The failure of humanity in Rwanda

On the eve of the publication of this edition of ANC TODAY, a meeting took place in Pretoria to consider a report on the progress achieved in the implementation of the Agreement signed by the Presidents of the DRC and Rwanda in Pretoria on July 30, 2002.

This Agreement covered the withdrawal of the troops of Rwanda from the DRC and the dismantling of armed rebel groups from Rwanda that had fled from Rwanda to the DRC in 1994. These were the former armed forces of Rwanda, the ex-FAR, and a militia called the Interahamwe.

The Agreement provided for the establishment of a Third Party Verification Mechanism (TPVM). At the request of the signatories, the TPVM was composed of the Secretary General of the UN, Mr Kofi Annan, and the President of South Africa, then also Chairperson of the African Union (AU).

The meeting, held on Thursday, November 27, was chaired by the current Chairperson of the AU, President Chissano of Mozambique. We attended this meeting together with Presidents Kabila and Kagame, of the DRC and Rwanda respectively, and the Special Representative of the UN Secretary General in the DRC, Ambassador William Swing.

The meeting announced in its Final Communiqué that given the progress achieved to implement the 2002 Pretoria Agreement between the DRC and Rwanda, and taking into account the positive evolution of the situation especially in the DRC, the time had come to close down the TPVM.

In its place, the governments of Rwanda and the DRC would assume the responsibility to complete the work of the TPVM. Both the AU and the UN endorsed this decision and committed themselves to sustain their political, material and logistical support for this process. Our country will continue to make its own contribution in this regard, as a member of the AU.

The progress to which the Communiqué referred included the complete withdrawal of the Rwandan troops from the DRC, which the TPVM had monitored and verified. It also reflected the fact that through the TPVM, some members of the ex-FAR and the Interahamwe had indeed returned to their country, abandoning the struggle to seize power in Rwanda through armed struggle, launching their attacks from DRC territory.

Because the task to dismantle the rebel Rwanda groups has not been completed, the Communiqué said "members of ex-FAR and Interahamwe armed groups in the eastern part of the Democratic Republic of Congo must be persuaded to depart from the territory of the DRC. These armed groups constitute a threat to peace and stability to both the DRC and Rwanda."

As we have said, these armed groups fled from Rwanda in 1994 and moved into the neighbouring DRC, the then Zaire. This was after they had inflicted an indescribable tragedy on the people of Rwanda. This was the Rwanda Genocide of 1994.

In a period of 100 days, from April 7, 1994, 20 days before our first democratic elections, between 800,000 and 1,000,000 Rwandans were slaughtered in a merciless orgy of bloodletting carried out by the FAR and the Interahamwe. They targeted the minority Tutsi section of the population, as well as those Hutus who opposed the physical liquidation of the Tutsis, whom the perpetrators of the genocide first dehumanised by categorising as "cockroaches".

It is these genocidaires that the November 27th Communiqué described as "a threat to peace and stability to both the DRC and Rwanda." Quite correctly, as reflected in their 2002 Pretoria Agreement, the governments of both the DRC and Rwanda had decided that it was vitally important that these genocidaires should never be allowed to repeat the horrendous crime they visited on the people of Rwanda in 1994.

Indeed, the earlier 1999 Lusaka Agreement to end the war in the DRC provided for the dismantling of these armed groups of genocidaires, described accurately in that Agreement as "negative forces". But real movement on this important matter actually started after the conclusion of the 2002 Pretoria Agreement between the governments of Rwanda and the DRC.

Earlier this year, as though to remind us of our continuing collective responsibility to ensure that we address the consequences of the Rwanda Genocide, a Canadian, Lt-Gen Roméo Dallaire, published an important book on the Rwanda Genocide.

General Dallaire commanded the United Nations Assistance Mission for Rwanda (UNAMIR), which was stationed in Rwanda from 1993, to help Rwanda to implement a peace agreement agreed by the then government of Rwanda and the opposing Rwanda Patriotic Front. But in the end, UNAMIR was not able to stop the 1994 Rwanda Genocide.

General Dallaire, assisted by Major Brent Beardsley, wrote his book to explain why the genocide occurred despite the presence of UN troops in Rwanda, "the peacemakers". His book is entitled "Shake Hands with the Devil: The Failure of Humanity in Rwanda", and was published this year by Random House Canada.

In the Preface, the General writes: "The following is my story of what happened in Rwanda in 1994. It's a story of betrayal, failure, naïveté, indifference, hatred, genocide, war, inhumanity and evil. Although strong relationships were built and moral, ethical and courageous behaviour was often displayed, they were overshadowed by one of the fastest, most efficient, most evident genocides in recent history. In just one hundred days over 800,000 innocent Rwandan men, women and children were brutally murdered while the developed world, impassive and apparently unperturbed, sat back and watched the unfolding apocalypse or simply changed (TV) channels.We sat back and permitted this unspeakable horror to occur. We could not find the political will nor the resources to stop it.The genocide in Rwanda was a failure of humanity that could easily happen again. I know there is a God because in Rwanda I shook hands with the devil. I have seen him, I have smelled him and I have touched him. I know the devil exists, and therefore I know there is a God."

In the Conclusion he says: "When I think about the consequences of the Rwandan genocide, I think first of all of those who died an agonising death from machete wounds inside the hundreds of sweltering churches, chapels and missions where they'd gone to seek God's protection and ended instead in the arms of Lucifer. I think of the more than 300,000 children who were killed, and of those children who became killers in a perversion of any culture's idea of childhood. Then I think of the children who survived, orphaned by the genocide and the ongoing conflict in the region - since 1994, they have been effectively abandoned by us, as we abandoned their parents in the killing fields of Rwanda. When we remember the Rwandan genocide, we also have to recognise the living hell these children inherited.

"At its heart, the Rwandan story is the story of the failure of humanity to heed a call for help from an endangered people. The international community, of which the UN is only a symbol, failed to move beyond self-interest for the sake of Rwanda. While most nations agreed that something should be done, they all had an excuse why they should not be the ones to do it. As a result, the UN was denied the political will and material means to prevent the tragedy.

"The global village is deteriorating at a rapid pace, and in the children of the world the result is rage. It is the rage I saw in the eyes of the teenage Interahamwe militiamen in Rwanda. It is the rage I sensed in the hearts of the children of Sierra Leone. It is the rage I felt in crowds of ordinary civilians in Rwanda, and it is the rage that resulted in September 11. Human beings who have no rights, no security, no future, no hope and no means to survive are a desperate group who will do desperate things to take what they believe they need and deserve.

"Several times in this book I have asked the question, 'Are we all human, or are some more human than others?' Certainly we in the developed world act in a way that suggests we believe that our lives are worth more than the lives of other citizens of the planet. An American officer felt no shame as he informed me that the lives of 800,000 Rwandans were only worth risking the lives of ten American troops; the Belgians, after losing ten soldiers, insisted that the lives of Rwandans were not worth risking one single Belgian soldier. The only conclusion I can reach is that we are in desperate need of a transfusion of humanity."

Next year, during the month of April, we will commemorate the 10th anniversary of the Rwanda Genocide and celebrate the 10th anniversary of the Liberation of South Africa. As we went to the polls on April 27th, 1994, the Rwanda Genocide had started. When we celebrated the first 100 days of democratic rule, Rwanda was immersed in unfathomable grief, mourning the death of a million people slaughtered in a period of 130 days.

General Dallaire says that "we are in desperate need of a transfusion of humanity." As we reflect on this important statement, we must admit that in April 1994 and subsequent months, we were so preoccupied with our own future that we virtually ignored the genocide in Rwanda.

We must also ponder the reality that the apartheid regime sold South African-made weapons to the then government of Rwanda, led by General Habaryimana. These were used both to commit genocide and to protect those who butchered hundreds of thousands, using machetes.

We cannot say we carry no blame for the unspeakable crime that was committed in Rwanda in 1994. Guns that our country had produced contributed to the slaughter. Our silence, as a million people died, gave additional space to the genocidaires to do their dastardly work.

General Dallaire has written that "the international community, of which the UN is only a symbol, failed to move beyond self-interest for the sake of Rwanda." We must ask the question whether this international community, which includes the UN and us, has learnt any lesson from its betrayal of the people of Rwanda.

Our own experience as we have worked to support the struggle for peace in the DRC and Burundi persuades us to conclude that many within the international community, including the UN, treat the Rwanda Genocide as a mere episode that came and went, with no consequences for how humanity should behave in future.

In our own country, we still hear voices raised that it is wrong for us to spend money to save lives on our continent, because the solution of the problems we face domestically must take precedence over the task of ensuring that genocide should never revisit the peoples of Africa. It is argued, passionately, that self-interest must determine everything we do, as self-interest drove those in our country who sold weapons to the genocidaires of Rwanda. This is an obscene and barbaric creed to which we should never subscribe. Rather, we must take strongly to heart the Conclusion that General Dallaire expressed when he wrote: "No matter how idealistic the aim sounds, this new century must become the Century of Humanity, when we as human beings rise above race, creed, colour, religion and national self-interest and put the good of humanity above the good of our own tribe - for the sake of the children and of our future."

This is what the November 27th meeting in Pretoria was about. It is for this reason that some of our senior officials have stayed more than a year in the DRC to contribute to the dismantling of the formations of the ex-FAR and the Interahamwe. It is for the same reason that we continue to work in the DRC, Burundi and elsewhere on our continent to contribute whatever we can to the struggle for peace and the defence of human life.

By the same token, we cannot stand aside as Palestinians and Israelis kill one another in a seemingly interminable conflict. Equally, we dare never abandon the path we have chosen for our own country, to build a South Africa that truly belongs to all who live in it. Neither can we relax our striving for the victory of the African Renaissance - for the sake of the children and of our future.

We must repeat after General Dallaire that we too have shaken hands with Lucifer. He was present when the apartheid system decided slowly to annihilate millions that it categorised as "surplus people", no different from the "cockroaches" who were feverishly slaughtered in Rwanda. He was present in the KwaZulu-Natal killing fields of the period spanning the late 1980s and early 1990s. He lives on in the hearts of the criminals in our country who kill for a mere cellular phone.

We have to do what we can to help transform the 21^st into a Century of Humanity, determining for ourselves what this means. Regularly, as Africans, we tell the world that our greatest challenge is poverty. Those who exercise power globally, are determined to tell us what our problems are. They tell us what to do, regardless of our daily experience. They threaten us that if we do not do as they say, they will ensure that we pay a price for our obduracy.

As General Dallaire said, and as our experience teaches us, a failure of humanity to stop another crime against humanity could easily happen again, with all humanity sitting impassive and apparently unperturbed. Now that we know what happened in Rwanda, we should never be silent again.

Ten Year Review VI

South Africa is changing in other ways too

The first ten years of democratic change in South Africa have been accompanied by significant social trends, posing challenges for government programmes and bringing into sharp relief the tasks that lie ahead.

These trends have had a critical effect on the progress and impact of transformation, and will need to be fully understood and incorporated into our plans for the future. In some senses they have made the process of social change more difficult since government programmes have had to respond to needs that have been evolving since the 1994 elections.

These major trends, identified in government's 'Towards a Ten Year Review' discussion document, include changes in the size of households, migration to urban areas, structural changes in the economy, and a dramatic increase in the economically active population. These trends are most noticeable in the 1996 and 2001 census results, as well as other data.

Between the two censuses, the population grew by about 11 percent from 40.4 million in 1996 to 44.8 million in 2001. Yet during the same period there was an increase of about 30 percent in the number of households in the country.

This disproportionately high growth in the number of households is accompanied by a reduction in the average number of people per household. While this may point to progress in relieving pressures of 'crowding' in households, it also poses major challenges for service delivery.

The more households there are, the more houses need to be built. Other services, like water, sanitation and electricity, similarly need to be supplied to a greater number of points. There is also a greater demand for land for housing. This is particularly so in provinces like Gauteng, where the average household size is lower, at 3.1 persons, than the national average of 3.8. Provinces like the Eastern Cape, Limpopo and KwaZulu Natal are not as badly affected, with an average of 4.2 people per household - higher than the national average, but still lower than the 1996 average.

The government report cites a number of reasons for the drop in household size, including "a decline in fertility rates and family size, the effect of new government policy on how citizens try to access services, encouraging 'unbundling', as well as freedom and improvement in quality of life, resulting in fewer extended families".

There was also disproportionately high growth in the economically active labour force, which grew at about four percent a year compared to the population growth rate of only two percent. This meant that while around 1,6 million net new jobs were created between 1995 and 2002, the number of unemployed people grew by around 2,4 million people. The number of jobs being created were simply not nearly enough to satisfy the growth in demand for jobs.

"This suggests that new job seekers were not only young adults reaching the job market, but were older adults who had not previously considered themselves part of the labour market," the document notes. It says evidence from qualitative case studies indicates that many of these are African women, and, of these, many are recent migrants from rural areas.

Since unemployment is probably the greatest challenge facing the country today, the implications of this trend need to be understood and accounted for in the design and implementation of social policies. It is also important to counter the simplistic view of the country's unemployment problem that is loudly propagated by many in opposition parties.

Another of the major social trends identified - the changing structure of the economy - also has important implications for how the country tackles unemployment.

While all sectors of the economy showed increased employment from 1995 to 2002, there was a distinct shift of employment away from public services, construction, mining and quarrying towards internal trade and finance, real estate and business service sectors. This suggests long-run prospects for expansion lie in the services sectors.

This means that economic sectors which are likely to grow in the future are those which require higher levels of skills. If unemployment is to be tackled, the job seekers need to be more skilled than at a time when jobs were being created in sectors with lower skills requirements.

The report concludes that one of the major consequences of the change in the structure of the economy is that 'two economies' persist in one country. The first economy is advanced, based on skilled labour and globally competitive. The second economy is mainly informal, unskilled and marginalised.

"Despite the impressive gains made in the first economy, the benefits of growth have yet to reach the second economy, and with the enormity of the challenges arising from the social transition, the second economy risks falling further behind if there is no decisive government intervention," the report says.

The fourth social trend identified, increased migration to urban areas, poses several challenges to social delivery and planning. Census data shows that in major metropolitan areas, and in some of the regional centres and small towns, more than one fifth of the population are new migrants. This has seen a major movement of people to the major urban centres of Gauteng and the Western Cape away from the rural areas of the Northern Cape, Eastern Cape and Limpopo - resulting in the emergence of new mainly informal settlements around major towns and cities.

The report notes that this has implications not only for resources allocations, but also the approach to spatial development. It is also affecting social relations. Connections to authority structures are under pressure and the ability of people to interact on a collective basis has been weakened.

"In rural areas, social capabilities are undermined by the loss of able-bodied and relatively skilled people, and existing social networks are put under pressure by poverty and lack of income. In urban areas. this migration risks overwhelming service delivery and employment opportunities."

When combined, these social trends adversely affect social cohesion and community cohesion, undermining the development potential of some areas and giving rise to increased criminality in others. These problems are then reflected in lower levels of social delivery and increasing problems in governance.

But, the report notes, despite these economic and social changes, government has made significant progress towards addressing their negative effects. The size, pace and direction of this social change has made the process of transformation more challenging. But it has not diminished the determination of the ANC-led government to succeed.

More Information:

• Towards a Ten Year Review, October 2003

North and South

A global village of mutual respect, peace and prosperity

The expansion of human knowledge, and scientific and technological advances, have created a potential to eradicate human suffering, poverty, disease, and ignorance. Yet even as the capacity of humankind has increased, so too has there been an increase in inequality within and between countries.

As Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz and the UN Human Development Reports annually reveal, in the decade of globalisation poverty has increased. In the 1990s, 54 developing countries suffered a decline in income. Fifteen percent of the world's population still suffers from chronic hunger. Trends in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa show that the Millennium Development goal of halving this number by 2015 will not be met. Yet elsewhere farmers are paid to let land lie fallow, and food is stockpiled or even destroyed to maintain high price levels.

The great potential of globalisation has not been realised because the rich and powerful countries and persons have managed the process for their benefit, and the international financial and economic institutions and agenda are structured to exclude the poor and developing countries.

Yet the very process of globalisation has resulted in a situation in which developed countries cannot remain immune from the consequences of underdevelopment and instability elsewhere. At a meeting of the World Economic Forum, Mozambique's President Chissano warned: "Your children will inherit the diseases we succumb to today".

In apartheid South Africa, walls, guard dogs, barricades, roadblocks and a proliferation of private arsenals served to imprison rather than protect the privileged. For the Portuguese people decolonisation was a first and necessary step for stability and economic expansion.

In tragic circumstances, and at great cost, the United States learned that it could no longer depend on oceans to protect its homeland. It has yet to draw the conclusion that true protection for its people will not come from the exercise of more, and unilateral, force, but will only follow when we all deal with the causes and not only the symptoms of terrorism.

The most important consequence of globalisation is not only that we are inter-connected, but that we are a global community that is inter-dependent.

No economy can grow in a vacuum. The quest for wealth and prosperity does not allow for isolation. Without expanding markets even the most advanced production systems would stagnate and collapse. Notwithstanding the economic stability achieved in my own country, we are only too conscious of the fact that economic and social upheavals in other countries and continents will undo our gains. Therefore it is in our own interest to engage in initiatives that will allow for progress, development and growth throughout Africa.

In the post-war years the deliberate transfer of resources to war-ravaged economies succeeded in developing and spreading prosperity among the peoples of the North. Simultaneously the centuries old reverse transfer continued from colonial countries whose economies had been shaped to meet the requirements of the imperial powers, and later by the political imperatives of the cold war. The consequences of this are still evident today, as countries borrow to service debt, struggle to develop and diversify their economies and meet the basic needs of their people in the face of unfavourable trade regimes, denial of market access, unaffordable drugs and medicines etc.

Too often they only receive prescriptions requiring them to take steps to make themselves attractive in the market place that determines investment. But it is not a prescription that is applied to the developed countries.

The present trajectory of uneven development and growing disparity between and within countries, is building long term instability, which can benefit no country, no continent and no people.

Africa must and does accept responsibility for its current condition. To the legacy of colonialism must be added mismanagement, self-enrichment, corruption, acceptance of bad advice and application of incorrect policies. Cold war rivalries, led to the support, protection, bankrolling, and sustaining in office of undemocratic and corrupt leaders. The result has been weak states, poor economic growth and an increasing scarcity of human and financial resources and capacity to overcome the damage.

But Africa has a new generation of leaders and a growing number of governments which derive their legitimacy from democratic constitutions and regular elections. The Treaty of the African Union provides for African intervention to support democratic governance.

The Human Development Report 2003 shows there has also been some improvement during the 1990s. Cape Verde, Mauritius, Mozambique and Uganda averaged per capita income growth of more than 3 percent a year. Sub-Saharan Africa achieved some of the world's sharpest reductions in hunger. Ghana reduced its hunger rate from 35 to 12 percent, and Mozambique from 69 to 55 percent. Benin increased its primary school enrolment rate from 49 to 70 percent. In Mali and Senegal enrolment rates increased by over 15 percent.

In primary and secondary education Mauritania increased the ratio of girls to boys from 67 to 93 percent between 1990 and 1996. Mali and Nepal narrowed their gaps by more than 10 percent. Despite HIV/AIDS, there were some improvements in child survival in Sub-Saharan Africa. Guinea reduced child mortality by 7 percent and Malawi and Niger by over 5 percent. Uganda reduced HIV/AIDS infection for eight consecutive years and Zambia may become the second country in the region to reverse the spread of HIV/AIDS.

Cote d'Ivoire and Mali increased the proportion of people with access to safe water by over 10 percent. In Ghana and Senegal the number of people with access to improved sanitation increased by 10 percent.

Both the African Union and the New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD) are premised on the human security paradigm which recognises the link between development democracy, stability, conflict resolution, peace making and sustainable peace and security and women. The creation of African institutions is currently being undertaken in the context of creating the proper conditions for political stability and sustainable socio-economic development. The African Union is unique among international organisations in deciding that at least 50 percent of its decision-making structures are women.

Next year, Africa will have an institution - the Pan African Parliament - charged with the task of mobilising the people of the continent in deepening democracy, accountability and transparency and inculcating a culture of human rights. The challenge it faces are formidable, as it will need to operate under the imperative that at the same time it will need to enhance cohesion and build unity.

The Pan African Parliament will need to build awareness of the economic, cultural, social and linguistic diversity of our peoples, and as a legislative body acquire knowledge of the different traditional and colonial legal systems on which each country's national jurisprudence has been based.

Greater engagement between international parliamentary bodies and institutions need to ensure that issues of mutual global interest are given due consideration. Through this we will ensure that our global village is a village that is characterised by mutual respect, peace and prosperity.

*** Frene Ginwala is an ANC National Executive Committee member. This is an edited version of a speech made in acceptance of the 'North South Award' presented in Portugal on 24 November.

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