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Rwanda: The Rationality of Genocide

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 August 2021

René Lemarchand
René Lemarchand*
Affiliation:
USAID Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire
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Extract

The image of Rwanda conveyed by the media is that of a society gone amok. How else to explain the collective insanity that led to the butchering of half a million civilians, men, women and children? As much as the scale of the killings, the visual impact of the atrocities numbs the mind and makes the quest for rational motives singularly irrelevant. Tribal savagery suggests itself as the most plausible subtext for the scenes of apocalypse captured by television crews and photojournalists.

Ironically, just as “tribalism” is being reaffirmed by the media as the bane of the continent, Rwanda’s descent into hell makes it a society not unlike others in Europe and Asia where genocide has been intrinsic to their recent historical experience.

Type
Research Article
Information
African Issues , Volume 23 , Issue 2 , 1995 , pp. 8 - 11
Copyright
Copyright © African Studies Association 1995 

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References

Notes

None of the views expressed in this article are to be attributed to USAID or any other agency of the US government.

1. Fein, Helen, “Patron, Prevention and Punishment of Genocide: Observations on Bosnia and Rwanda,” in Fein, Helen ed., ‘The Prevention of Genocide: Rwanda and Yugoslavia Reconsidered,” A Working Paper of the Institute for the Study of Genocide (New York: 1994), 5 Google Scholar.

2. The point is more fully developed in Lemarchand, René , Rwanda and Burundi (Pall Mall Press, London:1970), 175–196 Google Scholar.

3. Lemarchand, Rwanda and Burundi, 97-106.

4. For further information, see Barahinyura, Shyirambere J., Habyarimana: Quinze ans de tyrannie et de tartufferie au Rwanda (Edition Izuba, Frankfurt am Main: 1988)Google Scholar.

5. See the extensive evidence gathered by the Association Rwandaise pour le Défense des Droits de la Personne et des Libertés Publiques in its “Rapport sur les droits de l’homme au Rwanda, Septembre 1991-Septembre 1992” (Kigali: 1992).

6. See Lemarchand, René, Burundi: Ethnocide as Discourse and Practice (Woodrow Wilson Press and Cambridge University Press, Cambridge: 1994)Google Scholar.

7. The definitive source on human rights violations in Rwanda is the devastating report authored by Omaar, Rakiya and Alex de Waal on behalf of the London-based African Rights, Rwanda: Death, Despair and Defiance (London: 1994)Google Scholar.

8. Helen Fein, “The Prevention of Genocide,” 12.