30 Years Since Rwandan Genocide: How Capitalism Created Barbarism in the Great Lakes Region

Thirty years ago, an event of unprecedented and historic horror took place in East Africa: the genocide of Tutsis and the massacre of moderate Hutus. This event, which was covered in the media, amazed the whole world. Barbarity on an industrial scale caused the death of 800,000 to 1,000,000 people in 3 short months. The anniversary is an opportunity to review the causes and consequences of this massacre for Rwanda and the entire region.

We publish this analysis in five parts, from the pre-colonization period to the current situation, including colonization, decolonization and the genocide period itself. It was first published in 2019 as a pamphlet. It can be accessed here in Dutch and French.

Rwanda before colonization

It is often said that history is written by the winners. It is another way of expressing the fact that human societies are determined by power relations between antagonistic classes that clash. This is the driving force behind history. For those who want to see society transformed in the interest of the social majority, what we call a democratic socialist society, it is important to study history in relation to this class struggle. This is how we can learn lessons for the current political struggles.

Rwanda is located in East Africa in what has been called the Great Lakes region. It is a region with a rich, varied and complex history, which is at the origin of the Nile springs. One of the elements that makes historical analysis complex is that the dynamics of social relations in the region have often been determined in order to be able to ideologically defend a particular political regime. Some historians in the region, such as Abbot Kagame Alexis, have established elements that were true at a historical period in a specific geographical region to justify and perpetuate the domination of their own social class. The same is true for the colonial settlers who, for their part, have based their authority above all on a national narrative and a vision of social relations that corresponded to the need to divide and rule, based in particular on Gobineau’s racist theories (1). During the colonial period, this took the form of indirect rule (2). To do so, it was necessary to play on the contradictions that were present in pre-colonial Rwanda, to amplify the antagonisms, to create new ones and to present them as if they were there all the time. Thus was born the genocidal ideology according to which the Tutsis, a people of Hamitic pastoralists (3), colonized Rwanda, a country populated by Hutus, a people of Bantu farmers.

Another challenge is to be able to study historical processes in their development and context. The history of the Great Lakes region has similarities with periods we have experienced in Western Europe, but there are mainly differences. We cannot simply speak of pre-colonial Rwanda as being medieval and draw a complete parallel with our Middle Ages. Despite some commonalities, the temporality of the facts and the specificities related to the different kingdoms that have established themselves in the region should prevent us from taking hasty shortcuts. Scientists still have to do their work to give us an idea of the pre-colonial history of this region, since its settlement, which dates back to the expansion of the first homo sapiens sapiens in the Great Rift Valley (East Africa). Different authors, whether from the region or from countries involved in the colonial process, are interested in this vast subject. Beyond the nuances and contradictory debates inherent in the immensity of the task, scientific consensus emerges and establishes historical facts on certain important points.

Centralized monarchic states

In the Great Lakes region, speculatively from the 15th century onwards, but more reliably in the 18th century, there were several small centralised monarchical states such as Bunyro, Buganda, Nkore, Burundi and Rwanda. These states were plagued by struggles for internal power between the different clans of the nobility, and by social contradictions specific to the exploitation of a social overproduction on which the upper layer of society lived. There was also a specific willingness of each kingdom to expand at the expense of its neighbours.

This was done according to the potential of the productive forces and their development. The whole society, and in particular the dominant strata, was organized on a clan patrilineal basis. The clans could be composed of a Hutu — Tutsi or Bairu — Bahima mixture. Other population groups existed, such as the Twa — a very old population of the region which made its living from market and cereal cultivation and pastoral breeding. It must be understood that the relationship between agriculture and livestock in the region is as complementary as it is contradictory. Herds need pasture to produce and reproduce, and pastures need herds for tillage and manure to fertilize the soil. Large landowners rise above society, as do owners of large herds. Below them are those who have to maintain the livestock, work with them, and to do the same with the crops. In Rwanda there were those who became Hutus, who sometimes owned cattle, and those who became Tutsis, who were sometimes farmers, unlike what the settlers later wrote. That being said, the cow represented a significant capital: for example, a 300 kg attic of beans bought a 100 kg heifer; an un-tanned cowhide bought 30 kg of beans, or a hoe, or a young goat (5). “Nothing beats the cow,” says a Rwandan saying. This reflects the primary status of the cow in trade. Pastoralists, mainly Tutsi, have therefore tended to have a stronger position of strength by owning this capital.

The ethnic question — True ideas, like misconceptions, can become a material force when they are taken up in masses

Racism is a set of ideas that originates in a particular economic and social context. However, once this context has determined the ideology that reflects it, it takes on its own dynamic and influences the development of the context itself. Thus, the ideology of races had as its context slavery in the context of primitive capitalist accumulation. While this context in this particular form has disappeared, racial ideology has resurfaced several times in history with the various dire consequences we now know. We believe that if we understand the context that has led to the emergence of such a set of ideas, we will be in a better position to fight it. This is what we call the theory of action.

Ethnicism in the region has always been an ideological tool for dividing and ruling. Highlighting an ethnic antagonism helps to mask class conflict and avoid answering the agrarian question, for example. Thus, German and then Belgian colonial historians, officials and missionaries invented the idea that Tutsis were Hamitics from Abyssinia (6) and that they were better suited to command. This justified the withdrawal of several local chiefs (mwami) who opposed the settlers and their replacement by Tutsi chiefs committed to the colonial cause. During the struggle for independence, this antagonism was played in the other direction, notably by Belgian Christian democracy, to maintain colonial and then neo-colonial domination. This racist ideology has been promoted by pseudoscientists who, on the basis of physical anthropology, have installed an antagonism that makes it possible to establish imperialist domination, and thereby generating the foundations of genocidal ideology.

The production of the social overproduct

Pre-colonial Rwanda was an unequal society. The lean period between harvests, crop accidents, epizootic diseases (7) caused famines that could drive families or clans into poverty and into dependency. A rich person was defined by the number of people he had working on his properties (crops or livestock). Part of what was produced by the average peasant went to the chief who had granted him the plot. Those who did not own land therefore worked as day labourers on land owned by others in return for payment in goods (beans, sorghum, beer, butter, …) allowing them to acquire other goods. This status, considered destitute, was on the margins of society. In addition, customer relations specific to Rwandan feudal society were established between a rich man and his staff, strengthened and valued by ideology.

During the emergence of the Banyiginya dynasty in Rwanda at the end of the 18th century, there was a strengthening of pastoralism in the social structure. A system that can be compared to serfdom developed, whereby the peasant had to work on the lord’s land for a certain number of days (2 days of akazi), over a 5-day week. The ubuhake regime, a customer and obligation relationship that operated in a pastoral environment, was extended and intersected with the new power structures. Nevertheless, it was not the Tutsis in their totality who formed the ruling class, but a minority of them. It is estimated that between 10,000 and 50,000 Tutsis of noble clan were involved in colonial power out of a total of several hundred thousand Tutsis in the 18th century.

As we can see, there were many contradictions and fault lines in Rwandan society. This led to struggles and resistance. The entry into play of the imperialist powers changed the internal balance of power in the region and brought capitalist contradictions into East Africa.

Part 2: Colonisation and decolonisation of Rwanda

The imperialist powers are fighting over Africa

No African state uses German as a language of Western colonization. This situation is due to the international power relations that have caused Germany to lose all its colonies on the continent. Germany had already arrived late in the “race for colonies”. The cause was the German bourgeoisie’s delay in achieving national unity. While England, France, Belgium, Spain, Portugal and the Netherlands had been exploring for decades, Germany entered the colonial conquest late.

This backwardness in national unification also explains why the young German state focused in 1871 on strengthening its state internally and did not launch itself directly into the colonial conquest wars waged by its rivals. Initially, it was private capital that benefited from the protection of the German state that embarked on exploration, conquest and investment. The Berlin conference of 1885 consecrated the military power relations between the various powers that would see the emergence of German East Africa, including Rwanda-Urundi.

Alongside inter-imperialist rivalries, the contradictions of Rwandan monarchical society had risen to the surface, leading to a serious regime crisis. After the death of Kigeli IV Rwabugiri, his successor faced Belgian military incursions into his territory and was overthrown following a military defeat and an internal plot. Yuhi Musinga then took over the kingdom. Very quickly, the young king allied himself with the Germans to stabilise his power. As the French historian Jean-Pierre Chrétien puts it very well: “Obviously the Rwandan aristocracy has played the card of one European camp against the other, it seeks the support of those who seem to it the least dangerous or most respectful…”(2) This alliance allowed Germany to stabilise its colonial empire and to manage it economically with envoys on the spot; and this allowed the ruling royal family to secure its power.

The First World War redistributes the cards

The imperialist powers attempted to resolve their colonial disputes peacefully through several international conferences. Finally, the intractable logic of competition between the different national bourgeoisies led to the First World War. This war was waged to redistribute cards worldwide, with each capitalist state wanting to increase its share of the pie and ensure its hegemony. The defeat of the Triple Alliance (Germany, Austria-Hungary and Italy) resulted in the loss of the African colonies for Germany.

The protection of Rwanda-Urundi was entrusted to Belgium, which managed to recover this key region through a balance game. Indeed, the rivalry between the United Kingdom and France in East Africa was permanent at the time, as illustrated, for example, by the 1898 incident in Fachoda, now South Sudan. The territory occupied by Rwanda-Urundi is strategic in several respects because it is a gateway to Congo, it is at the source of the Nile and it is also a gateway to Tanganyika and Kenya which have coasts on the Indian Ocean.

The colonization of minds

In order to ensure its power, the Belgian colonizer, like the German before him, could not rely solely on force or repression. They based themselves on the royal family, which was the previous power, to have a base in society. But they also needed to break down all the resistance that could be an obstacle to colonial exploitation. So they froze the society they found and created an ethnic division in the population from scratch. In Rwanda, the whole population shared the same culture, spoke the same language, worshipped the same god “Imana”.

The colonizers instituted the fact that this people was divided into two completely distinct ethnic groups. Batutsi: superior race Hamito-semites or nilo-hamitic constituting 5% of the population, stockbreeders naturally able to lead, with a layer of lords close to the white race. Below them, the Bahutu: Bantu peasants, an inferior race that had to be commanded. The White Fathers (3) considered that the Batutsi could benefit only from an essentially primary education that allowed them to have positions in the colonial administration. A small Tutsi elite was then formed, but it did not represent the entire population described as Tutsi. The majority of them were exploited like the Bahutus.

To facilitate this process, it was necessary to reduce the king’s power and allow freedom of religion in order to impose Catholicism. This process would lead to the dismissal of Musinga and the establishment of a Catholic king close to the colonial administration: Mutara III Rudahigwa. The Tutsi elite, which constituted his entourage, would only maintain its place in connection with colonial interests, as Colonel Jungers reminded the students of the Astrida school group of the Brothers of Charity of Ghent, which formed the future elites: “remain modest. The graduation diploma you will receive is not proof of competence. It is only proof that you are capable of becoming competent assistants.” (4)

In the 1930s, the colonial administration provided information on the race to which each Rwandan belonged in the form of identity documents. According to the French historian Yves Ternon, at that time, 15% declared themselves Tutsi, 84% Hutu and 1% Twa.

After the war, Belgium was put under pressure following the terrible famines that took place because of the lack of investment in agriculture and infrastructure. Belgium was forced, for example, to open up education for the Bahutu. But, still in 1948, the magazine of Astrida’s former students said: “of Caucasian race as well as Semites and Indo-European, Hamitic peoples originally have nothing in common with Negroes… Physically these races are superb: despite the inevitable crossbreeding resulting from prolonged contact with Negroes, the predominance of the Caucasian type has remained clearly marked among Batutsi.” (6)

Arabica: the basis of the colony’s income

Beyond its geostrategic location, one of Rwanda’s assets lies in its agricultural land. The German coloniser, first, then the Belgian, made Rwanda a land of coffee production. This process has seen the replacement of vegetable and food crops by export crops dependent on prices on world markets. To transport these goods, it was necessary to build and maintain a network of roads that could be driven by vehicles. This happened through forced labour: in 1930 there was about 2 months of forced labour throughout the year. (7) These elements could only reinforce social contradictions, since the population was excluded from working in the fields to maintain colonial infrastructure, but had to cultivate coffee in order to be able to pay taxes to the State. This will lead to famines and population flight to neighbouring countries.

Edmond Leplae, Director of Agriculture at the Ministry of Colonies from 1910 to 1933, set up a compulsory cultivation system that he copied from the Dutch model in Java. At that time, there were 1 to 4 million coffee plants planted per year. From 11 tonnes in 1930, production increased to 10,000 tonnes in 1942 and 50,000 tonnes in 1959.

The “colonial revolution”: oppressed populations begin to free themselves from their chains

Marxists have always explained that revolution leads to war and war leads to revolution. After the Second World War, a revolutionary process took place all over the world. The objective allies of this process could only be those countries in which the social base of the state was different and where the production system represented an alternative to the capitalist system. It was therefore the USSR at first and then China in 1949 that inspired the revolutionaries. At that time, bureaucratic degeneration in the USSR was already a relative brake, but the bureaucratically planned economy (even with its limitations) and the victory over the Nazis gave the Stalinist bureaucracy immense authority. Indeed, the existence of an alternative to the capitalist system made it possible to establish a favourable international balance of power that will force the bourgeoisie in advanced capitalist countries to offer huge economic, democratic and social concessions to the working class in their country, and democratic concessions in countries that were suffering colonial oppression. Moreover, the bureaucracy that took power in the USSR in the 1920s did everything it could to prevent the emergence of a democratic socialist revolution in another country. This could have revived the process of struggle in the USSR itself for genuine workers democracy and democratic economic planning. Despite these limitations, it is therefore a model of top-down revolution and a bureaucratically planned economy that has been taken as an alternative model in a whole host of countries during the revolts against colonial oppression.

In the struggle against imperialism on the Asian continent, the victory of the Mao People’s Army and the formation of a deformed workers state, deformed by bureaucracy from the beginning, will be the model that many nationalists use in countries that were still under the colonial yoke. It is not based on the method and programme of the Bolshevik party during the Russian revolution, which was based on the combativeness and leadership of the Russian working class. Starting from the contradictions specific to colonial rule, this model is based on the nationalist petty-bourgeoisie, the upper layer of society (superior officers, intelligentsia, …) and radicalized progressive elements that fight against imperialist power. The strategy used is therefore not the systematic mobilization of the whole of society through collective mass actions such as demonstrations and strikes, from which a situation of dual power emerges, but rather the guerrilla warfare led by these layers. In a favourable international and national situation, this led to victories and a temporary decline of the imperialist powers.

This was the case, for example, in Indochina with the defeat of the French army in Diên Biên Phu. In general, a revolutionary process in one country inspired the struggling masses and revolutions in other countries. In Africa and Central and South America, these examples inspired the layers seeking to defeat imperialism. This resulted in a wave of struggles based on guerrilla warfare methods that took place in Cuba and Algeria, among other countries. At the end of the 1950s, most independence fighters in colonized countries were won to nationalism; some layers of the petty-bourgeoisie were affected by socialist ideas but based on the model of the Mao People’s Army. The leading role in the revolution was not assigned to the working class and its independent organisations, but to a higher layer of society that relies on peasant guerrillas to take power.

In Rwanda, national elites were also affected by this process. But the ethnic division of society divided the elite into two camps that drew different conclusions about how to view colonial oppression. In 1957, the Association for the Social Promotion of the Masses was founded. Unfortunately, this was not organised on a class basis but on an ethnic basis. Also in 1957, the Bahutu Manifesto was written by 9 Hutu intellectuals, including the future President of the Republic Gregoire Kayibanda. He denounced not colonization but Tutsi power. For them, the question of independence was secondary to the question of eliminating Batutsi economic, political and cultural domination.

The foundations of genocidal ideology were present in this manifesto. It took up the division into categories created by the colonial administration to deduce the need for a transfer of power by a Hutu majority. On the basis of this ideology, the Party of the Hutu Emancipation Movement (PARMEHUTU) was created. For the Tutsi elite grouped around the Rwandan National Union (UNAR), independence and the departure of the colonial administration, as well as the reestablishment of a constitutional monarchy in Rwanda, were required. In addition, a party in favour of Western interests emerged: the Democratic Unity of Rwanda (Rassemblement Démocratique Rwandais or RADER), which brought together former “astridians” (8) and Bahutu.

The colonial power, seeing the danger of loss of control, then changed its alliances and used the Hutu petty-bourgeoisie by promoting the idea of the “majority people”. This was largely carried out by the Christian democracy, mainly Flemish, and the elite of the Catholic Church on the spot. Elections were organized and won by PARMEHUTU. The first republic was established. Gregoire Kayibanda was the president. A policy of systematic discrimination against Batutsi was put in place, supported by violence and pogroms against those identified as such. The violence diverted the masses’ anger against an identified enemy and diverted attention from the problems facing Rwanda: economic inequality and the unresolved agrarian issue. The first Republic lasted from 1962 to 1973. But popular discontent continued. And on the basis of this, Juvenal Habyarimana, from the north of the country, used the regional tensions between the Hutu petty-bourgeoisie in the centre and the North to rise to power in 1973.

Part 3: The Second Republic, the Civil War and the 1994 Genocide

In the first two parts, we have chronologically retraced the historical elements that allow us to analyse the causes of the genocide. In this third part, we will no longer follow the events chronologically, but we want to enter directly into the debate. Beyond the explanation, it means questioning certain superficial analyses that have been brought into the public debate.

How to explain the genocide?

One of the clichés of colonial propaganda to justify the colonization of Africa by the imperialist powers was the “civilizing mission”. The racist propaganda of the time portrayed Africa as a barbaric continent in the grip of Arab-Muslim slavery and ethnic wars. The West’s mission was to bring peace and economic development. This would bring democracy and progress.

The reality is that after the establishment of the capitalist production system and integration into the world market, the average standards of democracy were not present and peace was far from being guaranteed throughout the continent, and in East Africa in particular. Instead of looking for explanations in the contradictions of capitalism, many ideologues preferred to take up explanations in the racist propaganda of the colonial years.

In our view, the culmination of “ethnic” tensions is based on a ruling class that fights by any means to stay in control and enjoy the crumbs that fall from the tables of world trade. In this struggle, the physical elimination as the “final solution” of his challenger and the designation of the enemy as the race that would cause all the contradictions was the option of the Hutu Power, the extremists of the Habyarimana regime. According to the above-mentioned ideologues, this is not the case: genocide is said to be linked to ethnic and barbaric struggles consubstantial with Africa and Africans. This is an ironic way of acknowledging the total failure of the colonial project. Seeing the contradiction, some intellectuals push the argument to the absurd by demanding a new colonization of Africa (1).

The first two parts provided elements of answers to this reactionary current which uses the distortion of history and the racialization of society as a means of division to hide imperialist ambitions. However, there is a current of ideologues considered as “progressive” and “scientific” that must also be unmasked.

Neo-Malthusianism to the rescue of capitalism

Analysing genocide as a “modern” phenomenon linked to the contradictions of capitalism is a philosophically materialistic, i.e. rational, attitude. But today, with the division of labour in the intellectual world and the absence of a global challenge to the capitalist system, this kind of approach is much less audible. Experts in each discipline approach a general question from the unique perspective of their expertise and then generalise this by trying to match reality to the analysis. This is what we call a philosophically idealistic reflection.

It is in this context that Jared Diamond’s analyses must be understood. This geographer and biologist is better known in the Anglo-Saxon world, but his theses are also relayed in the French-speaking world by academics such as Jean-Philippe Platteau, from the University of Namur. In general, with the environmental crisis, neo-Malthusianism is making a comeback. We hear leading figures such as French President Emmanuel Macron say that the cause of underdevelopment in Africa is due to the high birthrate belly of African women (2). We also hear some ecologists calling for a stop to reproduction to save the planet (3).

Marxism is often dismissed as an “old theory”. But in general, however, opponents reuse equally old ideas that have already been successfully countered in their time. Jared Diamond was one of those who brought Malthus’ ideas up to date (4). He has written two books on this subject. One of them is: “Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies”. He explains how Westerners were able to colonize Africa. Geographical and biological elements are highlighted as determining Western superiority. Related to the same subject, his second book is “Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Survive”. He explained that excessive pressure on environmental resources is the cause of the collapse of civilizations. He takes as an example the inhabitants of Easter Island, the Pascuans, and their statues (Moaï). In the same book, there is a whole chapter on the genocide in Rwanda, entitled “Malthus in Africa”. He uses the example of genocide to develop his thesis: overpopulation was one of the determining factors in the events.

In absolute terms, overcrowding should not be ruled out as an explanatory factor. This must also be taken into account in order to understand the social tensions in the region in a detailed way. As such, Platteau et al’s analyses of Rwanda are interesting for more than one reason.

But the mistake consists in taking an element of analysis and generalizing it to make it the main element of causality by considering the capitalist production system as an invariant. In doing so, we hide the social and economic contradictions that are linked to capitalism and present it as the unbeatable horizon of humanity. The analysis therefore ignores how, in the context of an acute class conflict over untreated land claims, the issue of demographics deepens the crisis. That is Diamond’s mistake. In the chapter on genocide, he writes: “Population pressure was one of the important factors behind the Rwandan genocide, that Malthus’s worst-case scenario may sometimes be realized, and that Rwanda may be a distressing model of that scenario in operation. Severe problems of overpopulation, environmental impact, and climate change cannot persist indefinitely: sooner or later they are likely to resolve themselves, whether in the manner of Rwanda or in some other manner not of our devising, if we don’t succeed in solving them by our own actions… Similar motives may operate again in the future, in some other countries that, like Rwanda, fail to solve their underlying problems. They may operate again in Rwanda itself, where population today is still increasing at 3% per year, women are giving birth to their first child at age 15, the average family has between five and eight children.”

In his “Essay on the Population Principle”, Malthus had the same approach. Karl Marx had refuted Malthus by putting the demographic element back in dialectical link with capitalist production relations. Diamond’s theory of collapse has been refuted as a whole (5). Intellectuals have reversed his analysis of Pascuan society. But very little has been written about his analysis of the genocide.

The element we want to add to this refutation therefore concerns Diamond’s analysis of the genocide in Rwanda but in a specifically materialistic way. Capitalism does not develop in a linear and homogeneous way. This is what Marxists call “unequal and combined development”, it generates possibilities of reserves until the moment when all regions of the world are subjected to capitalist relations of production. The way in which capitalist relations are imposed on new societies cannot be peaceful. This is linked on the one hand to the confrontation between the old and the new production relationship, and on the other hand to imperialist competition. To establish its domination, imperialism reuses the old social organization by reshaping it according to its interests and thus, in so doing, transforms it, creating new social relations and thus new contradictions. This is what we also wanted to illustrate with the first 2 parts. It is also in this sense that we do not follow the so-called “progressive” and “scientific” analyses such as those of Diamond.

The analysis of the crisis in the Second Rwandan Republic and the genocide illustrates this point well.

The crisis of the Second Republic

Juvenal Habyarimana took power in 1973. The make-up of the ruling class had changed. A small Hutu minority in the north of the country had taken control of the state power, taking advantage of it to enrich themselves on the basis of their role as intermediaries in exporting the country’s main resources, mainly agricultural (coffee, tea). To strengthen its power, the regime relied on the organization of the country, with a population under strict administrative control. There was thus a division of the country into 10 prefectures, itself subdivided into sub-prefectures, and 145 communes divided into sectors of 5,000 inhabitants, subdivided into cells of 1,000 people. Each cell was controlled by 5 people close to the regime. Every Saturday, the population had to participate in community work and indoctrination meetings run by the regime. This strict control of the population would serve the regime once it implemented plans for the physical elimination of the Batutsi (6). The one-party regime was supported by 7,000 soldiers and a 1,500-strong Praetorian guard (7). Throughout the dictatorship of the Habyarimana regime, strong military and diplomatic cooperation developed with France, which seized this opportunity to weaken the former Belgian colonial force and to establish itself in East Africa.

Rwanda at the time was presented as a model country for development cooperation. The country’s economy was undergoing an infusion of international aid. This may have temporarily masked the regime’s weaknesses, but economic contradictions surfaced during the fall in world commodity prices, particularly in the late 1980s when prices for tea and coffee fell. This forced Rwandan leaders to knock on the IMF’s door and force themselves to comply with the structural adjustment plans, the ancestors of austerity plans and other memoranda of today. This happened at a time when famine struck in the late 1980s and early 1990s following a drought in the south of the country. As the agrarian question had not been settled, a minority concentrates the majority of land: 16% of the population owns 43% of the land and coffee revenues constitute 80% of the State’s revenues. Between 1962 and the early 1990s, the population increased from 2,400,000 to 7,148,000 people. Mainly rural and young, it is a population suffering from famine and poverty that has to undergo drastic cuts imposed by the outside world following the development of its debt (7).

In parallel, the Batutsi who had to leave power at the very beginning of the First Republic in the 1960s organized themselves in the diaspora within various political and military organizations. Present in the border countries, a part of them were able to prosper and build capacity to challenge the power in Rwanda. At the end of the 1970s, President Idi Amin Dada’s Uganda was confronted with a guerrilla warfare that challenged its power. Following factional struggles, guerrilla leader Yoheri Museveni, with the National Resistance Army (NRA), succeeded in establishing himself as head of state of Uganda. Batutsi guerrillas fought in this guerrilla group from the beginning until Museveni took power. Fred Rwigema, one of the founders of the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), but also Paul Kagame, current President of Rwanda, were present in this and gained military experience. The RPF originated from the Rwandese Alliance for National Unity (RANU), which is the political grouping of the Tutsi diaspora. Once in power, Yoheri Museveni installed his brothers in arms in key positions. Competition for positions led Museveni’s relatives to challenge Batutsi’s presence in leadership positions in Uganda. The latter would therefore drive the Batutsi out of the regime and push them back to Rwanda. Rwigema was killed in unrest during the first attack and Paul Kagame, in military training in the United States, returned to lead the Rwandan Patriotic Army (RPA), the military wing of the RPF.

This was the beginning of the Rwandan civil war that moved from Uganda to the north of the country. The contradictions of the Rwandan regime were too strong and, very quickly, the RPA, which was well funded, very well trained and disciplined, was reaping military victories. To stop the RPF’s offensive, the regime asked for the support of French soldiers and diplomats who, until the fall of the regime, would grant it without fail. The aim for France was to maintain in the region a regime favourable to its interests and avoid a new Fachoda, i.e. the emergence of an Anglo-Saxon regime or dominion in East Africa. Faced with this situation, France proposed that the regime conducted negotiations towards a democratic (open to multipartyism) and peaceful transition under the aegis of the United Nations. It would be the Arusha Accords that will lead a force, UNAMIR, to gain a foothold in Rwanda. These negotiations reflected the internal but also the international balance of power. There was no willingness on the part of the regime to concede a crumb of power. And in this process, the regime knew that it was supported by France.

The regime responded to this crisis by increasing racial propaganda. Faced with the anger and misery of the population, during its indoctrination meetings, the regime pointed to the return of the old feudal order “Tutsi”. This generates outbursts of anger and pogroms, but as the military situation was resolved in favour of the RPF, the regime hardened its racial discourse. Since the early 1990s, an extremist movement had been developing around the president’s wife, who also comes from the north of the country. This is the ideology of Hutu Power and the physical elimination of opponents. Preparations for genocide were being made through racist ideological hype reinforced by modern means. As mentioned earlier, the population had to participate in weekly indoctrination meetings. The Hutu bourgeoisie of the North financed the Radio Télévision Libre des Mille Collines (RTLM), which broadcast throughout the country a climate of racist hatred that identified mututsi as the cause of the problems. It would also be a matter of dehumanizing the mututsi by presenting them as “cockroaches” who came from abroad to oppress the muhutu. In a situation of terrible economic and social crisis and drought that leads to famine for a large population without equal access to land, added with the militarization of society through indoctrination and mass media, there was a cocktail that explains why a part of the population was able to perpetrate and participate in this massacre.

This illustrates that the genocide was not a spontaneous manifestation of anger. It was the result of a process that had been carefully prepared by a fringe of the desperate comprador bourgeoisie (8) in competition with another fringe of the bourgeoisie. Moreover, in the first phase of the genocide itself, the first people to be executed were killed on the basis of a pre-established list of Batutsi considered as sympathisers of the RPF. It was the presidential guard supported by extremist Hutu Interahamwe militias who carried out the “hunt”. It was only in a second phase that the physical elimination as the “final solution” of the Batutsi as an ethnic group was put in place to eliminate the danger of restoration forever. This process was assisted by France, by François Mitterrand, Hubert Védrine and Bernard Kouchner, who supported the regime’s hard fringe to the very end and even brought it to neighbouring Congo once the war was lost.

A genocide under the eyes of the world’s media

The 1994 genocide happened despite the fact that since the beginning of the war and most certainly since 1992, the regime’s double discourse during the Arusha Accords (9) was clear: “negotiated” in French became “calling for murder” in the Rwandan language (Kanyarwanda). The media around the world followed the developments, a UN force was present on the spot, but withdrew after the massacre of the 10 Belgian peacekeepers.

The genocide of the Batusti and the massacre of the Bahutu who opposed the ruling regime led to a breakdown in Rwandan society and destroyed the entire sub-region. Several hundred thousand Bahutus from the regime or who had carried out massacres, but also those fearing reprisals or fleeing poverty, went into exile, particularly in neighbouring Congo. The RPF’s rise to power reshaped the internal and international balance of power in the region. Racial media hype had an impact on the entire Central and East African region, particularly endangering the Banyamulenge (10) in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).

The contradictions linked to capitalism have not disappeared but have been transformed, generating a new situation and a new balance of power. We will return in the last part to the new post-genocide situation. We would like to add that, on the course of the massacre itself and on genocide in general, there are many documents, analyses, documentaries, books, etc. It is necessary to consult them to have a precise idea of the situation and also to try to imagine to what extent the violence has torn the region apart. It is also necessary to break the revisionist and negationist ideas that are bound to emerge among those nostalgic for the 1973 regime.

Finally, to conclude this part, we found it necessary to publish a consequent analysis, on the occasion of the 25th anniversary of the genocide, to be able to indicate how Marxists want to respond to the current situation in East Africa. As we have indicated in the first part, the class struggle determines the course of historical evolution. In this struggle, we rely on the social majority that fights against the oppression of the minority to respond to capitalist problems and contradictions. This approach therefore excludes any racial division in society. It puts forward a programme that aims at the unity of all exploited and oppressed strata and establishes that only the social majority can build a society where the needs of the entire population will be met. We call this society democratic socialism.

Part 4: The Role of Imperialism and the Post-Genocide Situation

Imperialism = barbarism

In 2011, a revolutionary movement developed in North Africa and the Middle East. The difficulties in the process brought some European public opinion to support “humanitarian” interventions, particularly in Libya. The widespread and sustained illusion at the time was that our states had a role to play in bringing democracy and social progress in these regions. In opinion polls at the time, a large majority supported the fact that Western countries should intervene to protect Benghazi from Gaddafi’s bloody repression. A majority of the social democracy and the Greens, as well as left-wing figures such as Jean-Luc Mélenchon, supported the intervention at France’s initiative. And even part of the revolutionary Marxist left abandoned the internationalist position to support imperialist intervention.

Today, Libya is engaged in civil war and France, against the advice of even the European Union, supports General Haftar, a barbaric warlord, to defend its own interests. Libya is, in fact, dismantled. And it is not only it that is prey to centrifugal forces, but even the entire Sahel has been destroyed by these imperialist interventions. Terrorist groups such as AQIM (1) have created chaos. The European Union, for its part, is affected by a wave of migration from the region. In the EU the inability of neoliberal policies to resolve the question of the reception of these refugees is instrumentalized by right-wing and far-right populists.

In general, the humanitarian aspects of a military operation are nothing more than smoke and mirrors that mask the cold and brutal calculation of the interests of a small minority in power. The class struggle is not a moral issue, but a balance of power. Imperialism does not care about human life or nature. It is concerned about its supply, its outlets, its areas of influence and, in the final analysis, its rate of profit. And this, regardless of the cost to humanity and nature. To be convinced, the study of the Rwandan genocide is a textbook case study.

In Rwanda, French imperialism suffered a huge defeat. But it wasn’t a defeat without a fight. Imperialism did everything it could to protect its positions on the ground. Before going into detail, it is important to recall that if French imperialism played a reactionary role in this case, it does not mean that American and British imperialism played a progressive role. They just had conflicting interests. In the same period, American imperialism led the Desert Storm operation, which was the prelude to the destruction of the entire Persian Gulf region after 10 years of Iran-Iraq war. Moreover, following the installation of the Kagame regime in Rwanda and the destabilisation of the entire region, the two Congo wars followed (2). Several million people died, and rape became a widespread warcrime. The US did not want to participate directly in the UN mission after the failure of the Unified Task Force (UNITAF) Operation Restore Hope in Somalia.

The “new Fachoda”: from Françafrique to the Commonwealth

The facts are 25 years old, but only recently material has begun to accumulate and some prominent people have started to speak out. The material gives an idea of the French State’s involvement in the civil war and genocide. But a lot of work remains to be done, the most important of which is to get rid of this capitalist system of exploitation which, in order to cover its crimes, distorts the truth. The French army has blood on its hands because of the 1994 genocide. Several journalists and soldiers testify this, such as Lieutenant Colonel Guillaume Ancel who recently published a book, General Jean Varret who had already warned his hierarchy in the 1990s that the extremists of the regime wanted to “liquidate” the Batutsi, and journalist Jacques Morel who stated that “France covered the genocide like a hen breeds its chicks” (3). To get an idea of France’s general involvement, the documentaries “Rwanda, chronicle of an announced genocide” (3) and “Kill them all!” (4) are recommended.

In 1990, France sent a thousand soldiers to train, arm and even command certain operational units of the Rwandan Armed Forces. The aim was to maintain a regime with which cooperation began in 1973. Until the end, the French army played its part. The United Nations Mission for Rwanda (UNAMIR), headed by Canada’s Roméo Dallaire, was tasked with acting as a buffer between the two camps supported by different imperialist states. Dallaire had warned months earlier of the imminent preparation of a genocide based on informants within the Interahamwe militias (5). But as soon as the confrontation between the two factions reached its critical point with the assassination of 10 Belgian peacekeepers, UNAMIR was blocked by the contradictions of its mandate, leaving the balance of power to determine which faction would prevail and leaving the population in the hands of the genocide. In June 1994, France launched its famous “Operation Turquoise”, which included the current Chief of Staff of the French Armed Forces, General Lecointre. According to Ancel and others, this French military operation, originally an attempt to save the regime in extremis, turned into a humanitarian operation following the media coverage of the massacre and the regime’s crimes. However, the French army had got all its senior dignitaries and officials out of the country to neighbouring Congo (6).

Some draw the conclusion that more power must be given to supranational institutions and support a multilateral and multipolar world. That is a complete illusion. When the imperialist powers consider it in their interest to adopt a multilateral approach, they do so. If this is not in their interest, they override it. The example of Libya is very telling. And if supranational institutions really are in the way and interests of the imperialist powers, then these powers don’t hesitate to sacrifice them. The recent relaunch of the investigation into the death of Dag Hammarskjöld on his way to Congo illustrates this point (7).

Torn apart by the genocide, a society to be rebuilt

Despite the support of French imperialism, Habyarimina’s regime lost the civil war. The RPF’s victory brought an end to the genocide of the Batutsi. This military victory and the end of the murderous barbarism of Hutu Power gave the new regime significant national and international credit and authority. Especially since the organized opponents were defeated and outside national borders.

However, the RPF’s takeover is not without contradictions. First, during the military campaign, several members of the Rwandan Patriotic Army carried out massacres, reprisals and traditional acts of war crimes (8). These massacres reportedly continued once the military victory was established to secure the recently acquired power and to allow the settlement of former Batutsi refugees in areas such as Byumba and Kibungo (9). These massacres are at the root of two reactionary narratives: one that is purely denialist and denies the reality of the genocide of Batutsi and moderate Bahutu; the other advances on the basis of these massacres the theory of “double genocide”. According to the latter, “equivalent” massacres were perpetrated by both ethnic groups. And by mixing the history of Rwanda and Burundi, confusion can be created. In Burundi, the neo-colonial capitalist powers have relied on a Tutsi minority to rule the country. Following a rebellion by the population and in particular the Bahutus, the Micombero regime organised genocidal massacres in 1972. And in 1993, the crisis in Burundi turned into a civil war, with genocidal massacres.

Even if some of these massacres were conditioned by ethnic hatred, most of them were the result of a power struggle and revealed the inability to respond to social needs on the basis of a capitalist system in the grip of its contradictions. Private ownership of the means of production, agricultural land in the first place, implies that conflicts end in political and armed conflicts, in order to have access to resources.

The post-genocide situation was catastrophic. Rwanda is a poor country that experienced between 1989 and 1994: an economic crisis; an austerity program imposed by the IMF and the World Bank; episodes of famine; a civil war where different imperialists clash by proxy; and genocide. We were in a society with a million people massacred, hundreds of thousands of orphans, and thousands of women infected with AIDS as a result of the rapes they suffered during the war. And a society that had to judge on several hundred thousand people suspected of having participated in the massacres. Everything had to be rebuilt with little means. International aid initially focused on refugee camps and much of this aid did not even arrive directly in Rwanda but in the banks’ cash registers, in repayment of loans granted by the World Bank and the African Development Bank (ADB) (10).

The Gacaca, an attempt to reconcile society undermined by the contradictions of the state in a capitalist regime

In order to unmask those responsible for the preparation and organization of the genocide, and also to judge the many suspects, several instruments had been put in place. At an international level, the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) has studied the cases of nearly 100 people in Arusha (11). On the basis of its 1993 Law of Universal Jurisdiction, Belgium tried 4 persons from the Hutu Power (12). But the weakness of these institutions is multiple. First of all, it focuses only on “big fish”, leaving aside the mass of rotting suspects in prisons. And then, all this has a cost. The trial of the “Butare Four” in Belgium thus cost more than 3 million euros. On the other hand, international institutions only judge what the balance of power allows them to judge. To date, no RPF members who have committed acts of war crimes have been tried. Moreover, very quickly, Belgium repealed the strong version of its Universal Jurisdiction Act, under American pressure, following the conflict in Iraq (13). As a result, some observers are told that international justice only judges Africans, which weakens its authority. This is obviously a bad formulation, but basically the justice we know is dependent on the class contradictions of society and therefore dependent on the balance of power between the classes. This limits the potential for delivering justice that allows true reconciliation.

In Rwanda, the judicial authority has focused on the organizers, those who killed children and those who committed rape. The resources devoted to justice did not allow much more to be done. But the main limitation is that if we want to trace the history of the genocide we must be able to tell the recent history of Rwanda in a free way. However, as we know, history is written by the winners. They have no interest in having their class reign revealed.

For the alleged perpetrators of genocide in the other categories, an original institution has been set up: the Gacaca. These Community Courts are the modern version of an old tradition and institution of conflict resolution in Rwandan society before the period of colonisation. The Gacaca judged more than 1,2 million cases and 2 million people from 2005 to 2012. The results of these judgments were mixed (14). President Kagame presented these Community Courts as “African solutions to African problems”. This way of formulating things is often a pseudo-pan-African justification for injustice and dictatorship. Indeed, as we have shown above, what happened in Rwanda in 1994 and before that is not a “strictly” African issue but a situation where international and national power relations are intrinsically linked.

Beyond the criticisms, it must be acknowledged that after such a rift, within a capitalist system that feeds on division and is only ready to pull out budgets when it is profitable for the economic and political elites, or when the pressure of mass movements imposes it on them, reconciling society is impossible. The necessary means should have been put in place to ensure material and psychological care for victims and to set up institutions that adequately train people involved in community justice, which implies investing in education. It would also have been necessary to repair the damage caused by the civil war and genocide by rebuilding everything that that was destroyed in this period. Only a plan democratically discussed by the entire population could cope with this task. A plan that takes into account the social needs, allocates land equally and directs economic resources towards the needs and not towards reimbursing donors. And only the framework of a democratic socialist society would allow these elements to be put in place.

Part 5: Contradictions in Rwanda today and the Marxist response

Post-genocide Rwanda saw the arrival of the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) to power. In order to maintain the stability of its regime, the RPF fought against the ethnic divisions inherited from the former regime. The mention of ethnicity was removed from the identity card, schools were opened to all and orphans were exempted from the tuition fee. But the contradictions of the capitalist regime made the reconstruction of society very difficult. International aid did not reach the victims in the towns and villages. The political memory of the genocide was confiscated by the regime. On the one hand this was done to silence any internal opposition and, on the other hand to discredit the international community when it comes to criticizing the regime: the regime can at any time raise the spectre of the imperialist involvement or inaction during the genocide.

The detribalization of society has not led to democratic power-sharing. In fact, new contradictions have emerged. The Batutsi around Kagame who had emigrated to Uganda have regained power. And in order to establish their power on a basis other than ethnicism, they have transformed society. This led to the country’s accession to the Commonwealth in 2009 (1). While the language spoken by the majority of Rwandans, in addition to Kinyarwanda, was French, every effort was made to make English the language of higher education and administration. This made it possible to favour Anglophone Tutsi refugees close to the regime.

Paul Kagame, the strong man

Immediately after the end of the genocide, on the basis of the Arusha agreements, a government of national unity was created around President Pasteur Bizimungu (2), with Faustin Twagiramungu (3) as Prime Minister and Paul Kagame as Defence Minister and Vice-President. Despite this so-called power sharing, it was the RPF and Kagame who held the reins. In 2000, after the resignation of Pasteur Bizimungu, Kagame became President of the Republic.

Paul Kagame has since become Rwanda’s irremovable leader. He succeeded in stabilizing the new regime and winning the support of the American, Canadian and British leaders. This allowed the regime to benefit from the influx of foreign direct investment but also from huge development aid funds. Kagame managed to present himself as “the man of the situation”. He has succeeded in giving an image of a modern and reconciled Rwanda: gender parity is respected in the Chamber of Deputies; the fight against corruption is intractable, especially against the regime’s enemies; the capital Kigali is well maintained and secure; the fight against waste and the ban on plastic dates back to 2004 (4).

Paul Kagame also owes his status as a strong man to the way he treats any opposition. He does not hesitate to liquidate his opponents not only in Rwanda itself, but also outside the country, particularly in South Africa, where some of his regime’s recent opponents have taken refuge (5). A Canadian journalist had to be placed under protection of the Belgian State Security because she was threatened by Rwandan mercenaries for her investigations (6). After Kagame became President of the Republic, former President Bizimungu was imprisoned by the regime between 2004 and 2007 ‘for political considerations’ and owed his release only to a presidential pardon (7). Former Prime Minister Twagiramungu also became an opponent of the regime, denouncing the hegemony of the ’RPF single party regime’. (8) Kagame was able to manoeuvre to build this hegemony, as evidenced by the amendment of the Constitution in 2015 based on a referendum largely won by the regime. This allowed him to run in the presidential elections beyond the two previously authorized terms, which were to end in 2017. Therefore, if elected, Kagame will be able to remain in the supreme office until 2034, after five consecutive terms… (9)

The way Kagame stabilized the regime is also telling. In order to prevent former perpetrators of genocide from regaining their foothold in Rwanda, the RPF has been waging war in neighbouring Congo by supporting regime change following the fall of Mobutu in 1997. Settling in eastern Congo, the regime took advantage of the military situation to exploit Congolese minerals and lands, together with American, British and Canadian multinationals. This contributed to the two wars in eastern Congo and the massacres that took place there. It has also contributed to the destabilization of the entire region whose hegemony Uganda and Rwanda are competing for (10).

Rwanda, model student of the IMF

Thanks to restored stability and economic development, Rwanda is currently considered the model student of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), resulting in renewed lines of credit for the country (11). Rwanda’s economic figures are impressive, with an annual growth rate of 7%. Kagame’s Rwanda knows how to sell its image very well and even manages to invest in “softpower”, for example by buying an advertising insert on the sleeve of the Arsenal Football Club jersey (12).

But this should not mask the contradictions that lie beneath the surface of the Rwandan economy. It is true that Rwanda experienced GDP growth of 8.6% in 2018 and an average of almost 8% since the beginning of the century, according to IMF figures. This is a high growth rate, partly due to a catching-up phenomenon, after years of deep difficulties. But it is also a growth stimulated by large foreign investments, and by the exploitation of “blood minerals” in eastern Congo (13). In addition, it is necessary to qualify: in 2018, the country’s GDP was $9.5 billion for a population of more than 12 million inhabitants, which brings GDP per capita to nearly $800 per person, and thus an income of about $2.2 per day (14). And it’s only an average, calculated mechanically. As we can see, everything remains to be done, especially since the distribution of wealth remains fundamentally unequal.

There were a lot of discussions on poverty reduction under the Kagame regime. In August 2019, the Financial Times announced that Rwanda had manipulated its poverty statistics in 2015, the year of the constitutional amendment (15). Recent figures suggest that inequality has not diminished, but increased. It even seems that the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) has had to make food distributions in some parts of the country in order to avoid famine (16). 37% of Rwandan children suffer from chronic malnutrition. In the countryside, the “green revolution” advocated by the IMF is proving to be catastrophic (17). 70% of the plots are less than 1 hectare (18), which does not allow a family to survive.

This illustrates a process of land fragmentation that continues to increase as the population changes. The contradictions of private property on land act in both directions: on the one hand, concentration and on the other hand, fragmentation. The combination of the two processes leads to land conflicts that increase tensions among the rural population.

On the other hand, we are witnessing a significant urbanization of society. The phenomenon has so far been underestimated. It seems that the share of the urban population was 26.5% in 2015, compared to 15.8% in 2002 (19).

Which social layer and which system can resolve the contradictions?

As we can see, social contradictions have not disappeared in Rwandan society. The new regime cannot play on “ethnic” issues to maintain its power, as has been done before. The Habyarimana regime based its legitimacy on the fact that it represented the “Hutu majority people”. This ethnic division of society was intended to remove Batutsi from positions of power without really meeting the criteria of basic democratic representation. The Kagame regime, which came from the aristocratic strata of the former regime, has no interest in taking up these theories again to maintain itself.

Engaging the population in ethnic hatred does not seem to be on the agenda in Rwanda. This does not mean that this issue is resolved forever. Habyarimana’s former regime was defeated but not eliminated. Thanks to the military support of France and the Mobutu regime, they settled in eastern Congo. They are still organized, mainly within the Forces Démocratiques de Libération du Rwanda (FDLR, Democratic Forces of Liberation of Rwanda), and have significant resources through the exploitation of minerals such as coltan, wolframite and tungsten. In Rwanda, in the short term, the risk of returning to ethnic conflicts is limited but, based on the contradictions of Rwandan society and the region as a whole, it cannot be ruled out. The FDLR is one of the sources of destabilization in the region. To weaken them, nationalization and democratic control of mineral wealth by the social majority of the population is the only alternative.

We believe that a disaster of the magnitude of 1994 is not the most likely scenario in the short term. On the one hand because the current balance of power does not allow it, and on the other hand because after the 1994 genocide, the national and international bourgeoisies will not allow them to throw their authority to the abyss as they did in 1994. Nevertheless, contradictions are still present under the surface. Land conflicts are raging throughout the region: in Rwanda, Burundi, Congo, Ituri province and Uganda. This is against a backdrop of social inequalities and the maintenance of dictatorial regimes. In such situations, centrifugal forces and ethnically based divisions can find fertile ground.

The two essential questions remain: which social stratum can cope with the situation, and with what programme? This must, of course, be seen in the context of new waves of global economic crises. In a recent study on deindustrialization in the neo-colonial world, the Centre Tricontinental (CETRI) (20) provides some interesting insights: “(…) The share of industry in both overall employment and national income is beginning to decline to levels of per capita income much lower than for rich countries: $700 per capita in Africa or India, compared to $14,000 in Western Europe. (…) Many countries, without having emerged from industrial underdevelopment, are becoming low-end or medium-quality service economies with low productivity, through the explosion of so-called informal activities.” (21)

The authors continue, in the preface of their analysis, regarding the consequences of this deindustrialization at the social and democratic level: “So yes, premature deindustrialization appears to our authors as a negative evolution (…). Beyond economic considerations (…), ‘development’ without industry generally has regressive social, democratic and environmental characteristics. (…) Work in the factories is also more conducive to the development of trade unionism and the collective capacity of the popular sectors to act collectively in the face of economic and political oligarchies.” (22).

These conclusions are important because they draw serious political lessons:

• The global crisis of capitalism is linked to the fact that it has stopped developing the productive forces of humanity. Embroiled in its contradictions, it continues to exploit in a deleterious way the only two sources of wealth: human labour and nature.
• Under capitalism, regions that are underdeveloped in industrial terms will not be able to establish political regimes where basic democratic standards are respected. In many countries in Africa, elections are held in a fair manner. The very fact of organizing elections is in many cases a victory for the social movement. But the organization of elections alone does not necessarily guarantee democracy. In fact, only the mastery of economic policy can guarantee real democracy. How can we talk about democracy in an area where access to water, food, electricity, housing and training are not guaranteed. To achieve this, the social movement must be able to organize itself and take collective action. Many basic democratic rights are lacking in the neo-colonial countries: freedom of opinion, freedom of the press, right of association, right to collective action, recognition of the trade union fact, inviolability of the home, right not to be detained without cause, right to a fair trial. These are obstacles to the capacity for resistance and collective action.
• Only the working class constitutes the layer capable of responding to these challenges. It can do so because of its position in the production system. The labour movement has no capital and, in order to survive, can only sell its labour force to capital owners who gain value from it. The unique position of workers in the production chain gives them the ability to block the production process. By sharing the common condition of exploitation and the capacity for impact on the economy, workers develop practices of solidarity and collective struggles against their exploitation. In England, from 1830 onwards, the “chartist” movement promoted democratic demands to solve the socio-economic problems facing the working class. The bourgeoisie has severely repressed these movements, revealing its anti-democratic character. It is also a lesson that illustrates that socio-economic and democratic claims are inextricably linked. It is on the basis of this kind of experience that socialist theory and program have been developed.
• Concerning nature, deindustrialization leads to an economy reliant on the exploitation of natural resources, which has tragic economic and ecological consequences. Africa’s position in the global value chain makes it an area that produces raw materials and is mainly based on the primary sector. These are sectors such as oil, mining and agriculture that are exploited in a capitalist way, that is, without a long-term vision and in a predatory way on the environment. The aim is to generate profits by selling the raw materials to the bourgeoisies of the advanced capitalist countries, which will derive most of the surplus value. The most tragic current examples are deforestation and forest fires. The concentration of productive agricultural land and the fragmentation of land puts enormous pressure on land. This leads to deforestation based on burning and an agricultural method that, in this context, is tragic for the environment. In order to meet social needs, there should be an investment and production plan that requires an industrial infrastructure.

The tasks of the workers’ movement and socialists

Part of the workers’ movement is trying to maintain the lessons of the experience of collective struggles. Socialist theory, which is the summary of 200 years of the working class struggles against exploitation, is rich in lessons for anyone seeking alternatives to the capitalist regime.

We are in fact at the stage of the discussion in which the militants of the socialist workers movement in Russia before the 1917 revolution found themselves. For most Marxists at that time, workers’ revolution in Russia was not possible because of the country’s economic backwardness. The revolution had to start “necessarily” in a industrially advanced country. A bourgeois revolution had to take place “necessarily” beforehand in Russia, in order to accomplish the necessary tasks in order to be able to develop the productive forces that lay the foundations for a future socialist society.

Trotsky had responded to this as early as 1905 with his theory of “permanent revolution” (23). At the international level, the conditions are ripe for a socialist revolution. The workers movement in the industrially backward countries must therefore take on the “bourgeois” and “workers” tasks of revolution in the same movement. But this type of revolution can only succeed if it begins in the national arena and ends in the international arena. To do this, the workers and oppressed need workers’ parties organized nationally but also internationally, to help them in their seizure of power.

The development of a young and urban working class in Rwanda is an opportunity to build this kind of class organization in the region. Obviously, this process of building revolutionary forces is not linear and depends to some extent on the pre-existence of revolutionary forces that set themselves these tasks and build their own forces. Join with us if you want to contribute to the fight in the region.