Guest Editors' Introduction

Guest Editors' Introduction Author(s): Florence Bernault and Thomas Spear Source: Africa Today, Vol. 45, No. 1 (Jan. - Mar., 1998), pp. 3-6 Published by: Indiana University Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4187199 Accessed: 22-04-2016 12:26 UTC REFERENCES Linked references are available on JSTOR for this article: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4187199?seq=1&cid=pdf-reference#references_tab_contents You may need to log in to JSTOR to access the linked references. Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at http://about.jstor.org/terms

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Africa Today 45, 1 (1998), 3-6

Guest Editors' Introduction

Florence Bernault and Thomas Spear

Recent events in Rwanda, Burundi, and eastern Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of Congo) fundamentally challenge the way history has been writ-

ten in Central Africa, the way it has been manipulated by participants, and the way it has been systematically misinterpreted by outsiders. In the process, long-standing historical "myths," propagated by historians and

participants alike, have been continually evoked and reworked to justify political crimes. For example, historians have repeatedly tried to slay the static "Hamitic myth" that justifies the rule of purported immigrant Tutsi "aristocrats" over local Hutu "peasants" in favor of a dynamic view of the

changing construction of ethnicity during the colonial and postcolonial eras. This myth nonetheless continues to misinform the thought and actions

of Africans and foreign observers alike. Elite Rwandese Tutsi use it to justify their right to rule and their claims to what was eastern Zaire; Hutu extremists use it to justify the slaughter of their historical "oppressors."

Likewise, foreign journalists and diplomats seize on it as an easy explanation for a conflict that seems inexplicable on any other grounds, absolving them of any responsibility.

Many foreign historians have also consulted with the media, expressed opinions on the Internet, and participated in public conferences. As professional historians participate in shaping opinion in these ways, what are their obligations as scholars and citizens? Can they make a difference by countering the vast flow of misinformation or by collecting and preserving data for future research? Indeed, the crisis has not only shattered a whole region,

but it has also revealed critical fissures in African Studies. These range from technical difficulties in documenting evidence and events to questions about the ways historians have constructed their explanations of past events, which local actors have then manipulated to create their own historical "myths."

In an effort to understand both the logic of the crisis and the difficulties

historians encounter in recovering and understanding it, the African Studies program at the University of Wisconsin-Madison recently invited a number

of scholars with extensive experience in the area to reflect on both the history of politics and the politics of history in contemporary Africa., The papers on Rwanda published here argue that the genocide that broke out on

3


4 Guest Editors' Introduction

6 April 1994-far from being an abrupt irrational explosion or an unavoid-

able predetermined event-followed decades of political myth-making and ethnic polarization, conscious manipulation of extremist ideologies, and incitement to political violence.

Catharine Newbury first locates the Rwanda genocide within the larger framework of Rwandan history and politics, stretching back to the late precolonial era. She stresses the degree to which fluid precolonial social and political relations have been progressively "ethnicized" and "corporatized" as the implementation of colonial rule and subsequent postcolonial politics have hardened earlier political exchange and reified previous social divi-

sions to lay the basis for historical "myths" of Tutsi supremacy. She then shows how intraelite class politics gave way to corporate interethnic politics and all Tutsi were generalized as opponents of the regime in the after-

math of the Hutu Revolution in 1959-1961, generating in the process an ethnic discourse of power that was easily resurrected in the period leading up to the genocide in the early 1990s. Comparing the two events, Newbury

questions the politics of ethnicity in Rwanda in light of underlying factors in Rwandan politics that are often ignored: the recurrent marginalization of moderates, the dynamics of fear associated with political competition, growing rural discontent, and enduring government crises in a situation of winner-take-all politics.

Michele Wagner follows up Newbury's more general points with a

fine-grained analysis of local political strategies during the months leading

up to the genocide, thus providing a brilliant example of the crucial role contemporary historians can play in collecting data through fieldwork and preserving documents and life stories neglected by journalists. Describing a moving personal encounter, she traces her own transition from her initial role as a human rights observer seeking to come to terms with the sheer

horror that surrounded her to her subsequent role as a historian seeking to understand the causes of the violence, thus highlighting the symposium's broader themes regarding the politics of history. A third paper presented at the symposium, "Irrendentist Rwanda: Ethnic and Territorial Frontiers in Central Africa," by David Newbury, was

published previously in this journal.3 In it, Newbury critically examines claims-by both the new Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) regime and by

former President Mobutu of Zaire-that Zairian Tutsi, or Banyamulenge, were integral parts of a greater Rwanda Tutsi diaspora. These assertions led the RPF to claim parts of eastern Zaire while Mobutu could blame the rebellion in eastern Zaire on Rwandan aggression. Yet, as Newbury shows, the Banyamulenge, far from being loyal subjects of the Rwanda Tutsi court, had been its opponents before seeking refuge west of Lake Kivu. (Ironically, Zairian Tutsi had also been Laurent Kabila's opponents before 1996.) He further demonstrates how Zairian-Tutsi conflicts in 1996 stemmed from Mobutu's own ethnic politics and only subsequently became


Florence Bernault & Thomas Spear 5

coopted by larger regional forces following the genocide, the refugee exodus, and the RPA's attempt to combat attacks from the refugee camps. All three scholars thus seek to disaggregate the events of 1994-1996

from the pervasive historical myths of the past to show how ethnicity was created and manipulated by Europeans and Africans alike for deliberate political and economic ends. And yet, a deeper understanding of the conflicts continues to evade us. More than two years after the genocide in Rwanda, as Jan Vansina, we still lack reliable documentation or informed field data and research to assess the vast but ephemeral media reports. The actors, number of victims, patterns of local mobilization, causes, and con-

sequences all remain elusive, and probably will remain so for years to come. In an attempt to forestall a tragic recycling of past historical myths

into the future, Vansina pleads with historians to remain cautious and critical, aware of the biases of existing information and documentation and wary of making premature analyses that might continue to fuel political polarization in Central Africa.

Finally, Florence Bernault examines the French academic response to the Rwanda crisis. While French scholars were active in speaking out against the genocide and published numerous perceptive accounts of it, she argues that the French scholarly tradition, combined with France's particular involvement in the region, has prevented the French Africanist community from reflecting on their own scholarly practice in light of the crisis. It

is a timely reminder to us all to critically examine the politics of history as we seek to understand the tragic history of politics in the region.

Notes Florence Bernault is associate professor of history at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. A graduate of the Universite de Paris 7, she previously taught at the Ecole Normale Superieure de Fontenay-Saint Cloud, the Universite de

Provence, and Claremont Graduate School. She is the author of Democraties

ambigues en Afrique centrale: Congo-Brazzaville, Gabon, 1940-1965 (1996), and Pour une histoire des prisons et de 1'enfermement en Afrique (1998). Thomas Spear is professor of history at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. After graduating from the University of Wisconsin, he taught at La Trobe University in Australia and at Williams College. He is the author of a number of books on East African history, including The Kaya Complex (1978), Kenya's Past (1981), The Swahili (1985, with Derek Nurse), Being Maasai (1993, coedited with Richard Waller), and Mountain Farmers (1997). He also serves as editor of the Journal of African History.

1. "Past and Present: History in Modern Africa," University of Wisconsin-

Madison, 15 March 1997. The symposium included keynote addresses by B. A. Ogot of Maseno University College (Kenya) and Catherine Coquery-Vidrovitch of the Universit6 de Paris 7 (France); a panel on Rwanda featuring presentations by David Newbury (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill), Catharine Newbury

(University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill), Michele D. Wagner (Indiana


6 Guest Editors' Introduction

University of Pennsylvania), and Jan Vansina (University of Wisconsin-Madison); and a panel on eastern Zaire with Crawford Young (University of Wisconsin-

Madison), Michael Schatzberg (University of Wisconsin-Madison), Didier Gondola (Macalester College), and John Bemtsen (U.S. State Department). The symposium was sponsored by the University of Wisconsin's African Studies program, with funding from that university's International Institute and its Global Studies program, and the U.S. Department of Education. Coquery-Vidrovitch's presentation has been published as "The Exportation of the European Idea of the Nation-State to Africa," European Review 5 (1997): 55-73, and Ogot's as "Ethnicity, Nationalism and Democracy in Multi-Ethnic States: A Historiography," in B. A. Ogot, ed., Ethnicity, Nationalism, and Democracy in Africa (Maseno, Kenya: Institute of Research and Postgraduate Studies, Maseno University College, 1996). 2. For an elaboration of these points, see Catharine Newbury, The Cohesion of Oppression: Clientship and Ethnicity in Rwanda, 1860-1960 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988); Gerard Prunier, The Rwanda Crisis: History of a Genocide (New York: Columbia University Press, 1997); and David Newbury, ed., "Rwanda," special issue of ISSUE: A Journal of Opinion 23, no. 2 (1995), especially the articles by Rene Lemarchand, "Rwanda: The Rationality of Genocide," pp. 8-11; Catharine Newbury, "Background to Genocide in Rwanda," pp. 12-17; and Alison Des Forges, "The Ideology of Genocide," pp. 44-47.

3. Africa Today 44, no. 2 (1997): 211-221.


Guest Editors' Introduction

Guest Editors' Introduction

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