Honourable Chair of Panel 2, Dr Lloyd Axworthy,
UN Representatives,
Country Delegation Heads,
Your Excellencies,
Eminent Members of the Panel,
Colleagues,

 
It is an honour to have been invited here today to share with you my views, from an African and civil society perspective, on the responsibility to prevent genocide. This is a subject of particular importance to the African continent given our experiences of genocide in the 20th Century, and the ineffectiveness of both regional and international bodies to prevent or stem the extermination of entire groups and generations of people. One of the fundamental reasons behind the transformation of the Organisation of African Unity to the new African Union, was the need to provide the African continental body with the mandate to prevent and intervene in cases of genocide, crimes against humanity, and gross abuses of human rights.

As Africans we have experienced genocide, initially as a consequence of colonialism, and the desire to eradicate indigenous populations in order to confiscate land and resources. I should specify at the outset, that by the term ‘genocide’ I am referring to the “deliberate attempt to exterminate a nation or race of people.” As students of history, we know that genocide was not a tragedy which began with colonisation, but is an impulse as old as the organisation of power. What has changed throughout the centuries is the technology with which genocide is implemented, as well as how it is organised, and how the targets are defined. My discussion today will centre on African experiences of genocide, and the lessons that can be drawn from them in order to respond more effectively in terms of prevention. As the Chairperson of a non-governmental organisation in South Africa, the Independent Electoral Commission, I would also like to pay particular attention to the role of civil society in preventing genocide, and how this role can be strengthened in the future.

A caveat however is appropriate here. There are obvious limitations to speaking on “genocide in Africa” because Africa is an extremely large and diverse continent of 54 countries. Despite the many commonalities between African countries there are clear diversities of history, traditions and the operations of civil societies in the continent. While there is diversity between the African communities themselves there are also remarkable differences between these and their Western equivalents. The idea of non-governmental organisations as understood in the West does not manifest itself in exactly the same way in African communities. Whereas the NGOs in the West may share same traditions and modus operandi their African counterparts have own rules and regulations. The point I am making is that, due to diversity of African societies it is almost impossible to generalise or speak on behalf of Africa.

GENOCIDE IN AFRICA
– THE COLONIAL EXPERIENCE
While I intend to look at the genocide in Rwanda as a case study, this was not the only genocide in Africa, it was only the most recent. Ninety years before the genocide in Rwanda, there was another major genocide in what is current day Namibia. The genocide in both Rwanda and Namibia stand as two of Africa’s greatest tragedies of the 20th century. But genocide must be thought through within the logic of colonialism. The horror of colonialism led to two types of genocidal impulses, the first being that of genocide of indigenous people by settlers, and the other being the indigenous peoples’ impulse to eliminate settlers. The latter was very much a case of violence by yesterday’s victims, or a situation of victims-turned-perpetrators. In African colonial history, the more settled a colony became, the greater the violence that was exacted on the indigenous population in a race for land and resources.As was the case with apartheid South Africa.
The first genocide of the 20th century in Africa was the German annihilation of over 80% of the Herero population in German South West Africa in 1904. The Herero had resisted attempts to appropriate land and cattle, and the colonial army had responded by exterminating as many of the Herero as possible. The commander of the colony at the time, General Theodore Leutwein, had said, “I believe the nation, as such, should be annihilated, or expelled.” Many Herero, having been denied access to waterholes, were forced on a long march to death into the desert of Botswana. This is reminiscent of the long death march of the Jewish people at the end of the Second World War.

THE CAUSES OF GENOCIDE
1. Racism
The intent to perpetrate genocide was unequivocal, and unfortunately for Africans, Leutwein was a veteran of the bloody suppression of resistance to German occupation in Rwanda, Burundi, and Tanzania. It is worth sharing with you another of his quotes as it places in context the sentiments of some colonialists at the time. He said, “I destroy African tribes with blood. Only following this cleansing can something new emerge.” I am emphasising these early experiences here as there is a link that connects the genocide of the Herero in what is current day Namibia, to the Nazi holocaust, as well as to the Rwandan genocide. The link is ‘race branding,’ whereby it became possible not only to set a group apart as an enemy, but also to exterminate it with an easy conscience.

What made the genocide in Rwanda distinct
While these genocides can be linked, the particular difference that distinguishes them is the nature of how they have been implemented, not the impulses that causes them.

1) The method of killing: The technology of the German holocaust allowed a few to kill many, and the killing was carried out from a distance in concentration camps, beyond national borders in industrial killing camps. In Rwanda, however, the killing was with machetes, which would sometimes take several killers to every victim. This meant that the killing was perpetrated by hundreds of thousands – neighbours killing neighbours.

2) The ‘social project’: While the German population participated in the holocaust indirectly, in Rwanda the killers existed in every locality as part of what some have referred to as a ‘mass social project.’ It is what some academics have called the ‘popularity’ of the genocide in Rwanda that is so disturbing. With genocide translated into a social project as opposed to merely a state project, the population became criminalized.

3) The involvement of all sectors of society: A disproportionate number of the educated, political elite, civic leaders such as doctors, nurses, judges, mothers, wives and even human rights activists played a leading role in the genocide. Churches, hospitals and schools were turned into slaughter houses. The very civil society organisations of Rwanda that were supposed to serve as the conscience of the nation became part of the killing machine.

2. Citizenship
What is important to highlight here is that the genocide in Rwanda was carried out by those who considered themselves as ‘natives’, and it was their intent to get rid of the ‘other’ or the ‘foreigner’, and this is what drove the racial cleansing of the Tutsi. The Tutsi were widely regarded more as settlers than legitimate Rwandan citizens. Herein lies the problem that was at the heart of the Rwandan genocide, and remains a problem in many other African countries, that threatens to one day result in further massacres or genocide – the question of citizenship.

The major lesson for us today is the failure in Rwanda to transcend these identities at the heart of the crisis of citizenship in post-colonial Africa. The notion of a Tutsi being associated with power and privilege was largely a colonial Belgian construction. One of the major failures of the 1959 Rwandan revolution was the inability to transform ‘Hutu’ and ‘Tutsi’ as political identities generated by colonial power. The revolution actually built on and reinforced existing identities, which resulted in a political tragedy - the quest for revenge. Again, it was the issue of citizenship that lead the Rwandan Patriotic Front to cross over into Rwanda in 1990, as just a month before the state had decided to revert to ancestry as a requirement for citizenship – not 10 years of residence.

The controversy around citizenship is an issue that has the potential to continue to destabilise a number of areas in the African context, with the possibility of future genocide rearing its ugly head. Currently the issue of citizenship is highly emotive in Cote d’Ivoire, as well as in the Eastern DRC where the Banyamulenge still struggle to have their citizenship rights acknowledged. This is an issue that as Africans we will have to address within the new African Union if we are to avert future genocide from occurring.

3. Resources
Resources, the scarcity and uneven distribution thereof, have also been one of the major contributors to violence and genocide. The ineradicable inequality between nations and people produced a world in which the stronger devours the weaker. The stronger, almost without exception, have always known how to bend every rule, by force if it need be, so that the profit is theirs. Greed and lust for power have either disturbed or prevented the healthy growth of human society. If in the course of history people did not fall into competition over resources, if egoism and greed did not interfere, then the development of human society would always follow its course peacefully.

This is not because the stronger class is more evil at heart than the weaker. Instead the human basic need for survival, translated in economic terms, has been the more fundamental reason for the scramble, even destruction of life, over resources.

 

Regrettably, this human need produced a deep-seated social need which made the possession of resources the highest good, at whatever price. The problem began when these needs overshadowed ethical and moral considerations resulting in the total disregard of human collegiality and the sanctity of life. However, we need to learn to live life in community, i.e. exercise compassion and human dignity towards the other. While this calls for a communal approach it ultimately requires an integral approach to resources where economics and human rights can never be divorced.

LESSONS FROM THE INTERNATIONAL RESPONSE
It is important to carefully examine the lessons of the international response to violence in Rwanda, and the lack of co-ordination with local and international NGOs, if we are to create a template for what needs to be improved if such a tragedy unfolds again.We have spent much of the past half century saying ‘never again’ to genocide, but have failed to put in place the necessary measures to ensure we can take the requisite preventative measures.

We are informed that in 1994 enough information existed and was known to policy makers that genocide in Rwanda was imminent. For a number of reasons this information was not acted upon. Suggested explanations have been: the lack of political will; UN agencies that tended to recommend what the UN Security Council would approve and not what the situation on the ground called for; and misrepresentation of the situation in Rwanda by the media.

While the world vacillated, African nations repeatedly stated their willingness to intervene, but they lacked the resources to do so. African states in the immediate region had the most to lose, in terms of the spill over of instability and the mass influx of refugees. But the interest of African states in intervening also reflected the notion that they had a special responsibility for solving their own conflicts. Except for military observers, it was only the African battalion in UNAMIR 1 that stayed the course during the crisis.

Lessons learnt
There is a strong message here. Firstly, that Africa cannot only rely on countries outside of the continent to stem its bloodshed. There is a need for Africa to be self reliant, and develop structures of our own to intervene in cases of genocide or crimes against humanity. As I already mentioned, this is one of the new mandates of the AU, and the Peace and Security Council will bear the responsibility of operationalizing peacekeeping, peacemaking missions, with the additional advantage of a stand by force to be established. We have already accepted our responsibility to prevent genocide on the continent, and we are taking all necessary steps to mobilise our resources and skills to do so.

Secondly, even in our own regional organisation, we can learn from the weaknesses of the international systems in terms of their capacity to collect and analyse information. For instance, the tendency of agencies tasked with sharing information on human disasters is confine themselves to the anticipation of the humanitarian consequences of a crisis rather than the development of a crisis. With Rwanda, the monitoring process was sporadic with no follow through reports. The abuses were not put into a political context necessary for understanding the nature and evolution of conflict, and information was never translated into strategic options.

CONCLUSION
By way of concluding this brief presentation I would like to make a few proposals as a way forward:

Recommendations
• Strengthen regional and international organisations to not only detect the early warnings signs leading to genocide, but capacitate them to take effective preventive measures. The failure of organisations to intervene effectively in the Rwandan genocide suggests there is a long way to go in terms of capacity building.
• Fit human rights monitoring within a larger information and analytic structure that can process information in terms of complex social conflict, and communicate analysis to policy planning levels.
• The AU and the UN need to build on area expertise and develop a global network of specialists in state agencies, academic institutions, and rights monitoring groups that are electronically linked to provide information an analysis.
• The AU urgently needs to operationalise plans for a continental standby force that has the ability to intervene in a timely manner to prevent genocide, gross human rights abuses, and crimes against humanity.
• Civil society needs to be empowered. Our NGOs must become our conscience, our source of information, and a link to policy making. The research capacity of NGOs on the continent needs to be strengthened, and much more support provided by governments for their work, but maintain their independence so that they remain pressure groups.
• The role of women in peace-building activities should be promoted and enhanced.Women can play a key role in efforts to avert genocide, given that they have, in many cases, borne the brunt of the effects of genocide by having to rebuild their societies when a disproportionate number of men have been killed. Thus a collective, communal and consultative approach is necessary which, while contributing to the peace process is also honouring the motherhood of African women.
• It is important that the countries in Africa begin to look to their own indigenous systems and institutions that have always been in place to prevent genocide and manage reconciliation, peace and cleansing. These mechanisms Africa always had and now needs to retrieve them in her quest to drink from her own wells.