Some unlearned lessons

by Editor · March 26, 2014

In April Rwanda will mark the 20th anniversary of its genocide, which in 100 unforgiving days killed an estimated 800 000 people.�Perpetrators of the genocide are still being prosecuted. This month an ex-officer was convicted in a court in Paris.

Photographs of Genocide Victims – Genocide Memorial Center – Kigali – Rwanda
Adam Jones, Ph.D., Wikipedia

While the orgy of murder was orchestrated by one ethnic group, the Hutus, against another, the Tutsis (as well as moderate Hutus), some responsibility resided with the international community.

Former United Nations secretary-general Kofi Annan � then head of the UN�s peacekeeping arm � took personal and institutional responsibility for failing to intercede in the conflict.

Indeed, few can take refuge in excuses. The genocide might have been preventable. When it erupted, the world prevaricated, hesitated and disregarded until more than half a million civilians had been shot and hacked to death.

Commemorations of the Rwandan catastrophe tend to prompt a resounding chorus on the familiar theme of �never again�. Rwanda, we keep being told, is a lesson the world dare not forget.

Signs are that the lessons have not been altogether learnt, within Africa and beyond.

The heartbreaking situation in South Sudan, the continent�s youngest country, may stand as evidence of that. A country that less than three years ago was in the international focus and which held so much hope, is imploding, with more than 10000 killed and almost a million displaced since the conflict, which has taken on an ethnic guise, erupted in mid-December.

Rebel forces, which appear to trade on ethnicity, have looted even hospitals. Churches have been vandalised and robbed. The undermanned UN presence in the country is powerless to intervene.

The protracted series of wars in the Democratic Republic of Congo since 1996, exacerbated by the self-serving interventions of several African countries, has resulted in the death of several million people.

The international community aims at containment, presumably feeling powerless to put an end to the myriad conflicts which appear to be impossible to solve.

The recent conflict in the Central African Republic, which was waged under misleading sectarian banners, has killed multitudes and left hundreds of thousands displaced.

Order is being gradually restored � in part thanks to belated international intervention, especially by French forces � and encouraging efforts are being made at reconciliation. Still, the poison of the civil war will be felt for a long time, in the people�s psyche and in food shortages when harvests fail to materialise on untilled land.

These are but a few emergency areas of Africa. One might add to the flashpoints terrorism by Islamic fundamentalists, and the persecution of homosexuals in Uganda and Nigeria where new anti-gay laws reportedly have encouraged random attacks on homosexuals in both countries.

The spirit of these laws and the rhetoric accompanying them in some areas sound an ominous echo of the propaganda that preceded the Rwandan genocide.

Of course, Africa has its success stories, too. Ghana�s transition to democracy provides a model for the whole continent.

South Africa celebrates its 20th anniversary of democracy in April. For all its problems, South Africa is a great example of how a constitutional democracy can succeed � though this requires constant vigilance and defence, for there are some politicians and their cronies for whom the structures of our Constitution are an undesirable impediment.

Would the world respond quicker now to an imminent genocide than it did 20 years ago? The people of South Sudan or the Central African Republic might suggest it does not.

The development of the African Union�s Standby Force to intervene in armed conflicts as they arise is giving some grounds for hope.

But while a system facilitating quick reaction is to be welcomed, the accent must be on prevention. This requires resolute efforts at broad and sustainable economic development to forestall competition between ethnic groups, and reconciliation between historical antagonisms which many times have been expressed in acts of unspeakable violence.

The focus must not be on what has been accomplished so far, but on what still needs to be done to create a permanent peace throughout Africa.