Be vigilant to divisive voices that could lead to Rwanda's 1994 path

Chris Harman’s 2008 book, A People’s History of the World: From Stone Age to the New Millennium, centres on a harrowing thought. We are living in a self-destructive world, riding on greed and gross inequalities. It is a chauvinistic nativist world; a universe of prejudice, barbarous practices, and wars.   

Coincidentally, I should be reading Harman when the world is ruefully remembering the genocide, 32 years ago, of the Tutsi people of Rwanda.

Here, in Nairobi, we have remembered Rwanda in a cocktail of forums. One was a symposium on genocide prevention at the University of Nairobi. We reflected on the sinking of Rwanda into disaster in 1994, and her courageous rise from the ashes to renewal. Rwanda is today a symbol of hope for Africa. 

It remains disturbing, however, that between 800,000 and one million Tutsi and moderate Hutu were butchered in one hundred days. The daily killing was between 8,000 and 10,000. The mind wants to refuse to believe. Yet that is the reality; that 8,000 to 10,000 people were murdered every day, for three months and ten days, non-stop. 

The story of Rwanda is more than a national story, as the symposium heard from Prof PLO Lumumba. It is an African mirror of hopes and impediments. It speaks to nativist chauvinisms and barbarisms that animate individuals to hunt down and kill others in cold blood, as if they were rabbits. If you were not here 32 years ago, or were too young to register what was happening, you probably do not grasp the full magnitude of the horrendous history.

Human bodies began materialising on the Kagera River, to rudely rock the world to a cruel reawakening. These things were planned over a long timeline. The hate against the Tutsi was incubated through images and narratives of privilege and dominance. And you often hear in different parts of Africa, today, nativist echoes of Rwanda in the lead-up to 1994.

Here in Kenya, the ingredients are all there. In government and in the opposition alike, leaders beat loud war drums, evocative of our own genocidal nativist yearnings in 2007. Some speak passionately about their tribes. Others may not mention their tribes, but they play tribal favourite games.

Given the horrendous magnitude of the implications, leaders like former deputy president, Rigathi Gachagua, need to be called out by name. His ethnic sentiment is outrageously repugnant. “I want to tell you, Wajaluo,” he says, “You, WaLuhya should know... Macuzo!”  

When he is not there, he is saying, “WaKikuyu will not accept... “ or, “WaKisii this; WaKamba that; WaKalenjin...” Whatever his role in the opposition space may be, for now, it is a ride towards tragedy. Make no mistake. In truth, President William Ruto’s offensives against Kenyans have no tribal barriers. Accordingly, they can be engaged in political discourse without stirring up tribal prejudice and barbarous ethnic animosities.

Away from Gachagua, President Ruto is no better. He comes to Kakamega to greet us in distorted versions of our mother tongue. He asks us, in a strange version of our mother tongue, “WaKakamega, are you there?” Then he goes to Siaya. He does the same; a struggling greeting in Dholuo, followed by, “WaSiaya, are you there?” He swiftly moves on to lambast “the tribalists . . .” Yet, what the President is doing is itself loaded with heavy ethnic profiling and signaling.   

President Ruto invites “Kenyans” to join him in rejecting “the tribalists.” Get that. Ruto comes with coded ethnic grammar. The message is clear, though. It is one tribe against the rest, or the rest against one. Sociology will describe this coding as structural violence. If we made this mistake in 2007, do we need to demonstrate growth, development, and movement? Does the President need to lead in that growth?  

Does leadership need to guide itself towards sensibility, civility, and emotional intelligence consciously? The burden of remembering Rwanda teaches us many things. Among them is the need to read genocidal signaling clearly and early. Next is the need to refrain from denial. And third, nativist political approaches will reward society with disastrous outcomes. 

It does appear and increasingly so that the William Ruto-led journey to Singapore may have to reroute to Kigali first. Even then, it must reverse time by 32 years, back to 1994. After that, it must reroute to The Hague. Then only shall Kenyans remember that they were headed to Singapore. Such is the bane of nations in the grip of atavistic individuals.  

-Dr. Muluka is a strategic communications adviser. www.barrackmuluka.co.ke