Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of maps
- Acknowledgements
- List of abbreviations
- Rwanda
- Great Lakes region
- Rwanda: refugees and displaced populations, 31 March 1995
- Introduction: information and disinformation in times of conflict
- 1 Build-up to war and genocide: society and economy in Rwanda and eastern Zaire
- 2 Mind the gap: how the international press reported on society, politics and history
- 3 For beginners, by beginners: knowledge construction under the Rwandese Patriotic Front
- 4 Labelling refugees: international aid and the discourse of genocide
- 5 Masterclass in surreal diplomacy: understanding the culture of ‘political correctness’
- 6 Land and social development: challenges, proposals and their imagery
- Conclusion: representation and destiny
- Appendix: Summary of key dates and events
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
- Titles in the series
1 - Build-up to war and genocide: society and economy in Rwanda and eastern Zaire
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 September 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of maps
- Acknowledgements
- List of abbreviations
- Rwanda
- Great Lakes region
- Rwanda: refugees and displaced populations, 31 March 1995
- Introduction: information and disinformation in times of conflict
- 1 Build-up to war and genocide: society and economy in Rwanda and eastern Zaire
- 2 Mind the gap: how the international press reported on society, politics and history
- 3 For beginners, by beginners: knowledge construction under the Rwandese Patriotic Front
- 4 Labelling refugees: international aid and the discourse of genocide
- 5 Masterclass in surreal diplomacy: understanding the culture of ‘political correctness’
- 6 Land and social development: challenges, proposals and their imagery
- Conclusion: representation and destiny
- Appendix: Summary of key dates and events
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
- Titles in the series
Summary
The eruption of conflict and civil war in the 1990s, in both Rwanda and eastern Zaire, had its origin in modern struggles for power and wealth. The world, however, easily overlooked this modern origin, since the confrontations it witnessed appeared to have taken on strongly ethnicised, seemingly ‘tribal’ overtones and justification. The Rwandan 1994 genocide in particular, more than the fighting in eastern Zaire (1996 onwards), was for too long and at too great a cost portrayed by the media as rooted in tribalism. Rwanda's bloodbath was not tribal. Rather it was a distinctly modern tragedy, a degenerated class conflict minutely prepared and callously executed. Most of the world failed to see it that way, and continued to think of the conflict – this after all was Africa – in terms of ‘centuries-old tribal warfare’.
The power of shamelessly twisted ethnic argument for the sake of class privilege was demonstrated most shockingly in the blatant imaginings about history that galvanised Rwanda's ‘Hutu Power’ extremists. These extremists killed Rwanda's Tutsi and sent their bodies ‘back to Ethiopia’ via the Nyabarongo and Akagera rivers. The imagined origin of ‘the Tutsi’, along with their (poorly understood) migrations and conquest of Rwanda, were evoked by power-crazed Hutu politicians to instil ‘ethnic hatred’ in the very people they themselves oppressed: the victims of class oppression were spurred on to kill a minority group which the oppressors had labelled ‘the real enemy’.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Re-Imagining RwandaConflict, Survival and Disinformation in the Late Twentieth Century, pp. 9 - 52Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2002