
came African heroes because they dared
medicine. One of his prominent students
to kill whites.) Nobody understood the
was Josef Mengele, who would run the
genocidal impulse better than Frantz
gas chambers at Auschwitz.
Fanon, the Martinican-born psychoan-

32 TRANSITION ISSUE 87

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 The court of

King Musinga,
c. 1916

Rwlanda-Burundi

Infornmation Service

alyst and Algerian freedom fighter. For
Fanon, native violence was not simply
destructive; it was also a kind of affirma-
tion of life and dignity. "For he knows
that he is not an animal," Fanon wrote in
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-

The Wretched of the Earth (1961), "and it lence. Native violence, he insisted, was
is precisely when he realizes his human- the violence of yesterday's victims, peo-

A BRIEF HISTORY OF GENOCIDE 33

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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 Information
Service

pie who had cast aside their victimhood that the colonialist understands nothing but
to become masters of their own lives: force.

He of whom they have never stopped saying For Fanon, proof of the native's human-
that the only language he understands is that ity consisted not in the willingness to kill
offorce, decides to give utterance byforce .... settlers, but in the willingness to risk his
The argument the native chooses has been fur- or her life. "The colonized man," he
nished by the settler, and by an ironic turning wrote, "finds his freedom in and through

of the tables it is the native who now affirms violence." If the outcome was death, the

34 TRANSITION ISSUE 87

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killing of settlers by natives, that was discovered that this racial dichotomy
nevertheless a derivative outcome: tended to foster racial solidarity among
colonial subjects. So the colonial powers
The settler's work is to make even dreams of dismantled the single legal universe of
liberty impossiblefor the native. The native's direct rule, employing instead a system of
work is to imagine all possible methodsfor de-indirect rule. In so doing they created a
stroying the settler ... For the native, life can series of parallel universes: non-natives
only spring up again out of the rotting corpsecontinued to have rights in the realm of
of the settler.... For the colonized people, thiscivic law, as under direct rule, but natives
violence, because it constitutes their only work, were to be governed differently. Each
invests their character with positive and cre- ethnic group was now said to have its
ative qualities. The practice of violence bindsown set of customary laws, to be en-
them together as a whole, since each individ- forced by its own "native authority"-
ualforms a violent link in the great chain, aits chief-in its own "home area." In this
part of the great organism of violence which way, the aggregate category "native" was
has surged upwards in reaction to the settler's legally abolished, and different kinds of
violence in the beginning. natives were created. The political aim
was to fracture the native population into
On the day of reckoning, Trotha would ethnic groups. With each group gov-
be answered in kind. erned through its own "customary law,"
a plural legal order produced plural po-
litical identities; these identities were said
From the beginning, colonialism pre- to stem from tribes, cultures, and tradi-
sented itself as a civilizing mission- tions that predated the colonial en-
what Kipling called "the white man's counter. This shift to indirect rule signi-
burden." The Western colonial project fied a retreat from colonization's original
aimed to create a new society by build- project of civilization: the natives were to
ing modern cities and states, introducing remain natives, forever proscribed from
Western law. Under direct colonial rule, the realm of civil law.
the law distinguished a civilized minor- As political identities, race and ethnic-
ity from a not-yet-civilized majority, giv- ity involved different types of claims.
ing rights to the minority while disen- Race claimed to reflect civilization and
franchizing the majority. And yet whether development, whereas ethnicity claimed
rulers or ruled,Westerners or non-West- to reflect culture and habit. Civilization
erners, all those subject to the power of was a world of rights; culture, a world of
the state would live within the realm of custom. The distinction between race
civic law. This had the unintended con- and ethnicity was meant to capture the
sequence of racializing colonial society, difference between the non-indigenous
making race the primary difference be- and the indigenous: whites had a race,
tween colonizer and colonized, collaps- and it stood atop the pyramid of civi-
ing all other differences in its binary lization; ethnicity represented the diver-
logic. sity of uncivilized native peoples.
Sooner or later, every colonial power In this way the colonial state endeav-

A BRIEF HISTORY OF GENOCIDE 35

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 ored to supplant the political question of ministrators in both the public and pri-
native rights with the anthropological vate sectors. And as such, they came to be
question of native character. But the un- seen as both instruments and beneficia-
breachable divide between colonizer and ries of colonialism, even as civil law cod-
colonized was not the only dichotomy ofified their second-class citizenship.
indirect rule. Anyone resident on the ter- The so-called subject races of colonial
Africa were many. Besides the Asians of
Under colonialism, the distinction between East and South Africa, there were the
Coloureds of South Africa, the Arabs of
race and ethnicity was meant to capture
Zanzibar, and the Tutsi of Rwanda and
the difference between the non-indigenous Burundi. Historically and culturally,
these groups had little in common. The
and the indigenous: whites had a race,
Asians obviously had their origins else-
and it stood atop the pyramid of where, but the question of what distin-
guished other subject races from indige-
civilization; ethnicity represented the
nous people was more complex. In
diversity of uncivilized native peoples. Zanzibar, "Arab" was a kind of catchall
identity, denoting both those with Arab
ritory at the beginning of coloniza-ancestry and those with ties to Arab cul-
tion-usually, sometime in the I88os,ture. And South Africa's Coloureds were
during the scramble for Africa-wasidentified by their mixture, through their
generally considered a native. Those who ancestral links to Asia, Africa, and Eu-
came after were treated as resident aliens, rope. The Tutsi, on the other hand, were
strangers. In Uganda, for example, thewholly indigenous to Africa. So the
colonial state recognized the ethnic iden-colonial designation "non-indigenous"
tities of the Baganda, the Banyankole, theneeds to be understood as a legal and po-
Acholi, and so on. But the Asians, who litical fiction, not a historical or cultural
had been brought over from India by thereality.
imperial British East Africa Company to
build the railway, were a race.
By making a distinction between theThe postcolonial struggle forjustice-for
indigenous and non-indigenous, the stateredress of colonial wrongs-raised a ba-
created a middle ground between colo- sic question:What is a settler? The term
nizer and colonized. Alongside the mas-did not invoke a legal category: colonial
ter race, the law constituted subject races; laws had spoken only of natives and
while full citizenship in the colony wasnon-natives. Settler was a libel that natives
reserved for members of the master race, hurled back at the beneficiaries of colo-
the subject races were virtual or partialnial rule. As different forms of national-
citizens. Though subject to discrimina- ism emerged-narrow or inclusive,
tion, they were still considered part ofcultural or political, reactionary or pro-
the world of rights, of civil law. The sub- gressive-each form arrived at a differ-
Tutsi boy ject races were integrated into the ma- ent understanding of what a settler was.
Was the settler experience based on im-
Romain Baertsoen chinery of colonial rule as agents and ad-

36 TRANSITION ISSUE 87

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 I__ _ _ ? ? ? I I I_? ? I? j
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?:iL~ ?;!? ~ ? ? ?7? ~~~ . .... ? ? - ~~ ~ ~,
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Tutsi girl

Pol Laval,
Rwanda-Burundi
Information Service

L 7 ~e~I

X g ,r

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migration, or on conquest? Was every border. I arrived at a village church made
non-native a settler? If settlers had come of brick, roofed with iron sheets. Out-
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 as-
sorted bones, collected and pressed to-
settler prerogative, then the abolition of
gether inside sacks, sticking out of the
that prerogative-and the state that en-
forced it-would also abolish "settler" torn cloth. Ntarama is perhaps the most
and "native" as political identities. Butfamous,
if and the most visited, of Rwanda's
killing fields; the church has become a
settlers were created by migration, then
nothing less than repatriation would re-
starting point for the growing number of
solve the settler question. people who come to Rwanda to try to
understand.
The situation was inherently unstable.
Inside the church, wooden planks
By establishing these infinitesimal dis-
were
tinctions in law, the colonial state created placed on stones as makeshift
an array of indigenous and non-indige-
benches.You could see a pile of belong-
nous identities. In postcolonial Africa,ings-shoulder
as sacks, tattered clothing,
in colonial Africa, these identities were
a towel, a wooden box, a cooking pot,
the fault lines along which political vio-
plastic mugs and plates, straw mats and
hats. Then bones, entire skeletons, all
lence exploded. The violence started
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
air stank of blood and earth and rotten
set out to appropriate native land-as
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 ex-
tive shifted from the settler to the native. hortations I had seen under other radi-

While 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 tar- I was introduced to a man called Cal-

geted the former subject races: the Tutsi lixte who had survived the massacre at
in Rwanda in 1959, the Arabs in Zanz- Ntarama. He wore sandals made of rub-
ibar in I963, the Asians in Uganda inber sliced from worn-out automobile
I972-and, once again, the Tutsi in tires; his clothes were old, but not torn.
Rwanda in 1994. "On the seventh of April, in the morn-
ing, they started burning houses," he ex-
plained. "Only a few were killed. The
I visited Rwanda a year after the geno- burning 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

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 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
"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."

actual killing was on the fifteenth. Had there been marriages between
"On the fifteenth, they brought Pres- Hutu and Tutsi in Ntarama?
idential Guards. They were brought in "Too many. About one-third of Tutsi
from neighboring areas to support Inter- daughters were married to Hutu. But
ahamwe. Here, there were women, chil- Hutu daughters married to Tutsi men
dren, and old men. The men had formed were only i percent: Hutu didn't want to
defense units outside. I was outside. Most marry their daughters to Tutsi who were
men died fighting. poor. And it was risky, because the Tutsi
"When our defense was broken were discriminated against-Tutsi men
didn't want to give their daughters
through, they came and killed everyone
where
here. After that, they started hunting forthere was no education, no jobs.
Funeral for the
those hiding in the hills. I ran to the
Prospects were better for Tutsi daughters
king, 1959
swamp with some others." marrying Hutu men. They would get
Vansinay,
Rwanda-Burundi "Who took part in the killing?"
betterIopportunities."
Information Service asked. Callixte spoke without emotion; his

40 TRANSITION ISSUE 87

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 Female mlienjbers

of the royal court,

1957

H. Goldstein,
Congopresse

voice remained steady and calm throughout among indigenous people, not plural
our conversation. I wondered whether ethnic identities. The colonized popula-
this was because he had related the story
tion was split in two, with the majority,
the Hutu, opposed to both Belgians and
many times before. "Tutsi women mar-
Tutsi.
ried to Hutu were killed. I know only
one who survived. The administration Why was Rwanda different? The an-
forced Hutu men to kill their Tutsi wivesswers lie buried in the recesses of the

before they killed anyone else, to prove

racist mind. "Africa proper," the philoso-
they were true Interahamwe. One man
pher Hegel said, "has remained-for all
tried to refuse. He was told he must purposes of connection with the rest of
choose between the wife and himself. the world, shut up; it is the gold-land
He chose to save his own life. Another
In the church at Ntarama, you could see a
Hutu man rebuked him for killing his
Tutsi wife. That man was also killed.
pile of belongings-shoulder sacks, tattered
Kallisa, the man who was forced to kill
clothing,
his wife, he is in jail. After killing his wife, a towel, a wooden box, a cooking
he became a convert. He began to dis-
pot, plastic mugs and plates, straw mats and
tribute grenades all around."
hats. Then bones, entire skeletons, all
* * m

caught in the posture in which they had died.

Colonial Rwanda was a halfway house
between direct Even
and a year after the genocide,
indirect the air stank
rule, com-
bining features ofand
of blood both. "Customary
earth and rotten clothes.
laws" and "native authorities" were es-

tablished alongside civic law and civic

compressed within itself-the land of
authorities. But the native authorities in
childhood, which lying beyond the day
charge of the Hutu were Tutsi rather of conscious history is enveloped in the
than Hutu. That is, indirect rule in dark mantle of Night."
Rwanda established the Tutsi as a distinct But the more Europeans got to know
race. Thus the colonial state in Rwanda Africa, the less tenable became the no-
engendered polarized racial identities tion that the Sahara marked the limit

A BRIEF HISTORY OF GENOCIDE 41

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Presentation of
between night and day-between bar- tion that the natives had no civilization
the royal cow
barism and civilization. Europeans en- of their own.
herd, 1939 countered considerable evidence of or- The colonialists' explanation-the
From Societe,
"Hamitic hypothesis"-was ingenious:
ganized life on the continent before their
culture et pouvoir
arrival. That evidence sometimes came every sign of "progress" on the Dark
politique en Afrique
interlacustre: Hutu et
in the form of ruins, like the Sudanese
Continent was taken as proof of the civ-
Tutsi de l'ancien
Rwanda by pyramids or the stone walls at Greatilizing influence of an alien race. Ancient
P Kanyamachumbi Zimbabwe. It also came in the form of Egypt, Ethiopia, Rwanda: all these were
(Kinshasa, Democratic
Republic of the Congo:
highly developed African societies like
the work of an ancient European race,
Editions Select) the children of Ham-Noah's son, in
the Kingdom of Rwanda, whose politi-
the Hebrew Bible. The Hamites were
cal history stretched back hundreds of
taken to be black-skinned Caucasians;
years. Rwanda belied the racist convic-

42 TRANSITION ISSUE 87

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they wandered across the African conti- Belgian colonial state. This set the Tutsi
nent and ruled over their racial inferiors, apart from other so-called Hamites in
the black-skinned blacks. In 1870, at the Africa; it also ruptured the link between
Vatican I council, a group of cardinals race and color in Rwanda.
called for a mission to central Africa in Between 1926 and I937, the Belgian
order to rescue "hapless Hamites caughtauthorities made Tutsi superiority the
amidst Negroes," to alleviate "the an- basis of changes in political, social, and
tique malediction weighing on the cultural relations. Key institutions of the
shoulders of the misfortunate Hamites pre-colonial Rwandan state were disman-
inhabiting the hopeless Nigricy." tled. In the process, power was central-
In Rwanda, the Europeans identifiedized;Western-style schools were opened,
the ruling Tutsi as Hamitic and the Hutuand admission was largely limited to
as Bantu-"real Africans" who served Tutsi. Tutsi received an assimilationist ed-

the Tutsi. Of course, the Hamitic hy-

ucation: they were taught in French, in
pothesis failed to resolve some glaring
preparation for administrative positions
contradictions. While the term was in- in the colonial government.When Hutu
troduced by linguists to describe the lan-
Europeans encountered considerable
guages of the Hamitic peoples, the Tutsi
spoke Kinyarwanda (Rwandan), a Bantuevidence of organized life in Africa before
language. And although the notion of a
their arrival. The Kingdom of Rwanda belied
Hamitic race implied a shared pheno-
the racist conviction that the natives had
type-tall, thin, with aquiline noses and
coppery skin-the speakers of Hamitic
no civilization of their own.
languages included the blond-haired,
blue-eyed Berbers of north Africa. The
were admitted, they received a separate
curriculum, taught in Kiswahili. (The
greatest difficulty, perhaps, was that the
Hamites were supposed to be cattle-
graduates of the French-language cur-
riculum were called "Hamites.") The
herding pastoralists, unlike the agricul-
turalist Bantu. But by the second half of
underlying message was that Hutu were
the nineteenth century, many Tutsi lived
not destined for citizenship.
just like their Hutu neighbors, without * * *

cattle, working the land under Tutsi

overlords. In the I950s, as the
While numerous African peoples nization raged acros
were identified as Hamites-indeed, nent, Rwandan societ
three of the precolonial political entities While the Tutsi agi
that became Uganda were considered dence-and a Tutsi state without Bel-

Hamitic kingdoms-Rwanda was the gian masters-the Hutu made increas-

only colony where Hamitic ideology
ingly strident demands for social reform.
came to be the law of the land. The for- A new political elite emerged from the
eignness of the Tutsi was institutional- ranks of those who had been branded
ized by a series of reforms that embed- with a subject identity, and they made
ded the Hamitic hypothesis in the their suffering a badge of pride: Hutu

A BRIEF HISTORY OF GENOCIDE 43

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 Power! The revolution of 1959 brought tionaries accountable to their popula-
this Hutu elite to power, and in 1960, tions. But after 1972, the radical govern-
Rwanda achieved independence. Those ment of the Second Republic eliminated
of the Tutsi elite unable or unwilling to the local elections and re-created the
live under Hutu rule were murdered or colonial authority-defined, now, not
sent into exile. The Hutu state respondedonly as "customary" but also as "revolu-
to guerrilla attacks mounted by Tutsi ex-tionary." These were the organs of
iles with violence against Tutsi who re-power that orchestrated and organized
mained within the country, thus pushingthe mass slaughter of the genocide.
a second group into exile. (Many of this * * *

second group went to Uganda.) Where

the Hamitic hypothesis had enforced The dilemma of p
Tutsi supremacy, the new Hutu regimelies in the chasm that divides the Hutu
heralded an egalitarian social revolution:majority from the Tutsi minority. The
democracy, majority rule, and Hutuminority demands justice, the majority
Power came to seem synonymous. De-calls for democracy and the two de-
fending the revolution from Tutsi sub-mands seem irreconcilable. Irreconcilable
version became the sine qua non ofbecause ever since the colonial period,
Rwandan politics. violence has been motivated by a mutual
fear of victimhood. Every round of per-
In the 1950s, as the struggle for petrators has justified the use of violence

decolonization raged across the Africanas the only effective guarantee against
being victimized yet again. The contin-
continent, Rwandan society began to uing tragedy of Rwanda is that each out-
break of violence only creates another
splinter. A new political elite emerged
set of victims-turned-killers.
from the ranks of the socially oppressed In the political vocabulary of the
African Great Lakes region, the search
with a new slogan: Hutu Power!
for a form of governance that can guar-
The promise of 1959 quickly turned antee both justice and democracy in
sour: the revolutionary state had repu-countries torn by civil war has come to
diated inegalitarian colonial rule with- be known as the search for a "broad
out changing the institutional identitiesbase." In countries with a history of bit-
that underpinned it. Instead of forging ater fragmentation, where no political
way beyond natives and settlers, 1959movement could marshal a consensus,
wedded Rwanda's future to the politicalcoalition government came to be seen as
identities that had been constructed un-
inevitable. The practice of the broad base
der colonial rule. The revolution re- made a clear distinction between means

and ends. All political movements-

versed "settler privilege"-replacing
Tutsi chiefs with Hutu-without re- whether monarchist or "tribalist," even
when identified with a brutal dictator-
forming the concentrated power of the
ship such as that of Idi Amin-were
native authority. It did introduce local
elections, thereby making Hutu func-welcomed into the broad base, provided

44 TRANSITION ISSUE 87

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 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 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 is 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 looked
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

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j

Romain Baertsoen
politics and ideology-between those sighted. It is an article of faith that power
proponents of Hutu Power willing to is the precondition for survival. But
give up violence and those not willing Rwanda's Tutsi leadership may have to
to do so. The former would be invited consider the opposite possibility: that the
into the broad base; the latter would not.prerequisite to cohabitation, reconcilia-
Ultimately, the Rwandan governmenttion, and a common political future
might indeed be to give up its monop-
may need to recognize that the central
oly on power. Like the Arabs of Zan-
conclusion it has drawn from the history
of Rwanda since independence-thatzibar, or even the whites of South Africa,
the only possible peace between Tutsithe Tutsi of Rwanda may also have to
and Hutu is an armed peace-is short- learn that-so long as Hutu and Tutsi

46 TRANSITION ISSUE 87

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exist as political identities-relinquish- If the Nazi Holocaust was testimony
ing power may be a surer guarantee of to the crisis of the nation-state in Eu-

survival than holding on to it. rope, the Rwandan genocide is testi-

After all, if Rwanda was the genocide mony to the crisis of citizenship in post-
that happened, then South Africa was the colonial Africa. But if the Nazi Holocaust

genocide that didn't: just as a tidal wave breathed life into the Zionist demand

of violence engulfed Rwanda in 1994, that Jews must have a political home, a
South Africa held elections marking the nation-state of their own, few have ar-
peaceful transition to a post-apartheid gued that the Rwandan genocide war-
era. If some seer had said, in the late rants the establishment of a Tutsi-land in

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 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.

The genocide weighs

In Rwanda, heavil
as elsewhere, a conflict can
minds of Tutsi survivors. And it's true end only when the victor reaches out to
that neither the Arabs of Zanzibar nor the vanquished. In Rwanda, as elsewhere,
the whites of South Africa have suffered this process of reconciliation begins
genocidal violence like the Tutsi of when both groups relinquish claims to
Rwanda. To find historical parallels to
Few have argued that the Rwandan
this situation, where an imperiled mi-
nority fears to come under the thumb of
genocide warrants the establishment of a
a guilty majority yet again-even if the
Tutsi-land in the region. Indeed, Europe
thumbprint reads "democracy"-we must
take leave of Africa. For only in the erst-
"solved" its Jewish crisis by exporting it
while settler colonies of the New World

do we have a comparable history of vi- to the Middle East, but Africa has no
olence-a history that has rendered the
place to export its political crisis.
majority guilty in the eyes of victimized
minorities. Such, indeed, has been the af- victimhood, embracing their identity as
termath of genocide and slavery: the survivors. In this sense, "survivor" doesn't
genocide of indigenous populations in just refer to surviving victims-as it does
the Americas, as in Australia and New in the rhetoric of the Rwandan govern-
Zealand, and the slavery of Africans in ment. In a Rwanda that has truly tran-
the Americas. If we are to go by these scended the racial divisions of colonial-
experiences, we have to admit that the ism, "survivor" will refer to all those who
attainment of enlightenment by guiltycontinue to be blessed with life in the af-
majorities has been a painfully slowtermath of a civil war.
process.

A BRIEF HISTORY OF GENOCIDE 47

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