Where did the discrimination and hatred come from?

Scholars of Rwanda’s history advocate the old cliché that “ever since the beginning of Rwanda’s existence as a colony and as a country, the two ethnic groups of Hutu and Tutsi have been constantly at odds”.

For them the Tutsi genocide was just an ethnic and barbaric struggle in which Hutu killed Tutsi and Tutsi killed Hutu. Some are not even ashamed to claim that there has been a double genocide. But is that so? Can we provide more accurate information about the Hutu-Tutsi relationships in traditional and colonial Rwanda and about what really happened during genocide?

Filling this gap with first hand information would help heal the Rwandan nation and pave a path for the future. But where should this information come from?

The information we need may be drawn from genocide survivors’ accounts and other relevant sources such books, documentaries and films about the Rwandan genocide. But a forum in which all components of the Rwandan nation would be most welcome.

As a genocide survivor and a Rwandan born and raised in this country, I feel I can draw from my own experience and also from the many documents published on the Rwandan genocide to give a balanced view on the matter.

Today one of the overwhelming challenges of the post-genocide Rwanda is the cleavage between the Hutu and the Tutsi inside and outside Rwanda. This article is a contribution to this issue.

In fact, the Rwandan history demonstrates that there has been harmony between Hutu and Tutsi for more than eight centuries of known Rwandan history. The factors of this harmony were, among others, the awareness that Rwandans formed a united nation governed by a monarchy that stood over tribal cleavage and was a bond of unity. There was also the fact that all Rwandans had the same culture, spoke the same language, and had intermarriages that made a population intertwined in close relationships.

Hutu and Tutsi shared life problems and struggled to solve them, each one contributing to the welfare of the other and bringing in what was specific to their skills in terms of farm work, cattle breeding, pottery and entertainment.

My life experience as a child, and then as a student until 1959, also taught me that I had close friends in both ethnic groups. Nobody among my schoolmates or my neighbours had either a strong or even a slight feeling of being different from, or antagonist to, one another. None presented themselves as Tutsi, Hutu, but all knew they were Rwandans. Rather, all identified themselves according to the 15 Rwandan family clans and their totems.

Where did discrimination and hatred come from and how did they build up to culminate into genocide? To our best knowledge and understanding, genocide took place as a result of the colonial policy to divide the population in order to maintain their hegemony and sustain their economic interests.

German and Belgian colonial rulers first favoured Tutsi who helped them to impose and have forced labor and chores executed by Hutu, to foster better production and increase imports of tropical products such as coffee, tea and minerals. Likewise Hutus, known for their hard work, have even been imported from Rwanda into the Belgian Congo to work as miners in Katanga.

However, when the Tutsi in power asked for independence in the 1950s, the Belgians switched alliances and helped the Hutu to overthrow monarchy and install the republic. The quest for independence sounded the death knell for the monarchy with the mysterious death of King Charles Mutara III Rudahigwa in Burundi in 1959, and the destitution by the same Belgian colonists of King Jean Baptiste Kigeli Ndahindurwa in 1961.

From 1959 to the genocide the Hutu leaders, put in place by the Belgian rule in a last ditch attempt to maintain their presence in Rwanda, implemented a policy of establishing a Hutu power without the Tutsi. Anything that would be felt or suspected to be a potential revival of the Tutsi power, whatsoever, should be considered a serious threat to their monopoly of power.

With this policy put in place, Tutsi have been killed in successive pogroms, and survivors were forced to exile in neighbouring countries. In time the Tutsi Diaspora grew into a small nation with the ambition to go back to their country. The Tutsi inside the country also grew to become around 15- 25 per cent of the population. The official percentage was indefinitely maintained at 15 per cent, but independent sources quote 25 per cent as the probable number of Tutsi before genocide.

Oppression of the Tutsi inside and outside the country led to the development of a rebel army intended to topple the dictatorial regime of Kigali. According to the Tutsi rebels, this attack was the last means to have a right to survive and have a land. However the Hutu government viewed it as a real threat to their more than 30-year old power, and the French considered it to be a terrible threat to their Francophone influence in the region.

True, genocide was planned, organised, and executed by the Hutu power in place from 1973 to 1994, but the ideology of killing Tutsi to damp down their traditional political hegemony originated from the Belgians in the 1940s and 1950s, and was passed on over to the successive Hutu leaders from 1961 to 1994.

As a genocide survivor, I can testify to the unusual courage and stamina of Hutu rescuers who refused drawn into the genocidal cause of the Hutu majority, and who abided by their human or Bible-educated conscience. Their desire and determination to do what was right meant they were at risk of losing their lives, as was the case of a Hutu family of Jehovah’s Witnesses who were killed in Kigali. Their good standing constitutes clear evidence that other Hutu may have acted in the same way, and excuses such as “we have been told to kill them”, or “we killed them because they were Tutsi” are senseless.

Killing is, and remains, a personal choice and should be punished according to the degree of indictment. No human being could logically kill another human being without being accountable for it to a certain extent.

When it comes to the issue of healing Rwanda and its population, it takes courage, humility, and self sacrifice to imagine that Hutu and Tutsi could sit together, get along again, and speak the truth about what happened.

Today, the general trend among Rwandans outside and inside Rwanda, is to consider two camps, namely “the accused and the accusers”, or simply put “the Hutu Genocidaires” or perpetrators of the genocide, and “the Tutsi Victims of genocide”. Although there is some truth in this statement, however, this is not the whole truth. A balanced view of the situation is a necessary prerequisite to the healing process.

In my humble opinion, one of the things that Rwandans should do is to abandon the colonial dichotomy or stereotype of Hutu and Tutsi and view themselves as Rwandan nationals, belonging to the same mother country that they inherited from their ancestors. They must learn their history as it is without labelling it “Tutsi history” or “Hutu history”.

All nations experienced changes in their history, including revolutions and upheavals. We have the examples of the French Revolution, the communist revolution in China and Russia, and many other changes in different countries. Yet all those changes have been taken into account by history and helped successive generations to grasp their past and build their future.

It is sad to hear Hutu say that the Tutsi monarchy served only the Tutsi interests, while the monarchs in traditional Rwanda served the interests of all Rwandans. It is not fair either to forget that even when monarchy was toppled in 1959-1960, Hutu proponents of monarchy like Rukeba and Rwagasana faithfully fought for the reestablishment of the monarchical power. Some Hutu went into exile because they did not support the Hutu move to exterminate the Tutsi. Recently, the rebel army contained Hutu elements who were opposed to the dictatorship of Kigali.

Nonetheless, it is not fair either to think that the 1959 “Hutu Revolution” is tantamount to nothing. Even though we know that it stemmed from the Belgians and was implemented entirely with their full support it is, and will always remain, a revolution. The Hutu revolution, no matter how it came about, changed the political and social landscape of Rwanda. All Rwandans must honestly take it into consideration in all discussions concerning Rwanda. It cannot be ignored or minimised.

It is sad to hear some Tutsi call the 1959 Hutu Revolution “the so-called Hutu revolution”, as if it were not real. Tutsi who tend to belittle it miss the point. They are much like the Hutu who deny or minimise the genocide in an attempt to avoid accountability.

We must understand that when a revolution occurs, there are reasons and circumstances for it to happen. Likewise, if genocide took place there should also be reasons why it occurred. In both cases, a negative or revisionist attitude cannot help find a way of healing the wounds and scars left behind by social revolutions or genocides.

The two realities of genocide and Hutu revolution are essential to the present and future history of Rwanda. They constitute the major challenges of our legacy, and the puzzle that we are invited to undo or decipher.

Tutsi must recognise and weigh the consequences of their political influence for nine centuries, and their short-lived collaboration with the German and Belgian colonists. The Hutu must recognise their political role after 1959 and their leading influence to what is today known as “the Rwandan” or rather “the Tutsi Genocide”. If both sides entrench themselves behind their respective ideologies, denying and belittling each other, without making any concessions, there is no way to healing and reconciliation.

Post-genocide Rwanda is not only a harbor of pain and anguish resulting from bereavements and loss of properties; it is also a divided country, due to a host of seen and unseen reasons.

Rwanda is not only divided into Hutu and Tutsi, but also into Tutsi survivors, Tutsi returnees, Tutsi Francophone and Anglophone. Hutu are further divided into Hutu who are innocent, Hutu who participated in the genocide, and those who missed the chance of killing because almost all Tutsi had been killed. The latter do not hide their intentions to kill Tutsi if any opportunity was offered them today or later. This unrepentant attitude is rampant among prisoners of genocide in Arusha and in Rwanda.

We can ask: Is the healing process doomed to failure? Many think so, but do not dare tell a soul. Others would utter such sayings as “The Hutu will never get along with the Tutsi” or “How can I sit together with those who exterminated my family?”

Yet, the stark reality is that Hutu and Tutsi rub shoulders each day and share different activities. They have to live together, as this has always been the case for centuries. But if nothing is done today to solve the apparent differences and misunderstandings between various groups, one can fear that anything even worse might happen in the future.

In this regard the international community has a big responsibility. In the specific case of Rwanda, the most important thing is not to provide financial or humanitarian assistance in the form of food, medicine or weapons. Rwanda needs a deeper assistance in form of human rights and political education.

The major concern is how to educate a population that has been turned into “genocidaires”, and convince them that every human being including Tutsi and sound-minded Hutus have a right to live and enjoy life in their land; how to teach people who deny their responsibility and claim their innocence, that everyone is accountable for their deeds; how to teach those who have been offended, that justice should be done to those who committed murders and nobody else should be persecuted or presumed guilty solely because of his Hutu origins.

It should be emphasised that repentance and recognition of one’s guilt are a prerequisite to healing and reconciliation.

Another way the international community could help Rwandans is by disclosing all the information they have concerning how genocide was prepared and implemented. As keen observers of the genocide events, they can clarify how decisions were taken, who took those decisions, and, in fact, who was responsible for what happened. They can also help to heal minds and hearts by inculcating sound principles of tolerance, mutual recognition and respect, and fundamental human rights.

Of course, a key to reconciliation is a clear understanding of the reconciliation process. In fact, the Collins Complete and Unabridged English Dictionary defines “to reconcile”, as to make oneself no longer opposed, or to become friendly with someone after antagonising, or after settling a quarrel or a difference.

What does it mean for us Rwandans today? It simply means that Rwandans of all categories: genocide perpetrators and victims (survivors), rescuers, including Rwandans who came back to their homeland, must sit down together, and candidly debate their grieves, differences, and quarrels, with a view to finding a common ground to becoming friends again and living together in peace and harmony.

But more is needed than just sitting together and talking! Why? Simply because reconciliation entails that the sinners repent of their misconduct to gain reconciliation or friendship with the offended ones.

In conclusion, we have to recognise that genocide has become a benchmark in the personality of all Rwandans: survivors, rescuers and perpetrators, and bystanders. We can no longer breathe without thinking that a million like us stopped breathing, simply because there were Tutsi.

Let each of us reflect on this reality and see what we can do to heal the minds and hearts of those who suffered and are still suffering, and to reconcile the Rwandan nation which its facing unspeakable post-genocide consequences.

Let each of us reflect on this reality and see what we can do individually or as a community to help restore peace and harmony among Rwandans of all categories.