[REVIEW] When Victims Become Killers
Mar. 11th, 2003 11:54 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rfmcdonaldReview. Mahmood Mamdami. When Victims Become Killers: Colonialism, Nativism, and the Genocide in Rwanda. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001. 364 pp.
Rwanda has the unhappy distinction of being the country that most people think of when the word "genocide" is mentioned. ("Hutu," "Tutsi," "interahamwe," and "génocidaire" will also be prominent.) The question of what happened in Rwanda and why it happened is important, not merely because of its implications for Rwanda and for central Africa (don't forget that the current war fought by a half-dozen nations in the Congo at a cost of two million dead was sparked by the genocide of 1994), but because of what it says about human nature. The Rwandan genocide was, as horror-struck observers and survivors (and participants) have pointed out, quite different from other genocides in the 20th century (the Nazi genocide of Jews and Slavs, for example) because it enlisted virtually the entire population of Rwanda not targeted by the genocide: Men and women, adults and children, laypersons and clerics, the illiterate and the educated, all demographics of the Rwandan population took part in the genocide. There wasn't any bureaucracy to adroitly ship the undesirables out of public sight, there wasn't any segmentation of the genocide from the rest of the population, there was only indiscriminative massive slaughter. eren't What happened?
So far, there hasn't been a particularly useful book on the Rwandan genocide, from the point of view of explaining just what happened and why. Philip Gourevitch's 1998 We wish to inform you that tomorrow we will be killed with our families comes closest, but it lacks any profound historical perspective, I find. Gourevitch works from the statements of the Rwandans he interviewed that Rwandan culture is inherently authoritarian and fatalistic, that Rwandans are themselves prone to cruelty; but then, two or three years after a genocide such as the Rwandan, wouldn't any shocked survivor or observer find it difficult to avoid that? And then, there are problems with the official narrative of post-genocide Rwanda: The official RPF history of Rwanda is certainly more accurate than that of the génocidaires (it's really spectacularly unlikely that "90%" of Rwandan Tutsis were RPF supporters, never mind the rather simple question of whether slaughtering one million people can ever be moral); but then, the RPF came to power only after waging a bloody civil war in the early 1990s that displaced one Rwandan in six. I don't think we've ever gotten a consistent answer about the hundreds of thousands of Hutu refugees who had fled ahead of the advancing pro-Rwandan forces some years ago into the depths of the Congolese forests and were never seen again.
What happened? Briefly put, colonialism.
The modern country of Rwanda lies at the centre of a much larger cultural area, that of the Kinyarwanda, which covers the quasi-isthmus between Lake Kivu to the west and Lake Victoria to the east. People speaking similar languages live in Burundi, to the south; in Uganda, to the north; and in the Congolese provinces of North Kivu and South Kivu to the west. By no means was this cultural region united, politically or culturally: Mamdami demonstrates that there were long-standing differences between Hutu and Tutsi. For starters, the Tutsi (who tended to be cow pastoralists, and rulers) are even now much less likely to be lactose-intolerant than the agriculturalist Hutu. The dividing line between Hutu and Tutsi was never clear, however, as there were far too many cross-cutting ties to ever create two entirely separate groups--there were plenty of rich Hutu and plenty of poor Tutsi, plenty of intermarriage at all levels of society, and a shared language and cultural heritage. The Hutu and the Tutsi weren't quite castes, and they definitely weren't tribes; maybe they were more like Saxons and Normans in England after William the Conqueror.
And then, the colonialists came in. (First German, then after the First World War, Belgian.) Colonialism, as Mamdami notes, was hardly value-neutral or free of myth. The most noxious myth promulgated by Belgian colonialists was the belief that the Tutsi, supposedly natural rulers and pastoralists, were racially superior Africans--almost Caucasian, in fact--who had conquered a racially inferior Hutu peasantry. Over time, and ignoring the abundant evidence of intermarriage and the lack of any profound difference between Hutu and Tutsi, the Rwandan colonial government introduced identity cards which had a bearer's group membership permanently displayed. At the same time, Tutsi--as the racially superior Rwandans--were favoured by the colonial authority in areas as diverse as education, land ownership, and government; they were treated, for all intents and purposes, like white settlers elsewhere in Africa. By the time that Rwanda gained independence, the difference between Hutu and Tutsi, once that of nomenclature, had become a profound split with political implications.
As the division between Hutu and Tutsi was entrenched, Rwanda was integrated into central Africa, both Belgian and British. The densely populated Rwandan kingdom was valuable to Belgians as a source of labour for the still-underpopulated Belgian Congo; heavy taxation and outright coercion drove a Rwandan diaspora to the neighbouring Congolese provinces of North Kivu and South Kivu, while other Rwandans migrated to the prosperous plantation areas of Uganda in the British sphere. By the time that Rwanda (and Uganda, and Congo) gained independence in the early 1960s, hundreds of thousands of people of Rwandan descent lived outside of Rwanda, soon joined by a quarter-million Tutsi refugees (expelled in the first of the post-independence convulsions). Both in Congo and in Uganda, Rwandans--even people of Rwandan descent born in Congo or Uganda--were not treated as citizens, with rights to own land, to exercise local self-government, or even to citizenship. People of Rwandan descent in the two countries were periodically persecuted and kept from attaining full rights. In Uganda, even after guerrillas of Rwandan descent played a crucial role in helping Yoweri Museveni overthrow the corrupt dictator Milton Obote in the mid-1980s, people of Rwandan descent were still denied citizenship. The only place that Uganda's Rwandans could exercise full rights, it seemed was Rwanda, and organized behind the Rwandan Patriotic Front largely Tutsi guerrillas began raiding across the border.
In the meantime, Rwanda was governed by a Hutu dictatorship. Colonial rule had managed to install in the minds of politically active Rwandan Hutus the belief that Tutsi were interlopers, a class of foreign exploiters no less despised than the Belgians, and so the various Hutu dictatorships which ran the country without significant interruption until the genocide treated the Tutsi remaining in Rwanda as a dangerous minority undeserving of equal rights with Hutu. For the most part, Rwandan Hutu benefitted from anti-Tutsi discrimination, receiving the land vacated by Tutsi refugees in the 1960s, enjoying one of central Africa's most prosperous economies, and generally feeling secure that the Tutsi would never come back and resume their colonial rule over Rwanda.
The civil war that erupted in the early 1990s changed this unstable situation. Ugandans of Rwandan descent (largely Tutsi) were increasingly pushed by the Ugandan government into joining the guerrilla forces of the RPF, in the hopes of reclaiming their ancestral homeland and gaining a home. The Rwandan government, buffeted by a massive economic depression and increasingly unable to fight off RPF raids from Rwanda, turned to radical Hutu nationalism, trying to mobilize Rwanda's peasants with a Rwandan nationalism that excluded all Tutsi as potential traitors. (The Rwandan government also armed peasant communities, the better to fight off the RPF.) As the RPF raids became an actual invasion, the situation spiralled downward. Neither side was willing to honour the letter, never mind the spirit, of the 1992 Arusha peace accords which were supposed to end the war, mainly because neither the Rwandan government nor the RPF was willing to back down. After the failure of the Arusha accords, the RPF continued to attack the government, advancing slowly into the Rwandan heartland.
Finally, things cracked, and on the 6th of April, 1994, Rwanda's president Juvenal Habyarimana was assassinated (along with Burundi's president) as his plane was about to land in Kagila, Rwanda's capital. The killing began: at first, it was only the Tutsi who were slaughtered, but as Tutsi numbers dwindled and the RPF advanced deeper into the post-apocalyptic landscape of Rwanda, Hutus--whether political moderates, rivals, or just people who were unfortunate enough to be disliked by the génocidaires--were also killed. Almost a million people died.
After the fall of the génocidaire regime, Congo was dragged into the aftermath of Rwanda by the millions of Hutu refugees--including many perpetrators of the genocide, but also including many people who sincerely feared the RPF and Tutsis in generate--fled ahead of the RPF into refugee camps in Kivu. These refugees, together with the long-standing Rwandan-derived populations already living in the country, outnumbered non-Rwandan Congolese, who responded by trying to get the Congolese national government--then trying to democratize, if fitfully, under the rule of the declining Mobutu--to expel everyone in Congo who could trace their roots to Rwanda. One thing led to another, and then Rwanda--together with its patron Uganda--invaded Congo with the aim of overthrowing the Mobutu regime and incidentally dealing with the Rwandan refugees in Kivu (whether repatriating people not responsible for the genocide or punishing those who were). Laurent Kabila was eventually installed as president, but then all of the neighbouring countries began to squabble over whether (and how) to loot Congo. The war that began, involving countries as far away from Rwanda as Angola and Zimbabwe, has continued to the present day with calamitous results.
The Rwandan genocide, then, as Mamdami has so clearly laid out, has its roots in a colonial regime that divided the Rwandan population into two camps with fatal results for the future, and encouraged the movement of Rwandans throughout central Africa without allowing for any way for these immigrant populations to become naturalized and assimilated. It came about because colonialism--both Belgian and British--wasn't flexible enough to imagine roles and identities that were different from what were ascribed to them because of colonialism. It came about because of a lack of imagination and empathy by post-colonial leaders, who didn't want to think outside of colonial categories but merely wanted to cement their own power. It came about, in short, because Rwandans and non-Rwandans alike were not creative enough to think of a future for themselves where genocide and war were not inevitable. When Victims Become Killers is a book that is invaluable for anyone wanting to know about Rwanda's history, about the machinations that can lead to genocide, and about the mechanics of colonialism gone rancid. It comes highly recommended; with luck, it will soon be joined by other books of comparable
Rwanda has the unhappy distinction of being the country that most people think of when the word "genocide" is mentioned. ("Hutu," "Tutsi," "interahamwe," and "génocidaire" will also be prominent.) The question of what happened in Rwanda and why it happened is important, not merely because of its implications for Rwanda and for central Africa (don't forget that the current war fought by a half-dozen nations in the Congo at a cost of two million dead was sparked by the genocide of 1994), but because of what it says about human nature. The Rwandan genocide was, as horror-struck observers and survivors (and participants) have pointed out, quite different from other genocides in the 20th century (the Nazi genocide of Jews and Slavs, for example) because it enlisted virtually the entire population of Rwanda not targeted by the genocide: Men and women, adults and children, laypersons and clerics, the illiterate and the educated, all demographics of the Rwandan population took part in the genocide. There wasn't any bureaucracy to adroitly ship the undesirables out of public sight, there wasn't any segmentation of the genocide from the rest of the population, there was only indiscriminative massive slaughter. eren't What happened?
So far, there hasn't been a particularly useful book on the Rwandan genocide, from the point of view of explaining just what happened and why. Philip Gourevitch's 1998 We wish to inform you that tomorrow we will be killed with our families comes closest, but it lacks any profound historical perspective, I find. Gourevitch works from the statements of the Rwandans he interviewed that Rwandan culture is inherently authoritarian and fatalistic, that Rwandans are themselves prone to cruelty; but then, two or three years after a genocide such as the Rwandan, wouldn't any shocked survivor or observer find it difficult to avoid that? And then, there are problems with the official narrative of post-genocide Rwanda: The official RPF history of Rwanda is certainly more accurate than that of the génocidaires (it's really spectacularly unlikely that "90%" of Rwandan Tutsis were RPF supporters, never mind the rather simple question of whether slaughtering one million people can ever be moral); but then, the RPF came to power only after waging a bloody civil war in the early 1990s that displaced one Rwandan in six. I don't think we've ever gotten a consistent answer about the hundreds of thousands of Hutu refugees who had fled ahead of the advancing pro-Rwandan forces some years ago into the depths of the Congolese forests and were never seen again.
What happened? Briefly put, colonialism.
The modern country of Rwanda lies at the centre of a much larger cultural area, that of the Kinyarwanda, which covers the quasi-isthmus between Lake Kivu to the west and Lake Victoria to the east. People speaking similar languages live in Burundi, to the south; in Uganda, to the north; and in the Congolese provinces of North Kivu and South Kivu to the west. By no means was this cultural region united, politically or culturally: Mamdami demonstrates that there were long-standing differences between Hutu and Tutsi. For starters, the Tutsi (who tended to be cow pastoralists, and rulers) are even now much less likely to be lactose-intolerant than the agriculturalist Hutu. The dividing line between Hutu and Tutsi was never clear, however, as there were far too many cross-cutting ties to ever create two entirely separate groups--there were plenty of rich Hutu and plenty of poor Tutsi, plenty of intermarriage at all levels of society, and a shared language and cultural heritage. The Hutu and the Tutsi weren't quite castes, and they definitely weren't tribes; maybe they were more like Saxons and Normans in England after William the Conqueror.
And then, the colonialists came in. (First German, then after the First World War, Belgian.) Colonialism, as Mamdami notes, was hardly value-neutral or free of myth. The most noxious myth promulgated by Belgian colonialists was the belief that the Tutsi, supposedly natural rulers and pastoralists, were racially superior Africans--almost Caucasian, in fact--who had conquered a racially inferior Hutu peasantry. Over time, and ignoring the abundant evidence of intermarriage and the lack of any profound difference between Hutu and Tutsi, the Rwandan colonial government introduced identity cards which had a bearer's group membership permanently displayed. At the same time, Tutsi--as the racially superior Rwandans--were favoured by the colonial authority in areas as diverse as education, land ownership, and government; they were treated, for all intents and purposes, like white settlers elsewhere in Africa. By the time that Rwanda gained independence, the difference between Hutu and Tutsi, once that of nomenclature, had become a profound split with political implications.
As the division between Hutu and Tutsi was entrenched, Rwanda was integrated into central Africa, both Belgian and British. The densely populated Rwandan kingdom was valuable to Belgians as a source of labour for the still-underpopulated Belgian Congo; heavy taxation and outright coercion drove a Rwandan diaspora to the neighbouring Congolese provinces of North Kivu and South Kivu, while other Rwandans migrated to the prosperous plantation areas of Uganda in the British sphere. By the time that Rwanda (and Uganda, and Congo) gained independence in the early 1960s, hundreds of thousands of people of Rwandan descent lived outside of Rwanda, soon joined by a quarter-million Tutsi refugees (expelled in the first of the post-independence convulsions). Both in Congo and in Uganda, Rwandans--even people of Rwandan descent born in Congo or Uganda--were not treated as citizens, with rights to own land, to exercise local self-government, or even to citizenship. People of Rwandan descent in the two countries were periodically persecuted and kept from attaining full rights. In Uganda, even after guerrillas of Rwandan descent played a crucial role in helping Yoweri Museveni overthrow the corrupt dictator Milton Obote in the mid-1980s, people of Rwandan descent were still denied citizenship. The only place that Uganda's Rwandans could exercise full rights, it seemed was Rwanda, and organized behind the Rwandan Patriotic Front largely Tutsi guerrillas began raiding across the border.
In the meantime, Rwanda was governed by a Hutu dictatorship. Colonial rule had managed to install in the minds of politically active Rwandan Hutus the belief that Tutsi were interlopers, a class of foreign exploiters no less despised than the Belgians, and so the various Hutu dictatorships which ran the country without significant interruption until the genocide treated the Tutsi remaining in Rwanda as a dangerous minority undeserving of equal rights with Hutu. For the most part, Rwandan Hutu benefitted from anti-Tutsi discrimination, receiving the land vacated by Tutsi refugees in the 1960s, enjoying one of central Africa's most prosperous economies, and generally feeling secure that the Tutsi would never come back and resume their colonial rule over Rwanda.
The civil war that erupted in the early 1990s changed this unstable situation. Ugandans of Rwandan descent (largely Tutsi) were increasingly pushed by the Ugandan government into joining the guerrilla forces of the RPF, in the hopes of reclaiming their ancestral homeland and gaining a home. The Rwandan government, buffeted by a massive economic depression and increasingly unable to fight off RPF raids from Rwanda, turned to radical Hutu nationalism, trying to mobilize Rwanda's peasants with a Rwandan nationalism that excluded all Tutsi as potential traitors. (The Rwandan government also armed peasant communities, the better to fight off the RPF.) As the RPF raids became an actual invasion, the situation spiralled downward. Neither side was willing to honour the letter, never mind the spirit, of the 1992 Arusha peace accords which were supposed to end the war, mainly because neither the Rwandan government nor the RPF was willing to back down. After the failure of the Arusha accords, the RPF continued to attack the government, advancing slowly into the Rwandan heartland.
Finally, things cracked, and on the 6th of April, 1994, Rwanda's president Juvenal Habyarimana was assassinated (along with Burundi's president) as his plane was about to land in Kagila, Rwanda's capital. The killing began: at first, it was only the Tutsi who were slaughtered, but as Tutsi numbers dwindled and the RPF advanced deeper into the post-apocalyptic landscape of Rwanda, Hutus--whether political moderates, rivals, or just people who were unfortunate enough to be disliked by the génocidaires--were also killed. Almost a million people died.
After the fall of the génocidaire regime, Congo was dragged into the aftermath of Rwanda by the millions of Hutu refugees--including many perpetrators of the genocide, but also including many people who sincerely feared the RPF and Tutsis in generate--fled ahead of the RPF into refugee camps in Kivu. These refugees, together with the long-standing Rwandan-derived populations already living in the country, outnumbered non-Rwandan Congolese, who responded by trying to get the Congolese national government--then trying to democratize, if fitfully, under the rule of the declining Mobutu--to expel everyone in Congo who could trace their roots to Rwanda. One thing led to another, and then Rwanda--together with its patron Uganda--invaded Congo with the aim of overthrowing the Mobutu regime and incidentally dealing with the Rwandan refugees in Kivu (whether repatriating people not responsible for the genocide or punishing those who were). Laurent Kabila was eventually installed as president, but then all of the neighbouring countries began to squabble over whether (and how) to loot Congo. The war that began, involving countries as far away from Rwanda as Angola and Zimbabwe, has continued to the present day with calamitous results.
The Rwandan genocide, then, as Mamdami has so clearly laid out, has its roots in a colonial regime that divided the Rwandan population into two camps with fatal results for the future, and encouraged the movement of Rwandans throughout central Africa without allowing for any way for these immigrant populations to become naturalized and assimilated. It came about because colonialism--both Belgian and British--wasn't flexible enough to imagine roles and identities that were different from what were ascribed to them because of colonialism. It came about because of a lack of imagination and empathy by post-colonial leaders, who didn't want to think outside of colonial categories but merely wanted to cement their own power. It came about, in short, because Rwandans and non-Rwandans alike were not creative enough to think of a future for themselves where genocide and war were not inevitable. When Victims Become Killers is a book that is invaluable for anyone wanting to know about Rwanda's history, about the machinations that can lead to genocide, and about the mechanics of colonialism gone rancid. It comes highly recommended; with luck, it will soon be joined by other books of comparable
