In the eyes of millions of Rwandans and unbiased global observers, it’s no mystery why Rwanda’s post-genocide constitution and legal framework bans genocide ideology, denial, discrimination, sectarianism, and divisionism (i.e., the poisonous politics rooted in Hutu or Tutsi identity ). This precise prohibition is what precludes Victoire Ingabire, also known as IVU, from participating in Rwandan politics, owing to her persistent efforts to revive the divisive politics associated with Hutu/Tutsi identity – a legacy of the colonial era, marked by the racial fantasies imposed by European officers and Monsignor Andre Perraudin.
Free from direct involvement in the 1994 genocide against Tutsi (thanks to her residence in the Netherlands at the time), Ingabire stands apart from her mother Thérèse Dusabe, infamously known as the ‘Butcher of Butamwa.’ Dusabe, a ruthless genocide perpetrator fugitive, gained notoriety for her gruesome acts, including the horrific murders of pregnant Tutsi women, from whose wombs she derived a twisted satisfaction in cutting out unborn infants. Ingabire, however, is of paramount importance to the very establishments aligned with genocidal ideologies.
Handpicked by Théoneste Bagosora , the mastermind of the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi, as the tolerable face of Rwanda’s genocidal ideology, IVU’s ascent among the ranks of Rwandan extremists was nothing short of meteoric. In 1997, she assumed leadership of the genocidal group RDR in the Netherlands. A mere three years later, in 2000, she was catapulted to the position of President of the organization on the international stage.
To truly understand Ingabire’s ethnic politics and by extension genocide ideology, one must delve into the annals of history. In 1934, the Rwandan populace endured a census that, for the first time, affixed Hutu and Tutsi ethnic affiliations to the identity documents of Rwandan citizens. This divisive categorization stemmed from the concoction of “Historical Ethnicity,” a notion propagated by Belgian colonialism. According to this theory, Tutsis were deemed “Ibimanuka” (descended from heaven), a Nilotic people originating from Egypt or Tigray in Ethiopia, who supposedly colonized Rwanda, subjugating the indigenous Hutu population.
This was nothing more than pure colonial gibberish. Yet Genocidal zealots like IVU clings on into these fiction divisions forgetting that before 1899 all Rwandans shared a common ancestry (bene mugabo umwe), language, customs, and peacefully coexist in the same villages and urban neighborhoods, all bound by a pre-colonial faith in a singular God—Imana.
Fast forward to the late 1990s, the Urugwiro dialogue emerged as a crucial turning point, dedicated to eradicating divisionism and dismantling political parties intertwined with artificial Hutu-Tutsi identities imposed by Belgian rulers. Rwanda, at that juncture, bid farewell to the dogma of refusing to coexist, which was steeped in ethnic supremacy, inequality, and segregation. Presently, Rwanda upholds the principles of kuba, kubaho, kubâna as the guiding ethos of its governance.
This is why, many Rwandans describe how they discovered their national identity only under the leadership of Paul Kagame who has erased this historical-ethnic aberration which condemned a people with an ethnic unity, the Rwandan ethnicity, to be torn apart by the improper use of the concept of ethnicity for political ends, since the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi was conceived and implemented by the Hutu Power Tropical Nazism regime of Habyarimana, in order to guarantee the power of the “Hutu” through the total annihilation of the “Tutsi”.
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