JOURNEYING THROUGH THE HISTORICAL ROOTS OF THE GENOCIDE IN RWANDA
2.4 Post-colonial Rwanda (1962-1994): Learning from the past?
2.4.1 First and second republics’ failed journey (1962-1994)
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later the decolonisation process which required colonial powers to allow more powers to local population brought tensions between the ruling class and the colonial administration. The Belgian reversal to support Hutu dominated political parties brought violence mainly against Tutsi and pushed some of them to go into exile.
Thus, this period is seen as one of the remote causes of the Genocide and is also controversial because the role of both Rwandans and Belgians are discussed differently. This period with some controversial issues is part of the history taught in secondary school and needed to be analysed to understand the challenges teachers face to explain what happened. After independence, the socio-political violence and unequal treatment between Hutu and Tutsi did not stop as will be explained in the next section.
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the creation of the Rwandan post-independence army originated by means of an injustice against the Tutsi and Twa.
Even if it was declared by the interim President Dominique Mbonyumutwa (28 January 1961-26 October 1961) in his speech of 1 January 1961 that all Rwandans were equal in rights without considering “ethnic groups”, family, colour or religion, this was not respected in education. According to him, “schools which will not respect directives regarding quotas according to the number of every ethnic group will be closed or given to other owners” (Byanafashe, 2006, pp.166-167).1 Thus since the inception of the republic, quota systems were used to govern the education system.
In political life, the first republic (1962-1973) was characterised by the end of the multiparty system regardless of the fact that it was embedded in the constitution. The opposition was eliminated through intimidation, arrests, physical violence or negotiations. The Parti du Mouvement pour l’Emancipation Hutu weakened other political parties either dominated by Hutu or Tutsi and later these parties ceased to work. President Grégoire Kayibanda affirmed that many parties distracted the population and hence acted as a hindrance to development. Another characteristic of the first republic was its valuing of Hutu identity (Freedman et al., 2006). As a result, Tutsi kept being considered as foreigners. Gasanabo (2010) notes that after independence (1962), a number of publications described the Tutsi as enemies or exploiters of the Hutu and scholars were discouraged to write objectively about the kingship. The dissertation of Murego (1975) on the ‘Rwandan Revolution’ justifies the Hutu domination in the same manner as some parts of de la Mairieu’s book (1972).
The situation which prevailed due to the Mortehan Reforms was thus projected in a remote past. Thus, Murego tried to find some justifications for the “new order”, the Hutu dominated regime which came to power on the eve of independence.
The problem of Rwandans who were in exile since the 1959 upheavals was not considered favourably at the time and most of them were living in neighbouring countries. After different attacks organised and executed by Tutsi in exile, some of
1 The teachers’ reference book was first written in French and thereafter translated into English. Some sentences in the English version are not very clear.
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their relatives in Rwanda were killed as retaliation (Mugesera, 2004). An accumulation of challenges led the first republic to political instability which pushed the president, by the early 1970s, to rely on people of his region of origin in central Rwanda for the majority of ministerial positions.
When President Kayibanda was overthrown on 5 July 1973 by Major General Juvenal Habyarimana (1973-1994), the major aim was to restore peace and unity for Rwanda to develop. Even if the Habyarimana regime (1973-1994) did initiate some changes in the socio-economic sphere of life by increasing infrastructure such as medical centres, water supply, roads and schools in different regions, the big share of the budget was concentrated in the north and north-western region of Rwanda (IRDP, 2005). Thus, the economic undertakings factor favoured certain regions.
At the beginning of the Habyarimana regime, there was a short period of hope for the mistreated Tutsi. But this optimism progressively disappeared because the implementation of the quotas’ policy was reinforced and extended to key domains of socio-political life such as getting a job and enrolment in secondary and tertiary education. The quotas were to be applied according to the number of the population per regions, ‘ethnic’ groups and gender. In the education sector, alongside the quotas, examination results and continuous assessments also had to guide the choice of new candidates (Rutayisire, Kabano & Rubagiza, 2004). Practically, this quota policy was used to exclude not only Tutsi but also people from the south and central Rwanda, the region of the previous president, from key positions in national life such as the National Army, territorial administration and secondary and higher education (Buckley-Zistel, 2009; Byanafashe, 2006; Uwamahoro, 2009). Due to their exclusion, the Tutsi relied mainly on the private sector (Staub, Pearlman, Gubin &
Hagengimana, 2005) or had to change their “ethnic identity” to be considered as Hutu to gain entrance to some positions (Freedman, 2006; Mugesera, 2004).
The discrimination against Tutsi was coupled with the refugee problem which remained unresolved. The refugees in exile who were predominantly Tutsi were not granted a full guarantee of safety to return to their home country. Despite separation, ties between some Hutu and Tutsi families in exile were not completely broken. For instance, during the Tutsi exile some Hutu kept sending provisions to their friends
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outside the country or became their children’s godfathers (IRDP, 2005). However, as with some Rwandan intellectuals, refugees were concerned by a lack of rule of law in the country. After futile efforts of negotiations between the refugees and the Government of Rwanda through the United Nations’ mediation and other countries, they decided to attack Rwanda in 1990 from Uganda. This happened during a period where Rwanda was suffering economic misery following the fall of coffee prices on international markets and the regression of rural agricultural production (Newbury, 1995).
The war which started in October 1990 between the Rwandese Patriotic Front and the then Rwandan government was accompanied by internal displacements of the population and economic problems inside Rwanda. Despite the war and economic austerity, Rwanda made effort in political liberalisation. During the 1990 Franco- African Summit at La Baule in France, the French President François Mitterrand had announced to his African counterpart new links between aid and the quality of governance (Coleman Kitchen & Jean Paul, 1990; Manon, 2012). As Rwanda was receiving western aid and accused by the Rwandese Patriotic Front and the pressure of internal intellectuals of not respecting democracy, a National Commission for Synthesis was put into place in September 1990 to prepare a new constitution which was adopted the following year and the multiparty system was also reinstituted since 1991. Political parties became strong in cities but rural areas were sceptical about the role of elections in changing rural areas status (Newbury, 1995). At the same time, in the 1990s, through propaganda, a spirit of hatred against the Tutsi and their accomplices started to evolve (Thompson, 2007). Much of this was due to the creation of many independent newspapers such as Kangura and Umurwanashyaka which were not respecting professional deontology (Chretien, 1995). Building on negative aspects of ubuhake Hutu ideologues to assemble Hutu against the Rwandese Patriotic Front did their best to show that the Tutsi had dominated the Hutu for a long time (IRDP, 2005; Kuperman, 2004).
Due to the pressure and mediation from the international community, internal opposition and the Rwandese Patriotic Front, the then Rwandan Government was in August 1993, obliged to sign the Arusha Peace agreement with the rebels to end the war. The agreement was considered as a Fundamental Law of the transitional period
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and belligerents decided to promote national unity and reconciliation. Seats in the parliament and the cabinet had to be shared between the Rwandese Patriotic Front, the former single party and the internal opposition. Members of both bodies, the parliament and the cabinet, had to be designed by their parties. Disagreement within political parties and the manipulations of the Habyarimana entourage delayed the establishment of both institutions. The assassination of Melchior Ndadaye who was killed in a failed Tutsi-led putsch in Burundi in October 1993, divided the Rwandan political parties. Among most political parties, one group wanted to share power with the Rwandese Patriotic Front when another one worked to raise Hutu consciousness and was opposed to power sharing with the Rwandese Patriotic Front (Kissi, 2004;
Newbury, 1995). The second group was known as Hutu power (Des Forges 1999;
Scherrer, 1999).
The signed Arusha Peace agreement increased political tensions in Rwanda because hardliners in the government were unhappy with the share attributed to the Rwandese Patriotic Front which got 5 ministers out 20 and 11 members of parliament out of 70. The army was also a source of tension on two aspects. Firstly, the Rwandese Patriotic Front had to gain 40% of the enlisted rank and file positions and 50% of the officer positions. Secondly, there was no clear policy of demobilisation which created mutinies in the former Rwandese Armies Forces.
Furthermore, the refugee problem was exploited by hardliners to promote fear among the population. It was decided through the Arusha peace agreement that people who had left Rwanda ten years or more before could reclaim their land. In rural areas, people were sceptical about the respect of this provision (Kuperman, 2004; Newbury, 1995). Till the eruption of the Genocide misunderstandings within political parties hindered the transitional institutions’ establishment.
When the airplane of President Juvénal Habyarimana was grounded on 6 April 1994, a systematic killing of Tutsi and some Hutu opponents was initiated by some military officers (Des Forges, 1999). The Genocide was perpetrated not by a strong but rather a weak state (Kissi, 2004) led by an interim government of Jean Kambanda in collaboration with “the akazu elite, their state machinery, Hutu-Power factions of all political parties and a huge number of common people against Tutsi” (Scherrer, 1999, p. 13). Akazu, literally a small house, and in this context means an informal
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entourage of few dignitaries close to the President Juvenal Habyarimana and his wife’s families organised its militia, Interahamwe which at the beginning was the youth association of the ruling party. Hutu-power factions refer to the political parties’
factions created since 1993 and who opposed the power sharing with the Rwandese Patriotic Front composed mainly by Tutsi in exile and who wanted to return to their homeland.