By Hans Ngala*
Sunday April 7th marked 30 years since the Rwandan genocide began. In its wake, nearly 1 million Rwandans, mostly Tutsi, were killed by the Hutu tribe. Ethnic tensions brewing in the country at the time were further exacerbated by a radio station – Radio Milles Collines which referred to Hutus derogatorily as “cockroaches”.
The Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), a militia group led by Paul Kagame (today the country’s president), took power after 100 days of Tutsi terror, chasing many of the perpetrators into neighboring DR Congo.
While speaking on Sunday April 7, 2024 during activities to mark the tragic events of that same April day in 1994, President Kagame said that the world failed Rwanda. Reports of the genocide were well publicized but the administration of then US President Bill Clinton did little to help as did Francois Mitterand’s government in France. In fact, a 2021 report commissioned by Emmanuel Macron found that France had a large role in facilitating the genocide.
“Rwanda was completely humbled by the magnitude of our loss,” Kagame said. “And the lessons we learned are engraved in blood” he said on Sunday.
South Africa’s president, Cyril Ramaphosa was at Sunday’s commemoration as was Israel’s president, Isaac Herzog and former US president, Bill Clinton.
Herzog’s presence is clearly understandable given the history of the Holocaust.
So what can Cameroon learn from Rwanda?
In a sense, it is almost more appropriate to ask “What can the world learn from Rwanda?”. This is because the same silence that the world afforded to the Rwandan genocide, is being afforded to Anglophone Cameroonians even as the government unleashed deadly force to curb a burgeoning secessionist movement in its English-speaking area which today consists of two provinces.
President Paul Biya of Cameroon “declared war” on separatists in December 2017 and has used every method to try and quash the uprisings in that part of the country.
Separatist fighters have also turned their quest for “freedom” into terror, inflicting bodily harm as well as material losses on those who dare stand in their way or “betray” them in any way.
The US government cut military aid to Cameroon significantly in February 2019 because of “credible allegations” that the aid – meant for the fight against Boko Haram terrorists in the Far North of Cameroon – was being diverted to be used in suppressing the secessionists in Anglophone regions.
The International Crisis Group, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International and the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) have all issued statements warning of the deteriorating situation in Anglophone regions where thousands of schoolchildren have either been killed, missed school for years or are completely out of school. The NRC in the same year 2019, named Cameroon as the world’s most neglected crisis.
Most organizations give very conservative figures of deaths, putting them at just 3,000 since protests morphed into violence in 2017 following the declaration of the “independence” of “Ambazonia”; though the death toll is more likely in the millions given that many people have either just disappeared or their deaths are not documented anywhere.
While some have termed the civil war in Cameroon as a “genocide”, others – especially in government refuse even to use the term civil war as it suggests that government somehow recognizes it – something the government does not want even though Biya himself declared the “war”.
The lessons?
The lessons from Rwanda have to be three-pronged: to Cameroon’s government, to separatist fighters and to ordinary Cameroonians especially Anglophones.
To the government, it is best to realize that this is not a winnable war. The economy is suffering greatly as a result of the now “standard” Ghost Towns on Monday. Ghost Towns simply mean a boycott of all public services carried out as a protest against government and these are done on Mondays. While they are observed religiously in some towns in the region, some towns don’t observe it as much, but the impact is nevertheless still there. The economy suffers and government coffers run dry, affecting the provision of essential services. Towns like Bamenda, the capital of the North West Region, one of the Anglophone regions, has become quite filthy as a result of refuse not being collected by the refuse collectors, leading to an unsanitary town.
While some are calling for Mr. Biya to run for office in 2025 again (and he likely will), these advisors do not have his best interests at heart as they do not counsel him to get into talks with the separatists to find a way out of this conflict and the Rwandan case shows that no Western government or power structures such as the United Nations , have any interest in solving the conflict. Only Cameroon’s government can take the lead in resolving this. Rwanda didn’t wait for outside intervention but sorted out their issue in-house.
Separatist fighters for their part have to be realistic in their quest for independence. While it is true that they have a distrust of government should they lay down their arms, it is because government has not shown a real desire to get into meaningful dialogue. A government sanctioned National Dialogue in 2019 was largely criticized for not including many separatist leaders. However, the Anglophone population are getting fed up with being targeted by the very people claiming to fight for them. Reports of people losing their eyes, having fingers chopped off or being beaten by separatists are all too numerous, making even any support for their cause to fade. This leaves dialogue with the government as the only viable solution.
The role that Cameroonians have to play will be in supporting peace initiatives and reconciliation. The country is highly polarized and fraught with a litany of problems ranging from bad governance to the influx of refugees from neighboring countries and high unemployment among the youth. For the separatists and government to get into talking terms, reconciliation has to happen on many levels and can easily be facilitated by civil society groups such as churches and Parent Teacher Associations (PTA), which are seen to be trusted by Cameroonians across the board. Talks can be facilitated by South Africa or another third party outside of Cameroon where separatists will not feel intimidated by Cameroonian authorities and the media also have a job to play in promoting these ideas and perhaps government might listen and make it happen.
The fact of the matter is that this conflict started between Cameroonians and it will take the will of Cameroonians to end it. Some are quick to label those who took up arms as “enemies of the state”. While their tactics and methods are wrong in many ways, the concerns they initially raised remain very valid and just because the government doesn’t like it, it doesn’t mean that those concerns are suddenly now less true than they were in 2017. We condemn the killing of any Cameroonian by another. We condemn the killing of civilians by separatists. We condemn the killing of soldiers by separatists. We also condemn the killing of separatists by soldiers. We condemn the killing of civilians by soldiers and pray for a peaceful and prosperous Cameroon where all feel welcomed, included and heard. This can only happen once our Cameroon government acknowledges that they are the ones with the power and might to bring this conflict to an end. If not, all our reporting and talking will just be hot air blowing in the wind and history will judge the powers that be harshly if they do not bring the bloodshed to an end – or at least get the dialogue started.
Rwanda went through a genocide at a time when President Biya had been in power for 12 years and 30 years later, Rwanda under the leadership of President Kagame is one of east Africa’s leading economies. The country is well respected for its technological advancements, world-class capital city and salubrious streets. Rwanda is proof that the dark days of any nation do not last forever and Cameroon can emulate this example. South Africa too went through the transition from Apartheid to democracy in the same year as Rwanda was experiencing its genocide. Both countries are far from perfect, but they are clear proof that a country willing to include its minorities in the ranks of its decision-making, can overcome the odds. Perhaps, it is time to look for the lessons that can be learned from Rwanda and implemented in Cameroon. It should not be a case of saying arrogantly as the Cameroon French-language daily newspaper Réalités Plus in their April 1, 2024 edition stated that Cameroon had no lessons to learn from Senegal after the country elected 44-year-old Bassirou Diomaye Faye as president. These kinds of mindsets, of hating the light and preferring darkness as Jesus said (John 3:19); of preferring mediocrity over excellence as Cameroonian academic Francis Nyamnjoh puts it, has to end. If we are to see a Cameroon that works, we must admit that there are some things we can learn from others and Rwanda is a shining example of a country that has walked the dark path and yet healed and is moving and growing. Perhaps Cameroon can learn a thing or two from this tiny country.
*Ngala Hansel is a Cameroonian reporter based in Cape Town, South Africa. He has worked for the Press Division of the CBC Health Services, The Guardian Post and is also a writer for The Gospel Coalition. He currently works for Mercy Ships and holds an M.A. in Journalism from Wits University in Johannesburg.
DISCLAIMER: Views expressed in this piece are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the position of NewsWatch.
