When Victims Become Killers

Colonialism, Nativism, and the Genocide in Rwanda

Bibliographic Data

ID23398132
AuthorsMahmood Mamdani (0000-0003-1226-1016, corresponding author)
Year2001
Pages384
Publication date2001-12-31
Open AccessNo
TypeBOOK
Reviewed byWhen Victims Become Killers: Colonialism, Nativism, and the Genocide in Rwanda, John M Janzen, 2003
Reviewed byWhen Victims Become Killers: Colonialism, Nativism, and the Genocide in Rwanda, Jeanne Koopman, 2002
VenueWhen Victims Become Killers (SOURCE_BOOK)
PublisherPrinceton University Press (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1515/9781400851720
OpenAlexW2030226669
Open LibraryOL29232734M
ISBN9781400851720
LanguageEN
Citations received769

"When we captured Kigali, we thought we would face criminals in the state; instead, we faced a criminal population." So a political commissar in the Rwanda Patriotic Front reflected after the 1994 massacre of as many as one million Tutsis in Rwanda. Underlying his statement is the realization that, though ordered by a minority of state functionaries, the slaughter was performed by hundreds of thousands of ordinary citizens, including even judges, human rights activists, and doctors, nurses, priests, friends, and spouses of the victims. Indeed, it is its very popularity that makes the Rwandan genocide so unthinkable. This book makes it thinkable. Rejecting easy explanations of the genocide as a mysterious evil force that was bizarrely unleashed, one of Africa's best-known intellectuals situates the tragedy in its proper context. He coaxes to the surface the historical, geographical, and political forces that made it possible for so many Hutu to turn so brutally on their neighbors. He finds answers in the nature of political identities generated during colonialism, in the failures of the nationalist revolution to transcend these identities, and in regional demographic and political currents that reach well beyond Rwanda. In so doing, Mahmood Mamdani usefully broadens understandings of citizenship and political identity in postcolonial Africa. There have been few attempts to explain the Rwandan horror, and none has succeeded so well as this one. Mamdani's analysis provides a solid foundation for future studies of the massacre. Even more important, his answers point a way out of crisis: a direction for reforming political identity in central Africa and preventing future tragedies.

Criminology · Political science · African history and culture analysis · African history and culture studies · History · Middle East and Rwanda Conflicts · Psychology · 15.80 history of Africa · 1994 · 20th century · Civil War, 1994 · crimes against · Crimes contre · Crimes contre les · Crimes et délits politiques · ethnic relations · Etnische betrekkingen · Genocide · Hutu · Hutu (African people) · Hutu (peuple d'Afrique) · Insurgency · Massamoorden · Political crimes and offenses · Politics and government · Relations interethniques · Révoltes · Rwanda · Rwanda Civil War · Tutsi · Tutsi (african people) · Tutsi (Peuple d'Afrique)

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