It’s high time Africans reclaimed their collective crimes and atrocities

Crude weapons used to slaughter citizens of Rwanda in 1994 are seen here on April 7, 2011, during the Seventeenth Rwandan Genocide Commemorations. In just 100 days, 1million people were killed in cold blood. PHOTO/TOM MARUKO/FILE

What you need to know:

  • Philpot argues, among other things, that the Rwanda slaughter would not have happened at the scale it eventually did if the United States and other world powers had enabled United Nations peacekeepers to stem the tide of blood.
  • I detest the idea that Africans can never have interests of their own over which they kill each other... and that we are always doing the bidding of an external master.

On April 7, Rwanda started ceremonies to mark the 20th anniversary of the genocide in which anything between 800,000 to one million were killed in 1994.

Inevitably, there have been many articles, and a few books, revisiting that tragedy — casting new lights on it, embellishing the tale, editing out some old facts, and tweaking things.

Enter Canadian author Robin Philpot, with his book, Rwanda and the New Scramble for Africa. The book makes the case for looking back to 1990 when the Rwanda Patriotic Army launched its attack from Uganda, to understand the roots of the genocide, and argues that the Tutsi were not just victims or heroes of the genocide – they were also part villain.

Some will find that position repulsive, but it is a legitimate point of inquiry in trying to understand what happened in those blood-drenched 100 days from April 7, 1994.

The more troubling element of the book for me, however, is one that many Africans will agree with.

Philpot argues, among other things, that the Rwanda slaughter would not have happened at the scale it eventually did if the United States and other world powers had enabled United Nations peacekeepers to stem the tide of blood.

“The UK and US did everything in their power to prevent a peacekeeping force from being sent in,” Philpot said in the Voice of America interview recently. Why? According to him, for geopolitical reasons, the US wanted Paul Kagame to be installed as Rwanda’s leader.

Withholding resources that could have put an end to the killings was part of Washington’s strategy to ensure that Kagame would prevail, (in part because he or the RPF would never have won an election, Philpot argues).

“The Rwanda Patriotic Front and its leader were more like paid arsonists masquerading as firemen than patriots who saved the people from the fire, which is what the official story would have us believe,” Philpot writes.

"AFRICANS ARE CHILDLIKE"

Both the African and global anti-imperialist clubs are divided...at least on which imperialist is to blame. In Rwanda, especially for the ruling RPF, France and Belgium, France, in particular, has even been blamed for directly taking part in the genocide.

A sharp criticism of Philpot came recently in Africa Reflections, an online journal of commentary, by Robert Gribbin, US ambassador to Rwanda from 1996 to 1999, who writes: “In the end, Philpot’s conclusions are inherently racist because of his basic premise that Africans were not competent enough to organise their own politics, fights, disagreements and wars, therefore the guiding hand must be external, i.e., American.”

Whether the Rwanda war and the genocide were partly America’s and Britain’s devious plan, or a French plot, I detest the idea that Africans can never have interests of their own over which they kill each other... and that we are always doing the bidding of an external master.

This thinking plays into the old idea that Africans are childlike. On one hand, it helps justify things like slavery and colonialism as “civilising” missions. On the other, it allows us to escape the burden of responsibility and avoid confronting our own failures.

I think it is time to reclaim our crimes and atrocities against each other. I would take it several notches higher than Gribbin, because it is not just a question of “competence” as he puts it.

The madness in Africa actually does have logic, deadly as it is. The Rwanda genocide was at base a clash over land during a lean harvest period between the Hutu (who were mostly farmers), and the Tutsi (who were cattle keepers) in Africa’s most densely populated country.

The Hutu had the political power and numbers; genocide was the redistributive vehicle they chose to take Tutsi land. History, politics, and geopolitics were the cover they exploited.

Take slavery, for another example. African chiefs who captured other Africans and sold them into slavery, took several mouths off the table, and opened up more land to the slave “survivors”.

It is horrible, shameful, and has brewed enmities that have badly deformed African politics. But there is a lot to be gained from acknowledging that we are no different from other peoples — that there are things we feel motivated enough to kill millions of people over, and those that we are motivated to die for.