In Search of Complexity

Chris Blattman reports:

Alex Engwete reviews René Lemarchand’s new volume on the violence consumed the DR Congo, Rwanda, Burundi, and Uganda through the 1990s (and simmers today). ... Engwete picks up two Lemarchand quotes bound to stir passions. For one, he bemoans the ‘misleading analogy’ between the Holocaust and the Rwandan genocide: “Jews,” writes Lemarchand, “never invaded Germany with the assistance of a neighboring state for the purpose of bringing down the government.”

This highlights another narrative impulse: the desire for good guys and bad guys:

Drawing the line between the good guys and the bad guys is easy enough in the case of Nazi Germany; in Rwanda, the distinction is far more problematic, if only because it defies the simplistic equation between Hutu murderers and Tutsi victims.

This inherently complex dimension is one that is systematically shoved under the rug in official Rwandan historiography. The watchword in Rwanda today, symbolized by the moving memorial to Tutsi victims, is ‘Never forget!’—but there is an unspoken subtext: ‘Never Remember!’

Never remember the 1972 genocide of Hutu in Burundi, the massacre of Hutu refugees in eastern Congo, or the systematic elimination of Hutu civilians during and after the 1990 invasion of Rwanda by Kagame’s soldiers.

Above all, never remember Kagame’s onus of responsibility in the shooting down of the plane carrying the presidents of Rwanda and Burundi to Kigali, the detonator that ignited the genocide.”