The Rwanda Genocide - a Quarter of a Century later
Rwanda 1994: it’s been 25 years of this abiding nightmare
Apocalypse:
When Rwanda looked deep into the heart
of the abyss, the abyss looked deep into the heart of Rwanda
Stanza I of IMANNA
an epic poem in Spenserian Stanza written to commemorate the Rwanda Genocide and
remember its victims a quarter of a Century after the tragedy.
Stanza 1 of IMANNA,
the epic poem I have written on the Rwanda Genocide.
With the launch of the two surface-to-air missiles
(investigators later ascertained that only the first surface-to-air missile
struck the plane, the second missile missed but the dolorous blow had been
struck) at Rwanda's presidential plane, the African Great Lakes Region
descended into a nightmare from which there has been no waking.
The Dassault Falcon 50 was
the jet in which the Rwandan and Burundian presidents died when their plane was
shot down by surface-to-air heat-seeking missiles as it approached Kigali
airport
For the shooting down of the Dassault Falcon over Kigali's
evening skies on that fateful April 6th marked the end of all pretence that
Sovereignty was a shield behind which Africans - and African States - could
shelter safe from the ravages of prejudice, instability, powerlessness, poverty
and statelessness.
First of all, the missile strike against the president’s plane
proved to us Great Lakes Africans (if any further proof were needed) that the
African state will never truly shield us from the wrathful flames of prejudice.
For it is the state which has stoked the flames of prejudice in the Great Lakes
Region from before the declaration of liberation and statehood. For there had
been an injustice in Rwanda whose most potent and potentially explosive
evidence were all those Rwandans who had been living in exile for many decades.
Some of these Rwandans had actually been born in exile. The cry of these exiled
Rwandans had been answered in the most heartbreaking way by the Rwandan head of
state who had told the refugees that Rwanda was too small, too poor and too
crowded to accept them (the refugees) back.
The truth will (not) set you free.
In effect Rwanda had closed the door on these refugees' right
of return. Rwanda had foreclosed on the refugees' right to statehood. Rwanda
had declared these Rwandans stateless. It is hard to overestimate the
far-reaching implications of this potent decision by Rwanda to deny these
refugees the right of return to Rwanda. Whatever the friends of the elites in
power may do, one thing you must teach your friends in high places is never to
take away citizenship from your opponents even if you consider them your worst
enemies. To take away the right of citizenship from a peoples is to sow a
storm, such nations reap the whirlwind. Yet this is a lesson that we Africans
cherish only when out of power. Once in power, one’s opponents are declared mortal
enemies and their right to citizenship is immediately abrogated. It is a lesson
that the elites now in power in Rwanda have just as quickly forgotten. The
decades of eating the bread of sorrow as refugees and exiles have not taught
the power holders in Rwanda now any enduring lesson.
‘There's
such divinity doth hedge a King' (Hamlet, Act 4, Scene 5
 |
| Shakespeare wrote "HAMLET" a play on the fragility of monarchical power but also as a philosophical meditation on the son's obligations to avenge a murdered father |
The African state, with all
its technological resources, failed to protect the president’s plane.
The African state, with all its technological resources, failed to
protect the president’s plane. By failing to protect the one man who at this
time was truly determined on the path of peace, the African State failed to
protect the Arusha Peace Accords - in effect the shooting down of the
president’s plane was the shooting down of peace in the African Great Lakes
Region. The president’s plane needed to be protected by all Africans in the
Great Lakes Region. When we failed to protect the president’s plane, we Great
Lakes Africans failed to protect our own future. We failed to protect Rwanda
from Genocide, we failed to protect Congo from imploding, we failed to protect
the children of Congo DRC from genocide, and we failed to protect the children
of the Great Lakes Region from being hunted refugees for decades to come.
Failing to protect President Juvenal Habyarimana’s plane was a geopolitical
catastrophe of the first order for all of us in the African Great Lakes Region.
For centuries to come we will continue to pay for the death of president
Juvenal Habyarimana, the one man at that time who was determined on the path of
peace.
The lesson is as stark as it is harsh: it is imperative on all Great Lakes
Africans to protect their leaders at all costs. The life of your leader is
sacrosanct. Do everything in your powers to protect your leaders for the
alternative is unthinkable.
The African State must be our bulwark against the dark forces of the abyss
The third lesson of the Rwanda genocide - and the shooting
down of the President’s plane which was the trigger for the Genocide - is that
fragile as it is, the African state is all that stands between us and anarchy.
We Great Lakes Africans must find the balance between holding the state in
check to protect ourselves from its excesses and benefit from its tried,
tested, proven “Westphalian multipliers”, while ensuring the African state’s
viability as the only shield that stands between us and the abyss are never
lost to us again.
For, believe you, in the breast of every African the dark forces
of the abyss are roiling, bubbling, bubbling, simmering - waiting only for the opportunity
for that volcanic eruption as happened in Rwanda ’94. We must not deceive
ourselves (witness post-Apartheid South Africa’s hatred of ‘Africans’ from
Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Somalia, Nigeria and other pints north) that there is any
such thing as a ‘renaissance African’ - enlightened, altruistic, rational. Like
all human beings, Africans are a contradictory bundle of unreason, irrational
atavistic longings, prejudices dressed up as raison d’état , superstitions and
other dark dreams which third millennium Africa is yet reveal to an astonished
world. There is always something new out of Africa.
Yet all these are from this side of the looking glass. IMANNA the poem speaks to us
from the other side of the looking glass.
I.
Th’ first
surface to air missile shrieked straight
Skywards
over Kigali's sunset-red
Skies ’n’
struck the Dassault falcon true at eight
Twenty
five.
These first four lines of Stanza I of IMANNA speak truth of a kind beyond even the technological
might of the almighty African state. This first surface-to-air missile bespeaks
the powerlessness of the African state before the determined assault of the
dark forces which will periodically erupt in the African psyche.
For, truth be told, for a poverty-stricken populace, the
arrival back home of their leader aboard the most technologically advanced
plane gives rise to a swelling of the heart and hopes for better days amidst
the squalor and disease and poverty. ‘If my leader can ride the Dassault Falcon
50, then one day so can I, or if not I, then my son surely will’. The world
rarely delves into the symbolism and pomp that are the trappings of African
power. Like Napoleon Bonaparte sneered when deriding and dismissing Toussaint
L’Ouverture's address to the First Consul as a brother and a fellow statesman, what
the world dismissively sees when looking at the trappings of African power are
the gaudy baubles of “that gilded African”. Yet there is an African logic
(illogic) to the overly strenuous insistence on ceremony, pomp and circumstance
by Africans and their African leaders.
The stress on the symbolism of power, the pomp and
circumstance, was always an outright acknowledgement of the fragility and evanescence
of African power. Africans insist on ritualized display and painfully arduous
ceremony because of the stark reality that under the surface there lurks these
volcanic forces waiting to erupt into the apocalypse as Rwandans so accurately
termed their descent into the abyss. And when the abyss erupts inwards into the
everyday reality of fragile African power, there are no countermeasures which
will stand between the fragile falcon and the angrily buzzing heat-seeking
missiles homing in to launch the apocalypse.
The heat-seeking surface-to-air
missile intercepts the target aircraft guided by the heat-seeking infrared
device which is attracted by the heat given off by the doomed aircraft. Newer
iterations on the surface-to-air missile do not even rely on the heat signature
of the aircraft for that can be disguised and masked so as to evade the
heat-seeking surface-to-air missile. These types of antiaircraft missiles
detect the radar signature of the doomed aircraft using radar receivers housed
in the rapidly advancing missile. There are very few countermeasures that can
be deployed against the fast-approaching surface-to-air missile once it is
launched. This fact is the measure of the fragility of the African state in the
face of a determined opponent - or in the face of those underground psychic
passions that must periodically erupt into African consciousness.
The only protection that the
African state can rely on is the will of Africans who are determined to protect
this fragile yet ever so necessary African leviathan - the ever fragile African
state. As Africans count the cost of that missile strike over Kigali’s evening
skies that April day, perhaps we will all begin to truly value the African
state for the necessary evil that it truly is. The alternative is anarchy and a
descent unto the abyss a la Rwanda. The African continent cannot afford another
encounter with the apocalypse. One Rwanda is enough to last all Africans a
thousand years.
Gaudy baubles, garish symbolism
and all, the African state is too valuable yet too fragile for us Africans to
wait for the apocalypse to erupt afresh in Rwanda or elsewhere.
Th’ second missile
struck for dead
Home but
moments after: the first one bled
Out Rwanda,
that missile a stab rending
Th’ heart,
th’ vitals - Rwanda’s dead. Life’s fled:
The second surface-to-air missile was an unnecessary coup de
grâce. In fact, the subsequent investigations revealed that the second missile
did not even inflict damage on the plane. The first missile had struck the
dolorous blow - and the dolorous blow is only struck once. But, “to make
assurance double sure”, the forces of the apocalypse needed to strike that
second blow. And yet in firing that second surface-to-air missile, the forces
of treason showed their hand - that second missile showed the uncertain and
fragility of the insurgents’ bid for power. Like Moses striking the rock twice,
this second missile by the traitors has all but assured their doom: Moses was
never to see the Promised Land because Fate adjudged him to have been too riven
by doubt.
As well-armed and as well-trained as were the insurgents (it
takes rigorous training to be able to fire a SAM 16 surface-to-air missile),
the moment they fired the second surface-to-air missile they bargain with
history was voided. They showed that they were not the invincible immortals
that terror whispered in the ears of their dying victims. These were but men,
with feet of clay. They too were vulnerable. They too would have their day in
the sun - then, they too, would find that their day had come.
If there is anything that the insurgents should wish for, it
is that they turn back the clock and call back that second surface-to-air
missile which did not even strike the plane. Here Fate had already begun to
play dice with these hard men of history: it is as if in destroying the
presidential plane with that first missile strike and refusing to allow the
second missile to strike home, Fate was contemptuously telling the plotters
that they were human, only too human. From the moment the whoosh and shriek of
the second surface-to-air missile tore flaming across the darkening skies, Fate
was wining these men with trifles only to betray them in deepest consequence.
There have been many betrayals in Rwanda. But by refusing the use that second
surface-to-air missile, Fate had this to say to the plotters: the betrayals in
Rwanda are yet to begin. Note to second surface-to-air missile plotters: when
you draw up your bargain with the Devil you must not show yourself faithless to
the Great Lord of Lies and Faithlessness. You must stay faithful to the most
Faithless of Beings - that is the hard bargain by which you must abide.
These
are dark times in the African Great Lakes Region and the Devil deals from the
deep end.
Hence the attractions of Plato’s Laws to the hard men of power once they have shed off the camouflage
of insurgents and donned the garb of Philosopher Kings and Statesmen. Plato’s Laws have had a profound
influence on all would be reformers. When god-men seize power, their second
project is always to remake society after their own image because they have
become gods. And man must be made in the image of god himself.
The Enduring Quest for the New Rwandan
Whether local or foreign powerholder, there is
always something in the Rwandan identity which invites the men of power onto
the seductive path of social engineering and the re-making of Rwanda into a new
nation of new men – the new Rwandan. This drive to create the new Rwanda saw
the Belgians sow the seeds of the storm which Rwandans continue to harvest.
This drive animated and obsessed the Kayibanda years. The same alluring drive
beckoned the Habyarimana years and its MRND vision of a new Rwanda. It is this
animating vision which is driving the current Rwandan powerholders to erase a
large part of recent Rwandan history in the pursuit of their vision of “the new
Rwandan”.
As happened to the Belgians, to the Kayibanda
dream, to Habyarimana’s MRND vision, this enduring drive by every one of
Rwanda's rulers throughout history to chase this will-o’-the-wisp of creating
the new Rwandan is an obsession which will see the Kagame years come to nought.
The especial poignancy of the Kagame years is that he is leading Rwanda against
the backdrop of the last genocide which bookended the 20th Century which
was the century of genocides. It is as if the lessons of the genocide century
have passed the powerholders in Kigali by. The attitude in Kigali now is either
a case of consummate arrogance or a case of breathtaking blasé heedlessness.
Arrogance or careless, Rwanda cannot afford the collective amnesia being
imposed by the powerholders in Kigali. It was this same erase of the valid
claims of the excluded which set stage for the apocalypse which overtook
Rwanda.
Rwanda’s greatest misfortune is that, more than most African
states, it has always been prone to the hungers of the soul which seizes men in
power and drives them to remake society in their image. When the Belgian
colonialists failed to remodel the Kings of Rwanda into the image of Belgian Catholic
despotism, in disgust and vindictive hate the colonialist turned to the Kings’
former subjects on a giant project of social engineering in the heart of Africa
with a vengeance. The Belgian monarchists would destroy all signs of royalty in
Rwanda. And in this project of lese majeste
against the Rwandan throne, the Belgian monarchists found a willing and capable
set of allies in the rigid Rwandan monarchs who seemed to have all developed an
unerring instinct of cutting their noses to spite their faces.
In destroying the Rwandan monarchy though, Rwanda unleashed
the fabled dragon of the abyss which Lord Gihanga, Lord High Founder of the Rwandan
state had warned all Rwanda against. For the monarchical Crown, according to
the legend, was the scared Shield that stood between Rwanda and the deeps
whence was chained the defeated dragon of the abyss. To break the monarchy was
to unchain and unleash the dragon from the abyss of the damned whence
victorious Lord Gihanga had forever chained Rwanda's enemy dragon.
When Grégoire kayadanda took over, this Platonic pull to
remake society in one’s own image gained renewed attraction for the new elites
in power.
The fateful dilemma of all divisive power grabs
The problem of all divisive power grabs is the axiom that
the challenger will be challenged. In short order Grégoire Kayibanda found
himself ousted from power. He died a slow painful death through starvation at
the hands of his erstwhile northern allies. The northerners were men of a
different temperament form the southerners. The Southerners were men of
culture. Men who had lived lives defined by their former monarchical rulers.
The Southerners were men of refinement and culture. Men who, although they were
the avowed mortal enemies of the monarchy, were men who valued learning,
culture, that cosmopolitan outlook that made Grégoire ever so eager to attend
those African conferences and palavers. African conferences have been the
undoing of very many African presidents and ambitious hard men. What is it with
African aspirations to continent-wide unity that it is always so reviled and
mocked on the world stage, yet is always so attractive to parvenu African
leaders? Perhaps, for the Southerners, the sting of social inferiority that
they had felt at Court, their keen awareness of their gauche lack of refinement
and culture is what drove them into those fatal mistakes that would eventually
see Grégoire starve slowly to death at the hands of these brash northerners.
The northerners were men of a different breed altogether.
The northerners were not respecters of authority. True, they
had no time for the monarchy at all. But they had less than contempt for the
men who had attempted to model themselves after the despised monarchy. These southerners
thought themselves the new kings of Rwanda! That was the wonder that the
northerners felt at the breathtaking arrogance of Gregoire’s southerners.
For Rwanda’s elite, the ever seductive pull of Plato’s vision to remake
society in one’s own image
The MRND men were men on the fast lane to the remaking of
Rwanda. Theirs was a new vision of Rwanda. A new man would be born in Rwanda. And
if he could not be born, then, Zeus-like, Rwanda would make its own new man out
of its own formidable intellect. The formidable intellect of these MRND men was
picayune nonsense but that was beside the point. The point was that the MRND
had created a new vision of Rwanda. The MRND was remaking Rwanda into a new
society. And the Rwandan that the MRND had created was a new man. And if in the
creation of this new man there were no women involved too bad. And if, in the crafting
of this new Rwanda some people found themselves inconvenienced by the new
vision and they had to flee the dynamic reality of new Rwanda because they
wanted to hold onto an ethnicity that was clearly outmoded, double too bad.
Never mind that ethnicity was not really a choice in MRND
Rwanda. The Belgians had stamped ethnicity onto the national identity. And
every one carried that identity everywhere they went for state services - and
the state was the only resource-holder, still is, in Rwanda. For the Tutsi in
MRND created Rwanda, the national identity card was a death-sentence written in
your own blood. You carried it with you know that one day soon, the call of
blood would come and your ID Card would
then kill you.
The world extolled the MRND crafted new Rwanda. The world
lauded the rapid expansion of opportunities for the majority Rwandans. These
were the profligate days of the world commodity boom - the world could afford
to admire and be generous to Rwanda’s economic “miracle”. But about those inconvenient
refugees languishing in those refugee camps in Uganda, Tanzania, Kenya, exiles
in the States, Europe? Even as Rwanda binged, the exiles, the refugees, those
born into statelessness in the camps - they stayed excluded from the party.
They could only watch this consumption binge with muffled oaths at what the
world was extolling as an economic miracle. World commodities like coffee fuelled
this economic junkie high. But, like every junkie knows, the economic boom
turned into an economic burst. World commodity prices collapsed. And Rwanda
lost all patience with itself.
One of the most infamous signal moments of this loss of
temper and inner faith with itself was the moment when Rwanda declared to the
world that it was too small and too poor to allow for the return of those impatient
refugees and exiles. The statement by the head of state stripping refugee
Rwandans of citizenship and of any hope of return was a fateful moment for
Rwanda. To be denied citizenship. To have your identity stripped away from you.
To be denied any hope of ever returning home to Rwanda. Because Rwanda was no
longer your home. You were not Rwandan. You were a stranger. Worse. You were
without citizen rights in your adopted country either. You were stateless. You
were without an identity. This moment was Rwanda’s fateful moment. From this
moment on things changed for Rwanda. The world changed. These stateless
refugees realized that with the world on Rwanda's side, they had no one but
themselves. They had nothing. They had only themselves. It was a harrowing
moment of psychic abandonment. It was a moment when the stateless exile
psychically died. And yet it was an exhilarating moment too. It was a moment
for rebirth for these stateless nonpersons. These stateless nonpersons realized
that there was no one out there who would speak up for them. There was no one
who wanted to hear even, of the plight of these strange Africans who claimed
citizenship in a tiny African country which no one could even place on the map.
Where was this Rwanda anyway? The refugees and exiles had no one to turn to.
The world could not even locate their country on the world map. For God’s sake,
even pronouncing their unpronounceable names was an impossible irritant. The hungry
and angry refugees watched and listened, listened and learnt, learnt and bided
their time. And when the president spoke to the world about ‘too poor, too small’
that was language the refuge understood only too well. It was the moment when
they decided to take their fate into their own hands. To take your fate into
your own hands is an act of sovereignty. By the end of the decade Rwanda had no
choice but to invite these stateless nonpersons to the negotiation table.
Then that surface-to-air missile happened. The Apocalypse had
come to Rwanda.
Après le deluge, moi.
And after the apocalypse, Plato’s ancient pull beckoned
these truly formidable intellects. The desire to remake the Rwandan into a new
man took over the new rulers as if Rwanda had never heard of visions for a new
Rwanda before. The fever to remake Rwanda into the image of the new gods - it
is a vision as ancient as Rwanda, and as fatal.
The new men in Rwanda are in a race to remake Rwanda into the image of God
- into their own image that is – for the men in power are Rwanda’s new gods.
In the process of the making of this new man in Rwanda,
those who died when the apocalypse overtook Rwanda have been cast aside like so
much chaff in the wind. The dead of the Rwanda genocide have been cast aside so
that the national project of the making of this new Rwanda can take place. -
In the (re)construction of this new Rwanda, the dead are
only remembered at convenient moments when their remains are reinterred in
sumptuous style before the cameras. Until the next chosen moment, when the next
batch of discarded dead are chosen to be interred in sumptuous ceremony. No one
speaks of the outrage to the dead all these twenty-five years since the
genocide. Were they to come back to life they would not even recognize this country
they once called home and for which they died. Those who died in Butare will
look in vain for the place of their death. There is no Butare anymore. There is
only Huye - and the dead are not welcome there on nay normal day. And so it
goes, throughout Rwanda. The country is seeing the birthing of a new man. And
in the process the country too is being born anew: the old Rwanda is erased. A
new Rwanda, born. It is a country the dead will be barely able to recognize. For
the country that made them die because of their identity has erased those
identities. It is as if the dead died in vain. The names and identities which
cost them their lives have become something anathema. To be a Tutsi, which is
why they died, is an identity which you must not speak of now. And yet, in a paradoxical
signs of the tensions tugging at the heart of this new Rwanda, the Rwanda
genocide itself has become elided into “the Genocide Against the Tutsi”. The many
valiant non-Tutsi who died defending Tutsi rights to life and citizenship like
Agathe Uwilingiyimana did - well, them: they did not die. The hundreds of
thousands of Hutus who died – well, them: they didn’t die. And the thousands of
Twa whose deaths are ever erased from the public record – well, them: they did
not die. Or did they?
Agathe Uwilingiyimana – Rwanda's soldier-stateswoman.
Valiant Rwandan, like Spartan Leonidas at Thermopylae obedient to his
nation’s laws, you stood at Rwanda’s hot gates obedient to Rwanda’s laws,
obedient to the last
The heroic example of Agathe Uwilingiyimana is the kind of
stalwart example that will always gave the lie to the periodic Rwandan
obsession with birthing “the new Rwandan.” Prime Minister Agathe gave her adult
life to heroic public service in the name of Rwanda. The Prime Minister paid a
very high price indeed for her principles stance for the protection of the
rights of all Rwandan citizens. At the very end this Rwanda that she had
dedicated herself to, at a very high personal cost, abandoned this heroic
stateswoman to a horrific fate. What made Agathe go forth to her end was her
valiant attempt to give her life so that her children may survive and live.
Like a fierce lioness ever protective of her cubs Prime Minster went forth to
meet the killers who had come for her and her family. Like a soldier fierce to
serve and obedient to the charge of her country, Agathe Uwilingiyimana died
obedient to her charge to serve Rwanda. Agathe Uwilingiyimana died like the
heroic soldier obedient to her command. Agathe died with honour. She died defending
Rwanda’s honour, to the bitter end.
Plato’s Philosopher Kings
So when one looks at Agathe Uwilngiyimana’s banished career
and then one looks at the new Rwanda where what happened was ‘The Genocide
Against the Tutsis” what does one make of her heroic public service and her
martyrdom at the end? If Rwanda can only countenance the apocalypse as “The
Genocide Against the Tutsis” what becomes of the valiant and supreme self-sacrifice
of a valiant leader like Agathe Uwilingiyimana? Is she also to be erased form
the public record because she is clearly not Tutsi? Was he death in vain then?
Did she even die? It is here, when contemplating the supreme sacrifice of
Rwandans like the Prime Minister that Rwanda's brave attempt at social engineering
reveals itself as foolhardy and doomed-to-fail social engineering. It is the
hubris which always overtakes leaders who arrogantly fashion themselves Plato’s
Philosopher–Kings. And Rwanda’s new rulers are notorious for their conceit that
they are better educated, better tacticians, better strategists than any leader
or peoples that cares to measure up to their formidable intellects. It is
foolhardy for Rwanda now to downplay the sacrifice made by Rwandans during the
dark days. The erasure of the self-sacrifices that were made by many Rwandans
can easily become ammunition in the hands of the naysayers against Rwanda. It
is imperative that Rwanda now must reconsider its official narrative concerning
the events of the dark days of the genocide. The Jewish Holocaust has become an
enduring worldwide symbol of human courage in the face of the unthinkable
mainly because valiant survivors like the great Elie Wiesel have stood up to
the revisionists with courage. The Holocaust has come to speak for our pain as
human beings because survivors like Elie Wiesel have been courageous enough to
embrace and speak for the suffering not only of the victims of the Nazi
Genocide but also of the suffering of other victims of atrocities in other
lands, other times. The giant moral stature of Elie Wiesel does not come from
the honours the world has bestowed upon this courageous man. His moral stature
comes from the fact that he has given voice to the suffering of human beings-
not only the suffering of the Jews who were victims of the Nazis but the
suffering of all human beings who have become victims of atrocities and on
whose behalf Elie has spoken with bravery and courage and with a moving
eloquence all its own.
Rwanda must learn from the example of great men like Elie
Wiesel. Rwanda must not only embrace the suffering of the Tutsis. Greatness for
Rwanda will come from embracing the suffering of all Rwandans who suffered in
the dark days of the genocide. Greatness for Rwanda will come from embracing
the suffering not only of Rwandans but of that of other victims of atrocities
in other lands, other times. Rwanda must rise to the moral greatness that
history has extended to this small nation risen of its horrific recent past.
Rwanda must reject this new vision where only some of the dead are acknowledged
while the suffering of others is elided, erased from the record, swept under
the rug – a veritable act of national damnatio memoriae against the dead who
are not Tutsi.it is a moral outrage that Rwanda is privileging the suffering of
the Tutsi in this was in a country where the victims of the genocidaires came
from all ethnic sides and from all walks of life. This new Rwanda is using the
dead to play geopolitical games and that is not only a moral outrage, it is
mistake of historic proportions. It is a mistake that Rwanda will have to pay
for as the imposed collective amnesia is already distorting the reality of the
Genocide.
In this new Rwanda, the dead are only tolerated on special
days when they are summoned out of their pain and their past to be used as
props in this national pastime of one-upmanship and
‘I-am-better-than-you-because-I-suffered-more-than-you.’
The seductive – and bloody, and murderous – attractions of national social
engineering or the creation in Rwanda of Plato’s “new Rwanda, new Rwandan”
The seductive - and bloody and murderous - attractions of
national social engineering was one of the defining realities of life throughout
the 20th Century. From Soviet man in the Soviet Union to Socialist
man in Cuba , Angola to Red Khmer to China’s cultural revolution the price that
humanity has paid for this cruel and dry as dust Platonic vision to remake
society in the image of the new rulers has been very high. The current Rwandan
rulers act of social engineering smacks of the same hubris that filled graves
from the former Soviet Union to Europe, Asia and Africa. It is a vision of
society that Rwanda always has a peculiar affinity for. There is something
about Rwanda which always invites Rwanda’s latest rulers to remake the society
into their own image.
Yet every time human beings latch onto Plato’s vision to
remake their societies, the cost in blood and treasure has been truly
catastrophic. One would have thought that having known the price that humans
pay for the mad visions of wild-eyed statesmen, visionaries and cranks; and
having known the humbling fact of exile, that these new rulers would have
avoided the seductive power of the Rwandan desire to remake society in one’s own image.
The inconvenience of history
In post–Genocide Rwanda, the seductive pull of the Platonic “new
man” and the visceral hatred of anything to do with Rwanda’s history –
especially the monarchy – has birthed this bloodless vision of a new Rwanda premised
on the erasure of Rwandaan identity in the pursuit of this sanitized vision of Rwanda.
Yet against this drive to re–create Plato’s dream Republic in Rwanda is the inconvenience
of history. The current Rwandan hatred of the past has led to the urging and the
forcing underground of a large part of Rwanda identity. Or into exile. Hence the
vehement refusal to allow back the monarchy or any role for the King in present
day Rwanda.
In Rwanda, the invention of the (new) human
In the new Rwanda, all identities have been submerged for
the greater good - which is the making of this history–less, identity–less Rwanda.
Yet the truth is that the dead who died in the Rwanda Genocide were savagely hunted
down and brutally killed because of who they were. They were killed because
of their identities. To erase their identities now in death is a great
dishonour indeed. It is a cardinal principle of African culture that the living
must not dishonour the memory of the dead. To erase the Rwanda identity for
which these dead perished in the Genocide - what greater damnatio memoriae can
there be than this against the dead? Who would have thought that the dead of
the Rwanda Genocide would one day find that to speak of the very reason, the
very identity, for which they died is now a criminal offence in Rwanda?
Lest it be forgotten, this new Rwanda is a creation in the image
of the new Rwandan godlings, the new Rwandan gods. The erasure of the old Rwanda
identity is meant to create space for the new human desired by the ruling elite
in power in Rwanda now. It is an identity which is artificial, rootless and
thus insecure, prickly, quick to take offence, quick to see enemies lurking in
every sentence spoken of that old Rwanda , quick to cry racism in every statement
which seeks to understand this new Rwanda. This newest iteration of Plato’s bloodless
vision set out in his Laws.
Rwanda’s damnatio memoriae against the victims of the Rwanda Genocide
In ancient Roman times, when one wanted to destroy one’s
enemy permanently one invoked the powers of the state to render an act of
complete erasure against the dead person. This act the Romans came to term
damnatio memoriae. When a damnatio memoriae was declared against an individual,
even their monuments were pulled down. Records burnt. Names erased from public
monuments, from the public record. The Romans believed that that potent act
also denied the Soul of the victim of the damnatio memoriae the rest that their
Souls crazed in easeful death. In erasing from the public record the reason,
the identity, for which these Rwandans died in the first place is an act of
cruel damnatio memoriae against the dead of the Rwanda Genocide.
Like the Belgian, Kayibanda and Habyarimana attempts to erase Rwandan
history in the vain endeavour at the Creation of “a new Human”, “a new Rwandan”,
the Paul Kagame attempt at Social Engineering will fail
Even in the former communist world, the erasure of
identities was one of the reasons for the violent break up of those former
socialist “heavens”. Rwandan history shows that every time the Rwanda identity
is submerged, erased from the public record, damned, condemned in that
deliberate act of forgetting, the submerged identity always finds a way to
resurface. Given their bargain with the lord of the abyss, those surface-to-air
missiles are not done with their work yet.
Th’ heart,
th’ vitals - Rwanda’s dead. Life’s fled:
Ablaze, the
plane - all vitals torn, bleeding
Ichor gushing is death:
th’ state is exploding
The voices of Rwanda’s dead are speaking. They must
be heard. Rwanda must listen to the voices of the dead of the Rwanda Genocide
for even in as far away as here in Kenya, the Rwanda dead are speaking. Through
IMANNA, through the gnomic utterance of
flame-haired Imanna of splendour, the Rwandan dead are speaking.
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