REVIEW OF MAHMOOD MAMDANI'S BOOK WHEN VICTIMS BECOME KILLERS (Princeton, N.J: Princeton University Press, 2001)
By Emmanuel Nkurunziza,
Toronto, Ontario.
In his introduction to the book, Mahmood Mamdani warns that theory can manipulate facts. He also deplores the fact that previous studies tend to link local developments more to colonial history while doing very little to analyse them in the global, regional context. He acknowledges that sometimes political boundaries can be boundaries of knowledge, and that decolonization in one sphere does not lead automatically to decolonization in others.
Chapter one defines the crisis of postcolonial citizenship focusing on the two notions of “settler” and “native” as political identities. According to Mamdani, the basis for the identity conflict in (post)colonies is the construction of colonial markets. Another trend provides cultural explanation for this conflict. Yet, there is a need to differentiate between cultural and political identities. Whether we consider tribe or race as the cement of identity, in the beginning both were animated by colonial powers.[1] Originally, the colonizer’s aim was to wipe out any sign of local civilization, which, the colonizers hoped, would make them accepted by the colonized. Along this move, they set a division between themselves and the local population and started talking of two different races. The division between the natives’ ethnic groups were reinforced by the colonizer as customary rule under what was called indirect rule.
In other words, the race-based division materialized the vertical relations between the colonizers and the rest, whereas the ethnicity-based one was to materialize the horizontal relations between the different groups of natives. Later, natives were imposed another division: that between majority natives and the minority settlers. In the case of Rwanda, the former corresponded to the Hutu and the latter to the Tutsi, whom the Belgian colonizer considered as a Hamitic people that settled in the region following Biblical migrations. Hence was born the myth of the minority Hamitic Tutsi conqueror who subjugated the majority native Hutu.
Some postcolonial states maintained this description, and not surprisingly, some of them are still having sequel problems from inside and outside their borders. This is the key to the understanding of the Tutsi genocide in Rwanda in 1994 and its aftermath in the whole African Great Lakes sub-region.
In chapter two, Mamdani goes back to the origins of “Hutu” and “Tutsi.” There are two main tendencies in answering this apparently insoluble question: one seeks to present Hutu and Tutsi as having no difference in origins while another claims that the two communities have distinct origins. No matter what tendency is considered, it is agreed that Hutu and Tutsi have been constructed or reinforced as political identities. Yet, it is always impossible to have clear-cut clues of what the two groups were like before colonization. Political powers were vested in both groups, the monarch being neither Hutu nor Tutsi. It is during the colonial period that attempts to explain the differences between the two groups were put forward.
Basing on economic conditions, some insist that Hutus were mainly clients of the Tutsi. This is shattered by the fact that even Tutsi could be clients.
From a political perspective, others explain the difference by a myth that is centered on a Hutu-rebellion against the monarch. But once again, this is discarded by the fact that Hutu are not the only ones to have rebelled.
Another attempt to explain the different origins for the two communities is historical. The migration hypothesis holds that both communities moved to Rwanda in two tides. The consensus is that their ancestors lived in harmony as their common language and intermarriages show it.
In chapter three, the racialization of the Hutu/ Tutsi difference under colonialism is addressed. The origin of the racialization of the difference between the Hutu and the Tutsi is the Euro centrist understanding of the world. The Belgian colonizers maintained that no African people could be gifted with such organizational and administrative capacities as the Tutsi were. So, Tutsi were said to be descendants of the diasporas of the decadent Egypt kingdom, while others considered Tutsi as the descendants of Noah’s cursed son Ham – cfr The Bible in the book of Genesis.
The Catholic Church played a very big role in this racialization of the Rwandese population, no matter how the egalitarian principles preached by the missionaries contradicted with their racialization of the Rwandan population. The colonial administration, too, had a role in this process of identity racialization. Their annual reports provided for a whole chapter on the races description. The “logical” consequence of such report was the census carried out in 1933-1934 and which, for the first time, officially classified the Rwandese population in ethnic groups. Still the criteria used were as false as illusory. From an economic perspective, a person with more than 10 cows was labelled Tutsi, a Hutu being one with less than this number, and a Twa with zero. But above all, people were classified following their body and facial shape: the height, and the shape of the lips and nose. Even if these were to be reliable criteria, the margin of error would be too big because of intermarriages.
This racialist policy was applied in all spheres of life in Rwanda. In the administration, all Hutu chiefs were dismissed and replaced by Tutsi. Besides, Tutsi chiefs were exempted forced labor and only served as overseers for Hutu workers, who received no pay.
All in all, each group was branded a racial identity both intellectually and institutionally: from their pre-colonial ethnic identity, the Tutsi were constructed as a political identity associated with power. Later, they were turned into a non-indigenous identity of subordinate power, whereas the Hutu were branded an indigenous identity of nativized subjects.
Chapter four tackles the “Social Revolution” of 1959. Rwanda’s independence was claimed in two different ways. On the one hand, like any other African colonized people at that period, the Tutsi elite asked for the end of colonial rule and a return to tradition. On the other hand, the Hutu counter elite claimed the Belgians were not the only oppressors to get rid of. The Tutsi domination had to end with colonization. While the Tutsi elite preached nationalism and unity in independent Rwanda, their Hutu counterparts, under instigation of the Belgian colonial administration, claimed for a Rwanda free from the Whites and the Tutsi whom they saw as foreign settlers. Ironically, the clergy backed some of these latter forces. These Hutu counter elite had been educated mainly in seminaries and who were employed by the church. They identified with the masses of the Hutu indigenous majority. This hardened the stand of the Tutsi, for whom the recovery of national sovereignty came to rhyme with the restoration of the monarchy.
Thus, just before legislative elections in 1959, Hutu peasants encouraged by the elite, led a violent attack against Tutsi chiefs first, then to any ethnic Tutsi. This resulted in the death of thousands of Tutsi and the exile of thousands of Tutsi families. It is in this context that Rwanda was granted independence.
The Hutu elite that seized power on the grounds that it represented the indigenous majority excluded the Tutsi minority from the administration of independent Rwanda. The institutions set after independence were almost entirely Hutu, and the symbolic representation kept for the Tutsi minority was completely abolished in reaction to an attempt to regain power by an armed invasion that was led by Tutsi exiles. In sum, the ruling Hutu reduced the Tutsi of the interior to an alien race with no provision for claiming their civil rights.
Chapter five is about the Second Republic. Born of a military coup, the new regime pledged to continue the “1959 revolution” in a moral way. They launched a campaign aimed at adjusting the proportion of workers, students, etc. according to the proportion of each ethnic group in the population. Rather than quelling already existing divisions, which it exacerbated, this regime gave birth to another form of division: regionally oriented exclusion.
Worse, while still claiming that unity was the motto, the regime forbade army officers to marry ethnic Tutsi women. Thus, in spite of the unionist slogans, all that the Second Republic did to “complete” the social reforms that were achieved by the “the social revolution of 1959”, was to shift the Tutsi status from a non-indigenous race to an indigenous ethnicity.
Theoretically, while under the previous regime the Tutsi did not have any rights since they were considered as foreigners, the Second Republic gave them rights equal to those of other ethnicities, but their implementation was hampered by the quota system. Besides, except when under strong pressure, the Second Republic did not touch to the question of Tutsi exile in spite of their number and the recurrent influence they had on the sub-region’s global politics.
Chapter six moves abroad Rwanda to look into the politics of indigeneity in Uganda, the background to the RPF “invasion.” All along the tumultuous development of postcolonial Ugandan politics, Banyarwanda status varied from settler, citizen, resident, and native depending on their relationships with the ruler. At some moment, they were indigenous; at some others they were non-indigenous.
The 1990 land crisis deprived Ugandan Banyarwanda of the resident status that the incumbent regime had just granted them in recognition of their help in the guerrilla that brought him to power. And so started their forced repatriation that triggered the Rwandese civil war (1990-1994).
Chapter seven describes the Rwandese Civil War and the Tutsi genocide that was its main hallmark. There are two major ingredients to this bloody episode. On one hand, there are long term factors, like the exile of thousands of Tutsi people in the countries neighbouring Rwanda, to which we should add the Rwandese Second Republic stubborn resistance to their return. On the other hand, there is the citizenship debate that developed in Uganda in the late 1980’s and which ended up depriving the Banyarwanda of the little civic rights they had gained as a reward for their participation in the guerrilla. But beside these external causes of the war, the genocide finds its roots in inside Rwanda wherein the state resorted to the poisoned colonial history to mobilize Hutu against Tutsi.
Faced with an already explosive situation in the interior (demands for political reforms and a war-ravaged economy) the regime presented the attacking Tutsi refugees as foreign invaders whose victory would bring back the selvage of the Hutu native majority. The regime used all available means to convince the Hutu majority, which was uneducated in most parts, that the opposition demands for democracy and peaceful settlement of the war meant betrayal to the (Hutu) nation. For this, Hutu were invited to annihilate the Tutsi, who were assimilated to the attackers. The same fate was to be dealt opposition militants who were indiscriminately seen as the invaders’ accomplices.
It is in this context that the president’s assassination took place, which sparkled the long awaited and meticulously prepared plan of extermination of Tutsi people. The carnage unfolded while the international community sat arm-folded.
In chapter eight, the reader learns about the “Tutsi power” and the citizenship crisis in Eastern Congo. Like in Uganda, there were three types of Rwandans in Congo when independence was proclaimed in 1960: nationals, that is those who had lived in Congo for generations; migrants, i.e. those who arrived in the country as labor force from 1920’s to 1940’s, and refugees, i.e. those who came in 1959 and after as they fled the killings directed against the Tutsi in the 1959 “social revolution.” Geographically, the Banyarwanda lived in the Kivu region (east of Congo), with the Tutsi concentrated in the South while the Hutu lived mainly in the North.
The status of the Banyarwanda population kept changing following their integration or rejection by local populations for political or economic reasons. Three major shifts are to be noted: (a) in 1957, a colonial decree dissolved the administrative entity where they were the majority (Gishari, in Kivu), (b) the 1972 Citizenship decree granted citizenship to all Rwandans who arrived in Congo between 1959 and 1964, and (c) the 1981 Citizenship Law recognized as Zairian only people who could demonstrate their roots as back as 1885; the year Africa was divided in colonies at the Berlin Conference. The National Sovereign Conference reinforced the latter decree.
Encouraged by the Rwandese and Zairian regimes, who funded Hutu organizations in the region, the Hutu in Zaire identified themselves with the Zairian indigenous majority and started to oppose the Tutsi. Well aware that they remained a minority within a minority, the Tutsi used the call for democratization to claim their political identity. So ended the Rwandese identity that Hutu and Tutsi had claimed together in Congo -- then Zaire -- since independence.
With the intensification of the civil war and the 1994 Tutsi genocide in Rwanda, more than one million Rwandans fled to Zaire, among whom the defeated army and militia, who had just perpetrated genocide. This altered considerably the status of the Rwandans living in Zaire, which changed dramatically. Rather than disarming and putting them on trial, the international community kept them together with ordinary refugees and only a few kilometres away from the Rwandese border. As they made incursions inside Rwanda from Zaire, the Rwandese army crossed the border to attack them in their base and once in Zaire, the Rwandans helped the population bring down the decades old dictatorship.
Unable to free himself from the influence of the Rwandans, Laurent Desire Kabila, the despot’s successor resorted to dangerous old methods: he called the native Congolese to join hands with the remnants of the very genocide-guilty forces from Rwanda to oust the invaders by attacking any Tutsi in Congo.
In the conclusion, the political reforms after genocide are scrutinized. The challenge facing Rwanda and the rest of the international community is how to ensure a peaceful, harmonious cohabitation between a majority that has lost power and a minority that has just conquered it. Justice and democracy are considered the best solution. Indeed, the ruling Tutsi was not tempted to apply the survivor’s version of justice, which reassured the Hutu who had just lost political power.
------------------------------
[1] According to Mamdani, there is a general trend which consists of presenting political identity as derivative of market based identity; and there is another trend which emerged after Second World War and which suggests that it is a derivative of cultural identity. Though there are instances where the two are radically separated, the colonial power position vis-à-vis this matter kept changing depending on the aim.
Toronto, Ontario.
In his introduction to the book, Mahmood Mamdani warns that theory can manipulate facts. He also deplores the fact that previous studies tend to link local developments more to colonial history while doing very little to analyse them in the global, regional context. He acknowledges that sometimes political boundaries can be boundaries of knowledge, and that decolonization in one sphere does not lead automatically to decolonization in others.
Chapter one defines the crisis of postcolonial citizenship focusing on the two notions of “settler” and “native” as political identities. According to Mamdani, the basis for the identity conflict in (post)colonies is the construction of colonial markets. Another trend provides cultural explanation for this conflict. Yet, there is a need to differentiate between cultural and political identities. Whether we consider tribe or race as the cement of identity, in the beginning both were animated by colonial powers.[1] Originally, the colonizer’s aim was to wipe out any sign of local civilization, which, the colonizers hoped, would make them accepted by the colonized. Along this move, they set a division between themselves and the local population and started talking of two different races. The division between the natives’ ethnic groups were reinforced by the colonizer as customary rule under what was called indirect rule.
In other words, the race-based division materialized the vertical relations between the colonizers and the rest, whereas the ethnicity-based one was to materialize the horizontal relations between the different groups of natives. Later, natives were imposed another division: that between majority natives and the minority settlers. In the case of Rwanda, the former corresponded to the Hutu and the latter to the Tutsi, whom the Belgian colonizer considered as a Hamitic people that settled in the region following Biblical migrations. Hence was born the myth of the minority Hamitic Tutsi conqueror who subjugated the majority native Hutu.
Some postcolonial states maintained this description, and not surprisingly, some of them are still having sequel problems from inside and outside their borders. This is the key to the understanding of the Tutsi genocide in Rwanda in 1994 and its aftermath in the whole African Great Lakes sub-region.
In chapter two, Mamdani goes back to the origins of “Hutu” and “Tutsi.” There are two main tendencies in answering this apparently insoluble question: one seeks to present Hutu and Tutsi as having no difference in origins while another claims that the two communities have distinct origins. No matter what tendency is considered, it is agreed that Hutu and Tutsi have been constructed or reinforced as political identities. Yet, it is always impossible to have clear-cut clues of what the two groups were like before colonization. Political powers were vested in both groups, the monarch being neither Hutu nor Tutsi. It is during the colonial period that attempts to explain the differences between the two groups were put forward.
Basing on economic conditions, some insist that Hutus were mainly clients of the Tutsi. This is shattered by the fact that even Tutsi could be clients.
From a political perspective, others explain the difference by a myth that is centered on a Hutu-rebellion against the monarch. But once again, this is discarded by the fact that Hutu are not the only ones to have rebelled.
Another attempt to explain the different origins for the two communities is historical. The migration hypothesis holds that both communities moved to Rwanda in two tides. The consensus is that their ancestors lived in harmony as their common language and intermarriages show it.
In chapter three, the racialization of the Hutu/ Tutsi difference under colonialism is addressed. The origin of the racialization of the difference between the Hutu and the Tutsi is the Euro centrist understanding of the world. The Belgian colonizers maintained that no African people could be gifted with such organizational and administrative capacities as the Tutsi were. So, Tutsi were said to be descendants of the diasporas of the decadent Egypt kingdom, while others considered Tutsi as the descendants of Noah’s cursed son Ham – cfr The Bible in the book of Genesis.
The Catholic Church played a very big role in this racialization of the Rwandese population, no matter how the egalitarian principles preached by the missionaries contradicted with their racialization of the Rwandan population. The colonial administration, too, had a role in this process of identity racialization. Their annual reports provided for a whole chapter on the races description. The “logical” consequence of such report was the census carried out in 1933-1934 and which, for the first time, officially classified the Rwandese population in ethnic groups. Still the criteria used were as false as illusory. From an economic perspective, a person with more than 10 cows was labelled Tutsi, a Hutu being one with less than this number, and a Twa with zero. But above all, people were classified following their body and facial shape: the height, and the shape of the lips and nose. Even if these were to be reliable criteria, the margin of error would be too big because of intermarriages.
This racialist policy was applied in all spheres of life in Rwanda. In the administration, all Hutu chiefs were dismissed and replaced by Tutsi. Besides, Tutsi chiefs were exempted forced labor and only served as overseers for Hutu workers, who received no pay.
All in all, each group was branded a racial identity both intellectually and institutionally: from their pre-colonial ethnic identity, the Tutsi were constructed as a political identity associated with power. Later, they were turned into a non-indigenous identity of subordinate power, whereas the Hutu were branded an indigenous identity of nativized subjects.
Chapter four tackles the “Social Revolution” of 1959. Rwanda’s independence was claimed in two different ways. On the one hand, like any other African colonized people at that period, the Tutsi elite asked for the end of colonial rule and a return to tradition. On the other hand, the Hutu counter elite claimed the Belgians were not the only oppressors to get rid of. The Tutsi domination had to end with colonization. While the Tutsi elite preached nationalism and unity in independent Rwanda, their Hutu counterparts, under instigation of the Belgian colonial administration, claimed for a Rwanda free from the Whites and the Tutsi whom they saw as foreign settlers. Ironically, the clergy backed some of these latter forces. These Hutu counter elite had been educated mainly in seminaries and who were employed by the church. They identified with the masses of the Hutu indigenous majority. This hardened the stand of the Tutsi, for whom the recovery of national sovereignty came to rhyme with the restoration of the monarchy.
Thus, just before legislative elections in 1959, Hutu peasants encouraged by the elite, led a violent attack against Tutsi chiefs first, then to any ethnic Tutsi. This resulted in the death of thousands of Tutsi and the exile of thousands of Tutsi families. It is in this context that Rwanda was granted independence.
The Hutu elite that seized power on the grounds that it represented the indigenous majority excluded the Tutsi minority from the administration of independent Rwanda. The institutions set after independence were almost entirely Hutu, and the symbolic representation kept for the Tutsi minority was completely abolished in reaction to an attempt to regain power by an armed invasion that was led by Tutsi exiles. In sum, the ruling Hutu reduced the Tutsi of the interior to an alien race with no provision for claiming their civil rights.
Chapter five is about the Second Republic. Born of a military coup, the new regime pledged to continue the “1959 revolution” in a moral way. They launched a campaign aimed at adjusting the proportion of workers, students, etc. according to the proportion of each ethnic group in the population. Rather than quelling already existing divisions, which it exacerbated, this regime gave birth to another form of division: regionally oriented exclusion.
Worse, while still claiming that unity was the motto, the regime forbade army officers to marry ethnic Tutsi women. Thus, in spite of the unionist slogans, all that the Second Republic did to “complete” the social reforms that were achieved by the “the social revolution of 1959”, was to shift the Tutsi status from a non-indigenous race to an indigenous ethnicity.
Theoretically, while under the previous regime the Tutsi did not have any rights since they were considered as foreigners, the Second Republic gave them rights equal to those of other ethnicities, but their implementation was hampered by the quota system. Besides, except when under strong pressure, the Second Republic did not touch to the question of Tutsi exile in spite of their number and the recurrent influence they had on the sub-region’s global politics.
Chapter six moves abroad Rwanda to look into the politics of indigeneity in Uganda, the background to the RPF “invasion.” All along the tumultuous development of postcolonial Ugandan politics, Banyarwanda status varied from settler, citizen, resident, and native depending on their relationships with the ruler. At some moment, they were indigenous; at some others they were non-indigenous.
The 1990 land crisis deprived Ugandan Banyarwanda of the resident status that the incumbent regime had just granted them in recognition of their help in the guerrilla that brought him to power. And so started their forced repatriation that triggered the Rwandese civil war (1990-1994).
Chapter seven describes the Rwandese Civil War and the Tutsi genocide that was its main hallmark. There are two major ingredients to this bloody episode. On one hand, there are long term factors, like the exile of thousands of Tutsi people in the countries neighbouring Rwanda, to which we should add the Rwandese Second Republic stubborn resistance to their return. On the other hand, there is the citizenship debate that developed in Uganda in the late 1980’s and which ended up depriving the Banyarwanda of the little civic rights they had gained as a reward for their participation in the guerrilla. But beside these external causes of the war, the genocide finds its roots in inside Rwanda wherein the state resorted to the poisoned colonial history to mobilize Hutu against Tutsi.
Faced with an already explosive situation in the interior (demands for political reforms and a war-ravaged economy) the regime presented the attacking Tutsi refugees as foreign invaders whose victory would bring back the selvage of the Hutu native majority. The regime used all available means to convince the Hutu majority, which was uneducated in most parts, that the opposition demands for democracy and peaceful settlement of the war meant betrayal to the (Hutu) nation. For this, Hutu were invited to annihilate the Tutsi, who were assimilated to the attackers. The same fate was to be dealt opposition militants who were indiscriminately seen as the invaders’ accomplices.
It is in this context that the president’s assassination took place, which sparkled the long awaited and meticulously prepared plan of extermination of Tutsi people. The carnage unfolded while the international community sat arm-folded.
In chapter eight, the reader learns about the “Tutsi power” and the citizenship crisis in Eastern Congo. Like in Uganda, there were three types of Rwandans in Congo when independence was proclaimed in 1960: nationals, that is those who had lived in Congo for generations; migrants, i.e. those who arrived in the country as labor force from 1920’s to 1940’s, and refugees, i.e. those who came in 1959 and after as they fled the killings directed against the Tutsi in the 1959 “social revolution.” Geographically, the Banyarwanda lived in the Kivu region (east of Congo), with the Tutsi concentrated in the South while the Hutu lived mainly in the North.
The status of the Banyarwanda population kept changing following their integration or rejection by local populations for political or economic reasons. Three major shifts are to be noted: (a) in 1957, a colonial decree dissolved the administrative entity where they were the majority (Gishari, in Kivu), (b) the 1972 Citizenship decree granted citizenship to all Rwandans who arrived in Congo between 1959 and 1964, and (c) the 1981 Citizenship Law recognized as Zairian only people who could demonstrate their roots as back as 1885; the year Africa was divided in colonies at the Berlin Conference. The National Sovereign Conference reinforced the latter decree.
Encouraged by the Rwandese and Zairian regimes, who funded Hutu organizations in the region, the Hutu in Zaire identified themselves with the Zairian indigenous majority and started to oppose the Tutsi. Well aware that they remained a minority within a minority, the Tutsi used the call for democratization to claim their political identity. So ended the Rwandese identity that Hutu and Tutsi had claimed together in Congo -- then Zaire -- since independence.
With the intensification of the civil war and the 1994 Tutsi genocide in Rwanda, more than one million Rwandans fled to Zaire, among whom the defeated army and militia, who had just perpetrated genocide. This altered considerably the status of the Rwandans living in Zaire, which changed dramatically. Rather than disarming and putting them on trial, the international community kept them together with ordinary refugees and only a few kilometres away from the Rwandese border. As they made incursions inside Rwanda from Zaire, the Rwandese army crossed the border to attack them in their base and once in Zaire, the Rwandans helped the population bring down the decades old dictatorship.
Unable to free himself from the influence of the Rwandans, Laurent Desire Kabila, the despot’s successor resorted to dangerous old methods: he called the native Congolese to join hands with the remnants of the very genocide-guilty forces from Rwanda to oust the invaders by attacking any Tutsi in Congo.
In the conclusion, the political reforms after genocide are scrutinized. The challenge facing Rwanda and the rest of the international community is how to ensure a peaceful, harmonious cohabitation between a majority that has lost power and a minority that has just conquered it. Justice and democracy are considered the best solution. Indeed, the ruling Tutsi was not tempted to apply the survivor’s version of justice, which reassured the Hutu who had just lost political power.
------------------------------
[1] According to Mamdani, there is a general trend which consists of presenting political identity as derivative of market based identity; and there is another trend which emerged after Second World War and which suggests that it is a derivative of cultural identity. Though there are instances where the two are radically separated, the colonial power position vis-à-vis this matter kept changing depending on the aim.