The Dynamics of Violence in Central Africa. Rene Lemarchand
of its rich array of customary codes, was remarkably well equipped to evolve into a constitutional monarchy. Kagame's history, in short, was designed to get Europeans to see that Rwandan traditions were neither arbitrary nor decadent. To the contrary, they contained within their folds the promise of a democratic renewal. Kagame's painstaking reinterpretation of traditional Rwanda was consciously designed to influence the basic constitutional choices facing the Belgian trust authorities in the decade preceding independence.
As a politically committed intellectual, determined to save the monarchy from itself, Kagame showed unusual foresight and imagination. As an historian, however, he showed little inclination to depart from the basic tenets of the Hamitic tradition; pre-Tutsi traditions went virtually unnoticed. Not until 1962, with the publication of Jan Vansina's path-breaking work, L'évolution du royaume rwanda dès origines à 1900, did the flaws in Kagame's writings, and much of the historical literature on Rwanda, come to the attention of Rwandan historians.23 The history of Rwanda as the story of exceptional men performing exceptional feats just did not stand up to the historical record. What was left out was the rich history of preconquest Hutu states, some of which survived until the 1920s, and some of whose customs, rituals, and conceptions of authority were assimilated by Tutsi clans (and all this happened long before the term Tutsi gained currency in the area).24 Rather than a superior civilization imposing its rule on an inferior one, the evidence revealed a far more complex story. Ironically, much of what made the Hamites so captivating in the Europeans' eyes turned out to be the result of selective cultural borrowing from the supposedly inferior agricultural societies.
Here, then, was a view of history that came as close as any to reflecting Ranke's ideal of “how things really were.” More important, it could provide a meaningful rationale for cooperation and mutual respect between Hutu and Tutsi. This possibility was not to be realized, however. As independence loomed on the horizon, confronting Hutu and Tutsi (and Europeans) with basic tactical decisions, the Hamitic view of history reasserted itself with a vengeance, but not without undergoing some extraordinary changes in meaning and substance.
The Politics of Memory in the Historical Present
Commenting on the distinction between myth and ideology, Benjamin Halpern makes the argument that “the study of myth is a study of the origins of beliefs out of historic experience,” whereas “the study of ideology is the study of moulding of beliefs by social situations.”25 Though analytically distinct, the two are intimately linked to each other.
It was in Rwanda during the social revolution of 1959 to 1962 that the efforts of both Tutsi and Hutu to remember their past entered into their political agendas with unusual bluntness and profoundly divisive consequences. For the conservative Tutsi associated with the court, history ruled out reconciliation: “Since our kings have conquered the land of the Hutu by killing their kinglets (bahinza) and turning them into serfs, how can they now pretend to be our brothers?”26 For the Hutu, however, it was precisely this kind of outlook that made revolutionary change imperative.
In the remainder of this chapter, we shall turn our attention to four examples of mythmaking, where memory operates selectively and in so doing, creates not just “imagined” communities but communities of fear and hatred. The first example of divisive mythmaking can be seen in the resurrection of the Hamitic myth in the political discourse of Hutu elites in Rwanda and Burundi. The second is to be found in the denial of genocide by both Hutu and Tutsi (the first in Rwanda, the second in Burundi). A third example of mythmaking is to be found in what might be called the Rwanda irredenta phenomenon. By this, we mean the efforts of postgenocide Rwanda to legitimize its claims to eastern Congo by rewriting the precolonial history of the region. A fourth concerns the emergence of a new “tribe” in eastern Congo, the so-called Banyamulenge.
MYTH #1: THE RESURRECTION OF THE HAMITIC HYPOTHESIS
Of these four myths, the first is evidently the most critical to an understanding of the other three. More than any other, it is the Hamitic myth that has had the most devastating impact on the texture of Hutu-Tutsi relations through much of the Great Lakes region, in effect providing ideological ammunition for the elimination of “Hamites” by “Bantus.” Viewed through the lens of mythical representations, historical memory thus creates its own universe of death and destruction. “Men do not find truth,” wrote Paul Veyne, “they create it, as they create their history.”27
Initially fashioned by colonial historiography, the Hamitic hypothesis provided a simple model for understanding perceived distinctions between lower and higher orders of humanity. Recast in the form of an ideological weapon to discredit allegations of Tutsi supremacy, it reemerged with extraordinary virulence during the 1994 genocide.
Filtered through the prism of antimonarchical ideology, the Hamitic phantasm eventually morphed into a militantly anti-Tutsi vision. Already in 1959, the Hutu elites seized upon the myth and profoundly altered its meaning. They invoked the same mythical themes once taken to prove Tutsi superiority, but now used them to prove Tutsi foreignness and depravity. The Hamitic race, believed by Europeans to embody all that was best in humanity, was now presented by Hutus as the embodiment of the worst. Hamites represented cruelty and cunning, conquest and oppression. Where missionaries had invoked Semitic origins to suggest racial superiority, Hutu ideologues invoked them to argue that “the Tutsi are all originally bad.” Where anthropologists had detected contractual exchange between Hutus and Tutsi, Hutu saw only proof of compulsion. That the native Hutus had adopted customs from the Tutsi was seen as the result of social domination, enforced by ruse and coercion. Even physical attributes once seen as marks of worthiness were denounced: what some perceived as Tutsi feminine grace was now vilified as yet another ploy designed to subjugate the unsuspecting Hutu.
In retrospect, early references to the féodalo-Hamites by Hutu revolutionaries seem relatively mild compared to the murderous frenzy of antiTutsi propaganda and the blatantly racist iconography that was diffused by the Hutu-controlled media on the eve of the genocide.28 The cartoon in Figure 1 is a chilling example of how recent events in Burundi were recast in the frame of historical traditions with a view to casting aspersions on Tutsi cruelty: the death of the Hutu President Melchior Ndadaye (assassinated by elements of the Tutsi army in October 1993), is represented as involving a typically Tutsi-inspired martyrdom (impalement); watching his agony are soldiers of the RPF severing Ndadaye's vital parts, for the purpose of attaching them to the royal drum (Kalinga), as used to be the custom in traditional Rwanda.
Anti-Tutsi propaganda must be seen in the context of the pervasive fear created among Hutu by the RPF invasion of northern Rwanda on October 1, 1990. Another major background factor was the legacy of the Burundi genocide of 1972 that resulted in the extermination of at least 200,000 Hutu civilians.29 The impact of the Burundi bloodbath on subsequent developments in both Burundi and Rwanda cannot be overemphasized. It is not a matter of coincidence that the few Hutu elites who survived the Burundi carnage were the first to articulate a stridently anti-Tutsi ideology, explicitly grounded in a Hamitic frame of reference. Formalized by the founder of the Palipehutu, Rémi Gahutu, this ideology flourished among a small group of Hutu exiles in Rwanda in the years immediately following the Burundi slaughter. The main themes are depressingly familiar. We learn that Tutsi domination over the Hutu can only be explained by taking into account the moral depravity of the Hamites. We hear of their consummate skill in the use of cunning and deceit; using, for example, poisoned gifts (beautiful women and cows) to reduce the Bantu into bondage. The Hutu exiles also stressed the unspeakable cruelties perpetrated during the 1972 genocide. They presented them as irrefutable proof of Hamitic perversity.30
Figure 1. Melchior Ndadaye's assassination reinterpreted through the phantasms of extremist anti-Tutsi propaganda, from Le Médaille-Nyiramacibiri, no. 17 (November 1993): 10. Reproduced from Jean-Pierre Chrétien, ed., Rwanda: Les medias du génocide (Paris: Karthala, 1995), p. 365.
The Kinyarwanda text reads as follows:
Supervisor: Finish up that stupid Hutu and make sure his genitals are attached to our drum.
Ndadaye: You can