Rwanda: hills and 'how'
Rwanda's landscape and the question of how a country rebuilds after genocide.
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If South Africa is a study in contrast, Rwanda is practice in disbelief. I usually strive to ask ‘why,’ trying for deeper understanding and new perspectives. In Rwanda, I just kept wondering “how?”
If you’re like me and most, the first thought Rwanda conjures is the genocide of 1994 and “how could that happen?” While any genocide escapes comprehension, the history of the Hutu and Tutsi make this particularly hard to digest: there was basically no ethnic difference between the two groups, and the divide only started by relatively arbitrary classifications by Dutch colonialists. How can a group of people be willing to carve their neighbors and friends with machetes over arbitrary distinctions?
On my flight to Rwanda I happened to watch The Stanford Prison Experiment. In it, a group of students were assigned to be prison guards over another group of student prisoners. Before long, the ‘guards’ were beating the ‘prisoners,’ acting with condescension and brutality and wielding their power with relish. Meanwhile the prisoners became submissive, fitting their psychology to their role. The assignments had been random, but the roles created new behaviors, new people. People are just a product of their situations.
In the lead-up to the genocide, Hutu propaganda built fear that the Tutsi were plotting to slaughter them. Radio addresses primed protective and tribal divisions, playing on historical inequities (Tutsi had been given more elite status by the Dutch and at times had abused that). In that environment of fear, economic hardship and political uncertainty after the president’s plane was shot down, the people of Rwanda were on constant edge. Unlike in many places, this was not the product of super deep-seeded historical conflict, or irreconcilable cultural differences. Hutu and Tutsi were married, were friends, were in better times completely amicable. Many — perhaps most — could not readily distinguish between the two ethnicities. It was only when primed for a new situation of perceived inevitable conflict that Rwandans were persuaded to murder their neighbors: 800,000 of them in 100 days.
In thinking about this genocide it’s natural to shake your head, sadly mourn “how could anyone ever do that.” It’s tempting to stop there — to keep the question rhetorical. That’s also a cop-out. Over and over in war-time museums and stories and remembrances, it’s made clear that war-time acts cannot be judged by peacetime standards. How could you do that? How could Hutu murder Tutsi friends? I don’t have an answer, except that to ask that question in the abstract or as if the context is one we can relate to completely misses the point. People are a product of their situations — you can’t judge how people acted without understanding the events and atmospheres that led up to it.
And while we’re on the subject of trying to understand how people could enable a genocide: how could the US and the rest of the world stand by and let the genocide happen, even avoiding the term ‘genocide’ to skirt the responsibility that term implies? Again, I don’t pretend to have an answer, except that people were acting in a different situation in 1994 than we feel today in 2017. As surely as we could judge that inaction, 20 years from now I am sure others will judge ours about global poverty and many other issues. That’s not to excuse it and move on — we need to learn from our past mistakes. But that’s the point — learning requires doing more than shaking our head and dismissing it with a ‘how could anyone ever do this.”
Getting to know Rwandans, you keep wondering: how do people who murdered each-others families, parents, children now live and work side-by-side, moving on as part of what feels like an outstandingly safe and productive city? It seems impossible.
On the rare occasions where people talk about it, they say it is nearly impossible. But it’s also the only option. The alternative: to perpetually relive the horror and constantly seek vengeance, justice, etc. and not move forward with lives. Instead they do all they can to forgive and move on, however absurd that might seem.
As valiantly as they try, it doesn’t seem fully possible. It doesn’t seem that forgiveness for such things can ever be complete. Which leads to the current compromise: just don’t talk about it. Ask any expat who visits or lives there: the genocide is not a topic you can broach, no matter how close you are to locals. To think of it would be paralyzing, making not just progress but daily life untenable, so the only option is to bury the pain deep for most of the year.
Each year, national genocide remembrance week is the opportunity to remember, grieve, discuss, and constructively move forward. To face the past and make sure the issues are never repeated. To make sure Rwanda is one Rwanda not a collection of ethnicities. But it has to be confined to this week, this place, with all the structures and security to make sure it is constructive and not a path to reliving the conflict.
To deal with that all the time the way for example Germans do the Holocaust or how South Africa tried to deal with reconciliation after Apartheid is impossible, because the victims are still living and you can’t put them through that. Humans are incredibly adaptable — we get past grief, we move on, we adjust our happiness. But we are not infinitely adaptable, and even the strongest among us can understand that sometimes pain is just not something you can tough out.
Walking around Kigali, after stories and images of outright war and murder 20 years ago in the same streets, you continually wonder ‘how is this place so clean, so safe, so thriving.” Especially in contrast to other African cities, it’s just so livable and functional.
It didn’t happen by accident, it was a series of choices by leadership. No corruption, massive security enforcement, extreme discipline. Everything possible to attract businesses and build infrastructure and invest in the future along a well-set plan with organization and discipline you rarely find elsewhere.
I don’t mean to paint this picture of a particularly effective set of policies to follow. There are downsides. True opposition voices have a way of falling silent. Punishment very often outstrips the crime. Expats and locals alike won’t talk too loud about politics — intelligence and bugs are everywhere. Modern buildings look attractive, but you hear many are pretty empty. Businesses can get started easily, but the population isn’t educated enough for many jobs or wealthy enough to buy many services. As one friend said: it’s a bit like the ‘Pleasantville’ of Africa. You start to wonder at what’s just below the surface.
It kind of makes a farce of the idea that there are objectively better or worse policies to follow, or at least knowable ones. Should Rwanda embrace more open democracy and opposition speech? Human rights groups and westerners tend to think so — but what if there’s reason to believe opposition will stir up ethnic tensions that could rekindle the genocidal behavior? That’s a very real possibility. How do you balance that possibility with avoiding another strongman dictator?
As you drive around Rwanda, you are in constant wonder: “how is it so beautiful, and so packed with people.” Everywhere you look the land of a thousand hills is rolling greenery and valleys, the most stunning scenery around every bend. Also around every bend: people. Kids on the street, adults walking around, towns congregating on the side of the highway. In the hills where pathways have been cut, along the guardrails of the highway, in makeshift soccer pitches between two mountains, there are just people everywhere.
It’s among the most dense countries in Africa, and there’s no more room. There’s nowhere for them to go. They already farm every inch of hillside land, what next? Rwanda likes to compare itself to Singapore, but they don’t have the port-driven wealth to invest in education. People are sending their kids abroad for school and job prospects — there’s no room for more people here, and no real jobs right now it seems.
All this makes you wonder “how is this going to turn out.” Will the new generation, educated like none before it, take advantage of the infrastructure and institutions and drive Rwanda to be a business capital? Or will modern buildings stay empty while the elite talent is drained from the country and it continues to subsist on coffee exports and gorilla treks? As academics and observers debate President Kagame’s policies, go back and forth on whether Rwanda’s progress is real or surface, evaluate business prospects and human rights records and development priorities, arguments tend to take two forms: either they judge Rwanda as a country in abstract (as if good policy is good policy everywhere) or they judge it in comparison to the genocide two decades ago (as if any peace and progress is impressive and celebration-worthy). Both of these miss the mark. How is a landlocked country with a history of genocide supposed to act? There’s more than one right way and plenty of wrong ones, but the considerations better take its history and situation into account.
Countries, like people, are a product of their situations. Rwanda made me question a lot of the principles that I took as absolute before. Free speech and opposition politics have a very different range of outcomes in Rwanda than in the US. And they may have very different implications in Rwanda 10 years from now versus today. Rwanda helped me start to see policies, rights and even moralities as structures that build on each other rather than as separate values that stand in isolation. How to balance those when they are all interconnected? In my brief time I’m impressed with how President Kagame and the Rwandan people are trying to in their situation right now.
Originally published on Medium/Zig Zag Zuck.