Rwanda’s Foreign Minister Louise Mushikiwabo is campaigning to become
Francophonie secretary-general. ILLUSTRATION | JOHN NYAGAH | NMG
For more than a year now, Rwanda has been campaigning
enthusiastically to be the next leader of the Organisation
Internationale de la Francophonie, a group of French-speaking states
that have political, social and economic connections with France.
The new secretary-general will be chosen at the Francophonie’s upcoming summit in Armenia in October.
Rwanda’s
President Paul Kagame is already Chair of the African Union, so if his
country nets the Francophonie seat, it will lead two of the world’s
largest regional and global organisations.
Rwanda’s
Foreign Minister Louise Mushikiwabo is campaigning to become
Francophonie secretary-general. She’s focusing on four main issues:
Increasing the influence of the French language around the world;
elevating Francophone countries within political and economic
international debates; tackling youth unemployment; and exchanging
governance practices (encompassing everything from national
reconciliation practices to better tax collection systems).
These
goals are admirable, and they address some pressing issues facing many
Francophone nations. But what makes Rwanda’s Francophonie campaign
particularly interesting is the country’s complicated relationship with
France.
To this day, the two countries’ relations are
strained – and many attribute the tension to France’s failure to accept
its historical role in the 1994 genocide.
Before the
genocide began, the French and Rwandan governments had worked together
closely for years. Then-president Juvénal Habyarimana shared close
relations with his French counterpart, François Mitterand.
Scholar
Gerard Prunier has described how at the time, French officials
distrusted the Rwanda Patriotic Front, then a Uganda-based rebel group
of Rwandan exiles, which it considered part of an Anglo-American attempt
to undercut France’s influence in Central Africa.
This
concern led France to boost its support of Habyarimana despite his
government’s ethnic-based public policies, which victimised Rwanda’s
domestic Tutsi population – and which ultimately set the stage for the
genocide.
Habyarimana was killed when his Falcon 50
aeroplane was shot down by unknown assailants on April 6, 1994,
triggering the mass murder of hundreds of thousands of Tutsis. The plane
itself was a French gift, and was piloted by a French crew.
Sceptical views
What
is particularly troubling for the current Rwandan government and
genocide survivors is the history of French assistance in the formation
and training of the Interahamwe, the killing squads that spearheaded the
genocide.
After the Rwandan Civil War began in 1990,
France provided arms and sent military personal to Rwanda in order to
train Interahamwe forces.
Journalist Linda Melvern has
researched the close relationship between French and Rwandan officials,
and described how France sent military teams of “advisers” and
“technical assistants” to prepare not only the Rwandan military but the
Interahamwe to stop the RPF and their allies at any cost.
France has never fully accepted its responsibility for the consequences.
Since
taking power and leading the formation of a post-genocide state, the
RPF government has consistently held sceptical views of France and
French identity.
Post-genocide reconstruction has
largely tried to turn away from French influence in politics and
society. The most pressing example is the demotion of the French
language.
Despite Dr Mushikiwabo’s campaign to increase
the language’s relevance in the international community, domestically
speaking, French has been steadily demoted.
It is no
longer the country’s primary language (alongside Kinyarwanda) as it was
in the past. Since 2008, English has overtaken French as the primary
state-recognised foreign language, and Kiswahili was recently added to
the list.
But the demotion of French isn’t just about
France’s troubling history in Rwanda; it also reflects a generational
shift. The bureaucrats and officials who fought in the civil war and the
genocide have slowly been replaced by a new generation of
English-speaking Rwandans.
Additionally, many Rwandan
elites within the government and private sector consider adopting
English a matter of necessity, since it is generally perceived as the
primary language of international trade.
New international identity
Considered
against this background, Rwanda’s campaign to lead the Francophonie
looks odd indeed. After all, back in 2009, the country went in the other
direction by joining the British Commonwealth; among the organisation’s
53 members, only Rwanda and Mozambique lack any particular historical
connection with the UK.
At the time, Mushikiwabo
described Rwanda entering the Commonwealth as an opportunity for the
nation’s development: “Rwandans are ready to seize economic, political,
cultural and other opportunities offered by the Commonwealth network.”
But
there’s more to this move than meets the eye. In interviews since 2012,
Rwandan informants within the government, private sector and civil
society have often described to me how joining the Commonwealth was an
“anti-French” decision.
So why is Rwanda campaigning to
lead the Francophonie anyway? Just as it currently holds the chair of
the African Union, Dr Mushikiwabo’s campaign to lead the Organisation
Internationale de la Francophonie is part of a larger project: to foster
a new international identity and promote state interests around the
world.
Rwandan elites want the international community to perceive their country as a primary gatekeeper as they engage with Africa.
These
leadership positions not only boost national self-esteem, but allow the
Rwandan elite to strike international deals that can foster
development.
The resulting relationships can be used
not only to promote Rwandan interests, but to deflect international
criticism for questionable domestic and regional human-rights practices
and interfering with neighbouring states.
If Rwanda
wins the campaign for secretary-general, it will have to work to not
allow its past history with France to interfere with its grand plans for
global influence.
Jonathan R. Beloff is a teaching
fellow at the Department of Politics and International Studies in the
School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. @The
Conversation
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