By Peter Okoye
Enthusiastically watching the World Cup qualification tournament on a Tuesday evening between Nigeria and Rwanda being played in Kigali, the latter’s capital city, I unexpectedly observed a phenomenon. What was that?
It is obvious that in football, the names of players are inscribed at the top back of their jersey, but in this case, I saw none in the Rwandan team. I only saw the word “Rwanda” written in all the jersey of all the Rwandan players. Initially, I thought it was the name of a player only for me to see same applicable to all the Rwandan players.
“Could this be a PR stunt or a patriotic act?” I asked myself.
But patriotism can’t be measured by that phenomenon. What of other nations, does it mean that the players are not patriotic to their country by playing with their respective individual names. Driven by curiosity, I embarked on a research to know why that is so. During the course of my exercise, I discovered that the reason for that was an event that really shaped the political landscape of country even till the present moment. That particular event will be x-rayed in this article.
RWANDAN GENOCIDE
According to Encyclopedia Britannica, The Rwandan Genocide of 1994 was a planned campaign of mass murder in Rwanda that occured over the course of some 100 days between April and July 1994. The genocide was conceived by extremist elements of Rwanda’s majority Hutu population who planned to kill the minority Tutsi population and anyone who opposed their genocidal intentions.
It is estimated that some 200,000 Hutu spurred on by propaganda from various media outlets, participated in the genocide. More than 800,000 civilians – primary Tutsi, but also moderate Hutu – were killed during the murderous campaign. As many as two million Rwandans fled the country during or immediately after the genocide.
BACKGROUND
The major ethnic groups in Rwanda are the Hutu and the Tutsi, respectively accounting for more than four-fifths and about one-seventh of the total population. A third group, the Twa, constitutes less than one percent of the population. All three groups speak “Kinyarwanda”, their native language suggesting that these groups have lived together for centuries. Social differences between the Hutu and the Tutsi traditionally were profound. The Tutsi, with a strong pastoralist tradition, gained social, economic and political ascendency over the Hutu , who were primarily agriculturalists. Identification was fluid. The Tutsi are generally presumed to be light skinned and tall, the Hutu – dark skinned and short. The difference between the two groups was not always immediately apparent because of intermarriage and the use of a common language by both groups.
During the colonial era, Germany and later Belgium assumed that ethnicity could be clearly distinguished by physical characteristics and then used ethnic differences found in their own countries as models to create a ethnic-classed system. The colonial government favoured favoured the Tutsi in the leadership class of the country more than the Hutu. Some Hutu began to demand for equality which eventually led to the first Hutu uprising which began on November 1, 1959. A Hutu coup on January 28, 1961, which was carried out with a silent approval of the Belgian authorities, officially deposed and abolished the Tutsi monarchy.
Rwandan became a republic with an all-Hutu provisional national government came into being. Independence was proclaimed the next year, 1962. However, the transition from Tutsi to Hutu rule was not peaceful. Rounds of ethnic tension and violence flared periodically which led to the mass killings of Tutsi in Rwanda, such as in 1963, 1967 and 1973. Tension flared again in 1990, when Tutsi-led Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) rebels invaded the country from Uganda. The RPF was commanded by a Tutsi, Paul Kagame, who was disillusioned with the political developments in the country. A ceasefire was negotiated in early 1991, and negotiations between the RPF and the government of longtime Juvenal Habyarimana, a Hutu began in 1992. Hutu extremists were strongly opposed to that plan. The dissemination of their anti-Tutsi agenda, which had already been widely propagated via newspapers and radio stations for a few years, increased and would later serve to fuel the ethnic violence.
GENOCIDE
On the evening of April 6, 1994, a plane carrying Habyarimana and Burundian president, Cyprien Ntaryamira was shot down over Kigali, Rwanda’s capital, the ensuing crash killed everyone on board. The next few months saw a wave of anarchy and killings, in which the army and Hutu militia groups known as Interahamwe (“Those Who Attack Together”) and Impuzamugambi (“Those Who Have the Same Goal”) played a central role. Radio broadcasts further fueled the genocide by encouraging Hutu civilians to kill their Tutsi neighbours who were referred to as “Cockroaches” who needed to be exterminated.
It is estimated that some 200,000 Hutu participated in the genocide, although some were unwilling and consequently were forced to do so by the army and Hutu militiamen and some Hutu civilians. The United Nations Assistance Mission for Rwanda (UNAMIR) made unsuccessful attempts to mediate a ceasefire. The RPF rejected the legitimacy of the Hutu extremist interim government inaugurated in April and resumed fighting then. The RPF were successful in securing most of the country, taking Kigali on July 4, 1996.
Panic stricken, extremist Hutu leaders including those of the interim government, fled the country. A transitional government of national unity was established on July 19, with Pasteur Bizimungu, a Hutu, as president and RPF leader Paul Kagame, a Tutsi, as vice president. At that, the genocide came to an end.
AFTERMATH
The government of national unity that was established after the genocide abolished tribes and ethnicity and their usage to describe Rwandans saying it was the catalyst that fueled the genocide.
Once the genocide was over, the country faced years of reconciliation and recovery and part of those reconciliatory moves then is shown in the national football team of the country where the names of each individual players is replaced with that of the country; boldy written as “RWANDA”.
Having established this fact, it is verifiable and factual to say that the aftermath of the Rwandan Genocide of 1994 made the Rwandan national football team often referred to as “AmaVubi” (The Wasps) use the name of their country to identify each player during the game of football. In essence and with prove, the Rwandan football team is the only national team in the country that does this.