Citation
Development Ideology, the Peasantry and Genocide:
Rwanda represented in Habyarimana’s speeches
by
Philip Verwimp
“Some societies have, in the past, opposed manual and intellectual labor with the
latter giving in general more prestige to its performer. Such a concept not only
seems outdated but also unacceptable because it is not realistic. In fact, manual
labor, especially agricultural labor is the basis of our economy. We want to repeat
that agriculture will stay the essential base of our economic system for the years to
come.
In order to attract the attention of the Rwandan population for this reality, We have
named the year 1974 the national year for agriculture and manual labor. We take
this opportunity to thank and to encourage everyone who understood Our attitude
and who supported our action by practicing one day of manual labor themselves
every week.
Remember that this is the way we want to fight this form of intellectual bourgeoisie
and give all kinds of physical labor its value back . And we think that in all
programs, the brightest, must be the example for their countrymen. Action is thus
called for. “
Message of the Head of State, Major-General Juvenal Habyarimana, May 1, 1974.
‘Umurimo ni uguhinga, ibindi ni amahirwe‘
(“Our job is to cultivate, all the rest is good luck” -- popular Rwandan expression )
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1. INTRODUCTION
Two of the most intriguing books written on the genocide in Rwanda are Allison
DesForges’ Leave None to Tell the Story (1999) and Peter Uvin’s Aiding Violence : the
development enterprise in Rwanda (1998). The first book offers a very detailed and very
rich account of the implementation of genocidal policies in Rwanda from 1990 to 1994. It
is the best book on the genocide available to the world community. The main thesis of the
author is that the political elite in Rwanda chose genocide as a political strategy to remain
in power. The second book is a well-researched analysis of the impact of the development
business in Rwanda. It is a harsh critique of the way the Rwandan state, the NGO’s and the
international donor community organized development projects in Rwanda before the
genocide. The main thesis of P. Uvin is that the developmental process in Rwanda
humiliated, frustrated and infantilized the Rwandan peasant. He offers interesting insights
and reflections on the relationship between this developmental process and participation in
the genocide by the peasants.
The arguments that I will develop in this paper do not question the analysis of the above
mentioned authors, but focus on a neglected characteristic of the genocide, namely the
underlying peasant ideology. Desforges stresses the intentions of the political elite but does
not talk (or not much) about the economic conditions of the country. These conditions are
emphasized by Uvin, but he does not talk (or not much) about the intentions of the political
elite. This study of the regime’s peasant ideology brings together the politics and
economics of the regime and in this way touches the core of the Habyarimana regime.
In this paper, I take a closer look at the ideology of the Habyarimana regime (1973-1994)
as it is represented in his speeches. All speeches by and interviews with Habyarimana were
published during his reign by his office and the Office of Information of Rwanda
(ORINFOR).
These speeches are the primary source of information regarding
Habyarimana’s political thought. His speeches from the years 1973, 1974, 1979, 1980,
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The author owes many thanks to Ben Kiernan for giving the initial impetus to research the relationship
between the regime’s ideology and the peasantry in Rwanda. I am also grateful to Thavro Phim, Toni
Samantha Phim, Niti Pawakapan, Puangthong Rungswasdisab, Laurent Nkusi, Andy Storey, John
McKinnon and Ben Kiernan from providing insightful comments. I owe many thanks to Camille Riley
for editing and correcting a draft version of the paper. This research is supported by the Fund for
Scientific Research (Flanders, Belgium) and the Belgian American Educational Foundation. All
responsibility remains with the author.
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1981, 1982, 1986, 1987 and 1988 were analyzed to determine Habyarimana’s ideology.
The focus is on the speeches he gave on the many occasions of celebration in Rwanda.
These speeches, contrary to those he made abroad, are directed at the Rwandan population
and, as such, reveal the way the dictator saw his country, its population and his own task as
leader. These speeches should not be considered mere rhetoric. I will show that
Habyarimana actually implemented the policies that he advocated in his speeches. Hiding
his real intentions, he gave a friendly and nice explanation of his policies in his speeches. I
want to show that his speeches provide the answer to the question: where did the
genocidal strategy come from?
Did Habyarimana write his speeches all by himself ? This question remains open, but he
probably did not. According to my informants, at least three people helped him: Ferdinand
Nahimana, professor of history and leading intellectual of the regime; Jeanne Charles, a
Swiss professor and consultant to the president; and C. Mfusi, a Rwandan journalist who
later became a critic of the regime.
I focus my analysis of the ideology of Habyarimana on the politics and economics of his
regime. I want to show that his ideology served as a legitimation for the policies he
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advocated and especially for his personal hold onto power.
The following conclusion, which can serve as a hypothesis for future research, will be
reached at the end of this study: Habyarimana wanted Rwanda to be an agricultural
society. He glorified the peasantry and pictured himself as a peasant. In his ideology of
rural romanticism, only the Hutu were the real peasants of Rwanda; the Tutsi were the
feudal class closely associated with colonialist occupation. According to this Hutu
ideology, the Tutsi refused to till the land and were considered petty bourgeois. When
dictatorial political power is legitimized with a peasant ideology, genocide becomes a
political option (and indeed almost a necessity) because a peasant society does not tolerate
the existence of non-peasants, in the same way as a communist society does not tolerate
the existence of a capitalist class. The latter group is labeled “enemies of the revolution”.
The particular combination of peasant ideology and racism is also found in other genocidal
regimes as the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia and the Nazis in Germany. When only one
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I was unable to locate the speeches for the other years of his reign. The pages used in the footnotes of
the sections where I cite from Habyarimana’s speech, refer to the pages in the publications by
ORINFOR.
In my dissertation, I will develop a theoretical political economy framework to study Habyarimana’s
dictatorship and its ideology.
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particular group of people has the right to exist, namely, that group defined as ‘the real
peasants’, all other groups are targeted for extermination.
I argue that the Habyarimana regime annihilated the Tutsi minority because the Tutsis
were not considered real peasants. This annihilation resulted from the revolutionary Hutu
ideology which pictured the Hutu peasantry as a subordinated and exploited class that has
to rise against its Tutsi masters (and indeed against all Tutsi in general) to attain liberation.
When revolutionary leaders espouse a mono-ethnic peasant ideology to legitimize their
power and want to hold on power at all cost, genocide becomes their ultimate strategy.
Most scholars writing about the Rwandan genocide are convinced that the plan to commit
genocide was developed in the period between November 1991 and August 1992.
Although it is not easy to highlight dates on which specific decisions were made, numerous
sources reveal evidence of the importance of this period. One example is a document
transmitted to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs by the Belgian Ambassador in Rwanda in
March 1992 that refers to
“a secret military staff charged with the extermination of the Tutsi of Rwanda in
order to solve forever, in their way, the ethnic problem in Rwanda and to destroy the
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domestic Hutu opposition “.
I agree on the importance of the civil war and the 1991-1992 period for the development of
the genocidal plan, but the research I present in this paper shows that the civil war was not
the cause of the genocidal plan. The civil war offered merely the pretext, the occasion to
execute the final solution. War allows a regime to hide preparations for mass murder from
the media, from its own population, and from a political opposition. And, very important,
war allows the spreading of a message of ethnic hatred among the population. In a context
of war, a regime can blame the other army for the massacres, as Habyarimana did in
Rwanda.
In dealing with the UN, the donor countries and the internal opposition Habyarimana
showed his strategic skills. However, strategic behavior as such is not enough to explain
the genocide. The question arises where did the genocidal strategy come from. It cannot be
that political leaders, even dictators, choose these far-reaching strategies out of the blue.
We have to find out why, from the options the regime leaders had, they chose genocide.
This paper is a search for the roots of a government policy that planned and succeeded,
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Belgian Senate, Report of Rwanda Commission of Inquiry, December 6, 1997, pp. 493-494.
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over 100 days, in killing three-quarters of its minority population--about 800,000 people.
It will be shown that Habyarimana’s genocidal policy in the 1990-1994 period was an
extreme implementation of policies that already existed in the 1973-1990 period.
The structure of the paper is as follows. Part 2 below is a brief discussion on development
statistics to argue that scholars have misjudged the developmental realizations of the
Habyarimana regime. This section alone does not constitute the argument that I want to
make in this paper, but is a follow-up of Uvin’s book. The question whether or not
Habyarimana developed his country depends to a large extent on the definition of
development one is using. However, we should always keep in mind that Adolf Hitler also
developed his country in the 1930s; the population was proud of the economic
achievements of the Nazis. In order to understand the actions of dictatorial regimes, one
should not only look at their ‘developmental ‘ outcomes, but also at the intentions of the
regime. What particular kind of development did they want to achieve for their country? In
order to discover the intentions of the regime, ‘development’ in Rwanda is studied as an
ideology with particular emphasis on agriculture and on the restrictions of movement
imposed by the regime. That is the content of Part 3, where the central features of
Habyarimana’s ideology are discussed. In Part 4, I turn to some of the specific policies of
the regime in order to show how the so-called peasant-friendly rhetoric was actually
translated into anti-peasant policies. Demographic policy, forced labor policy, land policy
and youth policy are discussed. Part 5 points out that the main constraints of the Rwandan
economy are man-made. In Part 6, I relate the regime’s development and peasant ideology
to the civil war and the implementation of genocide as a ‘final solution’. Part 7 concludes
the argument.
2. DEVELOPMENT AS AN OFFICIAL GOAL AND GENERAL OBJECTIVE
In most of his speeches, Habyarimana focuses on the Rwandan economy. Habyarimana
provides little or no analysis of the condition of the economy in his speeches, but, rather,
unfolds his economic vision :
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“It is our duty and the supreme interest of our Nation, to overcome, once and for
all, unfounded hesitations and to engage ourselves in political action for
national development that translates our own will, our own genius, our own
sense of responsibility, our own sense of determination to get out of socio5
economic and mental underdevelopment.”
To the Rwandan population and to the outside world, Habyarimana presented himself as a
development-oriented leader. This in large part explains his initial popularity in the
country and his long lasting popularity in the international donor community. Economists
have long judged the level of development of a country by one single standard, namely the
gross domestic product (GDP or GNP) per capita. This is the value of all products and
services produced in a country in one year. Using this criterion, the evolution of the
Rwandan economy is as follows
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Table 1 : GNP Per Capita in Rwanda :
Year
per capita GNP in US$
Rank*
1977
1978
1979
1980
1982
1984
1988
1989
130
180
200
200
260
280
320
320
11
17
17
14
12
19
20
19
* from the bottom
On the basis of these statistics, some researchers argue that development in Rwanda under
Habyarimana was better than in neighboring countries. F. Reyntjens, for example, uses
statistics on GNP per capita from the World Development Reports to advance this thesis
(Reyntjens, 1994, p. 35). He argues that over a period of 15 years, Rwanda improved its
rank much more than its neighbouring countries and sees this as a proof of the
developmental attitude of the Habyarimana regime. Looking at the severe economic
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Habyarimana, J, Discours-programme, January 8, 1979, p.17-18.
From the yearly World Development Reports.
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problems Rwanda was facing, one is inclined to agree on this (see also Section 6). Table
1 however shows that a major improvement was reached in one year (1978). The GNP per
capita of Rwanda in 1977 was $130. One year later, it was $180. This is an extraordinary
increase of 38% in one year and it allowed Rwanda to jump from 11th to17th in the World
Development rankings. But during that year, even Zaire’s GNP per capita increased by
50% – further evidence that GNP measures should be critically viewed as reliable
indicators of development. In fact, the growth of Rwandan agricultural production (and
GNP) in the seventies and eighties came from putting most of the remaining cultivable
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land into use and from eliminating fallow, not from technological or market innovations.
In the following, two things will be shown: first, that the use of GNP per capita as an
indicator for development is long out-dated in the development economics research
community; and, second, that insights from development economics research, combined
with statistical indicators other than the GNP, reveal a different picture about development
in Rwanda.
2.1. GNP/capita as a Measure of Development
The development economics literature distinguishes between three concepts: economic
growth, development, and human development. When a researcher uses GNP per capita as
a measure of development, he/she is actually talking about economic growth. However,
development is broader than economic growth and cannot be measured solely by GNP per
capita. Many activities considered to be a part of ‘development’ are not captured in the
GNP measure. Development involves, among other things, the construction of democratic
institutions, the establishment of a performing banking system, the rule of law and an
independent judicial system, a free press, and access to health care and education. None of
these issues is captured in the GNP.
In addition, GNP does not measure certain economic activities or their effects. Some of
these include household labor, informal or black market activities, and the depletion of
natural resources. The World Bank states that GNP per capita does not, by itself,
constitute or measure welfare or success in development. GNP does not distinguish
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Prunier, G., and DesForges, A. copy these conclusions from F. Reytjens in their respective books on the
Rwandan genocide.
The World Bank, Rwanda Agricultural Strategy Review, 1991, p. 1
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between the aims and ultimate uses of a given product, nor does it say whether the product
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merely offsets some natural or other obstacle, or harms or contributes to welfare.
2.2. HDI as a Measure of Development
The other concept used by development economists to measure development -- human
development -- tries to correct for the failures of GNP as the sole measure of a country’s
development.
The Human Development Index, reported in the yearly Human
Development Reports of the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), is a
composite measure including literacy, life expectancy and GDP per capita. As a specific
interpretation of ‘development ‘, it gives a more accurate picture of the development
process in a country than the GDP measure alone, but as it includes the GDP measure it
also faces, to a minor degree, similar difficulties. Rwanda was ranked 21st lowest by the
HDI measure in 1990, meaning that 20 countries in the world were doing worse. As the
statistics for this index are based on the years 1985 through 1987, it is possible to see that
the life expectancy at birth of the average Rwandan citizen was 49 years, that 47% of the
population could read and write, and that real GDP per capita was 571 (Purchasing Power
Parity $). In comparison, Zaire was ranked 20th, Tanzania 35th, Burundi 11th and Uganda
28th.
Table 2: GDP and HDI for Rwanda in Comparison
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GDP/capita 1987
Rank
HDI (stat.1987)
Rank
Rwanda
Burundi
Zaire
571
450
220
26
18
5
0.304
0.235
0.294
21
11
20
Tanzania
Uganda
405
511
12
21
0.413
0.354
35
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Given the growth of its GDP/capita, Rwanda could have outperformed the other countries
in human development. With fewer resources, as indicated by a low GDP, Tanzania
reached a much higher HDI than Rwanda. Even Zaire, with only half of Rwanda’s
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World Development Report, 1993, World Bank, p. 306.
From the UNDP 1990 Human Development Report.
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GDP/capita reached an equal level of human development. Uganda, with lower
GDP/capita than Rwanda, outperformed Rwanda in terms of human development. Only
Burundi has both a lower GDP/capita and a lower HDI than Rwanda. Certainly, this paints
a different picture of ‘development ‘in Rwanda than the one usually presented. According
to the HDI, Rwanda did worse than three of its four neighbors.
2.3. The HDI and other Human Development Statistics
The HDI can be used to make other comparisons that indicate a country’s development,
and since, in the case of Rwanda, there is no a priori reason to limit the comparison to its
neighbors, all countries in the ‘low human development’ category of the Human
Development Report will be considered. In 1990, 44 countries are ranked in that category.
Niger and Mali received the lowest HDI scores and Zambia and Morocco had the highest.
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The Human Development Report calculates the HDI for males and females separately.
This can be revealing since the overall HDI score does not indicate the level of gender
inequality in human development. For example, the male and female HDI scores for some
countries are very close (e.g. Mali, Mauritania, Tanzania, Namibia), but for other countries
they are far apart (e.g. Afganistan, India, Yemen). Rwanda’s scores indicate that the
difference between the male and female HDI is 0.080, which ranks it 10th lowest in the
world, the same as Pakistan. This means that Rwanda joins the Asian and Muslim
countries as concerns the gender inequality between male and female human development.
Only 9 countries in the world had lower scores. Other relevant HDI information for
Rwanda is summarized in the following table. 1990 is used as a baseline year, since the
information in the 1990 report is based on statistics from the 1985-1987 period, when there
was no civil war to blame for poverty. The rank always indicates the position of Rwanda
compared to the 43 other countries. For instance, if the rank is 5 (access to health services),
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it means that 4 countries are doing worse than Rwanda for that category.
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Human Development Report, 1990, p. 111
The few times information for one or more countries was lacking, this country was not considered in the
ranking.
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Table 3: Statistics for Rwanda from the Human Development Reports
HDI
Annual Pop Growth Rate
% of population in rural areas
Pop / Doctor
% Pop Access to Health
Health Expend. as % of GNP
Calories/capita/day
% of required calories
% of children in prim school
% of children in sec school
% of sec school in vocational edu
% of people in tertiary edu
Education Expend. as % of GNP
% Rural Population in Poverty
% Urban Population in Poverty
% Population in the Labor Force
% Labor Force in Agriculture
Scientists per 1,000 people
Life Expectancy at Birth
1990
rank
1994
rank
0.304
3.3
93
34,700
27
0.6
1,830
81
65
7
26.4
0.6
3.2
90
30
49.2
92.8
0.4
49
21
4
2
7
5
8
5
5
13
4
3
3
16
2
12
4
3
2
16
0.274
21
-
-
94
2
50,000
3
-
-
1.9
19
1,910
10
80
5
70
28
7
12
-
-
0.2
3
4.2
26
90
1
30
9
46
9
90
4
0.2
2
48.1
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As indicated earlier, on the basis of the HDI measure, there is a high level of gender
inequality in Rwanda. Using the measures of GDP/capita and HDI, other inequalities in
Rwanda are manifest. For example, in the late eighties, in comparison with all countries in
the world, only Nepal and Bhutan were doing worse than Rwanda in the measure of rural
poverty. Nearly everyone in the entire population still lived in the rural areas, nearly
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Supporters of the
everyone worked in agriculture and nearly everyone was poor.
Habyarimana regime view this intentional lack of urbanization as a example of a
successful development policy. In this way, they argue, the regime prevented the
establishment of slums in the cities. This may appear to be an achievement, but further
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analysis will indicate that this view of the regime’s development policy is inaccurate.
One positive measure is the broad participation in primary schooling. In the late eighties,
almost two-thirds of the children in Rwanda were going to school. Although the quality of
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Further on, we shall see that this is not a coincidence, but the result of deliberate policies.
I refer especially to section 3.4. for this point.
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the education cannot be determined, in terms of enrollment numbers alone, this is a strong
result for a poor country.
An examination of secondary school enrollment indicates that Rwanda scored poorly in
this category. Only 7% of the primary school graduates in Rwanda continued to secondary
schooling. From economic studies in other countries, we know that schooling is very often
only worth pursuing if one continues into secondary school. The earning of a secondary
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diploma often gives access to off-farm labor in a nearby city. Getting this was the
privilege of the happy few in Rwanda. Migration to the city was not allowed unless you
obtained one of the scarce government jobs. People were obliged to remain on their farms
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and perform agricultural labor. Also notice that the percentage of the population working
in agriculture had scarcely changed in the post-colonial period. Another remarkable aspect
of post-primary schooling in Rwanda under Habyarimana was the number of students
enrolled in vocational education. In Rwanda, this meant ‘learning to be a farmer ‘. This
will be discussed more in detail in section 4.4, in which youth policy is discussed.
3. THE DICTATORIAL PERSPECTIVE: DEVELOPMENT AS AN IDEOLOGY
The flaw in reviewing Habyarimana’s regime by using development statistics is that
Habyarimana was a military dictator and that his rhetoric is not distinguished from his role.
It is possible to view economic development of a regime through the lens of what could be
called the ‘dictatorial’ approach. The Canadian political economist Wintrobe (1998), for
example, argues that dictators like economic growth. Growth, as measured by GNP, gives
them more resources to satisfy the elite’s desire for consumption, to employ more people
in the state’s administration, and to satisfy basic needs, thereby increasing the dictator’s
power. A brief look at the political economy of dictatorship makes this clear : in order to
stay in power, a dictator needs three things: first, a budget; second the loyalty of at least a
part of the population; and, third, a repressive apparatus to control the unsatisfied part of
the population. These three are inter-linked as an increase in his budget increases the
dictator’s power and allows him to reward supporters and repress opponents.
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16
Reardon, Th., ‘Using Evidence of Household Income Diversification to inform Study of the Rural
Nonfarm Labor Market in Africa,’ World Development, vol 25, no 5, 1997.
Again, we come back to this to show that this was a deliberate policy.
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One observer, the German pastor Herbert Keiner, called the Habyarimana regime a
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development dictatorship. In the next sections, the dictatorial approach to economic
development will be used to interpret Habyarimana’s rhetoric and policies. The key issue
in the political economy of development is that policies detrimental to the economy (and to
the population) are nevertheless carried out when they are beneficial to the country’s elite
and/or to the political power of the dictator. It will become clear that what Habyarimana
meant by the word ‘development ‘ is very different from the meaning of that word in the
development economics literature. In fact, Habyarimana’s ‘development’ is exactly the
opposite of development and of human development.
3.1. Agriculture
Habyarimana was convinced that the Rwandan economy should be agriculturally selfsufficient, making import of food unnecessary. In all of his speeches, which can be
considered official statements, he stresses that the development of Rwanda is the foremost
goal of his economic policy, and that auto-development and food self-reliance were the
methods to be used to meet that goal.
“If it is true that the first objective of a national economy is to be able to feed the
country at the service of the one’s it works for and is organized for, and if it is true
that the priority of priorities of Rwanda is just to build the national economy around
this major imperative, meaning to give it a solid base to allow it to respond to this
fundamental demand, one must absolutely be able to identify clearly the key factors
our economy needs in order to attain the objective of a well understood food self18
reliance.”
And
“Auto-development is not a slogan for us, it is not an effort to theorize, it is not a
vain aspiration to embrace a doctrine or a school of thought. No, for us, autodevelopment is our conviction that progress needs to come from our own forces, that
we cannot live beyond our means and that the solutions of our problems need to
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come from us.”
17
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19
Keiner, H., Allmahlich schwand die Bewunderung for ‘Habis’ regime, Frankfurther Rundschau,
November 5th, 1992.
Habyarimana, J., speech ‘Youth and Development’, May 21st, 1986, p. 49.
Habyarimana, J, speech on July 1st, 1987, pp. 205-206.
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In his speeches, Habyarimana often stated that the increase in the income of the peasant
and the development of the rural areas were priorities for his government. When viewed in
terms of his ideology, this is perfectly compatible with food self-reliance since increased
food production benefits the peasants directly. Indeed, if the government had actually
considered the food situation and the income of the Rwandan farmer to be of prime
importance, this would have been, other things being equal, a good government. After
reviewing his speeches, one infers that Habyarimana wants agricultural production to
increase. In fact, he presents increased agricultural production as the one and only solution
to overcome the problems of the Rwandan economy.
“In the coming twenty years, the population of Rwanda will be doubled. We thus
have to make sure that we have enough food. Our food strategy gives absolute
priority to our peasants and to the production of food crops that are most important
to solve our food crisis. The establishment of a policy of increased production
demands a profound internal transformation and a continuous effort for a long
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period.”
More specifically, however, Habyarimana is interested in increased production of export
crops, the foremost of which is coffee:
“In his policy of promotion and management of the export industries, the
government always takes care of the peasant families, being the essential productive
forces of our country, by delivering a guaranteed and certain income in order to
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improve their standard of life regularly.”
This indicates the first inconsistency in the implementation of policies according to the
ideology: if food-self reliance is the primary goal, then why strongly promote the
cultivation of coffee crops and tea plants for export? Taxation is the most probable answer
to this. Coffee provided the main source of tax-income for the regime. The production of
export crops is only beneficial to food security when the earnings from these crops for the
households are higher than the earnings from food crops. With declining international
prices for coffee and tea in the 1988-1993 period, the contribution of export crops to food
security at the household level was no longer assured. If food self-reliance was the stated
regime’s objective, the 1989 famine in southern Rwanda showed that food security was not
high on the regime’s agenda.
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21
Habyarimana, J., Speech for July 5th, 1983, p. 220.
Habyarimana, J, speech on the occasion of July 5th, 1984, pp.196-197.
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While increased productivity is generally considered a goal in most countries, it was a
requirement in Rwanda. All Rwandans, especially the peasants, HAD TO participate in
the enterprise of development and HAD TO increase their agricultural productivity. This is
revealed in the following excerpt from a speech Habyarimana delivered at the National
University in Butare in 1973:
“The coup d’état that we did, was above all a moral coup d’état. And what we want,
and we would consider our action as failed if we do not reach this goal, what we
want, is to ban once and for all, the spirit of intrigue and feudal mentality. What we
want is to give back labor and individual yield its real value. Because, we say it
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again, the one who refuses to work is harmful to society.”
When reading this excerpt from his speech for the first time, one is inclined to think that
the speaker is a goal-oriented, conservative type of person. Close and repeated reading
however, allow the researcher to interpret this statement. Let us go through it step by step.
(1) He says he did not do a coup d’état, but a moral coup d’état. Something of a higher,
divine order. As one of my collegues put it, he sees himself as a person of historic
importance. (2) His coup d’état has a goal, an objective. Habyarimana literally says that he
would consider his coup d’état to have failed if he did not reach that goal. This speaker
clearly has embarked on a mission. (3) In the next part we learn what the objective is,
namely to ban, once and for all, the spirit of intrigue and feudal mentality. This is the most
important part. These are exactly the words the regime used when it was talking about the
Tutsi. The Tutsi were considered the feudalists, the former masters of the Hutu-peasants.
You cannot trust them, the Hutu-ideology tells you (intrigue), they are always plotting
against the Hutu and working for the benefit of their own ethnic group. I remind that, in the
meeting of secret military staff (quoted on p. 4, above) we also find the expression ‘to
solve forever’. (4) To give back labor and individual yield its real value. The one who
refuses to work is harmful to society. Habyarimana wants all Rwandans to do manual labor
(see also section 4.3). According to him, the value of manual labor has been neglected.
Moreover, those not performing agricultural work, the ‘non-peasants,’ are harmful to
society. Habyarimana is saying that only the Hutu peasant, the one tilling the land , is
productive and good for society.
22
Habyarimana, J, Speech at the occasion of the opening of the academic year in Butare, October 14,
1973, p. 44.
14
15
Habyarimana’s 1973 speech contains words and expressions that appear in the exterminist
propaganda of the nineties. I argue that the peasant and racist ideology is present in
Habyarimana’s speeches from the very beginning of his dictatorship. Can one interpret the
1973 speech as saying that Habyarimana wants to ban the Tutsi from Rwanda and would
consider his presidency failed if he would not reach that objective ? Does ‘ban’ mean the
removal of public office or public life in general ? Does it mean the expulsion, forced
emigration, or ethnic cleansing of the Tutsi ? Implementing ‘ethnic cleansing‘ against the
Tutsi is considered ‘good’ because the Tutsi are harmful to society. In that way
Habyarimana can realize his ideal of a real peasant society, where everybody is doing
manual labour. If ‘ban’ only means to ban a feudal mentality, not the Tutsi as a group,
then at least the foundations for the banning of the Tutsis are laid in this speech. When one
associates an ethnic group with a specific mentality, as Habyarimana did, then the removal
of Tutsi from political power can be a first step, and the expulsion of the Tutsi as a group, a
second.
In order to secure his power, Habyarimana had to dissolve the power base of his
predecessor, president Kayibanda, but at the same time remain faithful to the Hutu
ideology. Kayibanda put it bluntly: ‘the Tutsi must also cultivate’. Habyarimana was more
discreet, but as least as determined.
In Hitler’s ideology, the Jews were not willing the work and were exploiting the Germans.
In the remainder of the paper, I will try to uncover, step by step, Habyarimana’s ideology
and practices, by further analysis of his speeches.
According to Habyarimana, all forces in Rwanda have to be mobilized for development
“Isn’t auto-development before everything else the exaltation of our living forces,
isn’t auto-development essentially the mobilization of all our living forces for a
development, a progress , a national management of the challenges of our country ?
23
“
The Khmer Rouge used exactly the same language: Cambodia needed to be developed.
Everybody needed to raise one’s productivity to allow Cambodia to make the Great Leap
24
Forward.
23
24
Habyarimana, J., Discours on July 5th, 1986 for the 24th anniversary of national independence, the 13th
anniversary of the 2e Republic and the 11th anniversary of the MRND, p.108
The Khmer Rouge government in Cambodia (called Democratic Kampuchea at the time) from 1975 till
1979 killed 1.7 million Cambodians during their reign of terror and genocide.
15
16
With allmost all cultivable land in use, Habyarimana relied on the increased productivity
of manual work to reach a higher production of food. Economists call this a labor-based
strategy of intensification. However, because of the density of the population vis-à-vis the
available land, the supply of labor in agriculture was abundant. Land, capital and
technology are the constraints for the Rwandan economy, not labor. Increasing the labor
productivity in agriculture would only mean that fewer people are needed to perform the
same amount of work. This is the second inconsistency in the implementation of policies
according to the ideology: if all agricultural work can be done by approximately 50% of
the population currently working in agriculture, then why demand that everyone do
agricultural work and that everyone be more productive?
Food production could have been increased, but not without various kinds of costs. First,
since all land was already put into cultivation, one could only intensify cultivation to
increase production. This risks further depletion of the soils. In this case, one has to use
fertilizer. The regime however, preferred to use its limited import budget to import
25
fertilizer for its lucrative large-scale tea plantations. This is a clear trade-off between
improving tea and improving food production. The issue was decided in favor of tea
production, just as it was with coffee. Second, during the whole of Habyarimana’s rule,
almost no technological innovation was introduced in Rwandan agriculture. In 1993,
26
peasants were still working with tools they had always been using.
Food self-reliance does not only concern the production of food, but also involves other
activities
“Of course, in the strategy of food self-reliance, agricultural production is very
important, but we should not minimize the connected activities : infrastructure, the
roads to evacuate the products, the health centers, a healthy population is able to
27
produce more than a sick one.”
25
26
27
Länderbericht (Country Report) Rwanda, Statistisches Bundesamt, BRD, 1992, p. 41.
Section 4.3 below also deals with the regime’s agricultural policies.
Habyarimana, J., interview by Swiss television, January 29th, 1988, Kigali, p.27
16
17
3.2. Industrial Development
The very modest Rwandan efforts towards industrialization were undertaken only after
intense outside pressure. The development of small handicraft enterprises for example, was
only allowed in 1985 after a campaign by the ILO, the Young Catholic Workers of
28
Rwanda and the special representative of Switzerland.
According to Habyarimana,
29
industrial development should always be auto-centered and endogenous, but more
30
importantly, industrial development should be organic:
“Our strategy for industrialization will not have two heads (= formal and informal
sector) ; it will be an organic strategy coming from a global vision of the problems
and the needs. Such a strategy will encourage industrial units of national dimension,
but who will not be defined separately, or independent, but organic and in line with
what is done for the small enterprise, in order for large enterprises to come to
support the small ones and not to destroy them.”
The use of the word ‘organic’ normally refers to the anatomy of the human body. In a 1981
speech, we find more evidence for the analogy between the economy and the human body:
“The commune must remain a body constitute of several cells, lively and dynamic.
And as every living body, the commune needs several elements to be able to render
service to its population. The commune, the basic cell of our development and of our
economy, has been restructured in order to fulfill better its mission i.e. to dynamize
31
the living forces of the country for their well-being.”
Habyarimana thus viewed the economy as a human body where all organs should function
together for the well-being of the whole. This fits perfectly into other parts of his ideology:
he frequently repeats that the individual is subordinate to the collective.
The economic theory of Habyarimana resembles very closely a well-known theory
developed in 18th Century France, by the Physiocrats. The key concept of this school were
the following: (1) agriculture is the basis of the economy and the only source of productive
value, (2) the economy can be thought of as a physical body where the products flow from
producers to consumers as blood flows through the organs of a body, (3) Society consists
28
29
30
31
Wlllame, J.C, Au sources de l’hécatombe Rwandaise, Cahiers Africaines, 1995, p. 154.
Habyarimana, J., Speech 1986, p.43.
Habyarimana, J.,Speech 1986, p. 41-42.
Habyarimana, J., Speech on the occasion of the first session of the National Development Council,
p.119, 1981
17
18
of three classes: the peasant-producers, the landowners and the ‘sterile’ class of
administrators-politicians, (4) equilibrium conditions exist in each economy, where
equilibrium means a situation of no surpluses or shortages.
The foremost theoretician of the Physiocratic School, Francois Quesnay, had a background
of medical training before he began the study of political economy. According to the
economic historian Taylor, Quesnay viewed the economy as a ‘circular flow’ or ‘body’
32
and attributes this to his medical background. (It is interesting but not persuasive to note
that before becoming a military officer in the new Rwandan Army, the young
Habyarimana attended medical school for at least one year at the Louvanium University in
Kinshasa, Zaire.) Although no references to Quesnay have been noted in the available
Habyarimana speeches, both men have in common that their theory is not just a theory
about the economy, but a philosophy about the entire organization of society. Quesnay
published books entitled Rural Philosophy and The Natural Law, in which he says that a
government cannot enact laws that oppose the natural law inherent in society. This would
now be considered an argument for ‘free trade’. At the time Quesnay was writing,
advocating free trade was not difficult because France was a primary producer of
33
agricultural products and had nothing to lose from trade.
The difference between the
two men is that Habyarimana wanted to minimize trade in food, especially food imports,
whereas Quesney realized the benefits of trade.
3.3. Macro-Economic Equilibria and the Individual
In a speech before the members of the Rwandan public administration, Habyarimana
discussed his favorite topic, the macro-economic equilibria of the Rwandan economy. For
him these equilibria are two-fold: the food/population equilibrium where food production
should increase faster than population growth, and the internal/external equilibrium, or
balance of trade, where the value of exports should equal the value of imports. In this
speech, he stressed that there is a direct link between the everyday activities of every
person and these equilibria. If, for example a secretary uses a car owned by the state to go
34
shopping, this increases the cost of imports because the state has to import the fuel.
32
33
34
Taylor, H.O, A History of Economic Thought, Harvard University, 1960, pp.14 and 21
Schumpeter, J.A., History of Economic Analysis, Oxford University Press, 1963, pp.234 and 235.
Habyarimana, J., Speech, 1986, pp. 146-148.
18
19
Habyarimana often asked his public to be creative, innovative and to take responsibility,
but in fact, the peasants (Habyarimana’s term) were not allowed to do anything unless
instructed by the administration. Peasants were not allowed to cultivate the crops they
wished, to use the techniques of soil protection they wanted, to move to the city, or to
organize themselves outside the MRND. Instead, the peasants were told to work hard and
increase their productivity. They were told to listen to the administration and to the
burgomasters of their communes. Habyarimana was strongly supported by the Catholic
Church in his advocacy of moral values, the labor ethic, and obedience to authority.
3.4. Restrictions on Movement
Habyarimana followed a consistent policy to make the peasants stay in the rural areas.
They had to remain in an agricultural setting. Of course, this anti-urban policy benefited
people already living in the cities, the so-called ‘elite’. It also explains why in 1973, 95%
of the population lived in the rural areas and in 1993, 95% still lived in the rural areas. The
dictator considered cities places of immorality, theft and prostitution. This ‘moral stand’
closely resembled the teaching of the Catholic Church in Rwanda which also considered
the cities as dangerous places which young people should be kept away from lest they be
contaminated by the cities’ immorality. Prostitutes or so-called prostitutes (often Tutsi
girlfriends of expatriates) in Kigali were sent to a re-education camp in Nsinda in the
prefecture of Kibungo.
Other dictatorships favoring ruralization instead of urbanisation have been studied. For
instance, on the reason why the Khmer Rouge evacuated the cities, Ben Kiernan writes that
35
it became far easier to control the population:
“From now on, there would be no more assembled constituency to whom dissident or underground
political activists could appeal or among whom they could quietly work. No human agglomeration
facilitating private communication between individuals. Nowhere that the exchange of news and
ideas could escape tight monitoring that reduced it to a minimum. No venue for a large crowd to
assemble except on CPK initiative, no audience for someone like Sihanouk to address. No
possibility of pressuring the nerve center of the regime by means of popular demonstrations in the
capital. And no chance for an orthodox marxist or other dissident faction to develop a base among a
proletariat.”
The difference between Pol Pot and Habyarimana is that, during his reign, Habyarimana
did not have to cleanse the cities in order to control the population. Nearly everybody was
35
Kiernan, B., The Pol Pot Regime, Race, Power and Genocide under the Khmer Rouge 1975-1979, Yale
University Press, 1996, p. 64.
19
20
already living in the rural areas and he only had to make sure that they stayed there.
However, the comparison with Pol Pot becomes chilling when one realizes that the capital
of Kigali was the first place that was cleansed of Tutsis (and moderate Hutus) during the
genocide.
An extension of favoring a rural population is the glorification of the peasant. In an
interview in 1980, Habyarimana stated that he had eight children himself and that his
36
character was strongly influenced by his parents and by his life on the farm :
“My parents were cultivators, simple peasants thus, they are dead unfortunately and
it is really in this point in life in the countryside, on the hills, in life with the land
(soil), that they have influenced me the most, and they were simple peasants, they
were not part of the leadership at the time and also the fact that they were Catholic.
Many points that one could underline for the part of my parents and that have
influenced my character and my own life.”
It is highly unlikely that a son of ‘simple peasants’ could first go to study medicine at
Louvanium University in Kinshasa and later enroll in the military academy in Rwanda.
Habyarimana is not the first dictator to ennoble peasants because of his regime’s ideology.
The Cambodian mass murderer Pol Pot also pretended to be a simple peasant. Ben Kiernan
writes that Hitler declared the farmer “the most important participant” in the Nazi
revolution. In Mein Kampf, Hitler linked German peasant farmland with German racial
37
characteristics. According to Chrétien, several copies of films about Hitler and Nazism
38
were found in Habyarimana’s home. In a 1997 book, David Large reminds us not to
forget rural Germany and especially Bavaria (the NSDAP hot spot) during the rise of
39
Nazism.
It is instructive to remember that Habyarimana’s population and agricultural policies had
their roots in the colonial area. The Belgian colonizers of Rwanda also tried both to
prevent the growth of cities and to increase the production of coffee, undoubtedly because
forcing the population to stay in the rural areas facilitates their exploitation.
36
37
38
39
Habyarimana, J, interviewed by Yuki Sato, July 12, 1980, p.236.
Kiernan, B., ‘Genocide and “ethnic cleansing”,’ in The Encyclopedia of Politics and Religion, ed.
Robert Wuthnow, Washington, D.C., Congressional Quarterly, vol. 1, p. 298.
Chrétien, J.P., Les Médias du Genocide, 1995, p. 256.
Large, D. Where Ghosts Walked : Munich’s Road to the Third Reich, Norton, New York, 1997, taken
from a review by Tom Nairn ‘Reflections on Nationalist Disasters’, p. 151.
20
21
In 1994 the World Bank condemned the restrictions on population movement because they
impeded the development of market centers essential for developing a market economy.
The World Bank added that this policy reduced the potential for economic growth. This
means that Habyarimana’s migration prohibition policy was considered an impediment to
development by the world’s leading development agency. Of course, one could disagree
with the World Bank on the grounds that it has an ideological bias toward free market
economics. In this case, however, the World Bank was absolutely right in its
condemnation of the regime’s restrictive policy. In the same document, the World Bank
added that these migration restrictions increased poverty by limiting the options of the
poor. From the development economics literature we know that migration, and especially
temporary employment in cities, is an important strategy to cope with poverty. The Bank
does not go as far as saying that this restrictive policy was a means to control the
population. When we look at this policy from a dictatorial point of view, the motivation
behind the policy becomes clearer.
Intermediate Conclusion with reference to G. Prunier’s work
In summary, Habyarimana’s macro-economic ideology, as derived from his speeches, is as
follows. Rwanda is a peasant economy and should stay remain so; in fact, all Rwandans
should be peasants. Agricultural manual labor is the only source of value and thus all
human and physical activity should be concentrated in the rural areas. Rwanda is a Nation
and all citizens share the same national identity. The revolutionary elite knows how to
develop the country and will lead Rwanda to food self-reliance. This aim can only be
achieved if all peasants join forces in the Revolutionary Movement for National
Development (MRND). Rwanda can only overcome its population problem if everyone
increases his production of food. The balance between the population and the supply of
food is not the only essential equilibrium in the economy. The other equilibrium is the
balance between imports and exports. In order for Rwanda to be able to reach both these
equilibria, the Rwandan economy and peasantry has to become more productive.
Especially the production of export crops should increase.
Habyarimana espoused a development ideology. His speeches reveal his vision for
Rwanda. Unspoken, but just as important, is that this ideology served as a legitimation for
his dictatorial power. As G. Prunier writes
21
22
“The MRND was a truly totalitarian party : every single Rwandese citizen had to be a member,
including babies and old people. All bourgmestres and prefects were chosen from among party
40
cadres. The party was everywhere.”
Prunier also writes that the MRND was not supposed to be a ‘political’ party:
“Indeed, the word ‘politics’ was almost a dirty word in the virtuous and hard working world of
41
Habyarimanism. Every effort was made to forget- at least officially – that politics existed.
Having one single party was the right choice for Habyarimana given his ideology and his
desire to stay in power. He could control the entire population, outlaw political opposition
and implement his vision of society. In so-called animation sessions, the population had to
glorify Habyarimana.
In Prunier’s words,
“Along the somewhat reminiscent lines of eighteenth century European theories of ‘benevolent
despotism’, President Habyarimana had decided to take upon his shoulders the heavy burden of the
42
state so that his subjects could devote themselves entirely to the business of agriculture.”
Prunier opened the eyes of the world community with his book on the genocide. He also
wrote about the ideology of Habyarimana, but he did not go all the way. Prunier believes
the system worked at the economic level, but he does not consider the ultimate
consequences of the agricultural and peasant ideology of Habyarimana (see pages 76–80 of
his book). This linkage of the peasant ideology directly to the genocide, offers a
perspective on Rwanda that allows for comparison with other genocides.
It is possible to see that the policies he adopted were designed to further both the adoption
of his ideology by the population, and his dictatorial power. Table 4 summarizes the
findings that will be discussed in detail in the next section.
Habyarimana’s policies were expressed as “peasant-friendly”, that is, they were presented
as helping peasants improve their lives. However, closer examination of several of these
policies -- including demographic policy; ‘Umaganda’; land and crops; and education and
youth -- indicates that these policies were in fact virulently anti-peasant.
40
41
42
Prunier, D. The Rwanda Crisis, History of a Genocide, 1995, p. 76.
Prunier, G. ibidem, p. 77.
Prunier, G., ibidem, p. 77.
22
23
23
24
Table 4: Comparing stated aims with actual outcomes
Policy
stated aim : increase
Income of peasant
ideology of auto-development
Food/Population
Import/Export
Balance
Balance
dictator’s aim
staying in power
increasing power
Migration to cities strongly discouraged
reduces peasant options
peasant should perform farm work
control people
Umuganda
reduces peasant income
unpaid collective work
enslave people
High Fertility
reduces peasant consump.
more and cheaper labor
refuse women the choice
Mandatory coffee cultivation
reduces peasant crop choice
increases government foreign currency holdings
raise taxes, make profit
Overvalued national currency
import made cheaper
Vocational education
learning to be a peasant
Fixed price for coffee and monopsony
increase export earnings
State owned firms
reduces investments
allows government planned economy
increase dependency
Tea growing on large estates
deprive peasants of land
increase budget
increase export earnings
Carry ethnic identity card
discriminate Tutsi
registration prevents free movement
control people
Ethnic quota in schools
discriminate Tutsi
“solving the ethnic conflict, uniting Rwanda”
favoring Hutu
Reserve government jobs for Hutu
discriminate Tutsi
favoring elite consump.
realize a peasant society
keep people uneducated
control income peasants
rent-seeking by Hutu
Publicly stated range of importance of the objectives of these policies.
(1) increase peasant income (2) Establish Food/population balance and Import/export balance (3) staying in power (not stated).
Author’s conclusion after studying the motivation behind these objectives and policies.
(1) Staying in power (2) Implement ideology : Import/Export balance and Food/population balance (3) neglect peasant income.
24
25
25
24
4. DISCUSSION OF SPECIFIC POLICIES AND THEIR JUSTIFICATION IN
HABYARIMANA’S OWN WORDS
4.1. Demographic Policy
As noted earlier, one of Habyarimana’s primary policies was to make Rwanda food selfsufficient. However, it can be argued that a strategy of increased food production without a
family planning policy is self-defeating. For many years, Rwandan farmers had been able
to increase food production because Rwanda was blessed with fertile soil. However, at
some point, land under cultivation reaches its absolute limit, and there is ample evidence
that by the end of the 1980s this limit had been reached. Rwanda was one of the most
densely populated countries in the world, yet developed no population control policy. In
fact, Rwandan women had the highest birthrate in the world. In 1974, at the beginning of
his dictatorship, Habyarimana told his audience that Rwanda had a demographic problem :
“We are aware of the problems caused by the demographic growth of the Rwandan
population and they should be getting our permanent and serious attention. We
believe however that the people who seem to advocate fast solutions, resulting from
a certain literature whose authors do not hide their egotism, should be more
reserved. The solution that we are looking for shall be Rwandan, taking our
mentalities, our moral values, our culture, our possibilities and human solidarity
43
into account.”
Rwanda had a Population Bureau or family planning unit, but it was a sham. Prunier
(1995, pp. 88-89) writes that the Ministry of the Interior allowed Catholic pro-life
commandos to attack pharmacies that sold condoms. Questioned about the demographic
policy of the government, Habyarimana gave misleading answers to hide its non-existence
: at one point he says that his scientists were looking for the best way to prevent population
growth and at another point he appealed to the Church to tolerate family planning, as if
scientists or the churches were to blame for the lack of family planning. The Catholic
Church, officially against family planning, did not oppose its individual members giving
family planning advice to people who requested it. Habyarimana himself opposed family
planning.
43
Habyarimana,J., Discours-programme, August 1, 1973.
24
25
Family planning, if available to the peasant households, would surely have been used (see
part 5). However, reviewing Habyarimana’s policies as a dictator sheds light on the
absence of family planning policy in Rwanda regardless of the will of the populace. From
the perspective of the dictator, people are production factors, which are used to produce
coffee and to supply labor to the ‘collective works’ (umuganda). More people means more
peasants and thus a larger supply of labor.
Three of Habyarimana’s speeches illustrate his views:
“I have already affirmed in other occasions, that the number of inhabitants of our
country should not always be presented as excessive, nor always be presented as a
44
constraint on development. That development is exactly the fruit of people’s work.”
“A Rwandan by nature wants to have a lot of children because he considers his
children a source of protection, a source of production to secure his living. The
Rwandan family wants to have children and it is a disaster when it does not have
45
children.”
“ We believe there is a real problem. If the population grows faster than the
economy, we have a problem. And nevertheless, we must reconcile two things, on the
one hand, the more numerous we are, the stronger we are, because we have more
arms and more brains, but the more numerous we are, the more we have to produce
for that population in order to have enough food, to have education, to have clothes.
46
We must reconcile these two parameters : population and growth.”
Habyarimana himself used the word ‘overpopulation’ as a justification to bar the return of
the 1959 refugees (mostly Tutsis) and their offspring. Population density was clearly not a
problem, however, when the regime accepted 300,000 Hutu refugees from Burundi in
47
1993. The message: Rwanda had space for only one ethnic group.
44
45
46
47
Habyarimana, J, Discours-programme du 8 Janvier 1979, Discours et Entretiens de Son Excellence le
Général-Major Habyarimana Juvénal Président de la Republique Rwandaise, et Président-Fondateur du
Mouvement Révolutionnaire National pour le Développement, ORINFOR, Rwanda, 1979, p.23
Habyarimana, J., interviewed by Yuki Sato, July 12, 1980, Discours et Entretiens de Son Excellence le
Général-Major Habyarimana Juvénal Président de la Republique Rwandaise, et Président-Fondateur du
Mouvement Révolutionnaire National pour le Développement, ORINFOR, Rwanda, 1980, p.243
Habyarimana, J, interview given to ZDF, German Television Channel 2, September, 29, 1987, ibidem,
ORINFOR, Rwanda, 1987, p. 258
In May 1990, the National Population Office published four volumes titled “The Demographic Problem
in Rwanda and the Framework of its Solution”. I did not find drastic proposals for the solution of the
problem, but this publication is a very detailed study of the relationship between population and
development in Rwanda and lists a large number of measures to be taken immediately. They include
family planning, schooling for women, industrialisation and urbanisation, the creation of off-farm jobs.
All sorts of measures that were not only costly to the state, but ran opposite to the regime’s ideology.
From his speeches, I conclude that Habyarimana was extremely preoccupied with the food-population
25
26
It is clear from his speeches that Habyarimana acknowledges that Rwanda’s population
growth is a real problem, but, in practice, he does nothing about it. In fact, from his
rhetoric, it is also clear that he considers population growth beneficial for the national
economy. People, and especially the peasants are essential to produce coffee and tea:
“It is the Rwandan peasant that makes Rwanda live. Because the foreign currency
we have for our imports, is because of the coffee, because of the tea, because of the
48
export of furs, there you can see the role of the peasant, the farmer, the cultivator.”
The fact that fertility did decline in Rwanda during the eighties has more to do with the
lack of economic opportunities than with government family planning policies. Fertility in
Rwanda declined because young people married at later ages than they used to do and as a
result have less children.
4.2. Umuganda Policy
Umuganda, the Kinyarwanda word for the wood used to construct a house, was one of
Habyarimana’s favorite speech topics and one of the regime’s most influential policies,
both in economic and in ideological terms. On February, 2, 1974, the President ordered
that every Rwandan perform unpaid collective work one day per week. This was stressed
in a speech given by Habyarimana at a seminar for Burgomasters in August 1975, after the
creation of the MRND (Mouvement Révolutionaire National pour le Dévelopment):
“The doctrine of our Movement is that Rwanda will only be developed by the sum of
the efforts of its own sons and daughters, the product of their efforts belongs to them.
That is why it has judged the Collective Works for Development a necessary
obligation for all the inhabitants of the country.”
This policy was presented as the reestablishment of an institution that had long existed in
Rwandan culture but that had been suppressed by the colonial economy. Umuganda was,
according to the MRND, a reaction against the monetarisation of the Rwandan economy
49
under colonialism. Related to this is the non-compensation of Umuganda, which again
48
49
equilibrium in his country, but more research is needed to find hard evidence that links his ideas on
demography and economics with the planning of the genocide.
Habyarimana, J., interview by Swiss television, Kigali, January 29th, 1988, p.28.
Needless to repeat that Habyarima continued and intensified the policy of coffee cultivation, which is
practiced to extract taxes (monetary income) from the peasants. He only added another source of tax,
non-monetary in nature, namely a tax on labour (umuganda). Both taxes existed in the colonial period.
26
27
makes the comparison with Pol Pot interesting. All Rwandans ‘HAD TO
VOLUNTARILY’ contribute their labor to the weekly collective works. In the party
publication on Umuganda, the authors argue further that Umuganda had been forgotten
50
because of the generalization of education and the increase in salaried jobs.
Economically Umuganda was very important for Rwanda since it made an enormous
amount of unpaid labor available to the state. During Umuganda, the Rwandan people built
such things as schools, roads, sanitation facilities, and health centers.
However, the political and ideological functions of Umuganda were even more important
than its economic benefits to the state. Ideologically, Umuganda was explicitly designed to
make sure that all Rwandans would do manual labor. The local politicians and
administrators were responsible for the organization of the weekly Umuganda, which gave
these officials great discretionary power. They could decide who did and who did not have
to participate. Not surprisingly, the cronies and friends of the regime escaped Umuganda.
The Manifesto of the MRND says that ‘it is a man’s labor that constitutes the essential
51
source of wealth in the country and from there the basis of economic accumulation.’ On
many public occasions, Habyarimana expressed his low esteem for intellectual work and
his high esteem for manual work. He instituted the Umuganda policy by cultivating a plot
of land together with his close friends.
“I admit that I do not understand, that I absolutely do not understand, when listening
to certain intellectuals, one is obliged to hear nothing but disobeying remarks and
destructive criticism regarding some accomplishments, regarding certain political
options taken that are not open for questioning.
I take the example of Umuganda – our collective work for development, thanks to the
manual labor of everybody. It is inconceivable that we could do without Umuganda.
A country is constructed by hands, not by words ! Rwanda will be constructed by the
sweat on our face and not by useless speculations !
The results obtained by Umuganda, its remarkable realizations that many countries
envy us, constitutes the best proof that it cannot be separated from the progress
Rwanda made in the last 10 years, that it is an essential part of that progress and
that it corresponds with our ancestral values – to engage oneself – so that everyone,
by individual effort, performs better in a collectivity always in progress. Each
intelligent and honest Rwandan can see this.
50
51
L’Umuganda dans le dévélopment national, Présidence de MRND, Affaires Economiques, Janvier
1990, p. 10.
Manifesto of the MRND, cited from Umuganda dans le devéloppment national, 1990, p.5.
27
28
I can only regret, with my last effort, that there still are ‘intellectuals ‘ who use their
time to criticize, destroy, this institution with their words, in stead of telling us how
52
to improve it, making it more performing, adapt it better to our needs.”
It is clear that he wants Rwanda’s professors to stop criticizing him and to contribute to
national development. In other words, the professors should do the same as the general
population: keep their mouths shut and work hard.
Although he expended much effort on portraying himself as a peasant, he saw himself and
the leaders of the regime as an elite :
“Rwanda has one single national language for the whole country. We do not have to
rely on an intermediate language, like many other countries have to do, in order for
the population and their elites to understand each other. We also do not have the
problem of imposing one of the national languages and the risk that such linguistic
53
hegemony poses”.
As we have seen before, it is common practice for Habyarimana, as for other dictators, to
use cultural arguments to justify economic exploitation. Working for the collective good,
as Umuganda was called, is a prime example of this. In section 6, Umuganda will be
related to the organization of the genocide. It will appear to be an effective instrument of
mass mobilization during the genocide. I mention it here in order to show that unpaid
collective labor, supervised by the regime officials, had existed since 1974. In the
preparation of the genocide, the regime could build upon practices and their ideological
and economic justification in place since the mid-seventies. Umuganda also gave the local
party and state officials knowledge and experience in the mobilization of the peasant
54
population. A skill that was to prove deadly during the genocide.
52
53
54
Habyarimana, J., “Youth and Development”, speech at the occasion of his visit to the National
University of Rwanda, May 21, 1986, p.66.
Habyarimana, J, “Francophonie et developpement,” speech, Paris Conference, Feb 17 to 19, 1986, p.
25.
In a future paper, I want to do in depth analysis of the mobilisation of the peasant population for mass
murder.
28
29
“Umuganda must be planned in order to reach its objective, developing our country
by building the necessary infrastructure for its economy and, allowing the new
Rwandan to engage in his work. Because of this, it has to be oriented towards
directly productive actions. In order to increase the development projects in the
Umuganda framework, the mobilization and sensibilization of the popular masses is
55
necessary and the MRND offers the appropriate way to do this“.
Umuganda is one of the prime examples of a top-down policy with an appealing
development image that was designed and used to exploit peasant labor, to control the
peasant population, to humiliate the Rwandan intellectuals, to give politicians
discretionary power over labor and to indoctrinate the Rwandans with the regime’s
56
ideology. Because of abuse, corruption and disbelief, Umuganda was not popular among
the peasant population. As soon as the power of the regime decreased, Umuganda had to
be abolished. Peter Uvin, writing on development aid, writes that Rwanda is a prime
example of state-run, state-controlled, top-down development. All development initiatives
57
in Rwanda were controlled by the regime, especially by the MRND party.
4.3. Land and Crop Policy
58
The export of coffee was the major source of income for the Habyarimana regime. The
confinement of the peasants to the farms was, in part, in order to compel them to grow
coffee. So important was the cultivation of coffee that the Rwandan penal code listed
59
penalties for ripping out, destroying or neglecting coffee plants on one’s farm. Farmers
were obliged to sell their coffee to a monopoly agency for a fixed price per kilogram of
coffee. Again, this is exactly the way the Belgian colonizers organized the Rwandan
economy. C. Newbury writes that the core of Belgian economic policy was the control of
60
labor and the forced cultivation of cash crops (for taxation purposes).
55
56
57
58
59
60
L’Umuganda dans le Developpement National, 1988, p.39.
I refer to the 1988 government publication on Umuganda p.20-32 for details on the organisational
structure of umuganda.
Uvin, P., Aiding violence : the development enterprise in Rwanda, 1998.
The price the producers received for the coffee was high compared to other African countries, but the
mandatory continuation to grow coffee in times of a low international price decreased income.
Little, P.D., and Horowitz, M., ‘Agricultural policy and practice in Rwanda,’ Human Organization, vol
46, 1987 and vol 47, 1988.
Newbury, C., The Cohesion of Oppression, 1987, pp. 152-154.
29
30
It is worth noting that Habyarimana discouraged the cultivation of bananas, even though
bananas produce a very high yield per acre, and despite the fact that a large domestic
61
banana market existed in Rwanda . In a 1979 speech, he is very explicit about that:
“Despite the opposition and the misunderstanding that I have seen in this question, I
remain convinced that the extension of the wine banana and, in certain regions, the
appropriation of land for its cultivation, are a great handicap for development and
for the food equilibrium of the population. The “myth of the banana tree” must
disappear as well as the myth of the “nice corners” and that of the burning of bushes
62
so-called regenerating effect.”
From 1989 to 1992, a research team from the University of Michigan Agricultural
Economics Department undertook a national household survey in Rwanda. Econometric
analysis of these agricultural household data reveal the importance of banana cultivation
for the income and the calorie intake of Rwandan peasants. In table 5, one can observe a
positive correlation between a high percentage of one’s land used for banana cultivation on
the one hand and high total income and high calorie intake on the other hand. For the
63
percentage of one’s land used for coffee cultivation, no such correlation is observable.
Total income refers to the sum of the income earned from subsistence production, the sale
of crops and non-farm activities.
Table 5: Pearson Correlations between crop cultivation, income and calorie intake
% of land used
for banana cultivation
for coffee cultivation
Total income
Corr.
Signif.
.077**
-.012
.009
.689
Calorie intake
Corr.
Signif.
.070*
.001
.020
.969
* Correlation is significant at the 0.05 level.
** Correlation is significant at the 0.01 level.
61
62
63
Little and Horowitz, ibidem.
Habyarimana, J, Speech at the opening of the 1980 new year, 1979, p.135.
The author owes many thanks to D. Clay for providing the data set. These data were gathered in 1991
when 1,240 households were interviewed. The correlation in Table 5 is only a rough measure, but
nevertheless gives a good indication. In the future, the author hopes to present more analysis with these
data. For further information on the data set, I refer to the numerous publications by D. Clay.
30
31
As for the access to land is concerned, this depends on the purchasing power a family has
and on the political connections. The burgomaster was in charge of the re-allocation of
64
land, a task that gives him much power. If the regime decided it needed more land for the
cultivation of export crops, mostly large-scale plantations of tea, peasants were driven off
65
the land and received very little compensation. We come back to this discussion in
relation to the genocide (section 6). Peter Uvin’s book on the development enterprise in
Rwanda details the many instances in which farmers showed their disapproval with the
land and crop policies enacted by the Habyarimana regime: farmers uprooted coffee trees,
invaded land that was previously appropriated by the government, attacked development
workers, told researchers that they would like to stop farming, refused to pay taxes and so
66
on.
4.4. Education and youth policy
With other dictators and with the Catholic Church, Habyarimana shared a particular
interest in the youth. He devoted numerous speeches to this subject in which he repeats
that the youth is the future of Rwanda :
“All our policy of auto-development is, in fact, oriented towards this major
objective: to assure the future of our children, who, in their way, will assure the
67
future of Rwanda.”
Habyarimana had a very particular idea of the task of a Rwandan youngster. Like all
Rwandan adults, a youth had to learn how to be productive. To illustrate this, we give
another excerpt from his speeches :
“Sharing my preoccupations, you have not hesitated helping the Government to take
the necessary measures for educational reform, addressing the desires of the
Rwandan population and the social-economic realities of our country. This reform,
as we repeated over and over again, especially the representatives of the Ministry of
National Education, aims, at the primary level the preparation of the Youth for their
life, giving them, during eight years, an education that enables them to take part in
national development. Rural and integrated handicraft education will have the
64
65
66
67
Des Forges, A., Leave None to Tell the Story, Human Rights Watch, 1999, p.236-237.
Little and Horowitz, ibidem.
Uvin, P., ibidem, pp. 118, 125, 126, 129.
Habyarimana, J., Speech on Youth and Development, May 21, 1986, p.46.
31
32
mission to train productive citizens, to promote their cooperative spirit and to open
themselves for the collectivity. For its part, secondary education has to be
specialized and oriented in order to satisfy the needs of the country for middle
management. Higher education, organized in the National University of Rwanda will
have the objective to train senior management people ready to improve the sectors
68
that are directly useful for national development.”
In the publications of the state agency for information (ORINFOR) that published all of
Habyarimana’s speeches, one finds many pictures of Habyarimana greeting Rwandan
children. The subtitle on one of those pictures says “the permanent contact between the
69
leaders (dirigeants) and the subjects (dirigés).”
It was exactly these young people, aged between 14 and 25, of whom Habyarimana
demanded that they should engage themselves actively in the national development
enterprise, who would do a lot of the killing during the 1994 genocide. In the ideology of
the regime, killing people was considered as doing a job (see section 6). One could add
that the regime told youngsters that they were working for the development of the country
when they participated in the killing campaign.
5. REAL ECONOMIC PROBLEMS, BUT
Long before the civil war, Rwanda faced severe economic problems. The major constraints
for the Rwandan economy are the land shortage, the depletion of soil quality, the very high
population growth, the absence of meaningful industrialization, the underdevelopment of
internal markets, and the fact that the country is landlocked. During Habyarimana’s rule,
almost everybody was working in agriculture, the degree of urbanization was the lowest in
the world, prices of imported goods were high, marginal product of labor in agriculture
was zero, many youth were unemployed, most people were very poor, and famine occurred
periodically.
Facing these difficulties, one is inclined to think that they are ‘given and set by nature ‘and
one would give any regime a lot of credit. These economic problems indeed were very
68
69
Habyarimana, J, Speech at the Opening of the New Year 1980, The Presidency of the Rwandan
Republic 1979, p 127-128.
ORINFOR publication of 1983, p.302.
32
33
real. When I proposed to take a look at Habyarimana’s speeches in the course of this paper
however, I set out to analyze his vision of Rwanda. The question arises to what extent can
the Rwandan regime be blamed for the degree of suffering of the Rwandan population,
given the severe constraints the economy faced. A few points come to mind here :
(1) Any policy directed at the solution of some of the problems in Rwanda has to allow
(and encourage) urbanization, the development of markets and the formation of a dynamic
private sector. From Habyarimana’s speeches, however, one learns that he was opposed to
exactly these measures. Cities were immoral places, where criminals prosper (he used the
term ‘vagabondage’ ) and prostitution destroyed the mores. Young people who moved to
the city (because they were literally starving in the rural areas) were fined and put in prison
when they wanted to set up a small business in Kigali. They were released after paying
bribes to the police.
The US Department of State 1993 Human Rights report writes on this that
70
“Freedom of movement and residence are restricted by laws and regulations which require all
residents to hold national identity cards and residence and work permits. Police conduct periodic
checks, especially in urban areas, and return those not registered in the locality to their own
commune. Property owners who do not require tenants to show valid documentation are subject to
fines and even imprisonment. Undocumented tenants are subject to expulsion.”
(2) Any policy advocating a solution should have a strong family planning package.
Survey research from 1992 indicates that while 92% of the women knew methods of
contraception, only 20% used them. A much larger percentage (49%) of women said that
they intended to use it in the following months. But Habyarimana’s speeches actually
opposed a family planning policy. In 1983, after ten years of his rule, only 10% of
71
Rwandan women used contraception. Only towards the end of his reign, he seemed to
agree to install an active family planning program.
(3) During the eighties, land concentration in the hands of the rich became increasingly
prevalent. Several surveys indicate that peasants had to sell their land out of distress. The
buyers of course were wealthy people who gained their primary income in government
administration (Uvin, pp. 112-113). In contrast to the ubuhake or cattle contract, the
ubukonde or land tenure system of northern Rwanda was not abolished after the Hutu
70
71
US Department of State, Country reports on Human Rights Practices for 1993, Report submitted to the
Committee on Foreign Affairs of the House and the Senate.
Enquête Démograpique et de Santé, Office National de la population, 1992, p.41-63
33
34
revolution. R. Lemarchand writes on this that the wealthy Hutu from the north benefited
72
most from ubukonde.
(4) Having the population pay for all kinds of permits allows officials to demand cash
bribes for these permits. Having the population stay in the rural areas allows politicians to
control them easier and mobilize them for communal work. Preventing the development of
a market economy, allows the owners of state firms to collect monopoly rents.
72
Lemarchand, R, Rwanda and Burundi, 1970, p.232
34
35
6. THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN DEVELOPMENT IDEOLOGY, THE
PEASANTRY, AND GENOCIDE
In his outstanding 1998 book, Peter Uvin writes that
73
“long before the 1990’s, life in Rwanda had become devoid of hope and dreams for the large
majority of people: the future looked worse than the already bad present. Peasant life was perceived
as a prison without escape in which poverty, infantilization, social inferiority and powerlessness
combined to create a sense of personal failure. “
I ask the reader to compare two excerpts, the first is a citation from Habyarimana’s speech
delivered on January 8, 1979, the second from an official letter of instruction during the
genocide:
“In order to attack the development problems efficiently and to overcome the forces
of evil, we have to rise, march and act as one person and the results shall be
74
spectacular.”
“Encircle the enemy so that he does not take possession of the commune. This means
that at the moment of the attack of the enemy, all the inhabitants must rise as one
single person and make a front, attack at the same time with their traditional
weapons, helped by the local police and the youth that is learning to defend the
commune (civil auto-defense). Those who live close to the border must guard her
75
even more.”
In the two cases, the same language is used to describe the tasks. Whether it is a
development project, or the extermination of the Tutsi, the population should behave in the
same way: it should act as one person in order to attack the problem efficiently. The (Hutu) population, say the instructions, has to overcome its hesitations, it has to fight in order to
drive out the forces of evil, being mental underdevelopment in the first instruction, and the
Tutsi neighbors in the second. The anthropologist Toni S. Phim writes that the Khmer
76
Rouge in
73
74
75
76
Uvin, P., Aiding Violence, The development enterprise in Rwanda, 1998, p.117.
Habyarimana, J, 1979.
Simbalikure, A., Under-prefect of Busoro Under-Prefecture, Letter to the Burgomasters of the
Communes of Gishamvu, Kigembe, Nyakizu and Runyinya, June 1st, 1994.
Phim, T.S., Anthropologies of the Khmer Rouge: Terror and Aesthetics, Genocide Studies Working
Paper, Yale Center for International and Area Studies, 1998, p. 7.
35
36
“official speeches, as well as performance of the songs and dances, inculcated the notion that the
entire population was an army, engaged in combat with the elements - rain, the earth – and with
human foes. “
The language Habyarimana used in his speech of January 8th, 1979 is the same as the
language used in the 1994 letter of instruction for civil auto-defense. My interpretation is
that the meaning of the two instructions is also the same. The “forces of evil” in
Habyarimana’s speech are the Tutsi, the representatives of the feudal class and feudal
mentality. “Attacking the development problems” is a call to establish a real peasant
society. Habyarimana wants his audience to understand that Rwanda will only solve its
development problems when it gets rid of the Tutsi mentality. It is the feudal class, or the
bourgeoisie, that is the development problem of Rwanda.
Again, this is exactly the same language as used by Pol Pot and other Khmer Rouge
leaders in Cambodia. Talking about the Plan to develop Cambodia, Pol Pot said that the
Plan had been drawn up
“from basic notions held by the Party Center, which has decreed that the country must be built and
that socialism must be built as rapidly as possible, taking us from a backward agriculture to a
modern one in from five to ten years, and from an agricultural base to an industrial one in fifteen to
twenty years. “
Speed was essential, Pol Pot continued, primarily because
“enemies attack us and torment us. From the east and from the west, they persist in pounding us
and worrying us. If we are slow and weak, they will mistreat us. “
He remarked that
“What is important about the Plan is not its numbers, but the ideology behind it, and the notion that
77
we must all unite together.”
A number of references to the Rwandan peasantry can be found in the propaganda during
the period 1990-1994. Most of this propaganda is racist, but sometimes racism is combined
with the glorification of the peasantry. After all, in the ideology of the regime, only the
77
These three citations are taken from Document IV translated and introduced by David P. Chandler in
Pol Pot Plans the Future: Confidential Leadership Documents from Democratic Kampuchea, 19761977, David. P. Chandler, Ben Kiernan and Chanthou Boua, eds., Monograph Series No. 33, Yale
University Southeast Asia Studies, New Haven, 1988, pp. 120-121.
36
37
Hutu were the real peasants. Some examples of this can be found in the analysis of the
extremist media by J.P Chrétien. I cite from his book (translating into English)
“Rwandan intellectuals, have courage, help the president defend the nation. I think
that the silence of the Rwandan intellectuals on the war of October-November 1990
becomes more and more clear and maybe complicit as she was on the rural question
78
for thirty years.“
“Did you know that 85% of the inhabitants of Kigali (= the capital) are Tutsi ? When
they expelled all the unemployed from the city, only the Hutu left. The Tutsi have
obtained working permits because their brothers confirmed that they used them in
79
the household. “
“During this Revolution one took the goods of these people who did not show their
engagement and one gave them to the poor who had engaged themselves in the
Revolution. So we can say that what we are concerned that this war is a final war ,
we have to show to the world that we are not impressed by the Whites, that the Hutu
is more courageous then the Tutsi, that the majority people is more courageous, that
we serve ourselves (French text : que nous nous autosuffisons)…This war is really
80
final...we have to conduct a war without mercy. “
In these three citations from the genocide propaganda machine, one finds some of the
central concepts of the Habyarimana regime that are discussed in this paper: the anti-urban,
anti-intellectual, and self-reliance ideology. As was said in the beginning of the paper, the
use of genocide as a political strategy does not come out of the blue, it is rooted in
principles and policies that existed long before the genocide. I believe one could
summarize the ideological construction of the regime by means of the following antithesis:
urban = consuming = immorality = trader = intellectual = minority = Tutsi
vs.
rural = producing = morality = farmer = manual worker = majority = Hutu
In relation to the autarkic economic and cultural ideology that was discussed in the first
part, it is worth noting that early in the genocide, but its organizers literally closed the
borders of Rwanda to prevent Tutsi from fleeing Rwanda. The country was not only
78
79
80
Kangura, nr 5, November 1990, copied and translated from Chrétien, J.P., p.35.
Kangura, nr 18, July 1991, p.10, copies and translated from Chrétien, J.P., p.145.
RTML, Radio Terre des Mille Collines, June 17th, 1994, copied and translated from Chrétien, J.P.,
p.330.
37
38
enclosed and surrounded by other countries, the organizers of the genocide made sure all
its borders were effectively closed in order to kill all Tutsi.
In order to further support my position, I now turn to Umuganda, the famous labor policy
of the Habyarimana regime. I compare the decisions regarding Umuganda taken by the
Central Committee of the MRND (in 1982,1984 and 1986) and the structure used to
organize the killing before and during the genocide.
81
82
A) Decisions of November 12, 1982
Organization of the genocide
1. Members of the national Umuganda
Comission :
- secretary-general of the MRND (pres.)
- ministry of Plan
- ministry of Public Works
- ministry of Agriculture
- ministry of the Interior
- vice-president of the CND
- secretary-general of the Chamber of Comm.
1.The highest authorities of the
country including the president, the
president and secretary-general of the
MRND, all MRND ministers and
important army officers, together with
the brothers of Md. Habyarimana
organize genocide in Rwanda
from 1990 to 1994. Business friends
import weapons.
2. At the level of the prefecture, a
Commission in charge of Umuganda
composed of MRND officials is installed
2. MRND officials given orders
to execute massacres in the 19901994 period. They lead the population
in the execution of the genocide.
3. rehabilitation of manual labor and
obligatory nature of Umuganda
3.National and local officials use the
word Umuganda to describe the
killing.
4. local officials have to feel concerned
about the political weight of the Umuganda
institution, serve as an example and
manage the population
4. The population should act like one
person to destroy the forces of evil.
Local officials sensitize and
mobilize the population
5. One should allocate the task in a
proportional way in order to appreciate
the work of each group objectively
5.Individuals are forced to kill,
implicate most Hutu in the
killing. Refusal to kill is a death
warrant.
81
82
From the above-mentioned government publication on Umuganda, p.51-53
This evidence can be found in numerous books and documents on the Rwandan genocide: FIDH
(1993), Death, despair and defiance, Africa Rights (1995), A. DesForges, Leave None to tell the Story
(1999), Chrétien, J.P., Les Média du Genocide (1996).
38
39
6. For the Communal Works of
Development, each participant must bring
his own equipment. Only heavy or
collective material will be given by the Cell.
6. Machetes, an agricultural tool most
Rwandans own, is the main instrument
used in the killing. Firearms are used
by officials in case of resistance.
7. Accumulation of unfinished projects or
not useful projects must be avoided.
nobody
Umuganda projects have to be harmonized
with national programmes.
7. Propaganda calls upon peasants to
finish the project, meaning that
should escape.
8. The militants must be informed on the
results of the Communal Works for
Development, the destination of the products
of the harvest and on the evolution of
Umuganda in other parts of the country
8. Members of the genocidal govt. tell
peasants not to hesitate to kill because
killing is already going on in the rest
of the country.
B) Decisions of June 27, 1984
Organization of the genocide
1. Decision on the hours of work for
Umuganda and on the radio broadcasting
for Umuganda
1. At public meetings and on the radio,
government officials incite the Hutu
population to do a special Umuganda
2. Umuganda will take seven hours starting
from the place of work
2. Genocidal government decides who
shall be killed first and who next.
3. The official responsible for Umuganda at
the level of the Cell will decide when
Umuganda finishes, but one should not leave
kill day
the place before 10 o’clock
3.Local officials determine the start
and the end of the killing. Interhamwe
(‘those who work together’)
and night.
4. In order to strengthen the sensitization for
Umuganda, the Central Comittee has decided
that Radio Rwanda will provide broadcasting
on Umuganda and animation.
4. Radio Rwanda and Radio Mille
Collines provide false information
on the RPF and incite killing.
C) Decisions of April 10, 1986
organization of the genocide
1. A price of 1.000.000 FRW will be given
to the Commune ranked first in the Umuganda
activities. This price will be inscribed on
the budget of the MRND presidency.
1.Various incentives used to implicate
people in the killing, from giving free
beer, the chance to loot the house of
the killed person, to extract cash from
victims and to grab a plot of land.
39
40
This comparison shows how a policy of forced unpaid work, designed to control and
exploit the peasant population and to enable local and national officials to mobilize the
population for collective ends, can be turned into an efficient extermination machine.
Some of my colleagues have pointed out that communal labor activities are a feature of
many communist-type regimes and do not necessarily lead to genocide. They are right, but
I believe that it is not correct to consider the usage of Umuganda for a campaign of mass
murder as a mere ‘perversion’ of the Umuganda institution. This would mean that
Umuganda was inherently ‘good ‘and only abused by a group of killers. I do not believe
this; there was more continuation of existing policies than a perversion of them. Umuganda
was deliberately installed to order all Rwandans to perform manual work, including
students and professors. During the genocide, Tutsi intellectuals as well as Hutu
intellectuals who opposed the regime, were among the first to be killed. During the
Cambodian genocide, Pol Pot killed most Cambodian intellectuals. At one point, Adolf
Hitler said that when he did not need the German intellectuals anymore, he would have
them killed.
Umuganda allowed national and local officials to mobilize and control the labor of the
83
entire Rwandan adult population one day every week. In her recent book, A. DesForges
(1999, p. 234) writes on this :
“Prefects transmitted orders and supervised results, but it was burgomasters and their subordinates
who really mobilized the people. Using their authority to summon citizens for communal projects,
as they were used to doing for Umuganda, burgomasters delivered assailants to the massacre sites,
where military personnel or former soldiers then usually took charge of the operation. Just as
burgomasters had organized barriers and patrols before the genocide so now they enforced regular
and routine participation in such activities against the Tutsi. They sent councilors and their
subordinates from house to house to sign up all adult males, informing them when they were to
work. Or they drew up lists and posted the schedules at the places where public notices were
usually affixed.”
83
Although Umuganda was forced labor, the majority of the population may have believed in the intrinsic
qualities of this policy, at least in the beginning. This, however, is irrelevant to the regime’s reasons for
the policy and is a topic for further research: to what extent did the population cooperate with these
policies ?
40
41
7. THE ECONOMY, THE CIVIL WAR, AND THE FIRST MASSACRES
As long as agricultural production was increasing, especially the production of coffee for
export, the power of the state was increasing. More production allowed for more tax
revenue and thus for a larger government budget. This in turn strengthened the repressive
apparatus of the state and the ability of the state to continue its rent-distributing capacity.
When, at the end of the eighties, state resources decreased sharply because of the drop in
the world coffee price, the ability of the regime to satisfy two goals at the same time
decreased: to satisfy the peasant population (to increase or maintain income) and to
increase export earnings (rent-seeking).
We know that, by all means, the regime wanted to increase export earnings. This namely
provided funds for the regime for import and elite rent-seeking. The effect of the forced
cultivation of coffee on the peasant population however became more and more coercive in
the process of decreased coffee-prices. It was, from the peasants’ perspective, economic
nonsense to cultivate coffee, since other crops gave higher yields. This meant that the
coffee policy impoverished the Rwandan peasant.
A coffee price fixed high enough guaranteed the regime the loyalty of the peasant
population. From 1990 onwards, this was no longer possible. The regime decreased the
price paid to the producer from 125 Rfr before 1990 to 100 Rfr in 1990 and increased it
again to 115 thereafter. Because of inflation, the real income of the peasant population
decreased during these years. A dictatorial regime, as we have discussed earlier, can only
survive when it receives a certain level of loyalty from the population on the one hand and
produces repression on the other hand. When the supply of loyalty drops, as it did in
Rwanda, the dictator needs to produce more repression to stay in power. I believe this is
the mechanism that explains dictatorial behavior in Rwanda in the years preceding the
genocide.
From the moment the exiled RPF rebels attacked, the regime started killing Tutsi civilians.
From 1990 to 1994, about 2,000 Tutsi civilians were murdered by the regime. As in the
case of Nazi Germany, the war offered a pretext and a cover-up for the killings. The
difference is that the Nazis started the war themselves, whereas Rwanda was attacked by
the RPF. Being attacked legitimizes the use of defensive forces, but can never legitimize
the extermination of an entire civilian population.
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I want to stress that the regime did not wait with its murderous campaign until later
developments in the war. In the first action of mass murder, 348 persons were killed in 48
84
hours in Kibilira, only 12 days after the start of the RPF attack. Habyarimana must have
known about the upcoming attack by the RPF, since it is highly likely that his intelligence
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service informed him of this. This means that the regime was prepared for the attack. The
‘preparation’, however, went a lot further than the usual military readiness. Only three
days after this attack , the regime rounded-up 8,000 to 10,000 people in Kigali and put
them in prison. In peace-time, the regime could only discriminate against the Tutsi. The
civil war allowed a radical and extreme strategy.
Not only vis-à-vis the Tutsi population, but also vis-à-vis other countries did Habyarimana
have his strategy ready. One day after the attack, he called President Mitterrand and two
days after the attack he was welcomed at the Palace of the Belgian King. Both rulers
promised immediate military aid. From the limited time span, it should be clear that it was
Habyarimana’s plan to involve other countries in the conflict. Prunier (1995) recalls that
Habyarimana staged a fake attack on his own capital to exaggerate the rebel threat on
October 3 and 4, 1990. Mitterrand responded by sending even more troops. The first mass
murder was thus committed while French, Belgian and Zairian troops supported the
military operations of the Rwandan army. I argue that it was Habyarimana’s purpose to
reach this result. Evidence given in other sections of this paper and also in G. Prunier’s
book (pp. 84-90) supports the argument that long before October 1, 1990 the Habyarimana
regime was losing the loyalty of the population and that the regime resorted to violence to
solve conflicts.
These few lines are necessary to show that the civil war was not the real cause of the
massacres and other actions of the Habyarimana regime. The war merely offered the
occasion, the pretext, to kill members of the Tutsi population. This means, as I have tried
to argue in this paper, that the plan to commit genocide must have originated from
something else. This, I argue, is to be found in a combination of the following factors
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These killings, their organized character and the implication of the regime are described in detail in a
report by the International Commission on Human Rights Violations in Rwanda since October 1990
(FIDH, March 1993). It is, I believe very important to observe that Léon Mugesera, close friend of
Habyarimana and one of the ideologists of the genocide, was present at the location of this first
massacre. Two years later, in 1992, this man would make an extremely racist speech inciting his
audience to kill Tutsi.
Adelman, H and Shurki, A., Joint Evaluation of Emergency Assistance to Rwanda, 1996, p.20.
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- a political economy argument: decreased coffee prices are a budgetary problem and a
‘dictatorial problem’. If the economy no longer allows the dictator to win the loyalty of
the population, more coercive and repressive methods are necessary to stay in power.
- an ideological argument: Rwandan is an agricultural nation and faced difficult
equilibria, both internal and external. Every Rwandan had to be as productive as
possible to keep the country in balance. This equilibrium was disturbed by the end of
the eighties.
- an ethnic argument: this is stressed by many authors and is compatible with my
argument in the following way. When resources are scarce, and regime leaders believe
that only the Hutu are the legitimate inhabitants of Rwanda, the connection is simple, in
this sense that the resources of the country are such they can only support one ethnic
group.
Of course, during the civil war, the plan for genocide was further developed and
elaborated. Various genocidal ‘tests’ were run to check the reaction of the local population,
the local officials, the army, and especially the international community. From all these
‘tests’, the regime learned that it could get away with mass murder. But the civil war also
worsened the economic condition of the regime and of the population. The war was costly
to the regime and food production was strongly disrupted because of internal displacement.
8. BY WAY OF CONCLUSION
From our discussion on ‘development’ we have derived that it is possible to document a
number of inequalities in Rwanda that are stronger or more outspoken than in other
countries with similar or comparable levels of GNP per capita and HDI. These inequalities
are summarized in the following dichotomies: male-female and rural-urban. With the help
of other sources, we have also documented three other inequalities that have nothing to do
with the level of GNP or HDI: Hutu/Tutsi, north/south, intellectual labor/manual labour. If
you take a close look at these five inequalities, and combine them with the ‘dictatorship
approach’ to Habyarimana, we get the following result:
The policies that Habyarimana executed during his reign, served his two main objectives at
the same time: Rwanda would remain a poor rural society based on agriculture, and he
would stay in power. It is this combination that provides the key to understand the
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genocide : all Rwandans had to be peasants and perform manual labor. The racist element
fits into this picture, since in the Hutu revolutionary ideology the Hutu alone are the real
peasants of Rwanda. The Tutsi, the feudal class, the bourgeoisie are the development
problem of Rwanda. The adherents of this ideology, first of all Habyarimana himself,
gained additional strength by observing the shortage of cultivable land. This led
Habyarimana to conclude that Rwanda only had space (or resources) for one ethnic group.
Ultimately, the civil war became the occasion to spread ethnic hatred among the rural
population, to increase the loyalty to Habyarimana, and to implement the genocidal
program.
Political violence and massacres in the 1990-1994 period served several purposes: (1) The
regime could blame the RPF for it and polarize the population along ethnic lines. (2)
Violence and repression allowed the regime to stay in power and increase power in the
face of declined loyalty from the population. (3) The regime could run ‘tests’ to observe
the reaction of the population, the administration and the international community. (4) The
regime could redistribute the goods and land of murdered Tutsi to supporters of the regime.
The most likely explanation is that the racist ideology, already present from the beginning
and institutionalized in Rwandan society, became an exterminist ideology when the regime
was losing power. Ethnic violence against Tutsi and its ideological justification were used
to regain the loyalty of the Hutu population and to remain in power. Habyarimana came to
power after ethnic violence had occurred in Rwanda. He realized the effectiveness of this
instrument to increase his power. Habyarimana executed the policies favoring autodevelopment only if they were compatible with - and serving at the same time – his desire
to stay in power. If a policy was beneficial to his level of power but detrimental to
development, he would implement the policy. He regarded the population (Hutu as well as
Tutsi) as suppliers of coffee and of unpaid labor. He wants the peasants to glorify him and
demanded strict obedience from the population.
In the small scale mass-murders of the 1990-1994 period, the local officials used the same
language derived from agriculture to describe the task: Umuganda, the well-known word
for weekly ‘communal labor for development ’ is used to describe and organize the killing.
Using the three perspectives from section 6 in this paper, one can explain the genocide as
follows : Rwanda should be a peasant society (ideology) and only the Hutu are the real
peasants (ethnicity). Land scarcity and declining coffee prices diminished the loyalty of the
peasantry towards the Habyarimana regime (political economy). In order to restore the
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loyalty of the Hutu population and to make Rwanda, once and for all, a real peasant
society, all Tutsi had to be killed. This annihilation would allow a redistribution of wealth
from Tutsi to Hutu and implicate a large part of the Hutu population in the killing
campaign.
In the late eighties, the regime had lost the loyalty of the peasant population after
falling coffee prices, famine, corruption, land appropriation and nepotism at all levels. The
regime increased repression and terror against one group of people (Tutsi) in order to
secure the loyalty of another group (Hutu). In fact, by implementing genocide, three
essential objectives of the regime were realized at the same time : they used the country’s
resources to enrich themselves and their supporters in the Hutu population ; they were
given the loyalty of that population and thus could remain in power; they could restore the
food/population equilibrium in favor of the Hutu. The Rwandan genocide was indeed a
‘final solution,’ a policy to get rid of the Tutsis once and for all, and to establish a pure
peasant society.
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