Genocide: The Lasting Effects of Gender Stratification in Rwanda

Abstract

April 7, 1994 changed the lives of every Rwandan. That spring, the ethnic tensions between the Hutu and the Tutsi had escalated over the duration of the spring. The whole country was about to be embroiled in conflict and, ethnic tensions having built to this point for centuries, there was no stopping it. However, for some women of Rwanda, the political unrest was distant; they simply wanted peace for their families. The Tutsis had oppressed their people and families, and they had supported the Belgian imperialist takeover. On that day in 1994, all Rwandan women found themselves divided by an ethnic war and were left with impossible choices to make: kill or be killed; see their children slaughtered or slaughter other women’s children; and be raped or stand aside while other women got raped.

Many women have the same story as Violette Mutegwamaso, a Tutsi. She was the mother of two children, whom she had to defend after her husband was brutally murdered by Hutus.  She and her children fled to a local church to seek shelter, but what they found was the opposite: Violette was forced to smear blood on her face and the faces of her children and pretend to be dead. They crouched down between pews and hid for hours as people were murdered and the number of corpses grew around them. “There was shooting going on, and people were falling and dying everywhere,” Violette said as she recounted her experience for “Women for Women International,” a nonprofit organization helping women from suffering nations create businesses for themselves through sponsorship.[1] Although she and her family were lucky to have made it through the genocide alive, because of so much death, Violette took in another orphan whose parents were lost in the war. The child was representative of an entire generation orphaned because of the genocide. Violette’s story, however, has a happy ending. Her farming business grew and became profitable and she and her family began the process of reconstructing their life.

Pauline Nyiramasuhuko’s story offers a different perspective. A prominent Hutu leader in the Rwandan government at the time of the genocide, she was born into a poor family.  Despite her limited resources, she was very bright, becoming the Family Affairs and Women’s Development minister in the Rwandan Parliament. Nyiramasuhuko ordered the massacres in Butare, a town in which the most extensive slaughter of the genocide occurred. When the governor of that region refused to follow her orders, she had him removed from office and killed; militias from Kigali then carried out genocide. After the Rwandan Patriotic Army (RPA) took control of Butare in July 1994, Nyiramasuhuko fled to refugee camps in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (ORC).  Prior to taking flight, she told the BBC “I couldn’t even kill a chicken. If there is a person who says that a woman, a mother, could have killed, I’ll tell you truly then I am ready to confront that person.”[2] At the end of the genocide she was made to stand trial, along with her son, Arsene Shalom Ntahobali. Presiding Judge William Sekule said that scores of ethnic Tutsis were killed after taking refuge in a local government office: “Hoping to find safety and security, they instead found themselves subject to abductions, rapes, and murder. The evidence… paints a clear picture of unfathomable depravity and sadism.”[3]

Introduction

Women played a significant role in the Rwandan genocide, both committing and becoming the victims of atrocities characterized by violence and sex crimes. Eight hundred thousand people were killed in just three months.  Many children were left without parents. Because women became the majority of the population in most cities, Rwandan society underwent substantial changes, the culmination of those changes being that more women currently serve in the Parliament of Rwanda than any other Western nation. In pre-genocide Rwanda, however, society was primarily paternalistic.[4] Women were absent from the political scene in Rwanda, though several women—Agathe Kanziga, Pauline Nyiramasuhuko, and Agnes Ntamabyaliro— played key roles in Rwandan politics and were later charged with inciting rebellion by the International Court of Justice.

The major questions this paper seeks to answer are why the Rwandan Genocide happened and why the role of women in the genocide historically significant.  What cultural elements existed to contribute to the perfect storm of the Rwandan Genocide? What were the claims of the Hutus against the Tutsis? What is Rwanda doing to rebuild after the genocide? Is the role of women different than before the genocide? Are there solutions to the ethnic and regional animosities that sparked the genocide and continue to this day?

To answer these questions, the events of Rwanda’s history must be analyzed. Within this history contains an example of what can happen when a foreign power intervenes with no prior understanding of the culture or foresight into the implications of their actions. They created ethnic differences that did not exist before their arrival but continued into the next century. With flare-ups of ethnic strife throughout the history, no time was tenser than the nineteen-fifties and sixties, when most of Africa was in one conflict or another. Finally, in 1994, tensions boiled over and one of the worst atrocities of our time occurred. This paper explores what was learned from the genocide in an attempt to prevent a disaster of this scale from happening again.

History

The roots of the Rwandan genocide lie in the nation’s history. Long before 1994, numerous but often overlooked factors, including European players must be considered. However, the three main inhabitants of Rwanda, the Twa, the Hutu, and the Tutsi, crossed paths when the Tutsi migrated into Hutu and Twa lands in the twelfth century. The three ethnic groups coexisted peacefully for hundreds of years but during the fifteenth century, the Tutsi King Ruganzu Ndori took control of innermost Rwanda. By the end of the seventeenth century, Tutsi King Kigeri Rwabugiri had declared a unified state reinforced by a centralized military. The area remained under African control and the Tutsi, Twa, and Hutu tribes remained [cooperative/peaceful] until European intervention in 1890, when Rwanda became part of German East Africa.

A turning point came in 1919 when Belgium began its occupation of Rwanda in 1919.  The Belgians governed Ruanda-Urundi (Rwanda) through the Tutsi kings. Embracing the Tutsis as the ruling class because they appeared more regal, were lighter skinned, and had more Caucasian features. These features may be attributed to the fact that the Tutsis were a pastoral people who tended cattle and were thus taller and stronger. As their pastoral lifestyle suggests, the Tutsis were a migratory people. They eventually settled in Rwanda but did not originate there, leading the Belgians to believe that the Tutsis were the sons of Ham, the son of Noah who is said to have populated Africa, according to the bible. Consequently the Tutsi were believed to be a lost tribe of Israel, not Rwandan.  As a result, the Tutsis and the Belgians found common ground: neither the Belgians nor the Tutsis were African the Hamitic hypothesis.  The Hutus, on the other hand, were an agricultural people and thus viewed as African. The Tutsis had been the ruling class prior to the arrival of the Belgians; however, there was relative peace between the Hutu, Tutsi, and Twa peoples. When the Belgians decided to rule indirectly through the Tutsis in 1919, they instilled more power in the Tutsis and created a divide that was not previously there. The Belgians instilled a sense of superiority in the Tutsis and required that they live in separate areas and attend different schools. Both Hutus and Tutsis were brought up to believe that the Tutsi were not Africans. The rift between the two groups further widened when the Belgians became confused by the intermarrying and mixed ethnicity children resulting Tutsi-Hutu unions; maintaining a divide between the two ethnic groups became problematic as their distinguishing features blended. In response, the Belgians outlawed intermarrying and required that Tutsis live in gated communities. To avoid confusion, the Belgians also required that each individual carry an identification card with them at all times that labeled the respective individual as Hutu, Tutsi, or Twa. Doing so deepened the divide and intensified segregation in Rwanda.

In the late 1950s, there was a shift in power. The Hutus had grown tired of oppression and demanded their voice be heard. In 1959, the Hutus came to power after a rebellion that killed nearly 50,000 Tutsis. The Tutsi King Kigeli V and thousands of other Tutsis were forced into neighboring Uganda as exiles. Because both Hutus and Tutsis had maintained that Tutsis were not Rwandan, the Hutus had no trouble pushing them out—after all, both ethnicities had been brought up to believe that Rwanda was not the Tutsis’ home.  In 1961, Rwanda declared itself a republic and Hutu Grégoire Kayibanda was elected its first president. Naturally, many more Tutsis left the country.

In 1978, Juvénal Habyarimana became the third president of Rwanda and a new constitution was ratified. Rwandan society became more unstable over the course of Habyarimana’s presidency, especially at the start of the 1990s when Tutsi rebel forces from the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) invaded Rwanda from Uganda. Although the RPF and Rwanda attempted to create a multi-party constitution and various agreements for peace were in the works in 1991, the Hutu community was not interested in peace. They wanted control over and revenge against the Tutsi. The Hutu had the upper hand and were uninterested in relinquishing it to their ethnic rival. Politicians knew that in order for Rwanda to remain a stable republic peace had to be maintained, but the majority could not be suppressed. In 1993, President Habyarimana signed a power-sharing agreement with the Tutsis in Arusha, a small town in Tanzani where the Tutsis had been operating. This power-sharing agreement, known as the Arusha Peace Accords, was meant to bring peace to Rwanda and end the civil war, but it had the opposite effect.

Genocide

The bloodiest four months in Rwandan history began on April 6, 1994 when President Habyarimana’s plane was shot down near the capital of Kigali and lasted until July: “an estimated 5-10 per cent of Rwanda’s population was then killed ‘between the second week of April and the third week of May’ 1994”^[5]. It is believed that Hutu radicals were to blame because the power-sharing agreement with the Tutsis that was signed in 1993, known as the Arusha Peace Accords, was to be implemented soon. The Rwandan Armed Forces (FAR) and Hutu militia, also known as the Interahamwe, were the two primary participants in the mass killings. The United Nations Assistance Mission in Rwanda was not allowed to intervene and thus stood by as systematic killings of Tutsis and Hutus alike took place.  On April 8 the RPF attempted to pull its troops out of Kigali. From that point on, all other rescue missions were conducted only to evacuate European or Western citizens stranded in Rwanda. No international intervention attempt was made on behalf of Rwandans.

On April 21 the U.N. Security Council voted to withdraw most of the UNAMIR troops. The force was cut from 2,500 to 270 soldiers. Nine days later, on the 30^th, the U.N. released a statement condemning the killings; however, they were not legally obligated to do anything about it because they did not classify the killings as genocide. Hundreds of thousands of people continued to flee to neighboring countries. It is estimated that as many as 250,000 Rwandans crossed the border into Tanzania in one day. By mid-May, approximately 500,000 Rwandans had been killed.  On June 22, Operation Turquoise began in which French forces entered South-west Rwanda in order to create a safe area. By mid-July, RPF forces captured the capital of Kigali; the Hutu government fled, followed by thousands of refugees; and the French forces were replaced by Ethiopian U.N. troops. The RPF set up an interim government in Kigali and 800,000 Rwandans had been killed within the first hundred days of genocide.

 Analysis

How did things escalate so quickly and why was there no one to help? When change began to arise, the Tutsis looked to the Belgians for help, but they were nowhere to be found. The Belgians realized that they no longer needed Rwanda. The colonial scramble for Africa having ended, Rwanda had nothing to offer them; it had become more of a burden to the Belgians than anything else. Involving themselves in Rwandan politics would only complicate their already tenuous situation, so Belgium abandoned the country without reassembling it. The Tutsis suddenly found themselves with no protection in an ethnically hostile environment. Unable to suppress the Hutus, the Tutsi reign in Rwanda was over and their only remaining option was exile. With a divided government, Hutus and Tutsis alike had been going in and out of exile in the neighboring countries of Burundi and Uganda and things were bound to reach a critical point and when that happened, it was going to be bloody:

The genocide evolved out of a past history of conflict and violence. A long history of dominance by the minority Tutsis (about 14% of the population) over the majority Hutus (about 85%) greatly intensified under the colonial rule of the Belgians. The Hutus and Tutsis in Rwanda live next to each other and share the same language and religion, primarily Catholic. They may have been originally different ethnic groups, but the primary differences over time became those of occupation, class, power, and social identities.^[6]

Rwanda was steered inevitably toward a bloody civil war and genocide when Belgium began occupation of Tutsi, Hutu, and Twa territory. As with the Belgium-Tutsi relationship, “ethnic identities are often magnified, if not manufactured, by occupying forces or national elites during the colonial period. Once independence has been obtained, ethnic identities are often internally enhanced for the political purposes of the new ruling regime.”^[7] Other than being the ruling class, there were no intrinsic differences between the Tutsis and the Hutus and Twas over whom they ruled. No physical distinctions had been made between them until the Belgians instilled in each ethnic group the idea that the Tutsis were more regal and looked more similar to Europeans than the other Africans did.

By leaving Rwanda and ruling instead through the Tutsis, the Belgians destabilized the country’s political environment. The conditions created by the Belgians contribute to the instability felt throughout postcolonial environments. The new regimes monopolize existing resources, leaving subordinate populations in socioeconomic conditions analogous to (or worse than) those characterizing colonial rule. Widespread inequities of access to social, political, and economic capital are perpetuated by these new social arrangements. The histories of postcolonial states frequently degenerate into civil wars or other internecine conflicts that undermine the fragile forms of social organization built out of the anomic social rubble of colonial decampment. In the most extreme cases, such as Rwanda, genocides arise.^[8]

While it is plausible that by fleeing Rwanda the Tutsi could have saved themselves from slaughter, nothing portended genocide to convince them to leave their homeland. The 1960s were a dangerous period in Rwandan history, but eighteen years had passed with relatively peaceful relations between the Hutus and the Tutsis:

Covert actions were an important dimension of the Rwandan regime’s close political control and were especially effective in a highly stratified society, where power differentials had long been taken for granted…when the genocide actually started; it took most outsiders, and many Rwandans, by complete surprise. Bald statements of intent were rare; and rumors which circulated of planned genocide simply served to further disarm the Tutsi population, by appearing to ‘cry wolf’” ^[9]

Because of this relative confusion, there was no real reason to be suspicious or to suspect that a full blown genocide would take place.

Another reason that the genocide was allowed to go on for so long was because of the global policing forces’ reluctance to use the term “genocide.” Genocide is defined as “acts committed with the intent to destroy in part or in whole a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group as such”^[10]. The U.N. never declared the killings in Rwanda as genocide. If the U.N. had done so, they would have been obligated to intervene. Since this was not the case, the killings were allowed to go on without international resistance. The U.S. could have also taken steps to stop the genocide, but the Clinton administration “produced an inventive new reading of the Genocide Convention. Instead of obliging signatory states to prevent genocide, the White House determined, the Convention merely ‘enables’ such preventive action…by neutering the word ‘genocide’ the new spin allowed American officials to use it without anxiety.”^[11]

Rwanda was essentially a perfect storm of factors in which genocide was the outcome. Political instability, the centralization of power, difficult living conditions, ethnic conflict, devaluation and past-victimization of a certain group of people, are all major instigators of genocide. All of these issues were present in Rwanda.

Rwandan Women’s Participation in the Genocide

Empowered women are important to the economic prosperity of any country. The coffee industry, one of Rwanda’s chief sources of capital, was severely damaged during the genocide, because of damage sustained to coffee plantations.  Women have assumed a prominent role in rebuilding those plantations and leaning new ways of growing coffee. According to Agnes Matilda Kalibata, [Rwanda’s] Minister of State in Charge of Agriculture:

Rwanda’s economy has risen up from the genocide and prospered greatly on the backs of our women. Bringing women out of the home and fields has been essential to our rebuilding. In that process, Rwanda has changed forever. . . . We are becoming a nation that understands that there are huge financial benefits to equality.^[12]

With that being said is it difficult for some people to believe that women could have had a significant role in the genocide, positive, negative, or otherwise. One of the few people charged by the International Court of Justice for the genocide was a woman, Pauline Nyiramasuhuko, who was charged with inciting genocide. Beyond that, there is still speculation regarding how involved women actually were in carrying out the genocide. Some claimed that women didn’t even play a role: “No women were involved in the killings… they were mad people; no women were involved. All women were in their homes,” claimed a female genocide suspect from Miyove prison.^[13] However, others claim that women played a more insidious role. Women may not have been directly involved in the physical violence of the genocide but they did play a subversive role by informing Hutu extremists where Tutsi families were located or hiding.

Rwanda’s stratified society during and leading up to the genocide applied not only to ethnicity but also to regional background and gender. Northerners perceived themselves to be superior to southerners and vice versa. Gender has always played a more specific role in importance of an individual and place in society, however closer to the genocide, race began to transcend even gender; It is possible that gender differences would have lessened over time and all women would have found equality, however, the evidence shows that even though women were the target of horrible sexual violence and mutilation, their standing in society was furthered by the genocide.

In Post- Genocide Rwanda, Rwandan women are more empowered than they have ever been before.  They have leadership positions within the Parliament. They are the facilitators of economic expansion. They are creating and owning businesses. Because the genocide reduced men to a mere 20% of the population, ^[14] women have had to assume the roles that men can no longer fill.

Rwandan Women Pre-genocide

There has long been a gender divide in Rwandan culture. Women have historically been subordinate to men in Rwanda: “A woman’s value and status depended first on her fertility and second on her cooperativeness, initiative, and ability to work. A man was judged in terms of his courage and even capacity for aggression, his ability with words, and his physical prowess.”[15] A woman was made to cook for the men, clean, raise the children, and keep herself occupied among the other women of the community. While this has been the status quo for most societies, limited not just to Africa but to the world, the complexity of Rwanda’s social structure is unique:

ruling class of herding Tutsi dominated a lower class of Hutu farmers, Tutsi noblewomen supervised the Hutus’ work, and Hutu women worked  hard at agricultural subsistence while the labor of their husbands in their fields or at war was monopolized by the aristocracy. Yet a Hutu man, despite his miserable position, remained no less a patriarch within his own family, where his wife had to kneel to offer him beer.”[16] Even though women had different social standings in society in its larger sense, when it came to each household, a woman’s place was the same, no matter her ethnicity.

As time went on, all Rwandan women occupied a similar societal role with similar expectations. The genocide, however, rekindled the issue of social distinctions between Hutu and Tutsi women. As the genocide continued, it became apparent that women were characterized not only by ethnicity, but also by regional affiliation. The way a woman dressed, could automatically define her as either a Hutu or a Tutsi regardless of her actual ethnicity. Depending on what part of the country one was in, the distinction between what clothing identified a woman as Hutu or Tutsi differed: “the peasants in this part of the country, which was far from the urban centers, were not used to seeing young women in pants, shorts, miniskirts, or braided hair. For these peasants, a young girl who dressed that way had to be Tutsi. According them, young Hutu girls were too well brought up to dress like whores.”[17]

Propaganda played a major role in pre- genocide Rwanda. Tutsi women might have been portrayed as more attractive than Hutu women, but they were also portrayed as “vixens, temptresses and spies who had to be eliminated,”^[18] Kangura, an anti-Tutsi periodical, published as part of a leaflet of commandments regarding Tutsi women. The first commandment asserts that:

“1. Every Hutu should know that a Tutsi woman, whoever she is, works for the interest of her       Tutsi ethnic group. As a result, we shall consider a traitor any Hutu who: Marries a Tutsi woman, befriends a Tutsi woman, and employs a Tutsi woman as a secretary or a concubine.”^[19]

The Kangura urged Hutu women to “be vigilant and try to bring your husbands, brothers and sons back to reason.”^[20] Other forms of propaganda called Tutsis “cockroaches” that needed to be eliminated. Valérie Bemeriki was a female journalist during this time who was an announcer on the RTLM, an extremist anti-Tutsi radio station. She was famous for reading the names of Tutsis that needed to be killed and where to find them. ^[21]

Women during the Genocide

Women took on different roles during the genocide. Hutu women at the head of Tutsi extremist circles rarely experienced any bloodshed. Fueled by hate and the memory of the suffering their people experienced, some Hutu women lashed out violently. Genevieve Mukarutesi, a Tutsi survivor, recounted her experience during the genocide:

On this date the situation deteriorated sharply in our sector. Hutu wanted to exterminate the         Tutsis.  My husband was Tutsi and we had four children….. Like other Tutsi families, we went to         Kabuye hill where there were a lot of us, about 50,000. At least 40,000 perished on this hill.  The    first attack was led by Hutus from our district directed by a pregnant Hutu woman who was   armed with a gun and a lot of grenades. She is Felicitee Semakuba, a former gendarme….During   this attack, I, myself, saw Mme. Semakuba with a gun and grenades. She was on her knees    shooting into the crowd of refugees all the while giving out orders to her team. She would often          get up to throw grenades.[22]

Many stories like Mukaruteski’s tell of how ordinary women were driven to violence. Whatever drove her to take part in the violence, Semakuba participated willingly. Clearly Mukarutesi knew this woman because she knew this woman’s name. If they were from the same area they may have grown up around each other. This sort of brutality is brought on, not by one element, but by many. Ethnicity was a major aspect, but there were other factors. .

When the genocide ended eight hundred thousand deaths later, the remaining Rwandans were left to rebuild their country and salvage their culture. The remaining survivors now had to learn to heal and to forgive others for the deaths of their families. Whether or not this healing could occur and if society would be able to return to some semblance of normalcy, remained to be seen.

Post-Genocide Rwanda

A society cannot go back to what it was before, nor should it. Norms likes extreme patriarchal social structure and ethnic tensions instilled in Rwandan citizens prevented them from becoming economically advanced. Internal divisions and a rigid societal structure impeded humanitarian advancement.

Ethnic tensions contributed to the Rwanda’s stagnation, but the rigid social structure to which women were subjected also imposed limitations on the country. When a nation handicaps over half of the population by starving them of education and basic human rights, its ability to prosper is doomed. This changed in the 1990s when women began to attend school; however rigid social structures still remained.

After the genocide, certain institutions were slow to recover. To this day fewer children attend school [than before the genocide]. Courts are slow to bring to justice many leaders of the genocide. Conflict still lingers on the borders of the Democratic Republic of Congo. Nevertheless, Rwanda has moved in a promising direction.

Seventy-two women presently serve in Parliament, holding 56% of its seats. Women have jobs and can own property, which had previously been illegal. Women have assumed positions of power and experienced a general empowerment because, as a result of the genocide’s devastating effect on Rwanda, they had no choice. Without women, Rwanda would not have survived.  “The job of rebuilding Rwanda fell to us,” says MP Faith Mukakalisa.”We’ve been shouting about women’s empowerment ever since.” Staying a housewife, she says, was never an option. There were businesses to run, fields to sow, important decisions to make.^[23]

In the years since the genocide, the majority of Rwandans are no longer poverty stricken; however some still make only $1 a day. Domestic violence still routinely occurs, but now little girls are allowed to dream of being more than a housewife. A journalist for the BBC asked Aimee Umugeni, who runs a women’s center, what she looks forward to in the new Rwanda. Her answer sums up the hope that most women now have in their post- genocide world:

‘What is it you hope for most for your daughter, Marie Aimee?’ The journalist asked.‘That Rwanda continues to succeed,’ she says. ‘That my baby has a good education. Perhaps       she’ll grow up to be a politician, a teacher or an engineer…it’s not like when I was young.       Nothing will stop her. She’ll be able to do whatever she wants.”^’3

Conclusion: Reconciliation

Twenty years after the Rwandan genocide, the Rwandan people are focusing on understanding the causes behind such an atrocity, and seeking to learn from the mistakes made during this time. Among Rwanda’s ethnic groups, reconciliation is still underway: “Reconciliation means that victims and perpetrators, or members of hostile groups, do not see the past as defining the future, as simply a continuation of the past. It means that they come to see the humanity of one another, accept each other, and see the possibility of a constructive relationship.”^[24]  The Rwandan government now has more women in positions of power than any other African government. Surprisingly, the issue of women’s role in the genocide has been largely ignored. The role of women pre- and post-genocide must now be melded into one. Their role must be redefined and Rwandan society as a whole must become acclimated to the diminishment of gender stratification.

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