Causes Of The Rwandan Genocide

CAUSES OF THE RWANDAN GENOCIED 1

Causes of the Rwandan Genocide

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CAUSES OF THE RWANDAN GENOCIED 2

Causes of the Rwandan Genocide

Introduction

The Rwandan genocide began in 1994 and unfolded within a hundred days, leaving

approximately 800,000 people dead. The mass slaughter of Tutsis and moderate Hutus was

triggered by the assassination of Rwandan president on the 7

of April 1994. However, if the

assassination sparked the genocide, several historical factors had fermented a situation that was

only waiting to explode into violence. Different scholars have advanced varied theories as to the

cause of the war. The Huntington’s school of thought for instance proposes the view that with

the end of the Cold War, countries would encounter ethnic animosity and clashes in a classic

clash of civilizations (Melvern, 2006). The theory, however, has been cited as inherently

defective and dismissive of the many factors that eventually caused the genocide.

Anthropologists and structural analysts too have proposed their own views as to the cause of the

Rwandan genocide but in the final analysis; scholars agree that the causes of the Rwandan

genocide were too complex to reduce into a theory. This paper will analyze the causes of the

Rwandan genocide using various perspectives and demonstrate that the over-powerful post-

colonial regime and its propensity for ethic division, pervasive culture of violence, political,

cultural, and economic reasons, as well as colonial influence led to the 1994 Rwanda’s massive

slaughter.

Rwanda: Historical Background

Since no single theory can explain the myriad and complicated causes of the Rwanda

genocide, it is vitally important to appreciate the country’s unique background and how it set the

stage for genocide. Centuries ago, the baTwa, baHutu, and the BaTutsi settled into present day

Rwanda (Berry, 1999). The baTwa were a pigmy tribe that lived off hunting, gathering, and pot-

CAUSES OF THE RWANDAN GENOCIED 3

making and mainly domiciled in the forests and hills. The baHutu were mainly cultivators and

led a more settled lifestyle in the lush and fertile countryside. The baTutsi were herders and

nomadic. Second in population to the Hutu, the Tutsis enjoyed social status conferred on them

courtesy of the number of livestock they owned. A Hutu would attain the status of a Tutsi if he

owned many animals and a Tutsi with few livestock could lose his status and become a Hutu.

Politically, the Tutsi and Hutu organized themselves into clans where each had their own

leaders. The hierarchical leadership was determined by one’s livestock and later by size of land

and army. Consequently, the Tutsi were inherently advantaged and produced a king called

Mwami (Twagilimana, 2003). Despite the imbalanced political arrangement that saw the Tutsi

enjoy leadership at the expense of the majority Hutus, there was relative stability as the monarch

did not enjoy absolute political powers. However, the advent of colonialism changed the political

scene in Rwanda. The 1884 Berlin Conference on partition of Africa put Rwanda under

Germany colonial rule. Hesitant to exercise direct rule, the Germans selected the Tutsis as

administrators. The Tutsi community enjoyed the benefits of colonial education and jobs and

ethnicity became institutionalized. Following 1919 Treaty of Versailles that marked the end of

the First World War, Germany was dispossessed off Rwanda and Belgium took over (Hatzfeld,

& Depardon, 2008). The Belgians further entrenched ethnicity by proclaiming the Tutsis as the

biblical Hamites whose duty was to spread civilization to Africa. The new division irked the

Hutus whose animosity against the Tutsis had started to grow.

From 1940 to 1950, the clamor for independence in Africa and Asia was at its crescendo.

The Tutsi, now highly educated and cognizant of the developments around the world led the

agitation for independence. Keen on avoiding a protracted war for independence that had

plagued other colonial powers, Belgium ceded ground and allowed the Hutus government

CAUSES OF THE RWANDAN GENOCIED 4

positions earmarked for the Tutsis. The new arrangement initially irked the Tutsis whose idea of

independence did not entail social equality with the Hutus. On their part, having tasted freedom,

the Hutus wanted full independence and they thus formed an emancipation movement called the

National Revolutionary Movement for Development (Des Forges, 1999). In a new twist of

events, the Hamitic tag that had elevated the Tutsis was used to label them foreigners who

needed to go back north where they came from. The Hutus declared a social revolution that used

violence against the ruling elite and the Belgians had zero options than to call for elections which

the MDR won. The colonial power came to an end and the Tutsi monarch was overthrown.

The independent Rwanda would soon plunge into ethic division as Rwanda and Burundi

split in 1962 soon after independence. In the ensuing riots against a UN resolution that spilt the

country, riots targeting the Tutsis escalated. With the death of the Mwami in 1959, the Tutsi

were now a threatened lot and soon after independence they regrouped to overthrow the

Kayibanda led MDR (Stone, 2008). The president, aware that his ethic Hutus were the majority

launched a campaign to mobilize his people along ethnic lines. He labeled the Tutsis as

cockroaches that had to be terminated or else they would come back to perpetuate their tyranny

on the Hutus. The Hutus heeded the clarion call and by the end of the riots, more than 300,000

Tutsis had been exiled to neighboring countries. A decade after independence, Kayibanda would

be overthrown by Juvenal Habyarimana.

Habyarimana’s reign, just like its predecessor, relied on divide and rule to establish

dominance over the people. In a reversal to the colonial method that required people to identify

with their tribes but now favoring the Hutus, the Tutsis found it difficult to access education and

jobs (Thompson, 2007). Habyarimana further punished them by relocating them to rural areas

that had little human habitation. He also barred inter-ethnic marriages and would routinely

CAUSES OF THE RWANDAN GENOCIED 5

possess properties belonging to the Tutsis. Tutsis were also victims of targeted ethic killings

reminiscent of the situation that had led many of them into exile. At the same time however,

Rwanda was beginning to experience relative economic growth despite high poverty levels.

Prelude to Genocide

The 1970s under Habyarimana were relatively stable until the 1980s when the economy

faced the worst crisis in post independence. The poor harvests occasioned by prolonged draught

caused massive food shortage against a backdrop of increased population. Moreover, Rwanda

was facing a huge trade deficit while at the same time the ruling elite was engaging in primitive

accumulation that angered many. Opposition began to emerge within the dominant Hutu as

criticism of Habyarimana’s high-handedness and corruption grew. Rather than address the

economic and social issues that plagued the country, the president started a crackdown on

dissenters. The international community, led by France, intervened and pressured Habyarimana

to introduce multi-party politics to address the social unrest (Stone, 2008). While the president

appeared to bend to pressure while in the public, he heightened crackdown on the opposition as

he became more extreme in his handling of the ensuing crisis.

The 1990, Habyarimana had exiled his opponents, predominantly the Tutsis, into

Uganda, Burundi, and Tanzania. Living in exile, the Tutsis were eager to return home, depose

Habyarimana and take back power. The militant ones formed the Rwandan Patriotic Front where

leaders such as Paul Kagame mobilized the Tutsis to occupy the Northern provinces, much to the

chagrin of the Hutus and the Tutsis who feared reprisal (Hatzfeld, & Depardon, 2008).

Habyarimana reacted by unleashing the Rwandan army on the Tutsi militants in an operation

where hundreds of Tutsis were killed. The Hutus civilians organized a militant wing called

Interahamwe to counter the Tutsis militants called Inkotanyi. With the help of French advisors,

CAUSES OF THE RWANDAN GENOCIED 6

Habyarimana managed to halt the Tutsis but noticeably, no one took responsibility for the many

deaths of innocent Tutsis. As the paper will explore subsequently, the pervading culture of civil

war and violence would become a potent ingredient of the genocide that followed.

In the lade-up to the genocide, a government sanctioned hate campaign and ideology

targeting the Tutsis was on the rise. Habyarimana through his cronies authorized propaganda

machinery that scapegoat the Tutsis as the cause of all the problems bedeviling Rwanda. The

Rwanda newspaper called Kangura for instance run a hate campaign against the Tutsis

(Thompson, 2007). The Hutu Ten Commandments ran by the influential newspaper criminalized

marriages and relationships between Hutus and Tutsis. The newspaper also ran images

portraying Tutsis as oppressors keen on ruling over the Hutus by all means. Cartons routinely

depicted war images and attributed them to the Tutsis in a vicious campaign that saw the hate for

the Tutsis escalate.

The hate campaign and propaganda was also propagated through radio. The fact that the

country had low literacy levels while the mainstream media was not accessible to many

threatened to slow down the hate campaign (Hatzfeld, 2008). However, the Hutus would

regularly gather in village hotels where they could listen to the hate messages against the Tutsis.

The country’s crop of educated and intelligent people was equally undiscerning, compromised,

or complicit. Beneficiaries of a government education that discouraged free thought, even

intelligent people were uncritical of the ideology being inculcated by the government through the

media.

The escalating civil unrest, government crackdown, and violence caught the attention of

the United Nations, which created the United Nations Assistance Mission to Rwanda to broker

peace, arrest the humanitarian crisis, help repatriation of exiled Tutsis and oversee the creation of

CAUSES OF THE RWANDAN GENOCIED 7

a transitional government as previously agreed between different parties in the Arusha Accord.

UNAMIR also dispatched a standing army of more than 2500 troops from different countries

(Thompson, 2007). On the eve of the genocide, four factions were tussling for power with

Habyarimana backed by the army and militant Hutus proclaiming the Hutu power against other

moderate forces.

Genocide

On 6

April 1994, president Habyarimana and his Burundian counterpart Ntayamira,

accompanied by their military and political cronies were coming from a regional meeting of

heads of states where they had also committed to implement the Arusha Accord. Before

touchdown at Kigali airport, the plane was shot twice and burst into flames as all its occupants

were killed. The UNAMIR commander, eager to seize the moment and install their favored

Prime Minister as the new president, moved to Rwanda’s army headquarters to demand as such

from Colonel Bagasora (Hatzfeld, 2008). The colonel could not listen and being a Hutu

hardliner ordered the army into action. The first casualty was to be prime minister and parts of

the cabinet that were moderate Hutus. The Tutsis suffered the brunt of the war as within minutes

most of them in elite positions in government were killed. Within a week the massacres had

spread to the village where the administrative structures and the RTLM radio helped to identify

Tutsis and moderate Hutus. As the UN peace keeping mission and the international community

watched without taking action for a hundred days, a third of the Tutsis’ population was wiped

out of existence. Estimates vary between 500,000 to 1.2 million deaths in what is regarded as the

worst mass slaughter in recent history.

Causes of the Genocide: Theoretical Perspective

CAUSES OF THE RWANDAN GENOCIED 8

Theories of conflict have for a long time portrayed the Rwandan genocide as a tribal

conflict of ancient tribes that could only happen in Africa. In the simplistic view of these

theorists, the Hutus and the Tutsis has different forms of civilizations that would inevitably clash

and lead to mass slaughter between the competing tribes (Cohen, 2007). By suggesting the

genocide was a mere contest between conflicting civilizations, the conflict theories is damaging

in two levels. In the first instance, it makes assumptions that are damaging and offensive to the

people of Rwanda. In the second level, the theory dismisses the myriad of other complicated

reasons that in combination led to the genocide. The theory is thus not only simplistic but

damaging to proper and accurate understanding of the Rwandan Genocide.

The other theory takes a colonial angle and postulates that Rwanda’s pre-colonial and

post-colonial history resulted to tribal tensions that eventually led to the genocide. The theory is

however primordial and inconclusive and hardly persuasive (Spalding, 2009). Though the Hutus

and Tutsis pre-colonial history was skewed in favor of the Tutsis minority, there is no evidence

of sustained ethnic tension. Livestock and agricultural land conferred social status regardless on

one’s tribe. While the Tutsis were at the helm of the monarch through a Mwami, each clan

retained a form of centralized political structure that governed the clans. Granted, the Belgians

exploited the existing arrangement to exalt the Tutsis, much to the chagrin of the Hutus(Fielding,

2014). However, by themselves, these circumstances were hardly causative of the Rwandan

genocide. The theory ignores Habyarimana’s role in stoking ethnic divisions that eventually

fermented the social unrests that triggered the genocide.

Modern theories lean towards the intricacies around an over powerful government trying

to use all means to sustain the status quo as the causes of the genocide. As soon as Rwanda

attained independence in 1962, a powerful clique captures state power and would not relinquish

CAUSES OF THE RWANDAN GENOCIED 9

it peacefully. In the 1990s, Habyarimana was facing stiff opposition from moderate Hutus and

Tutsis who were exasperated by the pervasive corruption and civil war (Fisanick, 2004). When

the Rwandan Patriotic Front invaded from the north, the situation was already rife for mass

violence. Moreover, the growing international pressure had put Habyarimana in a tight position

and he had agreed on a transitional government as per the dictates of the Arusha Accord.

However, as the economic crisis intensified, Habyarimana took refuge in his Hutu tribe.

Noticeably, it is the government that provoked and actively executed the genocide using its

administrative machinery.

The modernists theory has been hailed as the most central and cogent explanation of the

Rwandan genocide. However, the theory has also been criticized for failing to take an account

other equally important factors that led to the mass slaughter. The happenings in Burundi where

Tutsis refugees had run to as well as the fact of the situation being inverted regarding Tutsi Hutu

ration was also important. Moreover, the theory fails to take into account the role of the

international community in not just being complicit but somehow supporting the over-powerful

government. France and Belgium for instance supported Habyarimana against Tutsi’s invasion in

the 1990 without being forceful enough in demanding for their repatriation. France later turned

the pressure on Habyarimana to allow multiparty democracy but he defied them by being more

extreme (Kroslak, 2007). But more worrying, the UN peace keeping mission, despite a robust

mandate to protect civilians and disarm militants, stood aside as more than 800000 were killed

by the Rwandan army and Hutu militants.

The fear and propaganda theory also proposes a perspective to understand the Rwandan

genocide. Soon after independence, the first two presidents used fear and propaganda to keep

their hold on power. Being ethnic Hutus, the presidents presented Tutsis are archetypal enemies

CAUSES OF THE RWANDAN GENOCIED 10

to be kept at bay at all cost. The Kangura newspaper and national radio were the government

official mouthpieces to spread hate and propaganda against the Tutsis (mvuyekure, 2006). When

genocide started, the radio was used to identify Tutsis and moderate Hutus. Going back to the

1990s when the Rwandan Patriotic Front invaded from Uganda and captured the Northern

provinces, the government used fear to help create militant groups from the Hutus youth.

Following the Arusha Accord, Habyarimana ceded some cabinet seats, agreed to creation of a

national assembly, and forfeited 50% of the army to the RFP and finally agreed to democracy

(Fielding, 2014). However, the government continued to use fear and propaganda to paint RFP

as keen on restoring Tutsi’s oppression of the Hutu. The continued use of fear and propaganda

led to a situation where Habyarimana’s assassination was quickly blamed on all Tutsis and swift

justice administered.

Events in Burundi also played a causative role in the Rwandan genocide. While the Hutus

dominated Rwanda, the Tutsis dominated Burundi. Any violation of Tutsis in Rwanda was met

with similar reprisal of Hutus in Burundi. The 1993 assassination of the Burundian Hutu

president by the majority Tutsi army stands out as a watershed moment in the history of the two

countries (Destexhe, Marschner, & Shawcross, 1995). More than escalating ethic division

between the two countries, 200000 Hutus moved back to Rwanda as refugees and settled where

they could easily be mobilized against the Tutsis. Coincidentally, the Rwanda Patriotic Front

invaded Rwanda at the same time, raising suspicions that Burundi was supporting the militants.

Conclusion

To recap, the causes of the Rwandan genocide are complicated and interrelated that no

one theory can adequately encompass every cause. However, most scholars gravitate towards a

modern theory that traces the origin of the war to an over powerful government eager to stoke

CAUSES OF THE RWANDAN GENOCIED 11

ethnic division and use state machinery to retain the status quo. Rwanda’s pre-colonial and

colonial history that elevated the minority Tutsis above the majority Hutus, though not strictly

causative, did not help the matter. The events in Burundi that were the exact opposite of the case

in Rwanda offer regional context to the genocide while the United Nations, largely a bystander

as the slaughter of Tutsis and moderate Hutus unfolded, lays bare the complicit role of the

international community in the Rwandan genocide.

CAUSES OF THE RWANDAN GENOCIED 12

Bibliography List

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Cohen, 2007, One hundred days of silence: America and the Rwanda genocide, Lanham, Md.

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Rights Watch.

Destexhe, A, Marschner, A, & Shawcross, W, 1995, Rwanda and genocide in the twentieth

century, London, Pluto.

Fielding, L, 2014, Female Genocidaires during the Rwandan Genocide, Hamburg, Diplomica

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speak, London, Serpent's Tail.

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Kroslak, D, 2007, The role of France in the Rwandan genocide, London, Hurst.

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mvuyekure, P, 2006, Lamentations on the Rwandan Genocide: poems, Cedar Falls, Iowa, Final

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Thompson, A, 2007, The media and the Rwanda genocide, London, Pluto Press.

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