A Critical Analysis of the Rwanda-Burundi Genocide and the Sociopolitical Implications of Colonial Rule in Africa

There has always been a great deal of intrigue as to why certain people and certain parts of the world are cursed with such a greater deal of suffering than others. Over time certain societies have developed through a series of phases of modernity and civilization to become more successful. Industrialization has strengthened economies, research has advanced technology, science has made discoveries in healthcare, and the result has been that some people in some parts of the world enjoy significantly higher standards of living than those elsewhere. What is also striking is how development has been stagnated in many parts of the world.

Machiavelli and Hobbes described the world as a constant state of fear and chaos, dominated by man’s instinctual self-serving and violent human nature. If this is the way in which we choose to accept the world in its most natural sense, could certain atrocities in our history have been avoided at all or were they simply the result of mankind’s instinctual behavior. For the purpose of this analysis I have found the trend of colonial rule to be coincidentally paralleled to a number of the worlds most perplexing acts of inhumanity, in particular the Belgian colonization of the Rwanda-Burundi region prior to the Tutsi-Hutu genocide.

Over time, Western powers have found it wildly prosperous to impose their authority over weaker nations, leaving continents in the wake of their tyranny. The effects have been irreparable. Manipulation of weaker people is so entrenched into the history of the world that it has become profoundly imprinted in the psychosocial philosophy of international relations to this day. If we can understand colonialism as either an act of human nature or perhaps a vital flaw in foreign policy, then it may be possible to introduce a solution to avoid mass human rights violations. What truly inspires me is the possibility of being able to apply the trend of colonialism in its original sense, to politics of today. This approach could afford us the invaluable opportunity to prevent the outbreak of a fundamentalist antagonism in their early stages of development. Perhaps there are significant underlying differences in structure of these civilizations that allowed for colonial invasion to occur so successfully, but differences nonetheless that would have encountered conflicts in evolution the towards modernization. Is colonialism indeed responsible for the widespread downfall of its African territories, and did it set into motion precedence for ethnic rivalries?

Colonialism has had profound implications on a range of lasting parameters throughout the theoretical and philosophical study of political relations. The first that I will address is the psychology behind terminology we use to explain certain events and how this may be responsible for changing the outcome of a situation. Within colonialism there are undertones of greater paradigms that are cause for intrigue in the study of global political relations; how theology affects politics, education and media as political motivators, the violent nature of political relationships and the inherent nature of inequality in the world.

The mental images that have come up since the introduction of this topic are surely unique to you as the reader, and without a doubt they will be responsible for the way in which you so interpret the content of this paper. Interpretation of the world is, quite simply, the first step in understanding it’s perplexing calamities. On a very basic level, “we don’t live in the world on our own and somehow need to find ways of accommodating each other” (Pin-Fat, 23). The dilemma confronting us is the way in which different perceptions of ethics and morality coexist, if at all. Ideological differences will always, as they should, prevail, and if we are to approach them in collaborative manner, the first step is creating defining the issue and recognizing the implications of certain terminology. An acceptable definition of the term colonialism is as follows:

“A policy by which a nation maintains or extends its control over foreign dependencies. The two main types of colonialism are movement of people from the mother country to a form a new political institution in the designated distant land, and external powers’ rule over indigenous peoples (Spiegel, 59).”

Even if a universal definition can be agreed upon, which is rarely the case, it is almost impossible that the connotations and allusions of such a term will be the same throughout; the socialization experienced by a given person will define the perceived definition of the term. Essentially, I do not believe it is possible for bias and human emotion to fall away. For the general public, colonialism has connotations almost solely with the period from the early 1900’s to the early 1960’s revolving around European possession of foreign territories. I am hesitant to accept the way in which the term has become so isolated in time, since it defines a process not an event. This is troubling for a number of reasons, mostly because, as I will present shortly, the Western world has always had an eminent sphere of influence on the developing countries which are comparable to colonial governance of the 1900’s. The period of colonialism is long from over. In such a way colonialism has become a time frame, where post-colonialism is simply the period directly following ‘independence’ and implying that other powers have abandoned former abusive practices.

What seems to be a more realistic interpretation is that the period of ‘post’ has been quite radically extended and may still be today. This blatant classification of terms simply marginalizes as well as isolates the crisis from being of critical relevance to modern-day politics. The words become trapped in a time capsule along with others such as ‘slavery,’ and in this way we fail to realize their eminent severity in our societies. The way I see it, slavery was not abolished after ‘Abolition;’ a person who is not compensated for work is a slave, a child forced into the sex trade is a slave – and pretending this isn’t prevalent today is simply ignorance. For the purpose of this paper I hope to reestablish these terms into our contemporary vocabulary in a way that they may attract more mindfulness and urgency.

A great deal of what orchestrates the political world are perceptions. Our fears are a cultivation of what we perceive as threats and how we perceive ourselves in the world. As mentioned above with regards to terminology, propaganda and education are a powerful aspect of socialization because they are what teach us to think a certain way. Through the time of colonialism propaganda acted to suppress voices of dissent and create a world culture that accepts the white man’s rule. By nature, political control thrives on cultivating public opinions in its favor - be it Chairman Mao’s Little Red Book or the Nixon Administration’s Cold War “survival kits” and anti-Communist posters. Beginning as early as 1908, when Congo came under control of the Belgian State, they began a series of colonial exhibits to promote ‘the colonial idea’ to the Belgian population, largely isolated from African affairs. These nationalistic exhibitions centered on supposed representation of “before and after” Belgium and were largely contributors to circulating propaganda that cultivate colonialism into a widespread European practice. More importantly thought, Belgians hoped these images would send the message that Belgium was a powerful competitor on the international arena, that they had brought civilization to central Africa and that it was a sign of King Leopold II success in the world. Figure C illustrates one of these posters on display in Marseilles in 1906, illustrating a colorful embellishment of a colonizer-host relationship far removed from actuality, and perhaps they were wise enough in this regard to limit the expositions to outside Africa’s borders.

Because education systems have developed at such radically different rates and in such different ways they are accurate indicators of a country’s level of economic development. Because there was no centralized education system in place when colonizers arrived in the Rwanda-Burundi region, independence left many African countries with the curricula and teaching methods developed by their missionaries and members of the Church. For the most part these were teaching methods that had long since been abandoned by the Western world for being outdated and repressive of critical and creative learning, but because there was no effort made to replace these materials, communities relied heavily on them. At this point it must be addressed that regardless of how flawed and expired the schooling tools they had been left with, it was nonetheless an introduction to the value of education. Arguments are made that it disabled the re-creation of social identity within countered and thus deprived them of re-nationalization after independence.

Accounts of some of the curriculums in African schools reveal teaching practices nothing short of brainwashing that were imposed to implicitly create a psyche of inferiority to white supremacists. Umez reveals some phrases he remembers learning as a child in Nigeria:

"oyibo bu ndi muo," (white men are naturally spirits),…"America ilu oba" (… white man's country is naturally the land of kings), "dan bature," (…white men are by nature civilized), and " buter" (…symbolizes the natural lead of white men)…