Opinion
For how much longer will Western media and intellectual community blind themselves with fallacious narratives about Rwanda?
As a
scholar, having lived and worked in Eastern and Western Europe, North America,
and West Africa, and given my academic interest in the history and politics of
African postcolonial societies, I have read and written on Rwanda for over
twenty years.
Despite
the training I had received in critical theory and analysis throughout my
education and career, it took a great deal of effort trying to avoid finding
misinformation contained within Western scholarship on Rwanda or to escape
frequent intellectual feuds with my colleagues and friends who are genuinely
convinced about their good intentions.
Sadly,
things are not getting any better as disinformation about Rwanda and the
Rwandan people continues to spread like a torrent.
Western
journalists and scholars alike have shown a great deal of creativity in
spreading fake news about Rwanda’s colonial and post-colonial history,
including and mainly through a denial campaign of the genocide against the
Tutsi translated into a persistent negation of Rwanda’s self-realization since
July 1994.
This
denial operation finds its expression in a fallacy of a fictional
long-established tribal conflict between the Tutsi and the Hutu, a common trope
used by Western scholarship and media to define Africans wherever they dwell in
the 1885/6-Berlin-Treaty-drawn Africa. Anybody reading the history of the Great
Lakes region would quickly dismiss this fallacy, but “well-respected” scholars
continue maintaining and spreading this false and disparaging narrative.
The
assumed “tribal” conflict since time immemorial is claimed to be evidenced by a
“second genocide” allegedly perpetuated against the Hutu (who had fled to DR
Congo, or former Zaire, following the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi in
Rwanda) by the RPF whose members are essentialized as Tutsi rather than fairly
seen as an armed liberation entity which has freed Rwandans from a fascist Hutu
faction turned genocidal government.
As
part of this same deceptive narrative, the “double genocide” theory is being
recycled through an unfounded accusation of “genocide” being committed by
Rwanda on the Congolese soil. That perspective is dubiously conveyed through
several misinformation campaigns, (such as the “Genocost” campaign), spread in
all areas of intellectual and public life in DR Congo, relayed by the Congolese
diaspora, a perspective which in turn is simply acknowledged and unchallenged
by Western journalists and scholars.
This
is a classic manifestation of negrophobia, term borrowed from
Boubacar Boris Diop, François-Xavier Verschave and Odile Tobner, which in sum
stands for the intellectual dishonesty and contempt that Western scholarship
essentially engages in when dealing with African historical, cultural, and
linguistic contexts, an intellectual contempt which is wholly exemplified by
Stephen Smith in his Négrologie: pourquoi l’Afrique meurt and
in a plethora of “respected books” written by “respected scholars”.
What
these scholars and journalists tend to disregard is that the “double genocide”
theory and its recycled contemporary manifestations are a continuation of
infliction of pain and suffering on genocide survivors and victims of
transgenerational trauma who are still in a long and difficult process of
healing.
This
campaign of denial and continued infliction of moral pain takes additional
“creative” forms through the alleged Rwandan support of M23, claimed to be the
root-cause of the destabilization of DRC (despite the presence of 130 or so
other uncontained armed groups). This negation of Rwanda’s fruitful
self-realization is further conveyed through an imagined theft of Congolese
minerals by Rwanda, and a fictional Rwandan political, military, and economic
occupation of Eastern DR Congo.
The
additional fallacy about Rwanda in Western media and scholarship revolves
around a supposed repressive governance and absence of freedom. This is
illustrated in the ongoing and persistent harassment by Western public
representatives and journalists - on the eve of the visit to Rwanda of the US
Secretary of State, Antony Blinken - who are using all their power to coerce
the Rwandan government and justice system to ignore national and international
law by releasing Paul Rusesabagina.
Although
he was convicted by the Rwandan courts to a 25-years jail sentence, along with
20 other offenders, on terror charges, Western media and public officials are
giving themselves a legitimate reason to ask for the release of Rusesabagina
only because he is a US resident and because he has been awarded the
Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2005 by President George W. Bush.
All
these fallacies about Rwanda are the figment of imagination of a minority of
interested people who are essentially looking for relevance in a world where
popularity in academia, on social and mainstream media, equates to existing in
the real world.
Had
these fake narratives on Rwanda and the African continent remained within
academic salons, it would have been appalling but not surprising as
academia feeds itself on the invention of “attractive” and obscure theories on
Africa designed to justify its own relevance, despite the said theories having
little grounding in African reality.
The
real issue at stake here is that this fictional narrative on Rwanda leads to
bigger implications for Rwandans, as those same Western scholars and
journalists are hired as “experts” in “human rights” in the Great Lakes region,
writing pseudo-reports and seeking to legitimize a fictitious destructive
narrative about Rwanda, which in turn influences national and international
decision making, as well as international relations with Rwanda.
The
denial campaign which we witness today in Western scholarship and media
therefore perpetuates not only disinformation but promotes a genocide ideology
which may lead to, as we have begun to see already, renewed atrocity crimes
against the Congolese Tutsi in DR Congo.
This past July, I was not only moved at the Kigali Genocide Memorial and the truly palpable emotions the remembering of the genocide once again triggered in me, but by the warm welcome I received by many Rwandans who are visibly confident, optimistic, insightful, and by the collective effort, incisive initiatives, and creative solutions they have implemented for long-term sustainable peace and development.
Source:
www.newtimes.co.rw