RWANDA: HOW THE POST-INDEPENDENCE REGIMES FROM 1962 TO 1994 WERE NEO-COLONIAL, RACIST AND GENOCIDAL

Since the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi, an opposition has formed among Rwanda specialists, with on one side intentionalists or instrumentalists who consider anti-Tutsi racism as the root cause of cyclical political violence and genocide, and functionalists on the other, who reject indoctrination and identity radicalization as the main cause of the genocide, affirming on the contrary that without the armed attack of the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), the genocide would not have taken place.

Without making an exclusive choice between the two currents of interpretation, the article shows that there is a deep ideological unity and perfect continuity between the regimes of Kayibanda (1962-1973), Habyarimana (1973-1994) and Sindikubwabo (1994), with a triple characteristic: neo-colonial, racist and genocidal. Since these three regimes openly claimed to be the heirs of the ‘1959 revolution’ and anxious to defend and safeguard its achievements, the reflection focuses on the said revolution by showing in two sequences that it was based on a false postulate of ‘Tutsi oppression against the Bahutu’ on one hand, and that it gave rise to neo-colonial, racist and genocidal regimes on the other.