Did the President of Rwanda, Paul Kagame, help facilitate the most recent round of Genocide in the Rwanda? Is he currently sponsoring massive death and plunder in eastern Congo?
Below is some of my Facebook chatter on Kagame that some readers might find of interest. Dan was responding to a NYTimes article I posted on Facebook.
Dan Kashagama The thing that Gettleman [author of the article] and other Western media and activists do is alarmism... and they refuse - absolutely refuse - to acknowledge that Africans already have a solution to the crisis of mass violence and repression... African unity. For 50 years now, Africans have been telling the world that the violence and repression are the effects of neocolonialism.
After the 1994 Genocide in Rwanda, the OAU produced reports examining the causes and in response to pressure for pan Africanists, scrapped the non-intervention clause and got African parliaments to ratify the Union Act in which the new clause authorizes the AU's peacekeeping forces to forcibly enter a state in which war crimes, mass murder or govt'al collapse is imminent or taking place.
What Western reporters are doing is sensationalism... and the activists refuse to do anything to promote the capacity of the AU conflict resolution mechanisms. I have asked every activists who is crying over Africa to explain why it is they won't demand support for African solutions... instead of only calling for foreign intervention from the west [either cutting of aid, or military occupation via NATO or UN]... the answers I get range form utter ignorance of the pan Africanism, to cryptic remarks that display racism - the latent belief that Africans are congenitally chaotic and violent.
Has Jeffrie Gettleman, Annie Garrison, Bono, Stephen Lewis or any such people once stood up to said anything positive about the AU's peacekeeping operations or offered to help the Pan African Parliament [Africa's most important conflict management mechanism]. There is nothing happening in Rwanda or Somalia, or sudan that is new to Africans... the OAU/AU were set up precisely to address these failures... but the activist groups in the West have not helped that process. I find a lot of reasoning on their part rather weak and ineffective. Until they address Pan African institutions, they will continue to be worse than ineffective.
May 1 at 11:35pm ·
Kwame Zulu Shabazz ☥☥☥ Asante Brotha Dan,
I share your view that the AU is the proper institution for working Africa's problems on African terms.
Yes, most western reporting on Africa is racist or biased or patronizing--frequently dreadful. This particular article, however, is an exception to that general rule. Its not at all sensationalist. It is specifically about Rwanda's efforts to solve its own problems.
Moreover, the NYT coverage of Kagame is generally favorable. The author goes out of his way to cite several accomplishments of the Kagame regime. The point of the essay is the delicate balance between stability and repression. Gettleman has opted to focus on Rwandans who feel repressed, but I think he does it in a way that is reasonable.
The "alarmist" is i and i.
I have been in the audience twice when Kagame has traveled to the US. I also had an impromptu one-on-one discussion with the Rwandan ambassador to the United States a few years back. My sense of things is that what Kagame is really after is maintaining the status quo of Tutsi-domination.
I just don't think it can work. kzs
May 2 at 9:42am ·
Dan Kashagama We can all agree that a lot of what appears as favorable reporting on Africa is in fact misidentifying where the progress is being made... and omits important bits, in order to create a picture that fits traditional colonial views. Rwanda now is just the latest case in a long line of so-called "African miracles": Zimbabwe, Ivory coast, Kenya, Uganda, Botswana... and now Rwanda - they get talked up until the careless and uninformed media and activist backlash starts... the victims are invariably Africans who get pitted against each other in a death spiral. Rwanda will hit the cusp of the wave soon enough, and the bad news won't stop until its back in the madhouse.
Kagame is looking out for Kagame... many of his victims and opponents are Tutsi. The tutsi line is being promoted by his opponents, but I don't think Kagame will protect anyone on the basis of their ethnicity unless it keeps him in charge. The capricious nature of his relations with people around him is evidence enough that he has no lasting loyalties, and frankly neither do most African leaders who's legitimacy is in doubt.
But now I worry about the media and activists who are unwittingly banging war-drums and fanning the flames of conflict on the basis of ethnic and political vagaries. They forget Rwanda's these ethnic groupings and political alignments happen to transcend Rwanda's borders... and without proper political reforms backed by the AU, a chaotic collapse in Rwanda will sink the entire region in even more violence. This time could be worse than the last... and its urgent, absolutely urgent, that the AU have the capacity to engage and do its work. Activists interested in peace and rights should be looking at the real causes of success and failure in Africa, and stop repeating the old cliches.
May 2 at 4:37pm ·
Kwame Zulu Shabazz ☥☥☥ I hear you well my brotha. I certainly appreciate that this is much bigger than Rwanda. Thats why I mentioned Great Lakes in my previous post. Actually even the Eurocentric reporters have recognized that this is not a challenge that stops at Rwandas borders.
We can agree to disagree on what Kagame's agenda is. In America we had a brutal civil war in the 1860s. The war literally split up white families. Some favoring the Union and the others favoring secession. It was the bloodiest war of that era. But at the end of the day both sides favored white supremacy. Likewise Kagame and his Tutsi enemies favor Tutsi supremacy. You believe its a cliche. I would ask when did it become cliched? Who made that determination? And why did the ambassador to Rwanda devote so much time to the topic of how the Belgians invented ethnic animosity? And why did he refuse to acknowledge that the current regime is dominated by Tutsis? Why did Kagame himself feel compelled to initiate a we are all Rwandans policy?
I have talked to ordinary Rwandans who believe that Tutsi supremacy is a major obstacle to stability in Rwanda. They don't strike me as confused or brainwashed or biased on the matter. I certainly agree that the conflict in Rwanda, Burundi and elsewhere should not be reduced to a single factor. But it is equally problematic to downplay the reality of ethnic strife whatever its source. kzs
May 2 at 5:42pm ·
Dan Kashagama The "tutsi supremacy" argument is one of those western constructs... a product of the colonial identity system and it defies the logic and realities on the ground in Africa... Many of the people alleging a Tutsi conspiracy are either confused western commentators or activists who support the fallen Habyarimana regime or don't understand what has happened in Africa. If there are Rwandans saying this, they are doing so not because they believe its true, but because it panders to Western minds who reduce everything in Africa to terms of ethnic supremacy. The politics just don't have the latitude for that kind of dynamic. The vagaries and tendencies operative in African politics make a mess of supremacy in the conventional meaning of the term.
Today, the leading tutsi scholars and military officers are all in exile or have been killed... and they number in the thousands, including the entire cadre of the founders of the RPF. In other words, they despise kagame's methods... they invariably are against the wars - or their conduct - that kagame has fought in the Congo. If there was a Tutsi agenda for supremacy ...it would have to been dependent on the founding leaders of the RPF... otherwise it doesn't make sense. But the leading RPF ideologues are famously pushing other ideas that defy any possibility of Tutsi dominance. Two of the most important ones were Wilson Rutayisire and Alphonse Furuma [these two were the ones responsible for designing the RPF's mechanisms and whom Kagame had to defeat in order to continue his rampage].
Colonel Wislon Rutaisire [who also happened to be an important pan Africanist, founder of the RPF's newspaper and news agency, and author of Rwanda's new flag and anthem] - he led the revolt by RPF officers against the Kagame's invasion of the Congo with at least 24 of his colleagues [all ranking tutsi military commanders signing a petition denouncing the invasion - they are all dead or missing - so much for supremacy]. Wilson was killed in the Congo in what the Kagame regime claims is suicide... no ranking govt official attended his funeral, except for one, the Hutu ex-president Bizimungu who helped carry the coffin], along with a group of out-of-favor RPF officers who subsequently left Rwanda. Wilson's family was evicted from their home days afterward and they left Rwanda. Is this how supremacy works?
The most important leader of the RPF/A besides Wilson and other dead founders of the RPF/A, is Alphonse Furuma the author of the original politicization programs [still in use] of both the RPF and the NRA in Uganda [The Iwawa project is an offshoot of this politicization program, although I am quite sure he is horrified by what kagame and Museveni have done to his original idea]. Furuma is in exile in the US for opposing Kagame...and for defending hutu officers and leaders in the RPA/F.
Seth Sendashonga, the most prominent among the Hutu in the RPF leadership, was opposed to Kagame's dictatorial tendencies and the handling of the massacres and repressions committed in the name of the RPF. Seth in his writings was the most prominent Rwandan [he was minister of interior] to articulate the claim approximating the Tutsi Supremacy...he said that Uganda's rwanda exiles [most were Tutsi but many were Hutu] were displacing other Rwandans in govt and had become dominant in the administration of Rwanda. However, Seth also claimed that Tutsi were not the enemy but rather it was Kagame and the broken RPF. Seth had even harsher words for the Hutu groups who were anti-Tutsi and who were remnants of the genocidal Habyarimanas support network. Seth claimed there was no Tutsi conspiracy... just a party that had been hijacked by kagame and was being used to prop up a dictatorship that was polarizing.
And, there's Alexander Kimenyi... who is now one of Africa;s leading intellectuals. He is an expert at Rwanda's history, culture and languages. He is Rwandan Tutsi and a former leader in anti-Habyarimana opposition and in the RPF. Kimenyi retains the widest support base of any Rwandan in exile. Kimenyi has openly broken with Kagame over the interpretation of the 1994 Genocide, and the Congo.
Kimenyi, like almost every reputable African intellectual and dissident regardless of what state or ethnicity they hail from in Africa, has been promoting Pan Africanism [and perhaps he could do more in that regard because I personally don't think he's done enough]. All of the leading Tutsis, including the last king of Rwanda, Kigeri, is saying Pan Africanism provides the framework for comprehending the dynamics of the genocidal wars in Africa, and also for future stability. Even Kagame, on days when he is not issuing threats acknowledges the fact that only a pan Africa approach can guarantee peace and stability in Rwanda [incidentally so do his Hutu opponents...but not the western activists who have never heard of the Pan African parliament and think the AU is a diversion from the "real" issues that afflict Africans].
To cut the long story short, if there was a Tutsi supremacist agenda, its surely got to be the most bizarre kind that has as its method the killing and exiling of its would-be leaders. Kagame's regime now includes such people as Rwarakabije, one of the leaders of the anti-Tutsi genocide, and organizer of the FDLR in the Congo that Kagame has been using as an excuse to despoil Congo. If anyone still thinks that Tutsi supremacy is a coherent idea being nursed by Kagame or other Tutsi elites, its seems to have become dependent on its former enemies and angered the very tutsi community whom some now claim it aims to promote. The contradictions here are just too great to brush aside. It seems to me that Kagame's own supremacy is the big concern, not the Tutsi community.
May 2 at 7:23pm ·
Kwame Zulu Shabazz ☥☥☥ Brotha Dan,
Asante sana for this very informative post. I have looked up Prof. Kimenyi and liked what I read. When I get a moment I will send him an email. With your permission I would like to repost this to my blog so that other folks can have a look at it.
Kagame-ism and Tutsi dominance, however, need not be mutually exclusive. I have talked to enough Rwandans over the past 12 years to know that not all Rwandans would agree with your effort to minimize the role of Tutsi dominance in the Kagame administration. Several Rwandans (mostly Hutu but at least one Tutsi, I think) have indicated to me that besides a few strategic Hutu appointments the political structure is dominated by Tutsis. And obviously you are underestimating the level of Hutu ethnic-based resentment to Kagame's regime because you deny that there is any such thing as Tutsi dominance in the first instance.
That said, whilst I might not be wholly convinced of your bottom line, your post certainly has educated me on more of the nuances as Rwanda and its neighbors move forward. kzs
May 3 at 1:51am ·
Dan Kashagama Thanks Kwame,
You are welcome to repost my comments if they are helpful. I worry greatly about criminalizing an entire community...
Surely to describe the actions and tendency of a single man in packing his administration with certain people as constituting proof of a supremacist movement seems like overkill. Whatever Kagame has done or failed to do, the campaign to impugn the Tutsi in general is a continuation of a dangerous campaign that makes no effort to address facts or put kagame's actions in perspective by dealing in gross exaggerations and incitement of hatred against all Tutsis, not just the RPF or Kagame. Imagine if people were to describe Obama's administration as Black supremacy... the analogy is perfect.
The Tutsi in Rwanda suffer the same restrictions or access as Hutu, and are subjected to the same stresses... I think that the standard for supremacy has to show that being Tutsi confers advantages that Hutus do not have, and that Hutus are subject to tutsis. But the reality is that Rwanda is 90% peasants, Hutu and Tutsi, who don't know which way is up or down, and for the most part get along as equals. In fact Rwanda is unique in the exceptional reality that former killers, largely Hutu, live among Tutsi victims [however uncomfortably, its still something remarkable].
Tutsi are as much victims of Kagame's failures and heavy handed manipulations as are Hutus and Congolese. At what point does one cease to be described as part of a supremacy project, if one has no say in the policy of a regime. Many Tutsi are just as resentful of Kagame's regime as are Hutu. Many opposition leaders in Rwanda and journalists who are in trouble are Tutsi, and they have been subjected to the same abuses as Hutus opposition leaders [sometimes even suffered worse]. The Tutsi in Kagame's regime are also strategically tokens placed to give him some legitimacy, but have no more say than the Hutus in the regime. So what is the case to be made for Tutsi dominance if Tutsis are as oppressed as Hutus?
Somewhat similar circumstances hold true in Sudan where they say Nubians dominate, and forget the Bashir brutally executed several dozens of the leading northern officers of the Sudanese army when he took over, and that the northern Sudanese are just as marginalized and oppressed as every other Sudanese. Many islamic elites are rotting in prison [Turabi the arch islamic cleric was also imprisoned and marginalised by Bashir]. When do we stop characterizing the Bashir government as a "northern sudanese regime", or as "Islamic", and recognize it for what its is... simply as the Bashir dictatorship that does what it does opportunistically. Is Zimbabwe a Shona supremacy? Is Uganda a Hima supremacy? Is Kenya a Kikuyu supremacy? Is Congo a Luba supremacy? Is South Africa a Zulu supremacy?
Ask your informants if Kagame were to fire every Tutsi who is in his govt and replace them with Hutus, would that make the supremacy claim go away? What is the correct number of Tutsi that should serve under Kagame's autocracy? I don't think this indictment of an entire community is proper at all. Its claims are made as part of a twisted and continuing colonial campaign whose origins are not African. The vast majority of Hutus and Tutsi have nothing to with any supremacists groups. Its not fair to accuse Hutus or Tutsis in general of being ethnic supremacist just because some nuts may be out there who happen to share their ethnic identity.
We have to give thought to these problems and play a constructive role in these conflicts as responsible intellectuals and organizers and activists. Lets not get manipulated by misguided or genocidal factions. It is clear to me that some people are using the claim of Tutsi supremacy as a means of getting support from the West where the idea of supremacy evokes a strong negative reaction. But lets not also forget that many of people making the claim of Tutsi supremacy are beneficiaries of the Habyarimana regime, and that attacking the Tutsi community en mass was their usual political and economic modus operandi.
By priming people to think of the entire tutsi community as villains... the very same strategy used to desensitize Rwadans to violence against their neighbors - the end point of this globalized anti-Tutsi campaign is genocide. Why can't they qualify their statements, to show proof that Kagame's regime is not synonymous with the Tutsi community or interests? Why persist on claiming Tutsi supremacy if confronted by evidence of substantive and significant Tutsi resistance to Kagame?
The reasons and roots for the claim of Tutsi supremacy are to be found in colonial propaganda. The claim of supremacy was external to Rwandans and was a contention introduced by European administrators in the 1890s who attributed superiority on the basis of genetic descent from whites. Prior to the colonial occupation, distinctions between pre-colonial Africans were not based on genetic claims about being a master race, but rather on age and certain other ritual obligations, character traits, and occupational arrangements. The colonists advocated class war and race war... and infected Rwanda's subsequent regimes with a twisted discourse that deals in mass exterminations.
It seems to me that repeating colonial fallacies of supremacy or inferiority between African communities reinforces the racist claims that continue to divide and manipulate Africans. The supremacist claims were in fact at attempt to prove white supremacy, by claiming that some groups of Africans were genetically or congenitally superior to others on the basis of their having somehow been descended form whites... this is the same false claim they make about ancient Egyptians, or Wolofs or Amharas. The fact that white supremacist discourse is still being applied to describe Africans shows that the legacy of colonialism dies hard.
May 3 at 3:33am ·
Image source: Majimbokenya
Tags: congo, genocide, paul kagame, rwanda
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