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Al-Ahram Weekly 10 - 16 August 2000 Issue No. 494 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly 10 - 16 August 2000 Issue No. 494
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Egypt Region International Economy Opinion Culture Books Travel Living Sports Profile People Time Out Chronicles Cartoons The bitter fruits of colonialism
By Faiza Rady
To buttress their conquest of Africa, imperialist powers propagated the myth of the civilising mission, portraying Africa as teeming with ethnic and tribal strife. Notwithstanding efforts to shift blame elsewhere, European powers bear a direct responsibility for a whole host of African tragedies. The bitter conflict pitting the Hutu majority against the Tutsi minority in Rwanda, for instance, is a direct outcome of European imperialism.
Tutsi overlords ruled the Rwanda-Burundi region since their ancestors arrived from Ethiopia in the 16th century. By the time the Belgians overran Rwanda and Burundi, ethnic intermarriages had blurred the Tutsi-Hutu divide. A concept of race in the European sense never existed. Belgian authorities, however, invented divisions under a carefully-planned policy of divide and rule, while the Catholic Church attributed superior racial qualities to the Tutsi. Catholic missionaries dubbed the Tutsi a Hamitic "Ethiopian" people -- with the potential for approaching, but never quite reaching -- the "exalted level" of the white man. The Hutu, on the other hand, were defined as a negroid (Bantu) race -- brutish and inferior. Foreign missionaries in charge of the colonial school system, passed this racist "theory" down to successive generations of Rwandans, along with more traditional Christian values.
Conveniently promoted to the status of "honorary whites," the Tutsi elite collaborated with Belgian imperialism and ran the country for their foreign masters -- treating the Hutu as second class citizens. The Hutu, in turn, demonised the Tutsi as "foreign invaders" and "imperialist puppets" who had no rights to Rwanda. Belgium institutionalised the division by issuing ethnic identity cards to all Rwandans -- a system that remained intact for 60 years and allowed the perpetrators of the recent genocide to handpick their victims.
In the late 1950s, the Hutu lashed back at their oppressors. Between 1959 (when the Hutu overthrew the ruling Tutsi king) and 1967, 20,000 Tutsi were butchered. Three-hundred thousand fled to neighbouring Burundi, the Democratic Republic of Congo (renamed Zaire under Mobutu Sese Seko) and Uganda. Because Burundi, eastern Zaire and southern Uganda share a similar ethnic composition, the Tutsi easily integrated into the host communities.
Meanwhile, Belgian colonial authorities had cut a secret deal with the leaders of the soon-to-be-independent states. Rwanda was designated Hutu-run, while Burundi was to remain a bastion of traditional Tutsi rule. According to the deal, majority rule in Rwanda was defined along ethnic lines, whereas in neighbouring Burundi the majority Hutu population was to be governed by the Tutsi minority. The post-independence governments tacitly adhered to this arrangement. The Hutu ruling class in Rwanda derived its legitimacy on the basis of the Belgian covenant. In Burundi, the ruling military clique justified the repression of the Hutu majority on similar grounds.
The Tutsi remaining in Rwanda were long regarded as a fifth column, potentially subservient to foreign powers.
The exiled Tutsi, who were denied the right to return for three decades, established a guerrilla army -- the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) which attacked the Rwandan Armed Forces (RAF) from its northern base in Uganda and invaded the country in October 1990. The ensuing civil war raged for three years, until a cease-fire was declared following peace talks in Arusha, Tanzania in August 1993. Under intense pressure from the Western powers and the OAU, President Juvenal Habyarimana reluctantly agreed to democratic power-sharing and the inclusion of the RPF in the armed forces.
But Habyarimana and his cronies, comprising the President's in-laws and his business associates, wanted to keep their power base intact and dismissed any form of national reconciliation. Habyarimana pointedly slammed Arusha as a mere "scrap of paper." The Rwandan president, however, was ultimately forced to capitulate to increasing international pressure to implement the accords. On 6 April 1994 Habyarimana flew to Dar es Salam to work out with neighbouring heads of state the details of power-sharing under a new government that was to be sworn in on 8 April. Returning to Kigali in the evening of 6 April, Habyarimana's plane was hit by ground-to-air missiles and crashed, killing all aboard. The assassination of the Rwandan president, sparked full-fledged genocide. The following day, RPF troops engaged the Rwandan army. The civil war raged on until the RPF's victory in July put an end to a genocide, which had cost the lives of an estimated 800,000 to one million Tutsi and those among the Hutu who refused to collaborate with the genocidaires.
