When
Victims Become Killers: Colonialism, Nativism, and the Genocide in Rwanda, by Mahmood Mamdani. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001.
Reviewed by Adewunmi A. Alugbin
In Rwanda
from April 6 to July 15, 1994, the Tutsi ethnic group was literally
exterminated by their Hutu neighbors. In that time, many ordinary Rwandans
responded to the appeals of the genocidal power elite (The Akazu), seized any
weapon at hand and murdered their Tutsi neighbors[1].
The Tutsi were the same ethnic group who the Hutu had lived with in relative peace
for centuries. In the 100 days between April 6th and July 15th,
hundreds of thousands of old people, women, children, and even tiny babies were
“hunted down and hacked into pieces”[2],
which statistically, works out to 330 deaths per hour, 5.5 deaths per minute.[3]
Scholars have drawn parallels between the genocide in Rwanda and the Holocaust, and
rightfully so, however, the Rwandan genocide was not a genocide that utilized
sophisticated methods nor did it involve the systematic dehumanization and
concentration of its victims to camps. Instead, Rwandan people were killed largely
by fellow citizens, frequently by their own neighbors and sometimes even by
their own relatives. They were slaughtered mainly with simple agricultural
tools and any other items that could possibly be fashioned into a weapon.
After some review of the literature available
on the genocide, scholars have identified several reasons for the atrocities
that occurred in Rwanda.
Helen M. Hintjens identified the following as the main types of explanations
with three specific foci, and they are as follows: (i) a focus on external influences,
both colonial and neo-colonial; (ii) a focus on domestic causes, including
demographic factors and `ethnic’ conflict;
(iii) a psychosocial account based on the presumed social conformism and
obedience of Rwandans.[4]
The first explanation sees Rwanda as
susceptible to colonial and neo-colonial manipulation (see Barnett, Scherrer) due
to the peoples acceptance of the restructuring of their identities by the
Belgian colonial powers however, Mamdani argues that this restructuring was
present even before the arrival and after the departure of the colonial
authorities. `The Tutsi was a group with privileged relationship to power
before colonialism got constructed as a privileged alien settler presence,
first by the great nativist revolution of 1959, and then by Hutu power
propaganda after 1990.'[5]
The second explanation says the country's overpopulation and social cleavages
account as the primary root of the genocide. (see Prunier, Scherrer) Mamdani contested
that “ethnic conflict does not breed genocide; at most it can give rise to
massacres”[6]
meaning that other scholars tend to exaggerate the magnitude of this
explanation as a root cause of the genocide. The third explanation sees the
situation in Rwanda
as possible because of an “extreme form of obedience that is thought to
characterize all highly stratified, relatively stable societies.”[7]
Mamdani pays some attention to this explanation in his book by attempting to
address or explain what he refers to as the ‘popular agency’. He explored the
form of obedience that could cause so many ordinary people to seize any weapon
at hand and murder their Tutsi neighbors.
Mahmood
Mamdani in his book contends that while other authors have focused on those three
basic explanations for the genocide in Rwanda, the real roots of the genocide
was because “under Belgian rule Tutsi identities were radically altered by a
racial myth, the Hamitic myth, that tended to turn Tutsi into settlers, thus
setting in motion a settler native dialectic which reached its horrendous
climax in a genocidal apocalypse,[8]
in essence, discarding much of the existing reasons provided by other genocide
scholars. The aim of When Victims
Become Killers: Colonialism, Nativism, and the Genocide in Rwanda was to greatly elaborate and provide
an understanding of the causes of the genocide in Rwanda. It recognized the
complexity of the colonial era in the region where the Hutu and Tutsi
identities were politicized and then legitimized as different races. The book
also sought to elaborate on the role played by the Rwandan people themselves in
the atrocity.
In
Chapter One, entitled Defining the Crisis of Post Colonial Citizenship: Settler
and Native as Political Identities, Mamdani does exactly what the chapter title
suggests. He expanded on what he referred to as “borrowed facts” by presenting
new facts, relationships and analysis of existing data. He defined the
different administrative styles employed by Europeans in Africa by contrasting
the experiences of Uganda
and the Congo under British
indirect rule with that of Rwanda
which “Belgian rule turned into more of a halfway house between direct and
indirect rule.”[9]
He argues that colonial law in Rwanda recognized only race, not ethnicity as a
political identity thus political identities in Rwanda should be seen as
identities that were legally enforced and institutionally reproduced, Rwandan
identities were in essence “historical, not primordial”[10]
and should be analyzed within that context.
In
the next chapter, The Origins of Hutu and Tutsi, Mamdani tried to answer the
question who is a Hutu and who is a Tutsi but concluded that there is no single
answer to this loaded question. He acknowledges certain historical differences
but argues that other scholars ‘preoccupation’ with origins is just another
example of how colonial powers have “sketched the boundaries of colonial and
postcolonial scholarship.”[11]
Mamdani accepts the historical research and evidence that supports the fact
that the Belgian reform of the colonial state
that constructed Hutu as “indigenous Bantu” and Tutsi as “alien Hamites”, however, rather
than conforming with the ‘mainstream preoccupation’ in Rwandan studies, Mamdani
reiterates his point that Hutu and Tutsi were “political identities that have
changed from one historical period to another, each period indicating a
different phase in the institutional development of the Rwandan state.”[12]
The
Racialization of the Hutu/Tutsi Difference under Colonialism is the title of
the third chapter of Mamdani’s book. In this chapter, he expands on the
questions brought up in chapter two by tracing the origins of the Hutu and Tutsi
relative to the grand colonial discourse. Signs of civilization in Africa are categorized as imported through the Hamatic
hypothesis which is also used to explain the presence of the Tutsi in the
region. This chapter explored how colonialism racialized the Rwandan political
identity rather than ethincize it; thus creating the emergence of Tutsi as the
settler citizens and Hutu as the nativized subjects. The chapter also shows how
the Tutsi were caught in a conundrum of being a settler citizen that was also a
colonized subject and how after the colonial period, the Tutsi found themselves
at the bottom of the hierarchical ladder or indigenous peoples when they
occupied the top during the pre colonial period. This chapter set up the idea
of how it would be thinkable for the Hutu to revolt and turns against their
neighbors because after the colonial era, they were seen as a settler
population that did not belong in the region anyway.
The
“Social Revolution” of 1959 is the title of Mamdani’s next chapter. In this
chapter, the revolution to create one national Rwandan identity or failure
thereof is discussed. Mamdani, unlike other scholars who have done some work on
this aspect of Rwandan history, sees the revolution as a failure because it
failed to “transform Hutu and Tutsi as political identities generated by the
colonial power.”[13]
He argues that the ‘revolution’ merely gave the upper hand to the Hutu by
reinforcing the identities in the name of ‘justice’. The underside of the
revolution was that it turned to a ‘quest for revenge’ which underlined the
political decisions of the country thereafter, especially in the First Republic.
Chapter
Five, entitled The Second Republic: Redefining Tutsi from Race to Ethnicity, deals
with the political record of the Second
Republic, concerned with the cause of
the regional instability that plagued Central Africa
and its contribution to Rwandan situation. The chapter portrays the Habyarimana
regime as one that tried to redefine the Tutsi as an ethnicity rather than a
race, and tried to create right for the Tutsi.
Of all the attempts made to create a political and national identity for
the Tutsi within Rwanda, the
Second Republic
failed to adequately address the concerns of the Tutsi in exile in Central Africa.
These “external” Tutsi where leaders of the RPF[14]
and other assaults launched on the
Rwandan government in their repatriation attempts which further destabilized
the fragile political atmosphere in Rwanda.
The
sixth chapter of the book entitled The Politics of Indegeneity in Uganda:
Background to the RPF invasion, provides background to the RFP invasion as
promised by placing it in the context of regional instability. Mamdani presents
the crossing of the RPF into Rwanda
as both “an invasion of Rwanda
and an armed repatriation from Uganda.”[15] Ugandans
had become dissatisfied with the Tutsi presence in their country so the Tutsi
really had to try to fight their way back into Rwanda
as the anti Tutsi sentiments grew in Uganda. Africanists like Rene
Lemarchand have lashed out at Mamdani’s book calling it an “unforgiving
assault on area studies”[16]
however, amidst the other criticisms levied on Mamdani’s book by Rene
Lemarchand in his review article, Lemarchand does point
out that Mamdani triumphed in chapter six. Lemarchand writes:
“Ironically, it is in the `production of new
facts ' - the curse of area studies!-[sic] that Professor Mamdani is at his
best. I refer to his illuminating analysis of `the politics of indigeneity in Uganda', in
chapter 6, which
brings out a number of facts of critical importance to an understanding of the
circumstances leading to the RPF invasion. Contrary to what most analysts
assume, the constraints faced by the Tutsi refugee population in Uganda were a key factor behind the RPF decision
to fight its way into Rwanda.
Mamdani brilliantly shows how the Tutsi refugees, while denied citizenship
rights, became a focal point of resentment among Ugandan citizens …In the
combination of `push' and `pull' factors behind the RPF invasion, the (Tutsi) emerge
as the really decisive ones.”[17]
Chapter Seven, The Civil War and the Genocide
discusses mass participation of ordinary citizens in the Rwandan genocide by
attempting to explain the ‘popular agency.’ Mamdani make it clear that there
were different types of killing and that the genocide was not just about all
Hutu killing any Tutsi, he explained that since a civil war a preceded the
genocide, there were Hutus and Tutsis dead because combatants on both sides of
the war killed each other. Secondly, hutus killed other hutus they saw as Tutsi
collaborators or simply for material gain and lastly, Tutsi were killed by
Hutu. Mamdani reiterates that his focus is on the third type of killing and his
main concern is casting it in a light often ignored by other scholars. Mamdani
wants us to see the killing as not only a “state project”, but also as a
“social project.” He succeeded in casting the genocide as more than just a
localized affair but a “Rwanda-wide affair” which explained the cycle of
killing and how the ‘unthinkable’ became ‘thinkable.’
Chapter
Eight, entitled Tutsi Power in Rwanda
and the Citizenship Crisis in Eastern Congo, this chapter further elaborates on
Chapter Six’s idea of regional influence by focusing on the Congo and how
the Rwandan crisis is affecting it. Chapter Eight can be seen as the political
lessons and implications chapter because it focuses in essence on the RPF and
how it crossed the boarder from Uganda
into Rwanda in 1990,
bringing the Ugandan crisis along with it, repeated itself in 1997 with the
RPF’s crossing from Rwanda
into the Congo.
In this chapter, Mamdani calls for a regional analysis of the nature of the
Rwandan genocide, the external factors of instability in the region, combined
with the internal crisis of citizenship in the Congo so that what is not
“thinkable” can once more become “unthinkable.”
Mamdani
concluded his book with the assertion that political reform after genocide is
the first step to justice in Rwanda.
He calls for a type of justice that is both the victor’s and the survivors’.
As a
complete work, In delineating his disagreement with area
specialists, the author
in
effect sets up a straw man, propped up by what he describes as the `core
methodological
claims' of area studies, namely that ` state boundaries and boundaries
of
knowledge' are one and the same thing, and that knowledge in this sadly
rare®ed
®eld is `about the production of facts ' (pp. xii, xiii).
244 helen m. hintjens
adequate account of the 1994 genocide does have to
acknowledge
manipulation by external forces, domestic pressures
and psychological
factors such as obedience. But the nature of the
Rwandan state must be
seen as absolutely central.
[1] Scherrer, “Genocide
and Crisis in Central Africa” p xii
[2] Ibid p 1
[3] Barnett, “Eyewitness
to a Genocide” p 1
[4] The Journal of Modern African Studies, 37, 2 (1999), pp. 241±286 Printed in the United
Kingdom # 1999 Cambridge University Press Explaining the 1994 genocide in Rwanda Helen
M. Hintjens*
[6] Mamdani (p. 231)
[7] Helen M. Hintjens
[9] Mamdani
15
[10] Mamdani
15
[11] Mamdani
15
[12] Mamdani
15
[13] Mamdani
16
[14] The
Rwanda Patriotic Front, a military movement and political party. Found in 1985
in Uganda
by Tutsi refugees and exiles.
[15] Mamdani
17
[16]
Lemarchand 307
[17] Lemarchand,
p 310
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