Neither Settler nor Native: The Making and Unmaking of Permanent Minorities

by Mahmood Mamdani

Rwanda is a metaphor for political violence in Africa. As such, it was a wakeup call, the instigator of a major shift in thinking. The generation that grew up before the Rwandan genocide thought of violence in Fanonist terms—as the midwife of revolution, social change, and progress. On this view, the revolution supplied political independence, which was itself the end of political struggle and the beginning of a social struggle destined to be won. As long as there was independence, social justice would be achieved. Violence was thus either revolutionary or counterrevolutionary: either it was the violence of those trying to usher in social justice or the violence of those determined to prevent it. No third possibility existed. But Rwanda demonstrated otherwise. The violence of the genocide was not that of the poor against the rich, or of the powerless against the powerful. Instead the poor slaughtered each other, and the rich devoured fellow rich. Both victims and perpetrators understood the violence in ethnic or racial—not class—terms.