African media ‘failed Rwanda Tutsis’
The scale of the genocide of Rwanda’s Tutsi tribe in 1994 could have been significantly reduced had the media paid more attention to the atrocities that were unfolding in Kigali.
This is the assertion of a publisher, editor and author who told an international conference on the 30th commemoration of the Rwandan genocide (Kwibuka 30) that global and African media had failed to timeously bring world attention to the genocide.
Almost a million members of the Tutsi tribe were buried in mass graves by the Hutu militia between April and July 1994, during the Rwanda civil war.
Today the government of Rwanda, led by President Paul Kagame, is hosting the 30th commemoration of the genocide at an event in Kigali to be attended by current and former heads of state from across the continent and the US.
SA is due to be represented by President Cyril Ramaphosa with former president Thabo Mbeki in attendance along with former US president Bill Clinton.
Ramaphosa arrived in Kigali last night, where he immediately held a bilateral meeting with Kagame.
It’s understood the two leaders, among others,
discussed frosty relations between the two countries.
At the heart of the strained relations is South Africa’s decision to deploy its troops to the East of the Democratic Republic of Congo as part of the SADC peace building mission.
Kagame’s government views Pretoria’s boost of the SADC mission as a snub against it and support for the DRC.
Rwanda is seen as pro the M23 who are currently embroiled in a violent conflict with the DRC army.
The Kagame administration is also not happy that Ramaphosa’s government requires the Rwandans to apply for a visa before travelling to SA, whereas South Africans receive a free 30-day visa upon arrival in Kigali, without prior application.
Dele Olojede, a former SA correspondent of the New York-based Newsday newspaper, argued on Friday that the world’s superpowers could have reacted differently to the tragic events had the media, African in particular, paid attention much earlier.
Olojede said it was regrettable that in
1994 the media chose to shine the political light on the story of SA going to its first democratic elections, while paying little attention to what would turn out to be one of the greatest human tragedies in history.
The genocide against the Tutsi began on April 7 1994 in Kigali while SA was preparing to go to the polls 20 days later.
Olojede at the time was a Johannesburgbased correspondent of Newsday and travelled to Kigali to cover the genocide only as an aside to Nelson Mandela’s inauguration on May 10.
“That was clearly a story of a happy ending, we wanted that story,” he told the conference.
“So to me, I think, in looking back 30 years, that was probably the decisive factor.
“If one had covered, insistently the beginnings of the genocide, we might have trapped the world powers, especially the US, into taking action much earlier rather than wait until nearly a million people had been killed.
“So because of that experience, I have never since been able to stay away from Rwanda,” said Olejede.
Olojede became the first African journalist to win the prestigious Pulitzer prize, in 2005, after publishing a series of articles chronicling the aftermath of the genocide, 10 years later.
Dimitrie Sissi Mukanyiligira is one of the survivors of the mass killing. She was only 22 in 1994 during the genocide, in which she lost more than 208 immediate and extended family members.
Mukanyiligira, who now works at the World Bank office in Kigali, tells a chilling story of how she survived.
“I changed hiding places three times when it started,” she said. “I was hiding in the bushes in the first four days. After that I moved to the main hospital in Kigali where I stayed for a month. Then I was evacuated to a church in town.
“By chance I was not on their [Hutus’] list. The genocide was very well prepared so when you were not on the list, you had a chance.
“They went by a list first, then by appearance. If you looked like a Tutsi, they killed you.”
Olojede has lauded Kagame’s government for uniting the Hutus and Tutsis and rallying them behind his vision of rebuilding the country.
He said that is one of the lessons African countries such as SA can learn from the story of Rwanda — you need all sides in your national rebuilding efforts.
Turning to those criticising Kagame’s leadership style as authoritarian, Olojede said dogma did not matter at times.
“The systems of government are just an instrument we use to get to the destination, which is the flourishing of all lives.
“Let’s not be dogmatic about ‘I have democracy, you are authoritarian, you are this and that’. Whatever works is what I am coming to now as I move deep into my 60s. I now feel that one needs to be practical in that whatever delivers the public good is what we should [support].”