03-13-2008, 11:37 AM
Root causes and challenges of the great lakes conflicts
speech by his excellency paul kagame,
president of the republic of rwanda
to the faculty members and students
of the university of dar es salaam dar es salaam
may 14 th , 2005
the vice chancellor;
deans of faculties;
faculty members;
students;
ladies and gentlemen;
i am delighted to be here today and to have a chance to speak at this historic institution. The university of dar es salaam has always been an outstanding centre for education, where men and women have nurtured ideas, concretised their thoughts, stretched their talents, and realised their dreams. This university has always grappled with the challenges of development. It has produced thinkers and activists who have gone on to play crucial roles in the liberation of their countries, and of africa in general. I would like to point out that three of our cabinet ministers are alumni of this university. We should all be proud of this legacy, and of the fact that this institution has refused to be a mere ivory tower, producing unworkable ideas, totally unrelated to the lives of the majority of our people. I have been asked to talk to you about the root causes and challenges of the great lakes conflicts. This is a wide and complex topic. I will, therefore, share with you a few points that i think are fundamental, and then invite questions, comments, and dialogue at the end. First of all, let me say that conflict is not exclusively an african phenomenon, neither is it endemic in the great lakes region. Although recent years have seen many regions of africa involved in war and external or internal conflict, we should not accept the prevailing view that africa is conflict-centric. The conflicts our region has experienced are a manifestation of serious structural weaknesses. Their underlying causes have internal as well as external components. The interactions between the legacy of our colonial history and the post-independence models of governance, as well as the international political, social, and global economic milieu in which this interaction occurs, is the appropriate context in which to place the recurrent conflicts. The structural causes of the conflicts include bad governance, the politics of exclusion, and widespread state sponsored or state condoned human rights violations. I would, however, like to dwell on some of the more fundamental causes that are hardly ever subjected to analysis by so-called experts on the region. In my view, the legacy of european colonialism has had a more devastating impact than we had imagined and we are only now beginning to see the ramifications of this legacy. First , the artificial boundaries created by our former colonial masters had the effect of bringing together many different people within nations that were not prepared for the cultural and ethnic diversity. The leaders of these communities, instead of building on this diversity, sought to exploit it for their own ends. In the process they ruptured social cohesion, and dislocated social entities and culturally homogeneous groups of people. In other words, post-colonial ethnic conflicts in the great lakes region, and in many parts of africa, have their roots in the colonial policy of separating language, religious and ethnic communities. Where ethnic communities, scientifically speaking, did not exist, as in rwanda, they created them. Where language served as a uniting factor, they discouraged its use, and substituted it with their own. We ended up becoming anglophone, francophone, and others, depending on the whims of the colonial master. So now, curiously, african leaders can talk to decision makers in paris, london, or washington more easily, than they can to some of their communities. Or they even prefer to see themselves as closer to, or representatives, of those decision makers from abroad. By contrast, if we look at the history of ancient african civilisations, we find that ancient african kingdoms and empires, were strong entities, with a well knit social fabric, sharing a strong sense of patriotism and a strong desire for nation building and social development. Even those kingdoms which were involved in expansionist wars, which some anthropologists have used to try and explain the current conflicts, never indulged in ethnic massacres, let alone genocide. This is not to say that they were without inherent weaknesses, which colonialists were able to exploit. Second , we could cite the infamous divide-and-rule techniques that were used to weaken and subjugate the african people, and helped to implement policies that weakened indigenous power networks and institutions. Third, was the emphasis on the exploitation of raw materials for export, and the generation of wealth for the colonial power, at the expense of a genuine desire to develop the basic infrastructure and to provide basic social services to the region. The concentration on a few major cash crops and extraction of minerals left the countries in the region vulnerable to fluctuations in the prices of these commodities on the world market. There was a deliberate effort to produce for markets of the metropolis while ignoring national and regional markets. As a result, our internal markets were destroyed; and our creative spirit was subdued. Thus, in rwanda for example, while we were forced to grow and produce coffee for export, at the expense of subsistence crops that our populations needed then, the country saw the first waves of migrants fleeing recurrent episodes of famine. It is no wonder we have witnessed the increase of poverty levels among the ordinary people, and a heavy debt burden which has crippled the region's ability to develop. And as you know, poverty, ignorance, and the feeling of marginalisation are some of the factors that fuel conflict in africa. In rwanda, we know that economic distress was exploited by extremists to recruit the masses into the ideology of genocide, who turned out to be willing converts because they had nothing to lose. Another factor that, in my view, contributed to the conflicts in the region that we know today, is the weak states and the self-serving leaders who appeared on the scene as colonialists departed. These leaders did not have any interest in the socio-economic development of their countries, but rather supported the colonial type of policies and, in effect, continued the siphoning of the region's wealth. With few exceptions, the colonialists left behind african cadres who widened and deepened the social cleavages entrenched by brutal colonial policies. The point i am making is that, although we need to take responsibility for the sorry state of affairs in the region and the rest of africa, and although we must address the urgent and critical issues of corruption, mismanaged leadership and governance in our region, we must also seek to reverse the legacy left by external actors, including the ideology of genocide, and the dire socio-economic performance during the last decades of the post-colonial era. A critical review of the post-colonial era would show:
--- failed institutions that undermined nation building;
--- rulers who were conveyor belts of the worst policies initiated during the colonial era;
--- massive poverty and a heavy debt burden;
--- over-reliance on external charity as a strategy for long-term survival;
--- exclusion of the majority of the population from participation in governance and formulation of policies, including in areas that critically affect them; and
--- the lack of political will on the part of the international community to take a hard look at the anatomy of conflicts-in-the-making. Distinguished ladies and gentlemen; you will agree with me that this lethal cocktail of factors created the conditions for the region's crises.
Last edited by mo-uk : 03-13-2008 at 11:45 AM.
|
Linear Mode
