One is merely marked, the other celebrated. History books which tell us that the country gained its independence from Belgium in 1962 do little to explain this anomaly.
Not long after he was installed into the presidency by the colonial powers from whom the country had supposedly just won independence, then President Gregoire Kayibanda visited Tanganyika, where he met President Julius Kambarage Nyerere.
In a conversation overheard between the two, the ever forthright Nyerere couldn’t resist tweaking his guest’s nose: "Are we really on the same page?” he asked. "The rest of Africa is busy expelling the colonisers from their countries, but you seem to be busy expelling your own people, from their homes”.
Taken aback, and lost for an answer, Kayibanda is said to have extinguished his habitual cigarette, pinching the lit end between his thumb and index fingers, and absent-mindedly putting the stump into his jacket pocket. Nyerere never got an answer to a question that was most likely rhetorical in any case.
Within the region, Rwanda was among the first countries to gain independence, after, the then Congo, in June 1960, and Tanganyika, in December 1961. By the time of this reported conversation, both Congo, and Tanganyika were already taking in thousands of Rwandan refugees, fleeing the first genocidal massacres from the newly independent country.
As Nyerere well knew, he and Kayibanda weren’t even in the same library, let alone on the same page. One of the founding principles for Nyerere’s Tanganyika African National Union (TANU), in July 1954, was that: "All men are equal, and Africa is one”.
The founding principle for Kayibanda’s Party for the Emancipation of Hutu (PARMEHUTU), in October 1959, was that even friendship with a Tutsi was a betrayal of the party’s objectives.
According to Joseph Gitera, one of the brains behind the anti-Tutsi ideology: "Never forge a friendship with a Tutsi. Living in friendship with a Tutsi is to carry a burden”.
Nyerere was an African Nationalist who fought for independence beyond the symbols of flag, and a Pan-African in State House. Rwanda’s 1962 independence was designed to entrench Belgian control over the country.
In fact had they had their way, Kayibanda and his fellow PARMEHUTU founders, would have delayed political independence for Rwanda for another twenty-five years, at least.
By this reckoning it would be 1987, before independence could be considered by PARMEHUTU. Their most urgent need was what they termed the "emancipation of Hutu”, and by inference the elimination of Tutsi.
Massacres of Tutsi had already begun by the late fifties into early sixties. In this they were at on the same page with the Belgian colonisers, whose primary objective was to marginalise Tutsi, whom they regarded as a barrier between them, and complete control of Rwanda, and, Rwandans, mind, body, and soul.
In an ironic twist, it was the Belgians who were in a greater hurry to grant independence than were the leaders of PARMEHUTU to receive it. This was due to pressure from the United Nations which found it difficult to reconcile its publicly stated position on colonisation, with its prominent member states’ colonial policies.
But, independence need not mean a change in policy. Indeed, the first Rwanda constitution would be drafted by Belgian Colonel Guy Logiest. Rwanda would be an independent nation in name only. Rather than loosen the colonial grip, formal independence would entrench it.
The colonial authorities would be the power behind the new throne. It was a neat solution. Now the colonial power would be freed from having to keep at bay movements like Rwanda National Union (UNAR) which demanded true independence, under the banner of uniting all Rwandans; the kind of independence that Nyerere would have understood.
It was no coincidence, that as the 1963 Genocide against Tutsi began, the Secretary General of UNAR, Michel Rwagasana, incidentally uncle to President Kayibanda, was among the politicians who were murdered. Prominent Hutu who challenged the new view of Tutsi as hated aliens rather than Rwandans were targeted to be eliminated as traitors to the cause.
And no thought was more treacherous than the notion that all Rwandans, including the hated Tutsi, were equal. It should be understood that no policy would have been even considered by the newly independent government, without the sanction of the colonial powers. In effect, the colonial authorities had the veto on any major policy decision.
Since the arrival of Belgians in Rwanda, colonial power was exercised largely through the Church. Figures like Monsignor Andre Perraudin wielded great power, and influence. The policy of Genocide to "solve the Tutsi problem”, was not only established with the blessing of the Church, it was conceived within the Church.
Getting rid of the Tutsi was a shared project between PARMEHUTU and the colonial powers, who for all intents and purposes, controlled the new party. If this meant committing Genocide, then so be it. As French President Francois Mitterrand would declare, 32 years later, when his country, which had replaced Belgium as the new European power in Rwanda, said: "In such countries, Genocide is not such an important matter”.
As is rarely documented, the Genocide against the Tutsi started in 1959, and continued intermittently, to be ended in 1994, by the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF). The RPF would also end colonial rule in Rwanda. The independence movements which swept across Africa, their intellectual discourse of African liberation, would come to Rwanda only in 1994, with the defeat of the genocidal forces.
It is after July 4th 1994, that Julius Nyerere’s vision of an independence where all people are equal, and Africa as one, begins to take hold in Rwanda. To paraphrase President Paul Kagame, genocidal history, malignant as it is, is nevertheless part of Rwanda’s history. So while July 4 1994 is rightly celebrated as the day Rwanda was truly free. 1962 must be marked as the day the insidious ideology of hate became official policy.
On July 4 , Rwandans not only celebrate ‘total liberation’, defeating the genocidal forces, and bringing to end the Genocide against the Tutsi, they are also reminded that the war against Genocide ideology continues, and that a people’s independence is not an event, but, a process to be cherished and guarded at any cost and time.
It is the day the Rwanda Patriotic Army (RPA-Inkotanyi) won the war for the nation’s freedom. It is also a day that Rwandans are reminded that the best way to commemorate the heroes of July 4, is to win the peace, and make the new Rwanda for all Rwandans—a shining, fitting, living memorial to the sacrifice of the liberators.
The writer is a genocide scholar and former journalist.
The views expressed in this article are of the author.