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 21st 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.
