Prejudice, Crisis, and Genocide in Rwanda

Prejudice, Crisis, and Genocide in RwandaAuthor(s): Peter UvinSource: African Studies Review, Vol. 40, No. 2 (Sep., 1997), pp. 91-115Published by: African Studies AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/525158 .

Accessed: 23/06/2014 08:38

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

.

African Studies Association is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to AfricanStudies Review.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 134.117.10.200 on Mon, 23 Jun 2014 08:38:01 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=afsta

http://www.jstor.org/stable/525158?origin=JSTOR-pdf

http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp


Prejudice, Crisis, and Genocide in Rwanda

Peter Uvin

From 7 April, 1994, onwards, a well planned and massively executed genocide began in Rwanda, which led to the brutal slaughter of up to one million defenseless children, women and men. This genocide was the culmination of a four year period during which civil war and extremist violence cost the lives of tens of thousands of persons. Both these processes took place against the background of the never-resolved consequences of previous instances of violence, in Rwanda and in Burundi, including a massive festering refugee problem. They heralded the beginning of further violence in Rwanda, Burundi and Zaire, which has lasted until now.

This article attempts to understand the socio-psychological causes of the dramatic and profoundly disturbing events that took place in Rwanda in 1994. Its starting questions are: how do situations come about in which people massively participate in brutal violence against their neighbors who have not harmed them? What kind of social and political processes have taken place that can bring people to lose the values, restraints and ethics that under normal circumstances make these actions impossible, and abhorrent to contemplate?

We will demonstrate that racist prejudice was a structural feature of Rwandan society, fulfilling simultaneously important political functions for the elites and socio-psychological functions for the peasant masses. The origins of this prejudice lie in particular and partial interpretations of the past, stressing traumatic events and supposed differences rather than the inverse; here, as with all other prejudices throughout the world, factual accuracy is much less important than raw emotional power. This prejudice was institutionalized and state-sponsored throughout this century, although in changing forms. Dormant for more than a decade, this racist prejudice became radicalized as a result of a number of conjunctural factors, such as: a severe economic crisis from 1985 onwards, hurting all sectors of society, although in different ways; a civil war, bringing about death, insecurity and displacement; and strong internal and external pressures for democratization, rendering the continuation of the monopoly of power and privilege by the powers-that-be increasingly unlikely. It is this old, radicalized prejudice that reached its extreme, genocidal form in the 1994 events.

African Studies Review, Volume 40, Number 2 (September, 1997), pp. 91-115.



AFRICAN STUDIES REVIEW

This article begins with an overview of the pre-colonial and colonial history of Rwanda. It then studies the nature of prejudice in Rwanda, explaining its functions for both the elites and large segments of the population. Finally, it will analyze the economic and political changes that preceded the genocide and led to it. This explanation will be strongly informed by the literature on political psychology and on past genocides, foremost the Holocaust.

Rwanda Before Independence: A Contested History

The majority of scholars on Rwanda believe that, before colonization, most of current Rwanda was a monarchy dominated by a Tutsi king. The cattle-rearing Tutsi had arrived in successive waves from the North during the 15th and 16th century, fleeing famine and drought. The agriculturist Hutu they met in Rwanda had immigrated into this fertile region some centuries earlier, from central Africa. The most long-standing inhabitants of the region are the Twa, a small and marginal group (only one percent of the current population), primarily engaged in pottery and hunting. These, then, were for a long time the three main groupings in Rwanda. Their integration had gone very far: they speak the same language, believe in the same God, share the same culture and live side by side throughout the country. There are few cases known anywhere in the world of different ethnic groups sharing so many of the same characteristics. This has led many to challenge the notion of the existence of ethnic groups in Rwanda.

Indeed, there exists little agreement among specialists of the pre- colonial period (Kuper 1977, 100; Prunier 1995; Vidal 1985; Chretien 1985; Napier 1961; Lemarchand 1966). Disagreement exists on the nature of the distinction between Hutu, Tutsi and Twa. Are they distinct ethnic groups? Or are they socio-economic divisions within the society of Banyarwanda, akin to castes perhaps, or even social classes? Some authors suggest that by the 19th century hundreds of years of cohabitation and intermarriage had produced an "integrated" social system wherein the categories of Hutu and Tutsi were largely occupationally defined: whoever acquired a sizable herd of cattle was called Tutsi and was highly considered. In the same vein, Rwandan emigrees in neighboring Zaire were until recently known as belonging to the ethnic group of Banyarwanda-the local term for "Rwandans:" many of them grew up knowing themselves solely as such.

Another important issue which divides the specialists concerns the nature of the pre-colonial political system. It seems incontestable that, at the time of the arrival of the colonizer (end of the 19th century), Rwanda was a kingdom with a Tutsi king and a predominantly Tutsi court. Yet, intense debate exists as to the exact

92




nature of that system. Was the kingdom highly centralized and inegalitarian, or was the power of the king and the Tutsi surrounding him more theoretical than real outside of the central region? What were the levels of mutual control, exchange and obligation between Tutsi and Hutu? What is the role of lineages, which included both Tutsi and Hutu, in the social and political system? When did the cattle-work exchange--the centerpiece of so-called "Tutsi feudalism"-originate, and what was its precise nature? What possibilities for upwards mobility, if any, were open to Hutu? (de Heusch 1994; Lemarchand 1970; Newbury 1988; Prunier 1995; Vidal 1988).

There exists no consensual scientific knowledge to answer any of these questions. This is partly due to inherent difficulties of recreating the history of oral societies, as well as the distortions introduced by the eurocentric and often outright racist accounts by the first colonizers, missionaries and ethnographers (the only 'eye-witnesses' to the old political system). However, the prime cause of the difficulty in reaching any agreed-upon interpretation of these issues is the fact that, since the early days of the anthropological and historical enterprise in Rwanda, these issues have acquired important political stakes. The "official Hutu" position, held by the previous genocidal government and more or less backed up by some scientists, is that Rwanda was indeed invaded by "foreign" Tutsi cattle rearers, who gradually, due to their sophisticated organization, managed to install a system of centuries of oppression and exploitation. The inverse position, held by groups opposed to the government (mostly, but not solely Tutsi) as well as by a fair number of scientists, asserts that, although the population of Banyarwanda is composed of groups who, centuries ago, had different origins, the Rwandans are basically a single ethnic group, with the differences between Hutu and Tutsi reflecting socio-economic divisions. Proponents of this view advance detailed refutations, arguing that many of the pretended mechanisms of exploitation and oppression are simply misinterpretations if not outright propaganda. They also point out that Rwanda has never known any conflict or war between Hutu and Tutsi before the end of colonization. All in all, one can argue almost any position on these debates, and invoke a series of famous and not so famous social scientists to "prove" it.

I do not choose sides in these debates. In order to explain the 1994 genocide, it really is of little importance to know exactly what the pre- colonial political situation between Hutu and Tutsi was-whether it was one of legitimate, albeit unequal, "ethnic" harmony or one of clientship and ethnic inequality. The pre-colonial history does not by itself explain, and even less justify, genocide or extreme violence now. Even if it could be "proven" that Rwanda's history is not one of antagonistic ethnic groups but of harmony, that would be irrelevant for

93




the present. It is now conventional wisdom in ethnic studies that "the key to identifying communal groups is not the presence of a particular trait or combination of traits, but rather the shared perception that the defining traits, whatever they are, set the group apart"(Gurr 1993, 4). Benedict Anderson has taken this argument further, speaking of "imagined communities" to describe nationalist movements (Anderson 1991). In 1994, as in 1959, distinct ethnicity was most certainly a fact of life in Rwanda, at the level of discourse, state policy or individual sentiment. It has caused innumerable deaths and pain and cannot be wished away by pointing to a harmonious past.

There was one other important socio-geographic division in pre- colonial Rwanda. In the North-West (currently the provinces of Ruhengeri and Gisenyi), until the end of the 19th century, there existed a set of small Hutu kingdoms, in which fewer Tutsi lived, and were devoid of political power. These kingdoms were fighting aggression from the Tutsi kingdom in central Rwanda and were only incorporated into what is now Rwanda at the beginning of colonization, with German military help. These two regions, then-the Northwest on the one hand and the rest of the country on the other-differ in level of historical Tutsi influence, as well as their traditional system of land tenure, the importance of cattle rearing and agriculture, the composition of its traditional elite, etc.

It has been widely observed that the 1959-1963 violence against Tutsi was especially widespread in the North (Lemarchand 1970; Prunier 1995). Former president Habyarimana is from that region, as is the establishment that was responsible for the 1994 genocide (Habyarimana's wife and her family, the major conspirators behind the genocide, were from a traditionally prominent Northern lineage). It is also in this region that large-scale massacres against Tutsi took place in the 1990-1993, years preceding the actual genocide. From the end of the 1980s onwards, internal political opposition in Rwanda came very much from Southern Hutu, excluded from the spoils of power for two decades, and there had been instances of popular unrest in the South since the end of the 1980s. Many Southern Hutu opposition leaders were killed in the 1994 genocide. Hence, this North-South division is clearly of importance to understand contemporary Rwanda, although it is by itself not sufficient to explain the genocide.

Approximately a hundred years ago a fourth ethnic group entered Rwanda, descending from central Europe. This group is commonly referred to as the "Bazungu"-the term used for "whites," that in reality refers not to skin color but to an exclusive lifestyle. It never comprised more than one percent of the population, but came to own the largest share of the country's purchasing power, vehicles, etc. The newly arrived Bazungu conquered Rwanda by means of force and diplomacy. The latter essentially involved the delegation of an

94




important, albeit subservient, political role to the King and the Tutsi rulers surrounding him in return for their cooperation-the famous indirect rule, consisting of the "incorporation of native authorities into a state-embraced customary order and to the benefit of the colonial power (Mamdani 1996, 18). At the same time, with Bazungu (German) help, the control by the central Tutsi aristocracy over the territory of Rwanda greatly increased. Some small Hutu kingdoms in the Northwest were annexed and their land tenure systems brought under monarchic control, while the other peripheral regions of the country were brought more forcefully under centralized command (Newbury 1988).

Simultaneously, the nature of the state changed: it became a conduit for the rule of the colonizer, imposing taxes and obligatory cash crops to pay these taxes, implementing onerous legislation, including the infamous forced labor (Prunier 1995, 35; des Forges 1986; Willame 1995, 113). New sources of power and privilege emerged, such as mastery of the language of the Bazungu (French), adherence to his religion (Catholicism, and later the "secular religion" of development) and participation in the money-based economy.

Under Bazungu control, the exclusive beneficiaries of these new sources of power were people of Tutsi descent. During most of the colonial period, the Bazungu were convinced that the Tutsi were more intelligent, reliable, hardworking--in short, more like themselves-than the Hutu. For many scientists, as well as for many Rwandans, the origins of ethnic conflict and racism in Rwanda lie in this ideology cum practice of the Belgian colonizer; others dispute this hotly. For now it is sufficient to say that the Bazungu instituted a system of rigid ethnic classification, involving such "modem scientific" methods as the measurement of nose and skull sizes, and the attribution of obligatory identity papers stating one's ethnicity. They reserved education, as well as jobs in the administration and the army, largely for the Tutsi.

According to oft repeated data, in the 1950s, 31 of the 33 members of the "conseil superieur du pays" were Tutsi, as were all 45 "chefs de chefferies" and 544 out of 559 "sous-chefs"(Funga 1991, 24; Prunier 1995, 27). All in all, with the military backing of the Bazungu, the old and new Tutsi powerholders saw their power greatly increase (Newbury 1988, 118-20; Prunier 1995, 25). Note, however, that by far not all Tutsi benefitted from this policy: after all, there were a few hundreds of thousand Tutsi in Rwanda, and they did not all have positions in the government or the Church. Prunier documents that "it is mainly two [Tutsi] clans that monopolize the advantages: thus 31 out of 45 "chefs des chefferies" were in the hands of the Abanyiginya clan and five with the Abega clan" (Prunier 1995, 24). He also quotes data that show that the average income of 287 Tutsi families in the mid-1950s,

95




excluding holders of political office, was only four percent higher than the average income of 914 Hutu families (Prunier 1995, 50).

Hence, under indirect rule, social relationships in Rwanda changed greatly: they became more uniform, rigid, unequal and exploitative, with a clear hierarchy from Bazungu to Tutsi to Hutu to Twa, with persons at each higher level having privileges denied to those at lower levels and disdaining those below them. While formally the old political structure of Rwanda, revolving around the monarchy was still intact, its nature had changed profoundly (Lemarchand 1970; Newbury 1988; Prunier 1995, 30).

At the end of the 1950s and the beginning of the 1960s, two important processes occurred rapidly and simultaneously: the abandonment by the Bazungu of formal political power ("decolonization"), and the overthrow, by a few Hutu educated at the Catholic schools after the second World War, of the Tutsi oligarchy (the so-called "social revolution"). Both these processes were to radically alter the face of Rwanda, and begin the cycle of violence that rocks it until today.

The "social revolution" consisted of the overthrow of the monarchy, and its replacement with a presidential Republic. This took place with the acquiescence, if not connivance, of the departing Bazungu. Indeed, in the last years before Independence, in the name of a suddenly discovered attachment to democracy, as well as fear from the much more radical (Leftist, anti-colonial) Tutsi elite, Bazungu administrative and religious authorities had switched positions in favor of the Hutu (Prunier 1995, 49).

The process took place in three stages. In 1958-59, small pogroms took place in some provinces: hundreds of Tutsi were killed, and many more lost their houses and fled the country. In 1960-61, legislative elections led to a massive victory of Parmehutu, a radical Hutu (virulently anti-Tutsi) party, and the replacement of the monarchy by a presidential regime. In 1961-63, Tutsi refugees attempted to return manu militari, launching small guerrilla assaults from Burundi and Uganda. These assaults were stopped easily, but led to organized mass killing of innocent Tutsi civilians-eerily resemblant to the 1990-1993 events. Together, up to 30,000 Tutsi were killed and more than 100,000 Tutsi fled the country (Kuper 1977; Lemarchand 1970; Prunier 1995).

The Politics of Prejudice

Independence thus created a profoundly new and ambiguous situation in Rwanda. Its political system was now inverted, with a small Hutu elite on top of the political power structure. Yet, the two previously powerful groups were still physically present in the country,

96




holding many of their previous assets. The number of Bazungu actually increased, and their influence in the economy and the administration-even the military-(de Heusch 1994) remained large, albeit less formal. At the same time, hundreds of thousands of Tutsi still remained in the country, many of them well educated and wealthy.

Finally, the new elite faced the need to justify its hold on power to its fellow Hutu: after all, although some Hutu had usurped state power, the lives of the masses of Hutu peasants were basically unchanged. What was the ruling clique's claim to power? It was not elected by the people it claimed to represent; its main claim to power came from its control of the army and the state. How to avoid challenges to its control over these prime sources of power and wealth?

Strategies of Survival

Hence, a dual mandate of "state building" exists for the new elites: first, the definition and strengthening of the state as an institution with authority and capabilities; second, the strengthening of the control of the state by the powers-that-be: they-and no one else-must be shown to be the best suited to lead that new state.

The Rwandan state has been unusually successful at both these tasks. As to the former: the Rwandese state has been able to expand its presence to the most remote corners of the territory and of social life. Representatives of the state and of the single party were present at even the lowest level of social organization: each "colline" (hill-the basic geographical reference in Rwanda), each extended family was in permanence surrounded by centrally-appointed administrators, teachers, agricultural monitors, internal security agents or police agents, as well as by local party cadres of all kinds. The state was in charge of all fields of human endeavor, from education, health and rural development, to the promotion of culture and the "right" social values-much of this financed by vast quantities of development aid. It has been argued by many scholars that in much of Africa, this project has been only partly achieved, and that the state is weak or soft, incapable of penetrating the social organization and economy of large parts of the rural population. Whatever the general validity of this argument-and it has been contested by Sangmpam in this journal (1993)-it certainly does not apply to Rwanda!

As we said above, the second mandate of state building consists of the strengthening by the new elite of its control over the state apparatus. Also in this field, the regime was highly successful. Two strategies were adopted by the post-Independence regimes: the first Republic (1962-73) under Kayibanda, and the second Republic (1973- 1994) under General Habyarimana, minister of Defense under the

97




previous Republic. Like elsewhere, these were the twin strategies of the use of force and the quest for legitimization.

The Kayibanda regime imprisoned, chased or killed most former Tutsi powerholders and all Tutsi politicians, even the most moderate, as well as a quite a few opposition Hutu politicians (de Heusch 1994). The second Republic was an equally autocratic, military dictatorship. It killed many of the powerholders of the first Republic, and its internal security kept a tight lid on any opposition or dissent for more than a decade. The legal system was independent only in name and impunity was the norm (ICHRDD Jan. 1995, 194); regular popular elections were a farce in which Habyarimana was always re-elected with more than 95 percent of the vote; any form of critical press put the author's freedom at risk.

But the main strength of the two regimes lay not in their successful oppression (which was quite low compared to certain other countries in Africa, including neighboring Burundi), but in their capacity to legitimize themselves vis-a-vis internal and external forces. In this, both regimes employed two separate discourses of legitimization: one was the ethnic, "social revolution" argument, largely tailored for domestic consumption; the other was a "development" legitimization, aimed at both the international Bazungu audience and the domestic one, facilitating the maintenance of the powers-that-be in their position (Newbury 1992).

The ideology of the "social revolution" can be summarized as the notion that Rwanda belongs to the Hutu, its original inhabitants, who had been brutally subjugated for centuries by the foreign masters, the Tutsi; in 1959, the Hutu had wrestled power away from their former masters and installed a true democracy, representing the vast majority of the people. This notion that the government is the legitimate representative of the majority Hutu, and the sole defense against the Tutsi's evil attempts to enslave the people again, constituted the powerful core of the legitimization of the ruling clique's hold on power (Reintjens 1994; Prunier 1995; Pabanel 1995). This racist ideology was, and still is, powerful in its appeal: given that the ancient regime was "feudal" and unrepresentative, the new one must be progressive and democratic (de Heusch 1994, 11). This ideology was backed by the Church as well as many foreigners, who accepted its claims to progressiveness and democracy.

This prejudiced, ethnic ideology hides inequality and oppression under the veil of joint belonging to the "imagined community" of the Hutu. Or, in the words of a Physicians for Human Rights report: "Habyarimana fostered "ethnic" politics to divert attention from the nation's poverty and intra-Hutu political divisions" (Physicians 1994). As Anderson already rightly observed, racism "justifies not so much

98




foreign wars as domestic repression and domination" (Anderson 1991, 50).

This anti-Tutsi ideology can properly be called racist for two reasons: the differences it highlights are declared to be racial ones by those concerned; and these differences are invested with dehumanizing notions. Indeed, the distinctions between Hutu and Tutsi is considered to be one of races, with old myths of Tutsi as being of different, so-called "hamitic" race, backed up by sporadic "scientific evidence" on body size, blood composition and stomach enzymes being repeated until today (Chretien 1995; Grosse 1994). The distinctions between Hutu and Tutsi, moreover, are invested with notions of moral and human superiority and inferiority, with the Tutsi collectively being attributed characteristics of evilness that are properly speaking dehumanizing.

This ideology has always contained elements of a genocidal discourse, as we can see in a 1964 Kayibanda speech, suggesting to the Tutsi refugees that, if they seek political power again, they "may well find that the whole Tutsi race will be wiped out" (Erny 1994, 62-3). As Pabanel says, commenting on the 1961-63 period, "the leaders of the First Republic used these populations (the Tutsi inside the country) as hostages, crystallizing around them the frustrations born from the disillusionment with Independence. This led to violent massacres and a further population exodus" (Pabanel 1995, 114).

The development ideology adds to this a set of ideas that can be used for both internal and external legitimization, as well as for individual enrichment. It is hardly more sophisticated than the other strand, but certainly a lot more pleasant and appealing to international audiences. It basically consists of an argument that the state's sole objective is the pursuit of economic development for the [underdeveloped, Hutu] masses; as a result, all the "living forces" in the country, and all those abroad who are interested in promoting development, should work with the state to make that possible. This ideology legitimizes the government's intrusive presence in all aspects of social life, and diverts attention from the very real differences that exist between different classes and social groups. In other words, it diverts attention from all things political, replacing them with a discourse of technicity and collective progress. Thus the name of the single party was rebaptized to "Mouvement Revolutionnaire National pour le Developpement," and the parliament is called the "National Development Council." A local journal proudly announces that, during the Council of Ministers of Nov. 13, 1987, the President of the Republic "anoblissait" ("en-nobled") the term "peasant," by extending it to all Rwandans (Ntamahungiro 1988). If all Rwandans are peasants, there are no more classes, no distinctions--except of course between Hutu and Tutsi, the only allowed, never forgotten, distinction.

99




This ideology has been remarkably successful, especially with foreigners-not only in Rwanda but also elsewhere in Africa and the Third World (Pabanel 1995, 113). Chatterjee, for example, describes how the development ideology served the Indian Congress to "transcend class and class conflict, as well as politics," (Chatterjee 1993, 219) while Ferguson describes the way that in Lesotho it allows for "the expansion and entrenchment of bureaucratic state power, side by side with the projection of economic and social life which denies politics and, to the extent that it is successful, suspends its effects" (Ferguson 1990, xiv-xv). Medard, writing about Africa in general, writes that "ideological legitimacy is expressed through myths, foremost the myth of development and the one of national unity, as well as slogans, and stereotypical, constantly repeated, discourses ("langue du bois"). The fact that no one believes these discourses does not mean that they are inefficient: they monopolize and homogenize the allowable public discourse and act as a ritual of submission for those who are submitted to it....The efficiency of the one-party system...rests on the articulation of this ideological legitimization and political control (encadrement)" (Medard 1991, 94). Rwanda's case is an almost perfect example of this, with the exception that, instead of national unity, a particular form of national disunity was crucial to Rwanda's elites' ideological legitimization strategy. What Medard's quotation, and those preceding it, does not express is the extent to which this discourse fulfills important functions at the international level. Hence, one should guard against treating the "development" discourse as only a Western construct-as many critical observers do (Escobar 1994), but realize that this discourse has come to serve as a powerful tool for Third World elites, in their dealings both with their own populations and the international system.

Institutionalized Structures of Prejudice

In line with its ideology of the "social revolution," the new Hutu elite developed a policy of systematic discrimination against Tutsi, especially in areas of political power (the army, the government, the single party) and of vertical mobility (education, foreign training, state jobs). The army, diplomatic service and parliament, with rare exceptions, were always reserved for Hutus (Physicians for Human Rights 1994). A quota system was installed that limited access to higher education and state jobs to a number supposedly equal to the Tutsi proportion of the population. The system of ethnic identity papers introduced by the Belgians was kept intact by the post-colonial governments, and indeed continued to exist until the 1994 genocide, greatly facilitating its execution. The return of the Tutsi refugees- whose numbers would grow to up to half a million by the 1990s, mainly

100




as a result of natural population growth-was excluded, with the argument that there was no more room in Rwanda.

To be sure, this quota system was usually only partly implemented: most authors seem to agree that in the public sector-with the important exception of the army-the proportion of Tutsi was higher than the nine percent they were theoretically allocated. Moreover, they were very present in other sectors of society, such as commerce and enterprise, NGOs and development projects. Hence, they were subject to discrimination in schooling and access to jobs, but that discrimination was by no means foolproof or absolute. Oft repeated data "demonstrate" that the predominance of Tutsi in secondary schools did decrease after Independence, but that they still remained over-represented (these data evidently are to be interpreted with utmost caution, given their extremely political nature) (Funga 1991; Munyakazi 1993). In all likelihood, during the last two decades, Hutus from the South were as discriminated against in access to, for example, schools and universities, as Tutsi.

The quota systems and the ethnic IDs, combined with the prejudicial ideology of the social revolution, served more to keep the ethnic divisions alive (Chretien talks about maintaining the "stranger- ness" of Tutsi), to allow for social control by the state, than to implement actual discrimination. They were part of the institutional structure of Hutu power, administrative "proofs," reminders of the boundaries that separated the Tutsi from everyone else, and of the fact that the State was watching out for the interests of the majority Hutu.

Hence, these institutionalized structures of discrimination were both an outgrowth, and a facilitator, of prejudice. As Fein wrote about the Holocaust: "One condition that may predict genocide in the making is the practice of denying groups access to political and/or economic positions. In Germany prior to Nazi rule, the Jews were only marginally integrated politically. Economically Jews were overrepresented in the professions, but traditionally had been excluded from the guilds and civil service. The anti-Semitism that denied Jews access to political office, education and the professions eroded slowly during the 19th century, only to reemerge at the end of the century. Prior discrimination and prejudice made the Jews a convenient target for Nazi ideologues" (Fein 1993, 37-38).

While in normal times, this institutionalized structure of discrimination served less to address direct harm to specific Tutsi than to provide general legitimation for the Hutu leaders, in crisis times, it did provide a tool that could be activated to discriminate against Tutsi. That happened in 1972-3, when the Kayibanda regime was losing its legitimacy: unhappy with the slow speed of development, popular unrest broke out. Soon, under the leadership of the highest echelons of the state, mass anti-Tutsi campaigns were orchestrated.

101




These campaigns sought to strictly implement quota policies: thousands of Tutsi youth were kicked out of schools, adults lost their jobs, people were killed, others fled the country. It happened again in the years leading up to the 1994 genocide, when the ethnic IDs allowed the perpetrators of the genocide to dress up lists of Tutsi locality by locality, check their "Tutsiness" and slaughter them. Alison des Forges, one of the foremost American specialists on the Great Lakes region and a human rights activist working for Africa Watch bitterly laments the fact that all foreign aid agencies accepted the continuation of these ethnic IDs and did not pressure the government to abandon them-not even in the 1992, when it became clear to what they were being employed to target Tutsi for extermination (des Forges 1994).

The Social Nature of Prejudice The rest of this article will deal with the racist prejudice

described above. It will seek to answer three questions. The first two are closely related: what are the historical and social roots of this racist prejudice? And what explains its widespread acceptance, which continued for decades? After all, no Rwandan alive has first-hand experience with the "pure" Tutsi rule, before the arrival of the colonizer. By the 1990s, more than 80 percent of the population was born after Independence and the "social revolution," and has thus never personally known Tutsi rule, not even in its indirect form under the Belgian colonizer (calculated from United Nations 1991). Throughout most of Independence, with the exception of the first few years, the Tutsi as a group had been all but invisible in Rwanda: they had no political parties of their own, no organizations that militated for them. They were subject to discrimination in access to education and state jobs, and seemed resigned to that situation. They intermarried with Hutu, went to the same Church, lived in similar houses, earned roughly the same. And yet, the notion that the Tutsi presence was a problem, that the Tutsi were an alien group, with an inherent potential for evil, never disappeared. Why did this racist prejudice survive so well? What functions did it fulfill to remain so dominant in Rwandese society?

Finally, our third question is: what caused this racist prejudice to radicalize and become genocidal in the 1990s? How and why did genocide happen when it did? To answer these questions, we must analyze the profound political and economic challenges facing both the Hutu elites and the masses, and the way they resulted in the radicalization of the existing racist structure. That will be the subject of part four of this article.

Recent work by social scientists who have linked cultural and psychological processes provides some important insights here. Marc

102




Ross, in a fascinating book on what he calls the "culture of conflict," made a comparative analysis of ninety cultures and the factors that cause conflict within them. He concludes that "psychocultural" factors, i.e., "assumptions, perceptions, and images about the world that are widely shared with others and not idiosyncratic" are crucial (Ross 1993, 10). Such "interpretative processes, even though they are most often described in psychological terms, are also profoundly cultural. The notion of a culture of conflict draws attention to how people in communities develop and share interpretations rooted in psychocultural dispositions. The approach forces one to consider the common formative experiences and explicit values and practices shared by people growing up together and to appreciate the importance of the common identities, self-concepts and out-groups which serve as acceptable targets for externalization and projection" (111-12).

In Rwanda, basic psychocultural images about "the Tutsi" and "the Hutu" are basic building blocks of society. These profoundly engrained images treat Hutu and Tutsi as radically and unchangeably different, in their history as well as in their moral, intellectual and social attributes. These images pre-date the so-called "Hutu revolution;" indeed, they rather allowed it to take place. It is fascinating to look at the terms in which, from 1955 onwards, the nascent political debate in Rwanda was cast, and the images that were developed in the first political texts from that time-texts that are still referred to today. The "Hutu Manifest," which is the basic political text written by Rwanda's later President Kayibanda (1962- 1973) states that "the problem is basically that of the monopoly of one race, the Tutsi...which condemns the desperate Hutu to be for ever subaltern workers" (Mkundabigenzi 1961). In return, the circle of notables around the King wrote that there could never be fraternity between Hutu and Tutsi, for the Tutsi had conquered the Hutu and the latter shall always be their slaves. From exactly the opposite perspective, these people vehiculated identical images.

These profound, divisive images were largely shared by all Rwandans (Prunier 1996, 9, 37ff). This helps to explain the widespread popular participation in the massacres against Tutsi during the years just before and after Independence-massacres during which tens of thousands of Tutsi were killed, their houses looted and burnt and more than one hundred thousand forced to flee. These events have posed considerable problems for those authors who argue that the Hutu/Tusti conflict has been created out of nothing by elites intent on accessing or retaining power. As Kuper says, in The Pity of It All, "I have no difficulty in accepting an emphasis on the significant role of the elites in inflaming and manipulating ethnic hatreds, as Tutsi leaders sought to maintain their dominant position and as Hutu politicians challenged that domination and the increasing 'Tutsisation' of high office. But I

103




would add that they were harnessing real social forces, embedded in the structure of the society, and in the perceptions of many of its members" (Kuper 1977, 106, 249). For Kuper, these forces were structural, i.e., corresponding to real differences in power and prestige between both groups (Kuper 1977, 104, 252). I argue that this generally shared psychocultural image was the more profound force.

Among those who looked at the presence of racist prejudice in Rwanda, there is much divergence regarding its origin: is it a construction of the colonizer, or did it precede colonization? It seems most probable that images of fundamental differences between Hutu and Tutsi already existed when the colonizer "discovered" Rwanda: although the first ethnographers, missionaries and administrators have in all likelihood profoundly misinterpreted much of what they saw, they probably did not invent these images ex nihilo. This is not to say that these images necessarily bear a close resemblance to reality: they may well have been the ideology of an expanding Tutsi Kingdom, seeking to add historical legitimization, a sense of unavoidability and of historical normality, to its recent conquests and centralization of power (Chretien 1995, 85; des Forges 1986, passim). Hence, an ideology of the God-given superiority of Tutsi was evolving in the second half of the 19th century, in line with the actual conquest and centralization of power by King Kigeli IV. It seems likely that, when the first Germans came, the then King was more than happy to make them believe in the longstanding and accepted nature of his rule; and indeed, the Germans, by conquering new territories in the North and backing him up militarily, greatly helped the King extend his power (Prunier 1995).

The colonizer rigidified this ideology both through the use of racist images describing the Hutu and the Tutsi as two distinct races, with greatly differing intellectual and moral capacities, and through the initiation of indirect rule which forcefully implemented these images. Both the administrative authorities and the Church shared these images of Tutsi as naturally superior, born to rule, intelligent and fine, and of Hutu as the opposite of Tutsi in all respects. The colonizers expanded the opportunities for these ideas to become realities, and to influence everyday life chances. For decades, young Tutsi men were treated as the natural rulers of society, and given almost exclusive rights to power and privilege, while the vast majority of Hutu people were excluded from these chances. No wonder both sides came to believe in these images, projecting them back to times immemorial. By the time Rwanda gained independence, a century of myths and associated practice had created the ideology that was to underlie the post-independence instability.

Under these conditions, it is no wonder that the struggle for Independence became also an ethnic struggle--a fight as much against the (remote) Belgians as against the (much closer) local Tutsi acolytes.

104




In that respect, Rwanda followed the same continent-wide processes analyzed by Mamdani: "the form of rule shaped the form of revolt against it. Indirect rule at once reinforced ethnically bound institutions of control [far beyond their real customary reach] and led to their explosion from within. Ethnicity thus came to be simultaneously the form of control over natives and the form of revolt against it" (Mamdani 1996, 24).

After Independence, as we have seen, the new regime used the "social revolution" ideology as the prime strategy for legitimation of its control of the state. This ideology constituted both a reversal and a continuation of these longstanding psychocultural images. It was a continuation to the extent that it continued to stress the eternal and profound differences between "the Hutu" and "the Tutsi" as homogenous, mutually exclusive, categories. It was a reversal in that the moral and social privilege associated with the Tutsi-the natural- born rulers, the chosen people-was turned on its head, with the Tutsi now in the position of alien, inferior outsiders to be contained. As Emy states it well when discussing the so-called social revolution of 1959: "unlike the French Revolution, in Rwanda the distinctions between people were "inversed and not overthrown" (Erny 1994, 59, "inverse et non reverse").

Violence, finally, solidified racist prejudice further. Ethnic violence took place both in Burundi-where in 1965 and 1972, hundreds of thousands of Hutu were slaughtered by the Tutsi dominated army- and in Rwanda in 1959-63. Violence was perpetrated both by Tutsi (attacks by the refugees) and by the Hutu. Violence needs explanation and justification-for, as Warren (1993) rightly observed, people struggle as much to make sense of their own violence as of the violence of others; moreover, perpetrators of violence come to fear revenge (Libaridian 1987, 210-11). The incidents of violence in Burundi and Rwanda became a traumatic part of the culture of prejudice for both Hutu and Tutsi. In the words of Volkan, "the group draws the mental representation of a traumatic event into its very identity. It passes the mental representation of the event-along with associated shared feelings of hurt and shame, and defenses against the perceived shared conflicts they initiate-from generation to generation" (Volkan 1994, xxv). As Prunier states it eloquently: "in 1959 the red seal of blood put a final label of historical unavoidability on this mythological construction, which from then on became a real historical framework" (Prunier 1995, xiii).

105




The Radicalization of Prejudice: Towards Genocide

In this section, we will discuss how, from the middle of the 1980s onwards, the economy contracted severely, resulting in increased frustration and insecurity among all segments of the population. At the same time, major political challenges arose to the powers-that-be. Both these processes ended with a radicalization of racist prejudice into the genocidal form it took in 1994.

The Economic Crisis of Rwanda

The economic crisis faced by Rwanda was both financial and, foremost, agricultural. In 1985 a decade-long decline began in the international price of coffee, Rwanda's major export. Coffee export receipts fell from $144 mio in 1985 (an exceptionally good year) to $30 mio in 1993. This greatly reduced the earnings of the Rwandan state-- whose foreign exchange earnings are still far more than 80 percent dependent on coffee and tea-as well as the purchasing power of most rural households (Marysse, Ndayambaje, and Waterloos 1992, 45). The available data indicate that aggregate GDP per capita decreased from $355 in 1983 to $260 in 1990. According to a 1994 World Bank report, the incidence of poverty in Rwanda greatly increased, from 40 percent in 1985 to 53 percent in 1992 (World Bank 1994, i, 10).

However, apart from indicating a trend, these poverty data probably greatly underestimate the true extent of poverty in Rwanda. Both figures come from a 1983-85 census, in which the poor were defined as "the bottom 40 percent of the sample in terms of expenditures per capita" (World Bank 1994, 5). In other terms, poverty was thus by definition 40 percent! The same report tells us that "expenditures on food were 88 percent of total for the poor and 74 percent for the non- poor" (6). This suggests that a very large proportion of the so-called non-poor are in fact extremely poor, spending more than 80 percent of their incomes on food alone. A decade ago, in a major research project for the World Bank, Michael Lipton defined the "ultra-poor"-the bottom group in society, who is so deprived that it does not even benefit from policies of economic growth that may help the "ordinary" poor-as those households spending more than 75 percent of their income on food (Lipton 1988). This indicates that, whatever their income, people are so badly nourished that they must spend almost all their income on food simply to survive. People so malnourished are likely to be weak, often sick, with little capacity to benefit from educational or employment opportunities that may be of use to the ordinary poor. Moreover, these people are as good as incapable of investing in productive assets. According to this reasonable cut-off, it seems that

106




the incidence of ultra poverty is higher than 50 percent; above that, another part of the population lives in "regular" poverty.

Moreover, the 1992 data are estimates "based on the assumption that income distribution remained constant" during the 1980s (World Bank 1994, 9). This is a very doubtful hypothesis. The severe economic crisis has certainly hit the poorest, small farmers worst (collapse of their coffee earnings; collapse of the market for off-farm employment) (Maton 1994; Marysse, De Herdt, and Ndayambaje 1993; Andre and Platteau 1995). Similarly, the civil war that began in 1990 (see further) made hundreds of thousands of internally displaced people totally destitute. Thus the increase in poverty is in all likelihood much more severe, and starting from a much higher level!

As a result of this crisis, the Rwandese government was obliged to undergo structural adjustment programs: its foreign debt, until the beginning of the 1980s low by African standards, began increasing rapidly, and the pressure to adjust became very strong. In an effort to boost coffee exports, and to reduce imports, the Rwandese franc was devalued twice: by 40 percent in 1989 and by an additional 40 percent in 1993. Expansion of public sector jobs ceased, and those with jobs saw their incomes erode. At the same time, increased shares of the remaining government budget were taken up by debt reimbursement, and after 1990, by the war effort (UNDP 1995). At the same time, a severe agricultural/food crisis hit Rwanda. FAO data document that food production per capita increased greatly between 1960 and the middle of the 1980s, and has fallen off significantly since. According to recent research, "over the period 1984-1991, kilocalories produced by Rwandan farmers dropped from 2,055 per person per day to 1,509"-i.e., from an already low to an intolerable level (Clay, Byiringiro, Kangasniemi, Reardon, Sibomana, and Uwamaryia 1995, 1; FAO- GIEWS 1995). Commercial or concessional imports did not make up for the post-1985 decline in production. This decline is the result of a combination of factors, conjunctural and structural: a set of droughts in the middle and late 1980s; the effects of erosion, land degradation and poverty, combined with the exhaustion of the development model followed until then (Uvin 1996); and the effects of the civil war from 1990 onwards.

Data on population growth suggest just how severe the crisis was, and how profoundly it affected people's lives. Between 1982 and 1992, Rwanda's total fertility rate plummeted from 8.4 to 6.2 children per woman (B. Barrhre, Schoemaker, M. Barrhre, Habyakare, Kabagwira, and Ngendakumana 1994, 30). Such dramatic drops have been interpreted in other contexts as reflecting the profound insecurity felt by people about their futures. As a result, they delay their age of marriage and first birth, and desire dramatically smaller family sizes (Working Group 1993).

107




To conclude: from 1985 on, food production per capita decreased, international coffee prices collapsed and so did farm cash incomes. In the urban areas, wages and job opportunities were stagnating if not declining. After 1990, food production fell even more in the areas affected by the civil war, and hundreds of thousands of people lost their livelihoods. From 1985 onwards, millions of Rwandans saw their misery increase dramatically, while their prospects for the future disintegrated.

Political Challenges to the Elites

At the beginning of the 1990s, three processes combined to greatly increase the political pressure on the regime. One was the rise of internal discontent within the country, mainly among disgruntled Hutu excluded from the spoils of power. This often took a regional form, with political opposition coming mainly from the South and the center, for positions of power in the Habyarimana regime were almost fully monopolized by people from the president's district in the North, and most public investments took place in that region. According to some data, in 1982-4, 90 percent of all investments were in the four provinces of Kigali, Ruhengeri, Gisenyi and Cyangugu (the first is the capital, the three others provinces of the North, the President's region), while Gitarama, the most populous province after Kigali, received 0.16 percent, and Kibuye 0.84 percent (Newbury 1992). Widespread corruption, geographical exclusion, disappointment with the slow pace of development (especially after structural adjustment cut down on the expansion of the state machinery and thus increased competition for the remaining jobs), all combined to challenge the regime from within. By 1990, a number of political parties were created, representing tendencies more or less critical of the Habyarimana regime--but none of them representing the large majority of the country: the farmers.

The second was the 1990 invasion from Uganda by the Rwandese Patriotic Front (FPR in French), a small but well trained and experienced guerrilla army (it had previously fought in Museveni's war for the control of Uganda), composed largely, but not exclusively, of the descendants of the 1959-63 wave of Tutsi refugees. Although the invasion was pushed back, the FPR continued to control a small part of the territory in the North-East, and its threat was permanent.

Finally, following the end of the Cold War, the international community suddenly rediscovered once again a strong attachment to democracy, putting strong pressure on the regime to democratize, to negotiate power sharing with the FPR and the domestic opposition and to organize free elections (Reintjens 1994, 104ff). As a result, political parties were allowed beginning in 1990, and coalition governments were formed from 1992 onwards. This article will not present detailed

108




descriptions of the political platforms, strategies and alliances of the main players in government, the military, the rebel forces and the many small opposition parties that came into being, nor will it analyze in detail the slow, halting and ambiguous peace-cum-democratization negotiations and the tentative power sharing arrangements held in Arusha from 1992 onwards; this has been done very well already (Reintjens 1994; Guichaoua 1995; Prunier 1995) and is of little importance to my argument here. Suffice it to point out, as others have done, that, in its obsession with elections as the solution to all ills, the international community neglected the existence of important and powerful factions in society that were totally opposed to any form of powersharing, foremost with Tutsi but also with other Hutu. These factions were not invited to participate in the negotiations, but that did not stop them from becoming stronger by the day (with active support from the presidency and the highest levels of power) and to use violence to oppose these externally-inspired changes (Adelman and Suhrke 1996).

These processes threatened to deprive the Habyarimana regime and its cronies of their control of the state. The regime was under attack from all sides, and it took recourse to the usual, time-tested solution: the revival of ethnic hatred. Ethnicity could unite the majority of the population around the regime, take the momentum away from the opposition, combat the FPR and render elections impossible. Ethnicity was to be the tool for power of the elite, as it has been for the last 30 years (de Heusch 1994).

From Elite Fear to the Incitation of Genocide

The FPR invasion alone had made the renewed vilification of the Tutsi easier. The FPR invasion served the interests of the regime by increasing its legitimacy, and large parts of the population rallied around it (Reintjens 1994, 93, 150, 181). The war killed hundreds of innocent people in 1991 (and again in 1993), and displaced hundreds of thousands of people (up to 900,000 in 1993, although that number significantly declined some months later). Although opposition movements began negotiations with the FPR in 1991 and at times took its defense, it is clear that the strategy of violence and war chosen by the FPR facilitated the same practices on the other side. Under the leadership of the so-called akazu, the small group of people around Habyarimana's wife, a variety of dynamics were created that sought to radicalize racist prejudice.

The first was the extension of the FPR threat to all Tutsi, whether linked to the FPR or not, and reactivation of the notion of the "Tutsi threat." The most well documented expression of this strategy came immediately after the FPR invasion. In the night of 4 October,

109




1990, the Rwandan Army staged an all-night shooting attack on Kigali. This little piece of theater-which fooled the world for quite some time; it was only unmasked months later-allowed to strengthen a sense of psychosis against "the enemy within" and justified the imprisonment of 8,000 to 10,000 Tutsi throughout the country. Most of them were liberated only after months and international pressure; many were tortured, some killed or their possessions stolen. Thus, a direct link was created between the rebels and all Tutsi in the country (Nkubito 1992, 22).

More generally, at political rallies and speeches, as well as in extremist local language newspapers and radio stations-foremost the infamous Radio Libre des Miles Collines and Kangura, a radical newspaper-Tutsis were constantly the subject of the most hateful propaganda. This involved explicit and regular incitations to mass murder, constant verbal attacks on Tutsi, the publication of lists with the names of hundreds of people-to-be killed, threats to anyone having relations with Tutsi, etc. (Chretien 1991; 1995; Centre Nord-Sud 1994). These genocidal and extremist voices were not only tolerated-they were not prosecuted, not contradicted by government officials, not denounced by the President-but had the active moral and financial support from the highest levels of government and the military (Reintjens 1994).

During the same period, extremist political parties that openly preached hatred and violence were created, again with support from the highest echelons. These included the CDR (Commite de Difense de la Revolution-a party to the right of, but close to the party of Habyarimana), as well as a set of armed militia-the infamous interahamwe and impuzamugambi-linked to both the CDR and the party of Habyarimana (Human Rights 1994). These parties and groups served to radicalize and divide the opposition, and slow down the process of the Arusha negotiations. Soon, under the pressure of an increasingly polarized society, the other opposition parties began to split between radical "Hutu power" wings, close to the CDR and its discourse, and moderate wings. During the genocide, most of the leaders of the moderate factions were slaughtered.

From the beginning, frequent massacres of Tutsi were committed by the army, the presidential guards and the new militias (Reintjens 1994, 117). Thousands of Tutsi were killed in the 1990-93 years, often by "mobs" organized by local authorities and national politicians and the police. The involvement of the authorities in these crimes of terror is well documented and was widely known even then. Massive amounts of arms were imported in Rwanda, and distributed to the militia.

All these processes are well planned at the highest levels, their execution passed on with Rwanda's typical efficiency through the usual channels to local authorities. As the International Inquiry

110




Commission for Human Rights Violations since October 1, 1990 observed "these massacres...have never been the result of chance or spontaneous popular movements or even the result of competition between different parties; There seems to be a central hand, or a number of hands, that master the genesis and the unfolding of these events" (Commission Internationale 1993).

All these processes are well-documented now, and resemble similar processes in past genocides elsewhere in the world (Du Preez 1994, 83, 101-7). They successfully sought to spread ethnic fear throughout society, to organize and legitimize the forces of violence and genocide and to desensitize people to violence. Kelman and Hamilton (1993, 235) have done fascinating work to explain the social processes that allow large numbers of people to participate in violence. They distinguish three phases in the preparation of mass violence, three phases designed to overcome the moral inhibitions against violence: authorization, which absolves the individual of the responsibility to make moral choices; routinization, when the action becomes so organized that there is no opportunity for raising moral questions and dehumanization, when the actors' attitudes toward the target and toward themselves become so structured that it is neither necessary nor possible for them to view the relationship in moral terms. As Sabini and Silver state in their study of the psychology of genocide: "once brutality becomes standard procedure within an organization, it takes on an added legitimacy" (Sabini and Silver 1993, 212-13). The processes presented above achieved exactly that: through actions and words, they contributed to the dehumanization of the Tutsi, and authorized and routinized the use of violence against them.

When in April 1994, the plane carrying Habyarimana from a peace negotiation in Arusha was downed, the scenario unfolded along predictable lines. The army was ready, as were the militia, as were the victims. The violence started in Kigali, and was largely executed by the presidential guards, the militia and the army. A so-called interim-government replaced those civil servants who did not allow the slaughter to spread with new, extremist ones, and flew in the militia from the capital (Olson 1995). Hundreds of thousands of defenseless children, women and men were killed.

Conclusion

In Rwanda, as earlier in Nazi Germany, many people participated in the slaughter, and allowed its preparation, in a spontaneous manner. They did so because they shared a culture of racist prejudice, in which it was defined as acceptable to blame Tutsi as a group for all evils of society, and to use violence to deal with this

111




"problem." Such prejudice is not a matter of scientific fact, nor of an in- depth analysis of the actual behavior of Tutsi. It is a myth, an image that serves important functions for the holder of the myth-functions that are entirely independent of scientific accuracy.

Goldhagen observed about the Holocaust that "the existence of antisemitism and the content of antisemitic charges against Jews must be understood as an expression of the non-Jewish culture, and are fundamentally not a response to any objective evaluation of Jewish action, even if actual characteristics of Jews, and aspects of realistic conflicts, become incorporated into the antisemitic litany" (Goldhagen 1996, 39). Similarly, anti-Tutsi prejudice was a construct of Hutu people, and not the objective result of Tutsi behavior. After the 1990 invasion of the FPR, the behavior of some Tutsi (those in the FPR, and those who joined it) was clearly of a nature to destabilize the regime, as well as to threaten the lives and livelihoods of thousands of Hutu. This certainly contributed to the radicalization of anti-Tutsi prejudice into its genocidal form. However, the development of genocidal racism and its eventual bloody implementation was not simply a response to the invasion, nor was it based on a more or less objective assessment of Tutsi behavior, or some kind of self-defense. Profound anti-Tutsi racism pre-existed the invasion by decades, while its radicalized, genocidal, version perfectly neglected the hundreds of thousands of peaceful, non-FPR-sympathizing Tutsi. The hundreds of thousands of defenseless people killed were children, women, the elderly, pro-democracy journalists, NGO leaders, etc.--not FPR soldiers. They were killed because they were Tutsi, and thus collectively evil.

This longstanding ideology of racist prejudice fed on two processes, one emanating from government, and one from the needs of ordinary people. Anti-Tutsi racism served as a deliberately maintained strategy of legitimization of the powers-that-be, and was kept alive in Rwanda through a systematic public structure of discrimination and education, in which the different and problematic identity of all Tutsi was constantly being referred to. At the same time, racist prejudice was a means for small people, squeezed from all sides, to make sense of their predicament, to explain their misery and humiliation through projection and scapegoating. Racism fulfilled a crucial social function; the seeds planted from above fell on fertile ground. As Simpson and Yinger state: "the designation of inferior groups comes from those on top-an expression of their right to rule-as well as from frustrated persons often near the bottom, as an expression of their need for security" (Simpson and Yinger 1953, 83).

This racism lay dormant for more than a decade, meaning that it was less visible, less of a priority to people, less needed by both those in power and the masses-but not that it was questioned, or abandoned.

112




Under threat by political, military and economic processes, parts of the elite increased their use of the old strategy. Through hatred-filled speech and sporadic violence against Tutsi, they effectively managed to spread genocidal prejudice throughout society. This had been done before (1959 and 1973); it still worked because so little had changed in Rwanda. Indeed, the rapid reactivation and radicalization of the racist prejudice is testimony to its widespread and profoundly engrained nature, even during the peaceful first 15 years of the Habyarimana regime. By 1994, Tutsi in Rwanda, much like Jews in Nazi Germany, were "socially dead" people, whose murder was as acceptable as it became common.

References Adelman, H., and A. Suhrke. 1996. Early Warning and Conflict Management. Copenhagen:

Joint Evaluation of Emergency Assistance to Rwanda. Anderson, B. 1991. Imagined Communities. New York: Verso. Andre, C. and J. P. Platteau. 1995. Land Tenure Under Unendurable Stress: Rwanda Caught in

the Malthusian Trap. Namur, Centre de Recherche en Economie du Developpement, Faculty of Economics, University of Namur, (Sept.).

Barrhre, B, J. Schoemaker, M. Barrhre, T. Habyakare, A. Kabagwira, and M.

Ngendakumana. 1994. Enquete Demographique et de Sante, Rwanda 1992. Kigali: Office National de la Population & Demographic and Health Surveys Macro International, Inc.

Centre Nord-Sud. 1994. Le Rwanda dans son Contexte Regional: Droits de la personne, reconciliation et rdhabilitation. Document de synthese prepare pour la confrence de La Haye, 16-17 Sept. 1994. Centre Nord-Sud, Centre

Europlen pour 1'Interdependence et la

Solidarit6 Mondiales, Conseil de l'Europe, NCOS. Chatterjee, P. 1993. The Nation and Its Fragments. Colonial and Postcolonial Histories.

Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Chr6tien, J.P. 1985. "Hutu et Tutsi au Rwanda et au Burundi," in J.L. Amselle and E. M'Bokolo (eds.)Au coeur de l'ethnie. Ethnies, tribalisme et Etat en Afrique. Paris: La D6couverte.

-. 1991. "Presse Libre' et Propagande raciste au Rwanda," Politique Africaine 42 (June). - . 1995. Rwanda. Les Mtdias du gxnocide. Paris, Karthala.

Clay, D., F. Byiringiro, J. Kangasniemi, T. Reardon, B. Sibomana, and L. Uwamariya. 1995. Promoting Food Security in Rwanda through Sustainable Agricultural Productivity: Meeting the Challenges of Population Pressure, Land Degradation, Land Poverty. Michigan State University: Department of Agricultural Economics.

Commission Internationale d'enquete sur les violations des dreoits de l'homme au Burundi depuis le 21 Octobre 1993. 1994. Rapport Final, Human Rights Watch/Africa Watch, Federation Internationale des droits de l'homme, Union Internationale des Drois de l'Homme, CIDPDD.

de Heusch, L. 1994. "Anthropologie d'un genocide: le Rwanda," Les Temps Modernes 49 (579): 1-19.

des Forges, A. 1986. "'The Drum is Greater than the Shout': The 1912 rebellion in Northern Rwanda," in Donald Crummey (ed.) Banditry, Rebellion and Social Protest in Africa. London, James Currey. . 1994. Human Rights in Burundi and Rwanda and U.S. Policy. Washington: Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Crisis in Africa Session, July 26,1994.

Du Preez, P. 1994. Genocide. The Psychology of Mass Murder. London: Boyars/Bowerdean. Erny, P. 1994. Rwanda 1994. Paris: L'Harmattan. Escobar, A. 1994. Encountering Development. Princeton, Princeton University Press. FAO-GIEWS. 1995. Food Supply Situation and Crop Prospects in Sub-Saharan Africa. Rome. Fein, H. 1993. "Accounting for Genocide after 1945: Theories and Some Findings,"

International Journal on Group Rights (1): 79-106.

113




Ferguson, J. 1990. The Anti-Politics Machine. "Development," Depoliticization, and Bureaucratic Power in Lesotho. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Funga, F. 1991. "Pouvoir, ethnies et regions," Dialogue (149) (Nov.-Dec.). Goldhagen, D.J. 1996. Hitler's Willing Executioners. Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust. New

York: Alfred Knopf. Grosse, S. 1994. The Roots of Conflict and State Failure in Rwanda: The Political Exacerbation of

Social Cleavages in a Context of Growing Resource Scarcity. Ann Arbor, Department of Population Planning and International Health, School of Public Health.

Guichaoua, A. (ed.) 1995. Les crises politiques au Burundi et au Rwanda (1993-1994). Lille, Paris: Universite des Sciences et Technologie/Karthala.

Gurr, T.R. 1993. Minorities at Risk. A Global View of Ethnopolitical Conflicts. Washington, DC.: US Institute of Peace Press.

Human Rights Watch. 1994. "Human Rights in Africa and US Policy," Human Rights Watch Africa 6 (6).

ICHRDD. 1995. Pour un systeme de justice au Rwanda. Montreal, International Centre for Human Rights and Democratic Development/Centre International des Drois de la Personne et du Developpement Democratique.

Kelman, H. and V. L. Hamilton. 1993. "Sanctioned Massacres," in N.J. Kressel (ed.) Political Psychology, Classic and Contemporary Readings. New York: Paragon House, 232-40.

Kuper, L. 1977. The Pity of it All. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Lemarchand, R. 1966. "Power and Stratification in Rwanda: A Reconsideration," Cahiers

d'Etudes Africaines 24, vi(4): 592-610. Lemarchand, R. 1970. Burundi and Rwanda. New York: Praeger. Libaridian, G.J. 1987. "The Ultimate Repression: The Genocide of the Armenians, 1915-

1917," in I. Wallimann, and M.N. Dobkowski (eds.) Genocide and the Modern Age. Etiology and Case Studies of Mass Death. New York: Greenwood Press, 203-35.

Lipton, M. 1988. The Poor and the Poorest. Washington, DC.: World Bank. Mamdani, M. 1996. Citizen and Subject. Contemporary Africa and the Legacy of Late Colonialism.

Princeton, Princeton University Press. Maquet, J. 1961. The Premise of Inequality in Rwanda: A Study of Political Relations in the Central

African Kingdom. London, Oxford University Press. Marysse, S., E. Ndayambaje, and E. Waterloos. 1992. Revenus ruraux au Rwanda avant

l'adjustement structurel. Cas de Kirarambogo. Louvain La Neuve: CIDEP. Marysse, S., T. De Herdt, and E. Ndayambaje. 1993. Appauvrissement de la population rurale et

ajustement structurel: causalite au coincidence? Le cas de Kirarambogo (Rwanda). Antwerp: Centre for Development Studies.

Maton, J. 1994. Diveloppement economique et social au Rwanda entre 1980 et 1993. Le Dixieme decile en face de l'Apocalypse. Ghent: Faculty of Economics, Unit for Development Research Training, State University of Chent.

Medard, J.F. 1994. "Authoritarismes et d6mocraties en Afrique Noire," Politique Africaine 43 (Oct.): 92-104.

Mkundabigenzi, F. 1961. Le Rwanda Politique (1958-1960). Brussels: CRISP. Munyakazi, L. 1993. "La question ethnique: un probleme mal-pos6," Dialogue (170) (Sep.-

Oct.). Newbury, C. 1988. The Cohesion of Oppression. Clientship and Ethnicity in Rwanda 1860-1960.

New York: Columbia University Press. . 1992. "Rwanda: Recent Debates over Governance and Rural Development," in G. Hyden and M. Bratton (eds.) Governance and Politics in Africa. Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 193-220.

Nkubito, A. 1992. "Rwanda: Violations des droits de l'homme," Dialogue (152) (March). Ntamahungiro, J. 1988. "Eloge du paysan rwandais," Dialogue (130) (Sep.-Oct). Olson, J. 1995. "Behind the Recent Tragedy in Rwanda," Geo-Journal 35 (2): 217-22. Pabanel, J.P. 1995. "Bilan de la deuxieme Republique rwandaise: du modele de

developpement a la violence gen6rale," Politique Africaine (57) (March)112-23. Physicians for Human Rights. 1994. Rwanda 1994, A Report of the Genocide. London. Prunier, G. 1995. The Rwanda Crisis: History of a Genocide. New York: Columbia University

Press Reintjens, F. 1994. L'Afrique des Grands Lacs en crise. Rwanda, Burundi: 1988-1994. Paris:

Karthala.

114




Ross, M. H. 1993. The Culture of Conflict. Interpretations and Interests in Comparative Perspective. New Haven, London: Yale University Press.

Sabini, J. P. and M. Silver. 1993. "Destroying the Innocent with a Clear Conscience: A Sociopsychology of the Holocaust," in N.J. Kressel (ed.) Political Psychology. Classic and Contemporary Readings. New York: Paragon House Publishers, 192-217.

Sangmpam, S.N. 1993. "Neither Soft nor Dead: The African State is Alive and Well," African Studies Review 36(2):73-94.

Simpson, G.E. and J.M. Yinger. 1953. Racial and Cultural Minorities: An Analysis of Prejudice and Discrimination. (Third edition.) New York: Harper and Row.

UNDP. 1995. Human Development Report. Oxford: Oxford University Press. United Nations, Department of International Economic and Social Affairs. 1991. The Sex

and Age Distributions of Populations. The 1990 Revision of the UN Global Population Estimates and Projections. New York: United Nations.

Uvin, P. 1996. Development, Aid and Conflict. Reflections from the Case of Rwanda. Helsinki: United Nations University/World Institute of Development Economics Research (UNU/WIDER), Research for Action 24.

Vidal, C. 1985. "Situations Ethniques au Rwanda," in J.L. Amselle and E. M'bokolo (eds.) Au Coeur de l'ethnie. Ethnies, tribalisme et Etat en Afrique. Paris, La DIcouverte.

Volkan, V.D. 1994. The Need to Have Enemies and Allies. From Clinical Practice to International Relationships. Northvale: Jason Aronson.

Warren, L. B. (ed.) 1993. The Violence Within: Cultural and Political Opposition in Divided Nations. Boulder: Westview Press.

Willame, J.C. 1995. Aux sources de l'hcatome rwandaise. Paris, Brussels, Karhala/CEDAF. Working Group on Demographic Effects of Economic and Social Reversals. 1993.

Demographic Effects of Economic Reversals in Sub-Saharan Africa. Washington, DC.: National Academy Press.

World Bank. 1994. Rwanda Poverty Reduction and Sustainable Growth. Population and Human Resources Division, South Central and Indian Ocean Departrment, Africa Region.

World Resources Institute. 1996. World Environmental Tables. Washington: WRI, UNDP, UNEP.

115



Documents

Prejudice, Crisis, and Genocide in Rwanda