This article, originally from the Al Ahram, Egypt’s weekly paper, discusses the truth about Rwanda pre-genocide. The Tutsis, the victims in the genocide, aided and collaborated with Belgium for years prior.
“To buttress their conquest of Africa, imperialist powers propagated the myth of the civilising mission, portraying Africa as teeming with ethnic and tribal strife. Notwithstanding efforts to shift blame elsewhere, European powers bear a direct responsibility for a whole host of African tragedies. The bitter conflict pitting the Hutu majority against the Tutsi minority in Rwanda, for instance, is a direct outcome of European imperialism.
“Tutsi overlords ruled the Rwanda-Burundi region since their ancestors arrived from Ethiopia in the 16th century. By the time the Belgians overran Rwanda and Burundi, ethnic intermarriages had blurred the Tutsi-Hutu divide. A concept of race in the European sense never existed. Belgian authorities, however, invented divisions under a carefully-planned policy of divide and rule, while the Catholic Church attributed superior racial qualities to the Tutsi. Catholic missionaries dubbed the Tutsi a Hamitic “Ethiopian” people — with the potential for approaching, but never quite reaching — the “exalted level” of the white man. The Hutu, on the other hand, were defined as a negroid (Bantu) race — brutish and inferior. Foreign missionaries in charge of the colonial school system, passed this racist “theory” down to successive generations of Rwandans, along with more traditional Christian values.
TheStateOf . . . Rwanda. Like all African conflicts, the Hidden Hand of Europe lurks, always wreaking havoc. A friend of mine (J) worked on the war crimes trial and told me that she couldn’t believe how misrepresented the genocide is in the American media.
Filed under: History
