Analysing the Reasons of the Rwanda Crisis and the ‘Postcolonial Syndrome’

Abstract

The investigation focuses on the Rwanda crisis and begins with a brief introduction before looking into the historical circumstances preceding the 1994 genocide. It highlights the actual causes of the genocide and the Belgian colonisers’ policies (and, to a lesser extent, the policies of the German colonisers before them), which amplified the differences between the Hutu and the Tutsi. The article outlines how Rwanda became a postcolonial state, where old rivalries turned violent and resulted in massacres. Important factors were also the poor financial state of the country and the fact that Rwanda was a densely populated country, which should be seen in connection with Europe's "divide and rule" policy. Rwanda suffered as a postcolonial state because of the various parties' conflicting views on power sharing, as well as the International Community's support for an agreement that mostly benefited the minority (the Tutsi). Even if the Arusha Accords were designed to "repair" the circumstances of an already failing post-colonial experiment, the pressure used by Western circles to accept them undermined the power of the majority (Hutu) by causing additional damages rather than eliminating the previously existing ones.

Keywords

• rwanda
• hutu
• tutsi
• genocide
• massacre
• postcolonialism