James North writes:
The New Yorker’s legendary fact-checkers must have taken time off recently, when Philip Gourevitch’s long look at Rwanda 15 years after the genocide (May 4) passed through their department. Not only is the article so one-sided that it could have been written by the present Rwandan government’s publicists, it also includes glaring factual errors.
Gourevitch already has a lot to answer for. Over the years, he has turned Rwanda into what one critic has called a "black Israel." In his widely-circulated book, We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families, he interpreted the 1994 genocide, during which the Hutu majority slaughtered 850,000 of the Tutsi minority, as if it were an exact repeat of the Nazi Holocaust. In the middle 1990s this view was understandable, if already somewhat misleading. But then he portrayed Paul Kagame and his Tutsi-dominated government which came to power after the genocide as the heroic African equivalents of David Ben-Gurion and Moshe Dayan – and he continues to excuse their every action.
His latest article is quite astonishing. He mentions without comment that Kagame won the 2003 presidential "election" with 95 per cent of the vote. But nowhere in this article, which is long by contemporary New Yorker standards, does he find room to note that Kagame had his immediate predecessor as president, Pasteur Bizimungu, arrested on questionable charges and jailed for 3 years.
Critics, including the able former New York Times journalist Howard French, have also accused Gourevitch of ignoring Rwanda’s responsibility in the terrible war just to the west, in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, in which up to 4 million people have died from 1996 onward. French pointed out, in his important book, A Continent for the Taking (2004), that Gourevitch’s views influenced the Clinton administration, which probably even encouraged Kagame to launch military attacks into the Congo.
Gourevitch has apparently learned nothing over the past decade and a half from French and his other critics about the violent complexities in east-central Africa, and he must assume that none of The New Yorker’s readers have been paying attention either.
Let’s start with facts. Coltan is a mineral mined in the region that is indispensable to manufacturing cellphones. Gourevitch, as part of his argument that Rwanda today is booming economically, says, "There are now also mining operations in Rwanda, producing respectable amounts of cassiterite, coltan, wolframite, and gold." In his only other reference to mining, he admits that his hero, Kagame, "had been accused of running a colonial war of pillage...during Rwanda’s extended occupation of the mineral-rich eastern Congo." Note the passive voice; you do not know who is doing this accusing.
In fact, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan appointed a Panel of Experts, who reported in 2001 that the Rwandan military was draining eastern Congo of several hundred million dollars’ worth of coltan and other minerals, and passing them off as its own products. (More details of Rwanda’s role in east-central Africa are in Gerard Prunier’s just-published, thorough Africa’s World War.) All experts on the region recognize that the plundering of minerals, by Rwanda and other countries, is a central factor in keeping the awful war going. Gourevitch tries to provide Kagame with an alibi by hinting that the coltan was Rwanda’s all along.
There is more. Gourevitch whitewashes Rwanda’s Tutsi-dominated army, claiming that its campaigns in eastern Congo were aimed exclusively at "fugitive Hutu genocidaires," the soldiers who had carried out the mass murder in Rwanda in 1994 and then lurked in refugee camps just over the Rwanda-Congo border, waiting for a chance to finish the job. This view was perhaps tenable 10 or more years ago, during the early fog of war in the Congo. Since then, human rights groups and other observers have verified the Rwandan army’s complicity in massacres and war crimes.
In his book, Howard French quotes a Congolese human rights leader, Guillaume Ngefa, who calls the Rwandan-led invasion of the Congo in part "a campaign to exterminate the Hutu refugees." Ngefa states: "[T]hose who suffered a genocide are committing one in their turn."
After a while, Gourevitch’s tone and approach start to become familiar. He sounds like an unreconstructed Communist or Zionist who cannot recognize that his one-time heroes are flawed. One of the most unfortunate elements of the New Yorker piece is the four-column photo of Paul Kagame, in a pose so heroic that the Rwandan government could comfortably use it to decorate its offices.
I have some personal understanding that it is not always easy to recognize that you as a writer were wrong, or that the people you once admired have gone bad. I covered Zimbabwe’s first free elections in 1980, and I respected and wrote favorably about Robert Mugabe as he was then. I’ve also worked in Haiti, where I was sympathetic to Jean-Bertrand Aristide, the charismatic priest cum president who later turned sour and dictatorial.
But clinging to Mugabe, Aristide or Kagame is dishonest, and gets us nowhere. People who want to do something about the continuing war in east-central Africa have started to call for action around coltan, the cellphone mineral. Maybe Philip Gourevitch might want to look into their efforts?
Paul Kagame is a western puppet, he always has been — but you need to read the Left-wing press to know that.
Gosh, is it just me, or is the New Yorker increasingly speeding up its downward spiralling? It does look like I won't be renewing when the time comes. (Incidentally – I don't know if you covered this – n+1No. 7 had an interesting (unsigned) article on American Jewish magazines – 'The People of the Magazine')
I think the genocide theme for what happened in Rwanda is incorrect. The massacre was an example of economic losers overturning economic winners. It has happened countless times in human history. Hutus and Tutsis also belong to the same race.
Yes, I heard Gourevitch on public radio and he sounded like an old Comintern PR flack for the Tutsi regime. And the irony is that there's little reason to sugarcoat Kagame's deeds. The man is one of the great adventurers (in the Bonapartist sense of the word) of our age. Kagame is a formidable leader, in the same sense as that, say, Cortez was formidable. What an epic his life has been! Fighting in Uganda, in Rwanda, and in Congo.
I fail to see what you are slighting Gourevitch about! – "Rwandan military draining…..Congo of …..coltan". Coltan is mined by rich companies from the West, otherwise if any un-resourced fellow could do it, then the Congolese would be millionaires! In any case, the recent Rwanda-Congo joint operation (Umoja Wetu) against the genocidaire FDLR, was it aimed at "draining Congo"? – The "Tutsi-dominated army" myth has passed its sell-by date and all who thought that have long changed their minds after verifying the facts on the ground. Come to Rwanda, don't just sit in New York to only grieve over your mistaken assessment of Mugabe and Aristide — a weakness that still seems to dog you today! – Isn't it a contradiction, to say in one line that the "Tutsi-dominated army" went to plunder Congolese minerals and in another to sing praises about Guillaume Ngefa's "Those who suffered a genocide are committing one in their turn"? I think your failure at journalism has been your habit to cling on Mugabes and Aristides as individuals without soberly and unbiasedly taking your time (like 15 years) to examine the situations they presided over.
This is a great article. I only wish the writer had had enough time to describe the misuse of the current Rwandan justice system and the word "genocide" to shut down all of Kagame's critics all over the world. Critics and Hutus in Rwanda and around the world are suffering greatly from this abuse of justice and the fight against the so-called genocide ideology (genocide ideology is a phrase so broad, those who've visited Rwanda tell me, that it can include a 14-year old high school Hutu girl getting in an argument with one of her Tutsi classmates). Those inside Rwanda cannot progress thanks to the so-called Gatchatcha traditional courts. It's amazing how men like Gourevitch or Kagame's other friend pastor Warren can close their eyes and enjoy the company of such a man. That Hutus killed Tutsis is a fact. But that Tutsis killed Hutus is also a fact of no less importance. In fact, more Hutus than Tutsis may have been killed since Kagame's army invaded Rwanda in 1990, says the most comprehensive study of victims by 2 American scholars (http://www.bsos.umd.edu/gvpt/davenport/genodynami... It's impossible to understand what drives these Kagame apologists.
James North responds to Ingina y'Igihanga: I do hope to visit Rwanda, as you suggest. Do you live there? (Do you work for the Rwandan government?) If you are there, or wherever you are, do you really believe that 95 percent of the Rwandan people voted for Paul Kagame? Even Robert Mugabe did not claim that high a percentage.
Mr. North, I am a Rwandan Hutu (I know you love this categorisation and are not happy unless a Rwandan is given a brand) doing my own business and dabbing in amateur writing. I know you are a good journalist (forgive my earlier outburst!) but are afflicted by "assess-phobia" because you made a misjudgement over Mugabe and then came to the conclusion that all African leaders are the same. Contact me on my personal e-mail when you do decide to come to Rwanda. Rwanda is a miracle unfolding that is way out of the ordinary crowd of African countries. Gourevitch and Kinzer have seen this, but so have so many other journalists, not to mention politicians, philanthropists, businessmen, churchmen, name them. Vote for Paul Kagame? I was surprised that even one person could vote for somebody else! Whoever did had not seen Rwanda before or during the 1994 genocide, had not heard of Somalia, D.R. Congo, Zimbabwe, Uganda, Kenya………………………er, almost the rest of Africa. Do you live in USA? Do you really believe that an African-American got that overwhelming vote?
first you misspell Gacaca, then cite what "those who've visited Rwanda" tell you as fact. why would anyone listen to you on this matter? how about try visiting a country before you trash a journalist who's been on the ground there off and on for 15 years? and when you do, try telling a kid who watched his parents get slaughtered by neighbors with a club or his baby brother get bashed against a wall that the genocide after-effects are a crutch and excuse for all that's wrong with the country. especially when that kid now sees the guy who did it on the street daily and does nothing to retaliate. you're a pig, you make me embarrassed to be an American, and your comment should be removed in the name of basic human decency.
What was so dictatorial about Aristide? Putting him with Mugabe and Kagame is simply dishonest. A dictator is somebody who has control over his country. Aristide did not have control over Haiti when he was overthrown in 2004. What murders did he commit? Aristide was maybe too populist for our taste or not the right leader for Haiti but to compare him with Mugabe is simply dishonest and misinformed. I have been in both countries a few times and it is simply a deservice to History to make such comparisons. It is in the same category as the Hitler Hussein comparison made in the right wing to sell the war against Irak. Read Doctor Paul Farmer's article below: http://www.lrb.co.uk/v26/n08/farm01_.html