KWIBUKA I
Remembering the
victims, preventing Genocide
You look aghast at the peremptory and righteous decrees,
laws, regulations and fiats which daily come out of the government decree
machine in Kigali, Rwanda and you shake your head at the sheer at the follies
des grandeur of it all. You marvel at the shortness of human memory when you
look at the strenuous attempts the rulers in Kigali are making to erase the
past and rewrite history and you marvel at the breathtaking arrogance of it
all.
And then, when one has dismissed Kigali's shortsightedness
there always comes something more out of Rwanda which makes one to think again.
On 26th September 2019, Rwanda welcomed the first
group of refugees arriving in the country as asylum seekers from Libya. These asylum seekers have travelled a
traumatic journey to reach the calm and safety of kg, Rwanda.
In 2017, the world watched riveted as reports filtered in
from Libya of slave markets where South of the Sahara Africans were being sold
by slave traders. Slave markets. African slaves. Slave traders. That same year, Rwanda offered to receive African
asylum seekers from Libya. It has taken up to 26th September for the
United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees to act on Rwanda’s great act of
magnanimity. It took three years for the UNHCR to act on Rwanda’s offer to host
refugees from Libya. Knowing Rwandans and their history with the UN, it must
have taken a tremendous measure of restraint and the gritting of teeth for
Rwanda’s to wait as the insufferable UN once again took its time to act on a
request by Rwanda.
And then, after its medieval-byzantine bureaucracy had finally,
graciously allowed these refugees to reach Rwanda it was the same UN whose
refugee affiliate took to twitter to crow about the arrival of the refugees. When
it comes to dealing with the UN, for Rwandans there is always the need for the exercise
of a tremendous amount of patience and the gritting of teeth. Rwanda made the
offer to host these traumatized refugees in 2017, the UNHCR finally acted in September
2019. But then, Rwandans are nothing if not patient.
Rwanda offers African refugees asylum
This is a first anywhere in Africa. Save for the
statesmanlike generosity of Tanzania to Africans from the main and from the Diaspora
Rwanda’s act of welcoming these stateless Africans is an act of magnanimity
which deserves all the praise which such an act so richly deserves.
There is a continental catastrophe unfolding for Africa in
the north of the continent and it involves south of the Sahara African economic
and political refugees seeking passage to Europe by illegally crossing international
borders through the northern African countries to illegally.
The chaos and instability of post-Qaddafy Libya made that country’s
porous borders seem like an attractive proposition for would be migrants. The
horrors of lawless violence and civil war in Libya have combined with the
vulnerabilities all stateless people fall prey to make the South Saharan Africans
particularly vulnerable in Libya. But not only in Libya. Across the northern
part of the continent, South Saharan Africans are being forced into slavery by
human traffickers who promise them passage to the fabled riches of mythical Europe
– only to hand these Africans into servitude. Slavery has made a dramatic
comeback in the northern African nations and South Saharan Africans are
especially vulnerable to this evil trade whose ancient roots are sprouting
afresh in a revival of an institution which the northern African states have
never really foresworn – witness the horrors of slavery which Africans have
faced for centuries in Mauretania. The deeply entrenched exploitation and
cruelty against South Saharan Africans in North Africa is so easily wished away
and justified by invoking culture and religion to justify its evil. The economic
collapse of South Saharan economies across a wide swath of the continent has
added fuel to burgeoning trafficking of South Saharan Africans all across the
northern part of the continent.
The revival of the ancient institution of slavery, the
collapse of African economies south of the Sahara, the closing of Europe ever
more intent on looking inwards to its present needs and the collapse of the
state across states both south and north of the Sahara – all these forces have
rendered the situation of African migrants across the north of the continent particularly
untenable.
The dreams that make these African migrants to uproot
themselves from rootles lives crash against a shattering reality when these
African migrants reach North Africa. The sea and land crossings to Europe are
better policed than ever before so these Africans find that they will never really
cross into Europe by the illegal routes that they had been made to believe were
porous enough to allow them reach the jobs and education and opportunities
which Europe symbolizes in the minds of these migrants.
The statistics are horrifying: every week unseaworthy boasts
capsize in the Mediterranean Sea with tragic loss of lives. Every week Africans
perish in the Saharan while attempting that impossible crossing to Europe.
Every week Africans dies in the crossfire as northern African states implode
from youth unemployment and failed state institutions. And the human
traffickers are making a killing capturing and trading these starry-eyed
migrants into slavery.
A few of the Africans end up in stateless or displaced
persons camps or with the Red Cross and other refugee organizations. These are,
relatively speaking, the lucky ones. For from among these refugees some have
gotten the hardly believable news that Rwanda is offering them asylum.
Rwanda. A small resource-poor country offering these
forsaken Africans a place to call home. Rwanda’s gesture is as moving as it is
improbable. One has to know statelessness to truly plumb the depth of meaning
of what Rwanda has done here. By welcoming these suffering Africans Rwanda has
done a deed which Africa will not forget. Although all these African states
have responded to Rwanda’s deed with disdain disguised as studious silence,
every African head of state understands the urgent and unsettling message which
Rwanda has sent across the continent.
These stateless Africans are the vanguard army of a future
of collapsed states and vast refugees roaming no longer enforceable
international borders. These refugees are an urgent international cable to all
state houses across Africa. And it is Paul Kagame’s Rwanda which has delivered
this inflammatory diplomatic cable.
The message of these refugees is that African states are
sleep walking on a volcano which is already erupting. But doomsday scenarios
are a penny a dozen all across the blogosphere when it comes to Africa’s future
so I will not go there.
Post-Genocide Rwanda is challenging all these African states
by pointing at the real facts on the ground here at ground zero in post-cold
war Africa.
Just like the world is abandoning minorities all across Asia
and the Middle East, the world abandoned Africans after their cold-war era
usefulness evaporated with the collapse of the Soviet Union. The African Great Lakes region knows the hard
realities of this geopolitical shift all too keenly. And the casualty has not
just been the African Great Lakes region only. Across West Africa, French
verities have evaporated in the sun leaving former favourite French nations but
shells of their former statehood. And as these African states turn into mere
shells, their youth vote with their feet for mythical Europe. Except that Europe
is too well policed to allow them any but token entry.
For African states brought up in the school of hard knocks
like Rwanda, the fluidity and chaos of the international scene is opportunity
beckoning brightly. You can always count on Rwandans to pull a breathtaking
stunt while all those ossified African states are somnolent. Remember the bravura brilliance and audacious
execution of the Kitona air assault? And the monumental loss of lives it led
to. And the sheer savagery of the vengeance meeted out on the defeated inavders
by the Congolese, Angolans and Zimbabweans? Any talk of african armies is very
mistaken when you condier the fate of the Rwandans for whom Kabarebe’s
millitary genious led only to the meatgrinder of defeat. But as much as I would
like to talk about the tactical brilliance – and strategic blunder – of General
Kabarebe’s commando raid on Kitona, this is about remeberance and not about
Kabarebe’s coup d’ouel. So: back to Rwanda’s strategic calculations about the
future and the place of these new refugees in Rwanda’s grand national strategy.
It is not as if alll these african nations do not have the
brains and the strategic nous to read auguries of their own into the african
future. It is just that with these terrified stateless African refugees Rwanda
has made another strategic play. Of course Rwanda’s themselves will strenuously
deny all ulterior motives in their welcoming of these traumatized Africans. They
will point to international treaties (all true); they will point to African
treaties (all very proper and legal); they will point to the oneness of the human
family – and they will be right on this one too – as motives for their
interventions on behalf of these refugees. And being the thin-skinned Rwandans
that they are, they will take umbrage at any suggestion of cynical real politik
in their eager embrace of these stateless Africans. Rwandans will even deny
that what they are doing is eager – they will rightly point to the fact that
the South Saharan African refugee crisis in the north of the continent has been
an eyesore decades in the making. And they will point to the effete and
overpaid civil servants who man the United Nations Commission for refugees and
other UN affiliates are the true culprits in this whole sorry drama. You know
how well Rwandans have mastered the art of mocking those clueless UN
bureaucrats. When it comes to mocking effete overpaid UN types, Rwanda has
bested even the Americans in their scathing, excoriating sarcasm. So in the
end, Rwanda will succeed in camouflaging the truth of what their welcoming of
these African refugees really means.
Like vultures wheeling high in the vast African
skies, they are the harbingers of things to come
First of all, the truth of these African refugees arriving
in Kigali means but one thing – the African state is a pawn for grandmaster
chess players like Rwandans have proven to be. Most African heads of state;
most African states’ departments of state cannot really even be bothered to pay
attention to what Rwanda has done here. Even most African university international
relations departments have not seen fit to investigate the meaning of what
Rwanda has done here. African states hosting each others’ refugees: today’s
traumatized stateless hordes are tomorrow’s hungry, angry and highly motivated
rebel soldiers. Perhaps the silence from most African capitals arises from the realization
that from the vantage point of these capitals, what they see from Rwanda are
yesterday’s refugees being today’s feted statesmen. Perhaps then the
non-reaction is a very powerful reaction indeed. The message then is that from
every African capital and inside every African statehouse these refugees
arriving in Rwanda are being keenly watched. They are the hatchlings of future
troubles, rebel armies in the shell. If that is the case, then these African
heads of state are not as blasé as one may think from the apparent
non-reaction. The fact that African heads of state have not commented on these
refugees nor on Rwanda’s welcoming of them sends a very clear, very loud
message: these African leaders are very aware of what President Kagame and his
government have done and are doing by hosting these stateless Africans.
And truth be told, African heads of state are survivors.
They jealously protect their hegemonies. It would be totally out of character
for them to ignore such a brazen threat as that posed by Rwanda’s audacious
refugee plan. Perhaps the public indifference is but the bland face that African
heads of state are putting up to hide the inner turmoil that these refugees are
causing in African statehouses. For when they look at the occupant of state
house Kigali , African heads of state see just how powerful the refugee camps
growing all over Africa are for those intent on reclaiming their rights in a
country which has stripped them all of citizenship.
There is a famous international incident when it comes to
the claims of disenfranchised refugees and it concerns Rwanda itself. Asked one
time about the future of the Rwandan refugees and their wish to return to
Rwanda, then president, Juvenal Habyarimana unwisely answered that as regards
the Rwandans in refugee camps in Uganda, Tanzania, all across Europe and elsewhere,
Rwanda did not have room to accommodate the refugees. It was an off the cuff
response to a journalist’s unpremeditated question. But in the refugee camps
all across Africa and in Europe and America and elsewhere, the Rwandan
President’s response was galvanic. The
Rwandan president’s response was revealing of a mindset that rapidly filled the
ranks of the rebel forces that were already attacking Rwanda. The Rwandan
President ended up being the best recruiting poster for the Rwanda Patriotic
Front. And the strategist for the RPF at that time? One former student of the
US Army’s counterinsurgency course at the storied Fort Leavenworth. Perhaps,
then, when it comes to the African refugees whom Rwanda has welcomed so
famously, so eagerly, the African heads of state have not been silent at all. They are very aware
of what Rwanda’s geopolitical move means. After all, these African heads of
state are very good students of real politik and Rwanda’s geostrategic moves
are well understood for what they are. To non-Africans, the status of these
refugees being welcomed in Rwanda are a purely humanitarian issue. It is a
harmless matter of the African conscience finally waking up to its
responsibilities towards fellow Africans. About time too, such observers would
say – as the UN spokesperson implied at the start of the journey by the
refugees to Rwandan. About time too, one may be tempted to agree. Absolutely
not. It is easy to see these refugees arriving in Kigali as a purely
humanitarian matter but nothing would be further from the truth. The sheer
depth of the seismic geopolitical forces these refugees have triggered can only
be gauged truly when one remembers that there are equally needy Rwandan
refugees languishing in camps outside Rwanda – they are equally eager to return
home to Rwanda. So what is the play with these refugees? It is not that African
capitals are sleepwalking into irrelevance when it comes to these refugees
arriving in Rwanda. When they look at the occupant of state house Kigali, the
occupants of African state houses all across the continent understand all too
well the geostrategic meaning of what Rwanda is doing. These African refugees arriving
in Rwanda are the harbingers of things to come.
To most African university departments, Rwanda means
genocide studies. This hardball player of the game of real politik is a strange
creature – neither fish nor fowl; so they are as frozen in their reactions as
are their governments. This is not to tar these international relations
departments in our esteemed African universities. African intellectuals hew to
the pull of the state. Their non-reaction is par for the course.
Rwanda is not Israel
This small, resource-poor but plucky and gutsy African state
is running ahead of the pack when it comes to the burning issues of the day
here in the scorching sun of Africa.
Although Rwanda is not Israel, the sabra spirit of can-do is
everywhere in Rwanda. From harnessing cutting edge tech to drive the economy to
turning the population issue on its head, Rwanda is like an emergent Israel
here in the African Great lakes region.
When most economists look at Africa’s booming populations
they do so with their Malthusian specs firmly in place. Not so for Rwanda. Even
as the analysts point to the population pressure as the deepest underlying
factor in the Rwanda Genocide, Rwandans themselves have educated the world to
the true reality that every Rwanda is a resource for their country, not a
problem, not a population time bomb.
And Rwanda is investing in this human resource at a
ferocious pace. Education is the key driver of change in Rwanda. And Rwandans
are investing in education more than never before. With discipline and passion
and unfailing politeness, Rwandans are being noticed in universities all over
the world. And they are disciplined. And they are unfailingly polite. And they
are as aggressive to learn as are the Israelis. The world over, whenever a university
department head hosting a Rwandan student starts to speak about their Rwandan
student/s you see the joy, the passion. And the wistfulness at the state of
their own student population and their lack of drive compared to the Rwandans.
Rwanda is racing into the future
Rwanda is in a scorching race to the future. And why is
Rwanda so driven? Why are Rwandans so intense? So focused? It is human
demographics. It is those refugees again. Rwandans are a nation with deep
collective memory of statelessness. Every Rwandan knows deep in the bone the
true meaning of being stateless, a refugee, a despised foreigner, a nonperson,
the marginalized, and the unwanted. For Africans living in these collapsed
states, statelessness is the meaning of the future. It is a future which
Rwandans have lived for centuries. Displacement, alienation, realities that
change with the catatonic zombie-slow speed of bureaucrats shuffling paper in
offices in Brussels, in New York – Rwandans know deep in the bone that tomorrow
is not a given.
And when they see Africans languishing in the punishing
camps of the north Rwandans remember their own refugee days in the camps in
former Zaire now Congo. In fact Rwandans don’t remember their own refugee days
in the camps in former Zaire now Congo – Rwandans are living refugee days in
those camps in former Zaire now Congo.
Rwandans live the nightmare of those refugees living their refugee days in the camps in former Zaire now Congo
Welcoming the non-Rwandan refugees into their country is
also a desperate plugging at the cracks in the dam wall. Rwandans are very
aware that their collective finger in the cracks in the dam walls will not keep
those refugees living their refugee days in those camps in former Zaire now Congo.
Rwandans know that they would rather that all those refugees return home. The
terror is in the sure knowledge that the lives that those refugees living their
refugee days in those camps in former Zaire now Congo is the lives that they ,
the rulers in power now, lived when they were those refugees living their
refugee days in those camps in former Zaire now Congo.
So welcoming the refugees from these camps to the African
north is a case of looking at their own future lives through the looking glass
mirror. It is a thing that inspires both a deep terror and a manic
exhilaration. The warmth of the welcome being accorded to these stateless Africans
from the north is in sharp diametrical contrast to the sheer fury and hatred
with which the Rwandans in the refugee camps across the borders are treated by
the rulers in power now.
Since Rwandans are such computer geeks one can only end by
saying that a program is only as good as the algorithm that you write for it.
Kwibuka. Lest we forget
Front page of GENOCIDE.
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| Add caption |
GENOCIDE is a sonnet sequence in which Rwanda's last Queen, Queen Rosalie Gicanda, witnesses and tells the harrowing stories of the victims of the Rwanda Genocide. The aim of Queen Rose (as she was known by her beloved subjects) is to tell the stories of the victims of the Genocide - and thereby defeat the prophecy of the killers that by the time they were through with the Genocidal killings, there would be none left to tell the stories of the victims.
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