Rwanda lessons mustn’t be ignored

Tomorrow marks the 30th anniversary of the event which triggered one of the worst modern African genocides… and which still has echoes and repercussions to this day. On 6 April, 1994, an executive jet carrying Rwandan president Juvenal Habyarimana was shot down as it approached Kigali airport. Also on board the plane was Burundi president Cyprien Ntaryamira. Both men were Hutus and their deaths set off a terrible 100-day long bloodletting in which between 400 000 and 800 000 members of the Tutsi ethnic group were slaughtered by Hutu extremists.

The Hutu-led Rwandan army was eventually defeated by the Rwanda Patriotic Front led by Paul Kagame – and tens of thousands of Hutus died, with more fleeing into neighbouring Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).

Rwanda, under the autocratic leadership of Kagame, who took over as president in 2000, has made a remarkable journey back from the horror of the genocide. It has one of the fastest-growing economies in Africa and there is social progress and peace… although little dissent is tolerated by Kagame.

The lessons of Rwanda are manifold. The genocide may have been prevented, or lessened, had Western countries not sat on their hands, in a similar way to what is happening in Gaza now.

Killing lust among Hutu extremists was fuelled by tribalism and by Tutsis being referred to scathingly as “cockroaches”. Words, as this violence showed, do have the power to spark rages which cause immense damage. That is something which should be taken to heart by demagogues or populists in our own country.

Rwanda’s issues – especially with its neighbours in the DRC – affect us to this day, as the Kigali-backed M23 rebels in the DRC threaten our own, South African, troops deployed there.

So, in ways both positive and negative, Rwanda can not be ignored. Nor should it ever be.