Rwanda’s masterful deception
AFRICA / 15 FEBRUARY 2019, 07:06AM / SHANNON EBRAHIM
Exactly twenty years ago I sat in an Ottawa cafe with Canadian
General Romeo Dallaire, the former Commander of the UN Peacekeeping operation
in Rwanda at the time of the genocide. Six years after his utterly failed
mission, Dallaire was suffering from post-traumatic stress, but I was told he
had something very important to tell me. Nothing could have prepared me for
what I was to hear, especially considering I had just visited Rwanda, its
genocide memorials, and sat taking notes around a dinner table with the Rwandan
cabinet.
Dallaire did say that he didn’t
expect me to believe what he was saying under the circumstances, but that it
was the truth, and one day I would realise the veracity of what he was telling
me. It has taken me twenty years to process that conversation and to have the
courage to write about it.
Dallaire started out by recounting the horrifying days of the
genocide, and his sheer helplessness in the face of the refusal of the big
powers sitting at the UN to authorise and capacitate his mission on the ground
to intervene to stop the bloodletting. A genocide unfolded before his eyes that
took 800 000 Tutsi lives in 100 days. The trauma of that type of guilt is
something too grave for any human to overcome.
Much of Dallaire’s story is
recounted in his memoir Shaking Hands with the Devil. What I never expected to
hear from him, however, was what came next. Dallaire alleged that the Rwanda
Patriotic Front’s Tutsi Commander Paul Kagame had allowed the genocide to
continue longer than it needed to. Dallaire’s interpretation was that in
Kagame’s calculations, the extent of the genocide was likely to ensure that the
RPF would be able to rule the country for decades into the future, due to the
collective guilt of the international community. At the time, it was all too
much for me to absorb or accept.
Dallaire also told me about
emails he had been receiving since the end of the genocide from French Canadian
nuns he had known on the ground in Rwanda. Their repeated messages said that
Hutus were disappearing on a weekly basis in Rwanda, taken from their homes in
the dead of night, never to be seen again. The idea that the liberators could
have been slowly cleansing their society of members of the Hutu majority,
quietly abducting them without a trace, was horrifying. Dallaire claimed to
have heard similar reports from other people he considered reliable sources.
As time went by more was
unrevealed, this time by human rights organisations about camps of Hutu
refugees in the Eastern DRC having been “liquidated” by the Rwandan military in
the years after the genocide. These were camps with tens of thousands of men,
women and children in them that were simply eliminated from the face of the
earth. It is something that the Rwandan government, with Paul Kagame as its
President denied, but many mass graves were eventually found by the UN and
human rights organisations.
If one peels away all the gloss
that is the dominant narrative about Rwanda – the 8% economic growth rate, the
reduction in poverty and maternal mortality rates, the advances in education,
IT, and the low levels of crime and corruption – a very different picture
emerges. The miracle and image of Rwanda’s successes gives way to a nation
gripped by fear, fear to say what they really think, to vote the way they want,
to challenge government policies, or to hold their leaders to account. The 25
years of Kagame’s rule has ensured this culture of fear and intimidation, where
at each election Kagame claims to have won well over 90% of the vote, boasting
that the poll is nothing but a formality to confirm his right to rule.
The intoxicating addiction to
power led Kagame to preside over a referendum in 2015 to amend the constitution
to allow him to run for a third term in office in 2017, enabling him to extend
his rule by a further seven years. The amendment also allows him to stand for a
further two terms beyond 2024, potentially allowing him to remain in power
until 2034. The result of the referendum was supposedly 98% in favour.
The EU and the US may have
criticized the amendments saying it undermined democratic principles, but the
US continues to provide 20% of the Rwandan national budget, the UK is the
second biggest donor and Rwanda’s foreign aid budget as a whole total US$1
billion annually. No matter how Kagame may have manipulated electoral outcomes,
he has remained the darling of the West. Collective guilt for not intervening
to stop the genocide? A desperate need for a foreign aid success story? Or the
reliable extraction of strategic minerals from the Eastern DRC, and the secure
corridor Rwanda provide for their transport out of the region?
Whatever drives the West, what is
particularly troubling is the levels of domestic repression Rwandans are living
under. Any attempt to criticise the government is deemed a threat to national
security and an attempt to stoke sectarianism. Critics, opponents, and
journalists are jailed or disappeared, and the numbers are rising. It is no
longer only opposition leaders or critics that are jailed, but their family
members as well. To add to the draconian nature of the state, it is documented
by Human Rights Watch that petty criminals are being extra-judicially executed
by the security forces. Some villagers are shot for stealing a cow or a bike. It
is all part of a strategy to spread fear in the society to enforce order,
absolute control, and keep the electorate subdued.
For the last year Kagame presided
over the African Union as its Chair, but his façade of good governance and
democracy was never challenged. Perhaps it is time to tell the truth about the
way things really are in Rwanda and to start challenging some of the myths
that surround the notion of the Rwandan miracle. I have to wonder whether if
Madiba was still alive he wouldn’t have called for a more transparent electoral
system, and supported the notion of majority rule in Rwanda?
* Shannon Ebrahim is the Group
Foreign Editor.
General Romeo Dallaire, the former Commander of the UN Peacekeeping operation
in Rwanda at the time of the genocide. Six years after his utterly failed
mission, Dallaire was suffering from post-traumatic stress, but I was told he
had something very important to tell me. Nothing could have prepared me for
what I was to hear, especially considering I had just visited Rwanda, its
genocide memorials, and sat taking notes around a dinner table with the Rwandan
cabinet.
expect me to believe what he was saying under the circumstances, but that it
was the truth, and one day I would realise the veracity of what he was telling
me. It has taken me twenty years to process that conversation and to have the
courage to write about it.
genocide, and his sheer helplessness in the face of the refusal of the big
powers sitting at the UN to authorise and capacitate his mission on the ground
to intervene to stop the bloodletting. A genocide unfolded before his eyes that
took 800 000 Tutsi lives in 100 days. The trauma of that type of guilt is
something too grave for any human to overcome.
recounted in his memoir Shaking Hands with the Devil. What I never expected to
hear from him, however, was what came next. Dallaire alleged that the Rwanda
Patriotic Front’s Tutsi Commander Paul Kagame had allowed the genocide to
continue longer than it needed to. Dallaire’s interpretation was that in
Kagame’s calculations, the extent of the genocide was likely to ensure that the
RPF would be able to rule the country for decades into the future, due to the
collective guilt of the international community. At the time, it was all too
much for me to absorb or accept.
emails he had been receiving since the end of the genocide from French Canadian
nuns he had known on the ground in Rwanda. Their repeated messages said that
Hutus were disappearing on a weekly basis in Rwanda, taken from their homes in
the dead of night, never to be seen again. The idea that the liberators could
have been slowly cleansing their society of members of the Hutu majority,
quietly abducting them without a trace, was horrifying. Dallaire claimed to
have heard similar reports from other people he considered reliable sources.
unrevealed, this time by human rights organisations about camps of Hutu
refugees in the Eastern DRC having been “liquidated” by the Rwandan military in
the years after the genocide. These were camps with tens of thousands of men,
women and children in them that were simply eliminated from the face of the
earth. It is something that the Rwandan government, with Paul Kagame as its
President denied, but many mass graves were eventually found by the UN and
human rights organisations.
that is the dominant narrative about Rwanda – the 8% economic growth rate, the
reduction in poverty and maternal mortality rates, the advances in education,
IT, and the low levels of crime and corruption – a very different picture
emerges. The miracle and image of Rwanda’s successes gives way to a nation
gripped by fear, fear to say what they really think, to vote the way they want,
to challenge government policies, or to hold their leaders to account. The 25
years of Kagame’s rule has ensured this culture of fear and intimidation, where
at each election Kagame claims to have won well over 90% of the vote, boasting
that the poll is nothing but a formality to confirm his right to rule.
power led Kagame to preside over a referendum in 2015 to amend the constitution
to allow him to run for a third term in office in 2017, enabling him to extend
his rule by a further seven years. The amendment also allows him to stand for a
further two terms beyond 2024, potentially allowing him to remain in power
until 2034. The result of the referendum was supposedly 98% in favour.
criticized the amendments saying it undermined democratic principles, but the
US continues to provide 20% of the Rwandan national budget, the UK is the
second biggest donor and Rwanda’s foreign aid budget as a whole total US$1
billion annually. No matter how Kagame may have manipulated electoral outcomes,
he has remained the darling of the West. Collective guilt for not intervening
to stop the genocide? A desperate need for a foreign aid success story? Or the
reliable extraction of strategic minerals from the Eastern DRC, and the secure
corridor Rwanda provide for their transport out of the region?
Whatever drives the West, what isparticularly troubling is the levels of domestic repression Rwandans are living
under. Any attempt to criticise the government is deemed a threat to national
security and an attempt to stoke sectarianism. Critics, opponents, and
journalists are jailed or disappeared, and the numbers are rising. It is no
longer only opposition leaders or critics that are jailed, but their family
members as well. To add to the draconian nature of the state, it is documented
by Human Rights Watch that petty criminals are being extra-judicially executed
by the security forces. Some villagers are shot for stealing a cow or a bike. It
is all part of a strategy to spread fear in the society to enforce order,
absolute control, and keep the electorate subdued.
over the African Union as its Chair, but his façade of good governance and
democracy was never challenged. Perhaps it is time to tell the truth about the
way things really are in Rwanda and to start challenging some of the myths
that surround the notion of the Rwandan miracle. I have to wonder whether if
Madiba was still alive he wouldn’t have called for a more transparent electoral
system, and supported the notion of majority rule in Rwanda?
Foreign Editor.
The Truth can be buried and stomped into the ground where none can see, yet eventually it will, like a seed, break through the surface once again far more potent than ever, and Nothing can stop it. Truth can be suppressed for a “time”, yet It cannot be destroyed. ==> Wolverine
The Truth can be buried and stomped into the ground where none can see, yet eventually it will, like a seed, break through the surface once again far more potent than ever, and Nothing can stop it. Truth can be suppressed for a time, yet It cannot be destroyed => Wolverine
