5 - Opportunity II: Death of the Nation’s Father

Summary

Chapter 5 analyses the impact of the third macro-political factor in Rwanda’s path to genocide: the assassination of the president. The death of Habyarimana, who was by far the longest-serving sub-Saharan African head of state to have been killed-in-office, created a massive and sudden political opportunity. This chapter explains how and why the ensuing power vacuum and power struggles ultimately played out in favour of extremists at the macro-, meso-, and micro-levels in Rwanda. As before, decisions taken by elite actors strategically interacted and the contestation escalated once more in the absence of constraints at the domestic or international levels. At the national level, extremists quickly prevailed over moderates to capture the state because they possessed superior coercive capabilities. At the local level, violence broke out at different moments in part because it took time for local power struggles to resolve in some communities. Extremists and opportunists eclipsed moderates once the centre fell and sometimes with the support of extra-local forces. However, in part, violence onset varied because it also took time to break social bonds in ethnically more cohesive communities. Once extremists captured the state at the local level, they built small groups of supporters, drawing on their social networks. These critical masses then mobilized the wider community using ingroup policing and peer pressure.