It still surprises me how little many of my educated African friends know about the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda. As someone who lived through it, I am often disappointed by how unaware, and how indifferent, they are about this horrific chapter of recent African history.
Again and again, in conversations with educated friends from across the continent, Kenyans, Nigerians, Tanzanians, Cameroonians and others, I get the most basic questions: “When did it happen?” “Who killed who?” “Is it still going on?” These questions show how little is known, even among people I would expect to be informed about such a major event on our continent.
This ignorance is not just about facts and dates. It also suggests a lack of empathy and understanding. Many Africans seem to think that the Rwandan Genocide was a “tribal conflict” that had nothing to do with them. They do not realize that the genocide was a crime against humanity and that it could happen anywhere.
By contrast, the average educated muzungu (white person) I meet has at least a basic grasp of the genocide and its human toll. Yet my African friends can talk at length about the French Revolution, Napoleon’s adventures or the evils of the British Empire, all events long past and far from Africa.
Don’t get me wrong, these European histories deserve study. But it is sad that so many of Africa’s best and brightest know little or nothing about the systematic murder of nearly a million Africans on their own continent just a generation ago.
I see it even more at the annual commemorations we organize in my community here in the United States. I make a point of inviting fellow Africans, but very few ever come. Their absence reminds me of the apathy of Rwanda’s African neighbors in 1994, while the Tutsi were being slaughtered.
The West rightly bears responsibility for failing to intervene. But I feel we let our African brothers and sisters off the hook far too easily for their own apathy. It was our fellow Africans, not Westerners, who saw the evidence of mass murder pile up as the genocide unfolded.
Our African neighbors saw the horrors of genocide long before the images reached Western TV screens. It was the Tanzanians who saw the thousands of Tutsi corpses flowing through the Akagera River, which separates Tanzania from Rwanda. The Ugandans watched in silence as the bodies of Tutsi men, women and children floated into Lake Victoria. The Burundians heard direct accounts from the few survivors able to cross the river into Burundi during the early weeks of the killings.
And yet, despite all they saw, not one of these countries lifted a finger to push the UN to act, or to intervene themselves. Even respected elder statesmen like Julius Nyerere and Nelson Mandela did little.
That indifference from the people closest to Rwanda, in geography and culture, will always trouble me. It makes me wonder whether ideals like Ubuntu (humanity toward others) and Pan-African brotherhood still mean anything today.
Africans also held the top jobs at the United Nations during the genocide: Boutros Boutros-Ghali of Egypt was Secretary-General, and Kofi Annan of Ghana led UN peacekeeping. Their failure to speak out strongly is a stain on the continent.
I believe this crime against humanity, committed on African soil, should be known by every African. We need to break this silence and work hard to raise awareness about the genocide against the Tutsi. For too long, our history has been told through a European lens.
My African friends and I may know the white man’s tragedies of centuries past inside out. But we have work to do to remember our own recent tragedies first. Our indifference failed one million murdered Tutsi once. We should not fail them again. Ends.
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