30 Years Later, Can We Learn From Rwanda Genocide?

This month marks 30 years since the genocide in Rwanda. It has been estimated that over 800,000 people died in just three months in 1994.

According to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, “In 1994, Rwanda’s population of 7 million was composed of three ethnic groups: Hutu (approximately 85 percent), Tutsi (14 percent) and Twa (1 percent).”

The U.S. State Department’s archive on Rwanda provides an interesting history on how the Tutsis minority in Rwanda, and neighboring Burundi, ruled over the Hutu:

“According to folklore, Tutsi cattle breeders began arriving in the area from the Horn of Africa in the 15th century and gradually subjugated the Hutu inhabitants. The Tutsis established a monarchy headed by a mwami (king) and a feudal hierarchy of Tutsi nobles and gentry. . . . Within the monarchy, through a contract known as ubuhake, the Hutu farmers pledged their services and those of their descendants to a Tutsi lord in return for the loan of cattle and use of pastures and arable land. Thus, the Tutsi reduced some Hutu to virtual serfdom.”

In the 19th century, the German Empire conquered Rwanda. After World War I, Belgium took over the area.

In both cases, these empires kept the Tutsi domination in place. When the Hutu finally achieved Rwandan independence in 1962, more than 160,000 Tutsis fled the country.

According to Professor Claude Welch, “Most of them found safe harbor in neighboring Uganda, where a Tutsi-dominated guerrilla force, the Rwanda Patriotic Front, took up arms.”

Dr. Welch was my professor in college. He is an expert in African politics, civil-military relations, and human rights.

Rwanda’s President Juvénal Habyarimana, and his wife, Agathe, governed the country through an informal network known as the Akazu. The president doled out jobs to relatives and political loyalists through this network.

Author Helen Hintjens wrote in the Journal of Modern African Studies, “By the early I990s, akazu members had come to dominate the most strategic positions both in central ministries and in regional government.”

During the Rwandan Civil War (1990-1994), the Rwandan government tried to unify the Hutu people, and demonize the Tutsi, as they fought against the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF).

Under the Arusha Accords, the Rwandan government were required to share power with the RPF. Before this power-sharing agreement could be implemented, President Habyarimana was killed in April 1994 along with the President Cyprien Ntaryamira of Burundi.

President Habyarimana’s plane was shot down as it was attempted to land in the Rwandan capital of Kigali. Nobody knows precisely who committed this act, but there were many akazu who stood to lose from peace.

This assassination was the catalyst to the Rwandan genocide. The inability for the Hutu and Tutsi to share power was part of a larger problem of resource-sharing.

At the time of the genocide, Rwanda’s chief export was coffee. From 1989 to 1991, Rwanda’s export earnings suffered a 50 percent decline because of the collapse in the price of coffee.

Facing an economic downturn, and war, the Rwandan government decided to inflame tensions between the Hutu and Tutsi to stay in power.

Towards the end of our conversation, Dr. Welch taught me that the population density of Rwanda is one of highest among African countries.

According to the International Trade Administration, 62.3 percent of Rwandans are employed in agriculture. As the Tutsi and the Hutu compete over limited plots of land for farming, they will always be vulnerable to demagogues.

Since 2000, President Paul Kagame, a Tutsi, has presided over a long economic expansion. Is Rwanda one bad recession away from renewed violence?

Shortly before the 1994 genocide, Robert Kaplan wrote an article in The Atlantic, where he argued that “scarcity, crime, overpopulation, tribalism, and disease are rapidly destroying the social fabric of our planet.”

When I asked Dr. Welch about whether violence Rwanda could erupt again, he informed me that the consensus among the experts he knew was that it was a forgone conclusion.

As we discussed Rwanda, I couldn’t help but think about the polarization in our country. Right now, there are many Republicans and Democrats who are afraid that the outcome in November could mean the end of our democracy.

While our political differences pale in comparison to Rwanda, that isn’t good enough.

As Abraham Lincoln said in his Second Inaugural:

“With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation’s wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow, and his orphan to do all which may achieve and cherish a just, and a lasting peace, among ourselves, and with all nations.