The articulate and well-equipped system of global mass media intoxicates tele-addicts and tele-idiots on misfortunes and calamities, adopting the system of live broadcast as if it were a football match and not for life. Data, figures, testimonies, interviews, tears and corpses follow one another for a few weeks, and then onwards in search of a new scenario: the multi-ethnic circus of information always has the bags packed.

Thus lately appeared, only to then fade out on television screens around the whole world, the drama of Somalia and of the entire Horn of Africa, that of Albania and that of Bosnia. The paid-off caravan of commentators, just departed from Rwanda, is today, with satellite dishes firmly planted on the beaches, in Haiti, awaiting some exceptional shot; tomorrow it will move on to wherever the capitalist crisis has produced its inevitable catastrophes, including the plague in Indian cities, where for the moment it’s best not to get too close.

Now Rwanda is left to its fate of misery and violence in a kind of controlled drift, with the aim of containing its devastating effects above all on the neighbouring countries, where huge masses of refugees have poured in.

In order to succeed in understanding and correctly framing from the materialist point of view the creeping and prolonged civil war in Rwanda, which has been told to us as a tribal legacy between the Hutu and Tutsi ethnicities, it is necessary to briefly go back into the history of the migrations of peoples in search of new lands to inhabit and into that of European colonial exploitation, with its consequences.

About five centuries ago, Tutsi tribes, a Nilotic-type population dedicated to nomadic pastoralism, move southwards from the Ethiopian highlands in search of new territories in which to settle with their herds and reside there, integrating and adapting themselves according to the rules dictated by the new natural environment.

The causes and modalities of these migrations are not known; usually it is a matter, as the biblical accounts remind us, of nomadic pastoral tribes, but above all of the subsequent great waves of migration from India to Europe.

The Tutsi migration exhausts itself, in one or more waves, in a favourable hilly area, rich in water reserves, inhabited by Hutu tribes dedicated to sedentary agriculture. This one, and that agro-pastoral one with seasonal character, compared to the exclusive pastoral nomadism still present today in some African regions, represent an advancement in the form of production.

Nomadic populations, due to the organisation as armed military societies that they must give themselves in order to cope with a way of life particularly full of pitfalls and unforeseen events, generally present a marked aptitude for warrior activities, which are found to a lesser extent in sedentary populations, called to the defence of their territories only on occasion of foreign incursions.

Over time, coexistence between the two ethnic groups has been consolidated through frequent marriages to such an extent that it is currently difficult to recognise members of the two ethnicities by sight.

Even the social organisation, which we can reconstruct from the meagre descriptions currently available, has consolidated itself on a hybrid and transitional form from the Asiatic variant of the secondary form of production, probably derived through migrations from ancient archaic forms, to the ethnically based feudal: the agricultural Hutu communities are defended and protected by the agile Tutsi. Over time, moreover, groups of Watussi, warriors par excellence, have occupied the top rungs of the social ladder (see ‘L’Unità’ of 21 May).

While in the Land of Hills, part of Great Lakes Africa, this type of productive and social organisation was being consolidated without particular problems of ethnic intolerance, which, due to the favourable natural conditions and remoteness from the centres on the coast did not require advancement, elsewhere, and precisely in Berlin in 1885, its fate was changed.

The European colonisation of Africa until 1870 had been limited to coastal areas and maritime and commercial bases; the assault on Africa, a correct term to indicate the manoeuvres for the partition of the Dark Continent, was unfolding under the influence of the major European powers of the time.

In 1871 in Africa, while in France the glorious struggle of the Paris Commune had just been consumed in blood, the American journalist Stanley finds in a village on the shores of Lake Tanganyika the Scottish explorer and missionary Livingstone, presumed missing in one of his reconnaissance journeys into the interior of Africa. Behind the miserable cloak of scientific research and the spreading of the evangelical message were the poorly concealed interests of the European powers to seize large parts of the immense basin of raw materials, metals, gold and precious stones necessary for the expansion of the process of industrialisation in the old Continent.

From the experience gained in his travels and because of the toughness he showed towards the local populations, Stanley proved to be the right man for a mining company owned by the King of Belgium, Leopold II, for the discovery and subjugation the whole of the great Congo basin, which had immediately appeared as an enormous mining deposit of diamonds, zinc, lead, copper, and silver.

The conquest of Africa appeared so easy and secure that the European powers made claims on the territories even before having occupied them militarily, thus creating dangerous situations of conflict of interests in Europe.

At the Congo Conference of 1884/85 in Berlin at the behest of Bismarck, the Congo was recognised as the private property of King Leopold II, who then ceded it to the Belgian state (how generous given the costs of military occupation), but above all, it was established that an African territory, in order to be recognised as a colony of a European state, had to be stably occupied, thus beginning the race for the partition of Africa.

England soon set up a policy that tended as quickly as possible to unite all its African dominions into one long and continuous colony ‘From the Cape to Cairo’; while France, starting from Algiers, descended beyond the Equator toward the Indian Ocean. The lesser powers had to be content with occupying the remaining parts: Portugal was soon dissuaded, by British pressure, of uniting Angola with Mozambique through the conquest of part of what is now Rhodesia, and Spain eventually had to be content with the Canary Islands and Río de Oro. Belgium could be satisfied with the Congo basin, Italy occupied Eritrea, then Somalia, and lastly Libya, while Germany with the Kolonialverein (Colonial League) and the Society for German Colonisation, starting from the base of Dar es Salaam, in present-day Tanzania, penetrated towards the centre of the continent in the direction of the deposits of the Belgian Congo, thus blocking, to everyone’s satisfaction, the English project of a single dominion from the Cape to Cairo.

Togo and Cameroon complete the aspirations of Wilhelm II and German capital as the third colonial power in Africa, recognised by the English in exchange for the renunciation of claims in Nigeria, and South West Africa, today’s Namibia, with its rich diamond deposits. German penetration into East Africa ends in what are now Rwanda and Burundi, on the borders of the very rich-in-raw-materials Zaire, practically the former Belgian Congo. Here, the Society for German Colonisation confirms and utilises for its local colonial organisations the structures and social hierarchies existing among the ethnic groups at the time of the conquest.

Since the First World War, under the Treaty of Versailles, the Belgians then succeeded the Germans, by purchase, in the control and exploitation of Rwanda-Urundi, then separated in 1962 into the two independent states of Rwanda and Burundi. The pre-existing situation worsened by entrusting police and administrative positions predominantly to the Tutsi minority, definitively relegating the Hutu majority to the lowest levels of economic and social organisation.

To complete the work, they then introduced certification of ethnicity or descent on identification documents, thus perpetuating these ethnic and economic divisions. At present, it is not possible to know which and how many agreements were made between the Belgian and Tutsi chiefs and which guarantees they had to provide the European exploiters.

We find a careful description of the situation after this annexation in the Belgian Congo that lasted until independence in 1962 in ‘The Thorns of the Congo in the Belgian Crown’ in Il Programma Comunista, No. 16 of 1959: ‘The Société Générale de Belgique is, of course, the financial group that has so far secured the lion’s share. Its powers are unlimited: it controls the colonial administration and all “private” enterprises, not to mention all the civil, religious, military and political institutions of the colony. But its powers are no less extensive in Belgium, where the “democratic supervision” of parliament slavishly obeys the colonial policy plans of the state agent in the name of the “national community”.

‘The European population of the Belgian Congo and Rwanda-Urundi is naturally subordinated to the all-powerful and anonymous presence of finance capital. In the shadow of this “golden calf”, the Europeans – 108,000, of which 85,000 are Belgians – enjoy absolute priority over the 12 million indigenous peoples of the Congo plus the 5 million of Rwanda-Urundi, entrusted to Belgium under trusteeship by the UN after World War II, as under mandate by the LoN in 1922.

‘With the exception of the indigenous notables, mercenaries of the Europeans, the entire Congolese population constitutes an immense labour reserve at the mercy of state enterprises, industrial and agricultural production apparatuses, and trading companies. No indigenous bourgeoisie has been formed there, since the notables are nothing but “idle” chiefs living off the backs of their tribes. The indigenous petty merchant bourgeoisie is suffocated by competition from European trade, itself absorbed into the orbit of the big industrial companies. For some years now, an “indigenous peasantry” has been forming, organised into cooperatives; but this experience only fattens a “kulakism” that exclusively benefits the Catholic missions that keep them under control.

‘Livestock farming is in the hands of either the Europeans or the feudal lords of Rwanda-Urundi, while only a small percentage is reserved for the tribes and the indigenous peasantry. For the rest, all the productive forces are “salaried” as porters, dockers, bellboys, maids, and proletarians employed in the large mining, industrial and, commercial enterprises’.

The first bitter clash in recent times between the two ethnic groups, now firmly divided into hierarchies, took place at the end of the 1950s when the Hutu majority drives the dominant Tutsi group out of the country, who take refuge northward in Uganda where, in the former British colony, which for decades had become a refuge for the persecuted, have since formed, in military training bases, the leadership cadres of the current Revolutionary Patriotic Front (RPF), composed of Tutsis and ‘moderate’ Hutus.

From ‘Congolese Assegais v. Belgian Ballots’ (Il Programma Comunista No. 21, 1959): ‘Even the tribal struggles that broke out a few weeks ago in Luluabourg (today Kananga), in Kasai province, and those still ongoing in neighbouring Rwanda-Urundi, are now moving out of the traditional framework of clashes between different ethnic groups and are increasingly part of the process of political and social awakening of the Dark Continent. It should be noted that, in Rwanda-Urundi (a territory under Belgian “trusteeship” on the eastern borders of Congo), the colonial administration repeats the game of presenting the recent bloody events as a mere flare-up of hatreds between tribes and responding to them with the promise of a hasty electoral consultation: but the first thesis is disproved by the fact that the “ancestral hatreds” overlap with a conflict of a very specific social order, the Watussi being, as the “Economist”, certainly not suspect of revolutionary tendencies, writes, “traditionally the supreme feudal lords of the Bahutu peasantry”, as always, allies of big white capital, and having “turned their assegais against the popular and reformist organisation” of the latter, and the electoral programme is designed specifically as a safety valve for the worrying discontent of the more “backward” populations’.

Supported also by the above descriptions and by the established habit of pitting tribal groups everywhere against each other in rigid hierarchies, we can deduce that the economic motivations of the poor rural Hutu communities against the richer feudal Tutsi had a definite weight in these revolts compared to the ‘ancient tribal hatreds’.

The succession of the great massacres by machete blows, the mass exoduses, and the overlapping acts of retribution is staggering: 1959, 1963, 1965, 1973, 1991, 1992, 1993, 1994!

In the formation of African nation-states with controlled independence, France and England have always manoeuvred more or less loosely behind the scenes, and the very democratic government in Paris currently maintains in the Central African Republic its most important strategic military base on the entire Continent, from which it is always ready to intervene with its highly trained legionnaires to maintain the role of European gendarme in Africa, thus being able to support its own financial companies with its military apparatus.

From the reply of the ‘French Minister for Cooperation’ (the name of the ministry is nice but quite different from the conduct) to the rapporteurs on the 1994 budget at the National Assembly (‘Le Monde Diplomatique’ / ‘Il Manifesto’ June 1994) it is read that France is present for direct military aid in 25 African countries with an annual expenditure for equipment of 57 billion lire (perhaps a translation error: lire or francs?), 792 ‘technical assistants’ and military personnel on the Continent, and trains 1,330 officers a year in military academies in France, most of whom are oriented toward the training and command of rapid-intervention and gendarmerie battalions. Furthermore, it finances and directs the interstate schools for infantry in Thiès (Senegal) and for transmission in Bouaké (Ivory Coast); 20% of the funds of the Military Cooperation Mission (MMC) are dedicated to training, of the other 80% it is not made known; but let us add, however, that France in Mauritania trains an army under the control of the Moors and Berbers that sows terror among the Black minorities freed from slavery only in July 1980 but who still live in a condition of total subjugation!

Rwanda is an artificial state, a typical product of decolonisation, which in most cases divided the approximately 700 million Africans, belonging to more than a thousand different ethnic groups, into 52 states that are in reality nothing more than containers of misery, constant internal conflicts, and mass flights due to hunger and terror.

In all, there are an estimated 20 million refugees across the entire continent. The severe famine afflicting the Horn of Africa could cause another 20 million deaths across all of East Africa. All the tragedies of the continent are on these orders of magnitude. In its latest report on adjustment in Africa, the World Bank calculates that it will take, at the current rate, 40 years for the poor states of the Sub-Saharan region to regain the per capita income level of the mid-1970s (‘Le Monde Diplomatique’ / ‘Il Manifesto’ September 1994).

Geographically, Rwanda is a state just slightly larger than Sicily, but it is much more populated with 7.5 million inhabitants (as opposed to 5 million in Sicily) and has a GNP per capita of $290, or 1/80 of that of the USA. This is certainly a low figure, but still far better than that of the neighbouring states: Tanzania (120), Uganda (170), Burundi (208) and Zaire (220). In these overcrowded highlands, the density is 290 inhabitants per square kilometre, the highest among all African countries. 44% of Rwandan territory is arable land and tree crops, permanent meadows and pastures cover 18%, while forests and woodlands 21% and the remaining 17% is uncultivated and unproductive, that is to say, overall, moderately decent figures.

Agriculture is poor (potatoes, cassava, sorghum, and beans) and its mineral resources are modest: only in the extraction of tungsten does it rank last in world statistics with a share of 1/320 of world production. Small quantities of gold and tin complete the country’s wealth.

In spite of this, French control in the area, with the UN’s blessing, has strengthened by taking advantage of the current Belgian weakness and crisis, and a policy of active interference in the weak and poor African states is clearly evident as a modified form of predominantly economic colonial invasion.

French imperialism, like the others, which in this period of general capitalist crisis nevertheless enjoy relative vitality, never ceases to act according to an economic policy of plunder and looting at low cost, exploiting and exasperating the divergences among various social groups in order to extend the ‘zone of influence of the French franc’, as also in the case, in addition to those already mentioned, of Equatorial Guinea, where direct support to the ruling clans is as shameful as ever.

The latest massacre with the related exodus in Rwanda was not the result of an exasperated response to an isolated incident or from a chain of revenges and reprisals, but it is clearly evident that it is an operation carefully prepared and organised.

In the past, the French authorities, who had quickly replaced the Belgian authorities and had, in any case, limited local armament to the bare minimum, had supported the government composed of the Hutu ‘Francophone’ majority, arousing the fear of the Tutsi ‘Anglophone’ minority that their situation would worsen after the arrival of the French.

The previous French military intervention in Rwanda in November 1990, planned for only a few weeks to ensure the safety and evacuation of the Europeans in Kigali, after an initial offensive by the RPF (Tutsi plus moderate Hutu), ended up lasting more than three years. The expeditionary corps had quickly reached 600 troops, which was considerably more than the number of foreigners to be protected. A group of military assistants and instructors (DAMI) had taken over the training of the Rwandan gendarmerie and the army, which quickly grew from 5,000 to 40,000 men, while the French legionnaires increasingly intervened directly in the armed clashes in order to save the regime of Hutu General-President Habyarimana.

In 1993, the Minister for Cooperation allocated a loan of 12 million francs in support the Rwandan armed forces; six temporary missions for training the gendarmerie were carried on site; some forty Rwandan officers attended the French military ‘grandes écoles’. In addition, the sale of Egyptian arms to the Rwandan army, worth $6 million, was guaranteed by Crédit Lyonnais, while arms worth a further $5.9 million arrived from South Africa in violation of all embargoes.

At the request of the ‘RPF rebels’ and based on the April 1993 Arusha Accords (Tanzania), which ended three years of war between government forces and the Front and laid the foundations for the peaceful division of power, a UN contingent of Belgian military replaced the French, but after the killing of ten blue helmets, Belgium withdrew its contingent and Rwanda, after the massacres following the shooting down of the Rwandan presidential plane, was left to its own devices, bringing about this latest tragedy.

Everything suggests that the extremist and reactionary wing of President Habyarimana’s regime (architect of ethnic cleansing against the Tutsi and supporter of the infamous Hutu paramilitary gangs of the Kigingi), opposed to any agreement with the RPF, played the card of the final offensive against the Tutsi.

On 6 April 1994, the presidential plane was shot down during landing by rockets launched from the presidential guard’s camp, and a few moments later a long-laid plan was set in motion. All members of the moderate centrist opposition were massacred, beginning with the prime minister, Ms. Agathe Uwilingiyimana and the ten Belgian blue helmets escorting her. The militiamen were in possession of lists prepared long ago, the members of the presidential guard were accompanied by civilians to whom weapons had already been distributed since December, and who had been given military training. Their enlistment was made with the promise of money, livestock, and the land of displaced neighbours; the same promises were made to Hutu peasants who, on average, have 0.7 hectares of land to feed families of at least 8 or 10 people.

After the departure of the blue helmets and the few Europeans and other foreigners, including the evacuation of an entire orphanage by French infantrymen, the massacres of the Tutsi continued behind closed doors under the eyes of the UN observer forces, who ‘did not have the mandate to defend the victims’ (‘Le Monde Diplomatique’).

The progressive advance of the RPF forces – which, however, begins to consider the old proposal to divide both Rwanda and neighbouring Burundi, which is experiencing the same tensions and related massacres, into ethnically homogeneous zones – caused, after the fall of the Rwandan capital, the sudden and large exodus to neighbouring countries, especially into Zaire, for fear of retaliation by the victors, who instead were sending messages for a return to the homeland and reconciliation.

Even during this period of disengagement from Rwanda, both before and after the victory of the RPF, the role of France, under the aegis of Mitterand’s son, advisor for African affairs and responsible for the Rwandan question since 1990, was worthy of its colonialist tradition. The Front therefore repeatedly threatened to consider the French as enemy invaders if they were found in areas under their control.

Regarding the ‘Turquoise Humanitarian Mission’, entrusted exclusively to French troops at the explicit and insistent request of Paris, there is the RPF’s accusation that: ‘the deployment of legionnaires and marines had as its main goal to erase compromising traces, to “extract” those French involved in assisting the Hutu soldiers and massacre militias or to rescue those responsible for the genocide. While at the same time attempting to steal victory from the RPF fighters. These accusations have been echoed by Amnesty International, which has asked Paris to facilitate an investigation into the possible presence of French military instructors alongside the militias and “death squads”’ (‘Le Monde Diplomatique’).

The French military apparatus in Africa since 1960 has operated more or less in this manner 18 times, including Rwanda in the count from 1990 to 1993, and from last June to August for Operation Turquoise. This network consists of 7 permanent bases based on 8 defence agreements and 25 technical cooperation agreements: the gendarme of Africa has always demonstrated excellent operational capabilities.

In addition to the European vampires, Rwanda’s misfortunes are also being compounded by the greed of the governments of neighbouring states, Zaire in the lead, followed by Uganda, who are taking advantage of the situation to increase their influence and thus demand more funding.

For the populations of the Zairean provinces invaded by 2 million refugees, the disaster has been total: fields, gardens, livestock destroyed, and the fleeing Zairean and Rwandan soldiers multiply their extortion. But the tragedy of the populations around Lake Kivu means good business for others: the Zairean army immediately reused for itself or resold almost all the weapons requisitioned from the Rwandan military, and the Zairean soldiers who collaborate in the distribution of aid also carve out a personal slice for themselves by force, while the local authorities demand a landing fee of $6,000 for each incoming aid plane.

President Mobutu even interrupted his vacation in Mauritius to receive the new Rwandan President Bizimungu, who asked him to disarm the 20,000 soldiers who had taken refuge in Zaire and for his neutrality, necessary to begin Rwandan reconstruction. Recall that in 1990 Mobutu sent the special division of the presidential guard against the RPF and suffered a defeat with heavy casualties at the hands of the Rwandan General Kagame, considered the best African strategist, trained both at the Fort Leavenworth military academy in the USA, and at the command of the Ugandan guerrillas.

In the meantime, the members of the Rwandan interim government, after the military defeat, identified by the UN report as being co-responsible for the massacres, are well housed in the best Zairean resorts: surely Marshal Mobutu will submit an appropriate expense account.

The whole situation, despite the fact that the Rwandan tragedy has disappeared from the honour of the chronicles, reveals to us that this is only a part of the whole African tragedy that occurs daily across the continent ‘From the Cape to Cairo’. This blood will be avenged ‘the day when the workers of the former colonial metropolises will destroy the temples built with the sweat of the exploited of all countries, and now defended by priests and holy men behind the filthy curtain of a retrospective morality, behind a veil of crocodile tears’ (‘Black Blood’, Il Programma Comunista No. 6, 1960).