2014 marks twenty years since the Rwandan Genocide. In this post, Rob Coates assesses France’s role in the Genocide and its impact on Franco-Rwandan relations to the present day. Rob recently submitted his MA Francophone Africa dissertation on commemoration, textbooks and music as means of post-genocide reconciliation in Rwanda. He spent January to April of 2014 working at the Commission Nationale de Lutte Contre le Génocide (CNLG) in Kigali.

During the 20^th commemoration activities of the Genocide against the Tutsi in April 2014, international solidarity in the face of this heinous tragedy had one notable absentee: France’s delegates stayed at home and the ambassador to Rwanda was banned from the Kigali Genocide Memorial. This was the latest instalment in an international row between the two countries. The bone of contention? France’s role in the run up to, during, and after the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi.

Although hesitating to name France by name, President Kagame’s speech couldn’t have been clearer in its denunciation of French policy to let sleeping dogs lie: “The passage of time should not obscure the facts, lessen responsibility, or turn victims into villains. People cannot be bribed into changing their history. And no country is powerful enough, even when they think that they are, to change the facts. After all, les faits sont têtus. Therefore, when we speak out about the roles and responsibilities of external actors and institutions, it is because genocide prevention demands historical clarity of all of us, not because we wish to shift blame onto others.” (Paul Kagame, 7^th April 2014, Amahoro Stadium.)

In the interests of this fabled ‘historical clarity,’ France’s role in the dark and sombre 100 days of Rwanda needs to come to the surface, and, if France herself is not prepared to do so, then I suppose this blog must! (It must be stated that, because of limits of space, this can only be a brief overview.)

During the colonial period, Rwanda was claimed first by the Germans and then, after World War I, by Belgium. France’s interests in Rwanda came later, after independence, under the Presidencies of Kayibanda and Habyarimana. One aspect of this was the signing of, among other unilateral treaties, a Special Military Assistance Agreement in 1975, modified in 1992 to reflect the reality of French technical assistance at all levels of the Rwandan Government’s military forces. This point is perhaps best illustrated by this famous image (used in genocide memorials in Rwanda) showing, French military personnel (in the jeep, cigarette in mouth) driving alongside a platoon of Hutu shouldering les armes blanches:

AFP/Getty (Retrieved from: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1042059/Dozens-French-leaders-supported-Rwandan-genocide-claims-new-report.html)

French cooperation prior to 1994 with the almost exclusively Hutu military was just the tip of the iceberg, but France’s activities in Rwanda did not cease during the Genocide against the Tutsi either.

The most infamous operation of the period – Turquoise – was initially a much delayed humanitarian relief effort, which resulted, ironically, in providing many of the high-level Hutu perpetrators with safe passage to Zaire and international exile.  Operation Turquoise could also be used to epitomise both the horror of genocide and the indifference of the international community, through the actions of French troops at the Murambi Technical School.  Before the arrival of French troops, Murambi had been the scene of one of the worst massacres of the genocide – more than 40,000 Tutsi lured to a place of apparent safety before being systematically slaughtered.  The school was then used by the French as a base of operations where, for their own entertainment, they constructed a volleyball pitch on top of the mass graves.

After the genocide, France has become a haven for the escaped génocidaires.  While the recent trial of Simbikangwa points to a new direction for the French legal process, many other génocidaires have sheltered in France for some considerable time, with little action to bring them to justice: Agathe Habyarimana (the assassinated President’s wife) is perhaps the most high profile of these.

Although this is a quick summary of almost 60 years of the history of the Franco-Rwandan relationship, it is something that deserves greater study.  Former French President Sarkozy admitted in 2010 that French errors may have led to the Genocide, but the political rapprochement made there has been undone more recently.  What is true, whether the French government like it or not, is that although all of the blame cannot and should not be laid at France’s door, France must still face up to the responsibilities brought on by her actions.  Recognition would be a good start.  Studying the period and prosecuting génocidaires resident on French soil would be even better.

In this post, Kelsey Suggitt, who has just begun her PhD on Francophone Africa at the University of Portsmouth, reflects on her 9 month internship in Cameroon with the World Wide Fund for Nature.

September 2014

About a year ago I flew out to Central Africa to begin an incredible communications internship with World Wide Fund (WWF) for Nature in Yaoundé, Cameroon.

Despite studying Francophone Africa for the past five years (first as part of my BA in Combined Modern Languages and then on the MA Francophone Africa programme, both at the University of Portsmouth), this was a place I knew very little about. In fact, the first time I heard about the opportunity, I had to google Yaoundé to find out where it is. Even after that I still could only have told you it’s in a bilingual country (English and French), politically stable and located between Nigeria, Chad, CAR, the Congo and Gabon.

As you can probably guess, I had a lot to learn and a very short amount of time to do it in. For the first three months I was a sponge; watching, listening and drinking everything in, both in the office and out of it. Yaoundé is the capital of Cameroon and is located in the heart of the Francophone part of the country. It is also known as the ‘political capital’ of the country, with Douala, the largest city, the ‘business capital’. Here, in the city, just about everyone speaks French and few are able to communicate more than the odd phrase in English. With a degree in French and experience living and studying in France, I assumed that I’d be able to get by. However, my difficulty with understanding the strong accent and the speed at which people speak, along with the language peppered with ‘Cameroonianisms’ meant that I became a rather silent observer.

But it’s not just the spoken language that is very different, even body language is not the same, with simple gestures such as “come here” and counting numbers on fingers, being almost as alien to me as Chinese.

One thing that was made clear to me is that Cameroon is so much more than just an ex-colony of France. This is a country of cultural diversity. Every Cameroonian belongs to one of the 250 or so tribes in Cameroon and every tribe has its own history, culture and even dialect. Now, when I talk about tribes, this is not an alien concept, I don’t mean these people live in huts, wear little clothing and paint their faces. These are modern people like you and I. Their young people live on their mobile phones, download music and live and breathe the internet, just as they do in Europe. They have office jobs and drive cars just like the rest of us. Tribes here can be understood just as communities, that is to say they come from the same family or ethnicity, and have a shared history, traditions and values.

During my time here I’ve come to make some friends who are from the Bassa tribe. The Bassa are a very proud people who can trace their lines back thousands of years to Egypt, long before the arrival of the French and British in Central Africa. Their language is unlike any I have heard before and exists almost entirely in spoken form (although there are accounts written in Bassa, and even French/Bassa dictionaries), yet this language unites this tribe, which boasts that their ‘patois’ is the ‘language of Cameroon’ and it can transform social situations. For example, I’ve seen two complete strangers meet in a bar, discover that they’re both Bassa and immediately become joyful at finding another ‘brother’.

It is through these friends that I have had the opportunity to travel within the country. ‘Bassa country’ extends from Douala to Yaoundé, with the many of the villages in between belonging to the tribe. This is because of the path the Bassa took in their retreat from the German colonists, and also because of the Douala/Yaoundé train track which many from the tribe worked on as forced labourers.

Not only have I been fortunate enough to travel this route a couple of times, by bus, but I have also been able to visit Limbé, located west of Douala near Mount Cameroon National Park. This was my first trip out of Yaoundé, and my first time experiencing a black beach (so coloured because of the nearby volcanoes) and also visiting the Anglophone part of the country. From here I also went to Buea, which is best known in Cameroon for its prestigious university, but it was here that I truly understood that Anglophone does not necessarily mean ‘English-speaking’, but more ‘English-influenced’. This is because most Anglophones are not exposed to ‘British’ English, but a Cameroonian version, with many understanding a German accent in English, easier than my own native-speech. And, in fact, many prefer not to speak English at all, but their own patois or pidgin-English.

Unfortunately my internship limited me somewhat to the Yaoundé office, where the Central Africa office is based for WWF, although I researched and wrote about these other countries, nothing compares to getting out of the office and visiting some of the places that we cover. This was so with Limbé, where one of the Cameroon offices is based, and also with Kribi; one of the best tourist spots in Cameroon. The latter is a small town south of Douala, and not far from the border with Gabon. This is a site with beautiful white beaches as far as the eye can see, on the edge of dense, moist rainforest. Because it’s such a calm, isolated location, I found it a perfect contrast from the hectic, noisy, traffic filled cities of Douala and Yaoundé, plus there was the added advantage of swimming in the bath temperature sea!

Spending only 9 months in the country meant that I was unable to truly ‘know’ the place and I am doubtful of becoming an encyclopaedia on all-things Cameroon. But I certainly know more than I did before I took up this adventure. Furthermore, I have finally experienced life in a Francophone Africa country, and one thing I feel I have as an advantage over the many books and internet articles on Cameroon news, history and politics, is that I have lived with and around this diverse people, whose lives and opinions cannot be simply summed up in a few thousand words. Often the published stories are very far from the reality, and there are many more narratives just crying out to be told.