Better late than never, as the saying goes. This dense work, published when Rwanda celebrates the 24th anniversary of the Liberation of the country, was long awaited by historians and the general public. It is a major book on genocide and the liberation war in Rwanda. It answers, in fact, the major question: how was the APR (Rwandan Patriotic Army) able to defeat the FAR (Armed Forces of Rwanda), an army far superior in military equipment and in number of combatants? However, the author takes a long but necessary detour to situate the subject in the political history of Rwanda, from colonization to genocide and the end of the 1990-1994 war. The book is well written, and this makes its reading easier. It is divided into two almost equal sections.
The first part, which includes 10 chapters, analyzes the causes of the destruction of the foundations of the pre-colonial Rwandan society. This book recalls, like many other studies, how the seeds of ethnicity were sown in the country by Belgian ethnologists. That is why this study underlines how ethnic identities were used for the Belgian colonial administration’s policy of divide and rule. Indeed, pre-colonial Rwandan social classes (Bahutu, Batusi and Batwa) were changed into racial meaning, which they did not have before. This new meaning with racial connotation was used first of all to exclude the Bahutu from the Belgian colonial administration by Resident Mortehan law in 1927, contrary to the practices and spirit of the time of the Bami. After excluding the Bahutu from their administration between 1930 and 1959, the Belgians decided also to exclude the Tutsi by putting the PARMEHUTU party in power at the time of independence. This section extensively discusses the books of Jean-Paul Harroy and Colonel Guy Logiest, respectively last Vice- Governor of Ruanda-Urundi and Special Resident of Ruanda, who wrote about how and why they took this turn. The author then emphasizes how this botched decolonization led to the massacres of Tutsi in the 1960s and 1970s. However, this has been well established and well known by those readers who are interested in the history of modern Rwanda. Indeed, many authors have written relevant books on this period of the country’s history. What is interesting and new is the link the author makes with the rest of his book, including the description of life in the Rwandan refugees camps.
The description of the lives of refugees in the camps of Mushisha, Kayongozi, Kigamba, Nyarunazi (Burundi) or Nyakivala and Nshungerezi (Uganda) is poignant, original and unpublished. To date, the studies on this matter are scarce. This study tells the story of life in the camps, especially at the first moments of the installation for the pastors whose herd had been raided the moment they left Rwanda and who were now forced to start from scratch. Nyamwasa’s book thus complements Jean-Marie-Vianney Rurangwa’s A Rwandan on the Roads of Exile (2013) on the Nyarunazi camp in north-eastern Burundi. The only difference is that Rurangwa’s book is a testimony in the strict sense, whereas for Nyamwasa, fragments of testimony serve to support the central thesis of the book: the right of return to Rwanda, if necessary, as was the case, with weapons in hand.
This time in the camps, which was meaningless, did not promise anything for the future. He noted that the return to Rwanda would be the only solution shared by all refugees in the early 1980s. The chapters, devoted to political awareness after the defeat of the Inyenzi, are very interesting and clear. They present this social history hitherto unknown to the general public.
The second section, which comprises 15 chapters, carefully analyzes the development of such political awareness among Rwandan refugees around the world. From the testimonial point of view, the author gives more examples of the camps in Burundi and some in Uganda, to recall how this political awareness of refugees gave birth to political organizations, such as the Rwandese Alliance for National Unity (RANU) and the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF).
As a guerrilla group, the Rwandan Patriotic Army (RPA) was an armed wing of the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), the author recalls. As such, RPA fighters received dual political and military training. As in all guerrillas, any military action was preceded by the training phase on the political history of Rwanda. Here the author emphasizes that since the Belgian colonial times and the Kayibanda and Habyarimana regimes the social and cultural unity of Banyarwanda has been broken by ethnic and tribalistic considerations.
In the organization of any guerrilla war, the author’s response is that an army has first and foremost the mission to protect citizens against a regime deemed oppressive. By supporting the Habyarimana regime with its ethnic (Tutsi) and regional (Hutu other than from the North) discriminations, the Rwandan Armed Forces (FAR) had lost the legitimacy of being a national army because, as the author argues, any national army has the primary mission to scrupulously ensure human rights, justice and equity for all citizens. Once these principles no longer form the moral and intellectual framework of the military cadres, the troops lose all motivation and mobilization for the defense of the nation. This section is certainly a testimony of the author, but it also addresses political ideas related to guerrilla techniques.
Written by a medical officer, the book also addresses the issue of caring for the wounded in combat zones in the absence of the Red Cross, which usually looks after them. The author also discusses how most countries abandoned Rwanda, for example, how heavily armed UN troops left civilians threatened at the Kicukiro Technical School (ETO), even if their executioners were on the scene. He recounts how, with a lot of risks and dead comrades in the battle, in the night following the carnage of Nyanza near Kicukiro, APR’s units were able to rescue and treat a few survivors, after chasing a FAR regiment positioned nearby.
The book also aims to challenge the negationists who write and say that the RPF did nothing to rescue Tutsi civilians and Bahutu political opponents threatened by Hutu Power and the FAR. As such, Nyamwasa defends a political point of view that he subtly tries to share with the reader. He usually succeeds because the book is based on the facts, giving the names of the actors, where these were and when specific events and actions took place.
At the end of the book, in the epilogue, Nyamwasa returns to the central question for all Rwandans since the ethnic trap of the colonial era, to use writer Benjamin Sehene’s expression (Le Piège ethnique, 1999) and its crystallization during the Kayibanda and Habyarimana regimes. He ponders how to rebuild the soul of the nation around the concept of “imbaga y’inyabutatu” where the Hutu, Tutsi and Twa, in social and historical dimensions of the private sphere, merge into Rwandans in the public space. This was already Mwami Mutara III Rudahigwa’s choice in the late 1950s after the spread of the tribalist fire of the Manifesto of Bahutu (1957). This seems to be a political project in the broad sense of the term: how to build a viable city for all. To echo Shakespeare, “to be or not to be” Rwandan is the fundamental question for the post-genocide society. On this matter, this book also responds indirectly to revisionists, negationists, genocide deniers, and all those around the world who try to water down the genocide against Tutsi. We know that their favorite propaganda is to say that the RPA sacrificed the Tutsi from within for its own political objectives of winning the war at all costs.
Ironically, such propaganda is spread everywhere by Hutu Power and Western circles that supported it at the time of the genocide against the Tutsi. Now they shed crocodile tears for the Tutsi survivors while they killed their parents and their relatives! Such insult to intelligence would make supporters of Hutu Power defenders of the survivors. The purpose of this propaganda is to create uncertainty, anxiety and even insecurity among survivors and other citizens in Rwanda and abroad. Thus this book is a reminder to return to objective reason: as the author underscores, if the RPA had not won the war against the FAR, there would be no survivors nor national reconciliation policy. Hutu Power would have continued to reign over the country. Has anyone ever commemorated during the PARMEHUTU regime, survivors of Gikongoro, Nyamata, Cyangugu and elsewhere in 1959, 1963-1964? To think about it brings cold back!
On some aspects of the genocide, the reader will need to complement this reading by others. In addition to those quoted extensively by the author in his book, on the political segregation of theTtutsi from within under the Kayibanda and Habyarimana regimes, Antoine Mugesera’s book – Imibereho y’Abatutsi kuri Republika ya mbere n’iya kabiri (1959-1990) is a major reference. It is well documented on the matter. And on the collective character of the genocide of the Tutsi, the reader will consult with interest a major book on the subject by Jean-Paul Kimonyo – Rwanda. A popular genocide, 2008 – and many other studies.
In the end, the book returns to the watermark of the book’s central idea that the RPA defeated the over-equipped FAR because it was the armed wing of a political organization (RPF). This political movement was very well ideologically structured on a basic idea, which had been lacking in Rwanda since the colonial era: to defend the right of every Rwandan to live freely in his country. In addition, this book has three major perspectives: a testimony on the war of liberation, life in refugee camps, and a political essay on reconciliation after the genocide. On this last point, the author insists, almost repetitively, on the role of the RPF, the armed wing of the RPF, which has since become the national army, to play in the ongoing reconstruction of the country. This is because we can train the cadres of the army and the police and economically develop a country, but if human rights are not guaranteed by the moral integrity of the senior officers in the army and the police no one will ever be safe. This was the case under the Habyarimana regime. The sense of justice, integrity and fairness fade. Unacceptable ideas are diffused and accepted.
Thus, the Tutsi were considered as second-class citizens under the Kayibanda and Habyarimana regimes without disturbing anyone other than the victims. The refugees had to stay outside under the pretext that the country was full of people. And life went on as if nothing had happened. From the point of view of ideas, we can justify everything. Thus, during the Kayibanda and Habyarimana regimes, all the philosophical justifications for excluding the Tutsi replaced the need for political debate instead of the thinking about the nation to build for all after the colonial humiliation of the African peoples. These tribalist policies, which were under way in some countries, such as Rwanda during the period of African independence, and which Mwalimu Julius Nyerere called, at the time, “ujinga na upumbavu” (ignorance and foolishness) should be transcended in the 21st century. Nyamwasa’s book is both a story of testimony and a political essay about the rebirth of the nation. It is a must-read book for anyone who wants to participate in the debate about the future of Rwanda.
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