Time has come to rewrite Africa’s great lakes history
Since the leaked report alleging that Rwanda and Uganda troops committed genocide against Rwanda and DR Congo Hutu in DRC, Rwanda’s Minister of Foreign Affairs and Cooperation and government spokesperson Hon. Louise Mushikiwabo has been talking negatively and discouragingly about rewriting the history of Africa’s great lakes region. In contrast, many believe that the region is and has been unstable precisely because the history of the region was not properly written.
Influenced by European race theories that put a black person at the bottom of the race pyramid and the white person at the top, aristocratic explorers, missionaries and colonial officials in the great lakes region (Uganda, Rwanda and Burundi) credited all the magnificent civilizations they found in the region to Bahima and their Batutsi and Bahororo (Batutsi from Rwanda) cousins whom they described as ‘white’ people who got lost in the region and turned dark because of tropical sunshine. Further, they described them as intelligent, physically attractive and born leaders to indefinitely rule others in the region. On the other hand, Bantus or Negroes (especially Bahutu and Bairu) were described as a race of ugly and unintelligent human beings without leadership qualities and only fit for menial work. They were denied the civilizations they had developed in a region that had been described as part of the ‘Dark Continent’ without a history and civilization.