ABSTRACT
Africa is the continent with the most ethnically diverse states in the world.1 As a result, political confl ict defi ned in ethnic terms is ubiquitous on the continent. Nevertheless, the Rwandan genocide of 1994 stands out with respect to its swiftness and proportions. Between April and July of 1994 an estimated one million people, mostly Tutsi along with Hutu political moderates, were massacred by their Hutu compatriots.2 The genocide was incubated in the institutional set-up of the colonial and postcolonial states in Rwanda. Both of these political systems established exclusivist social institutions-against the Hutu majority under the colonial logic of “divide and rule” and, after independence in 1960, against the Tutsi minority under the rationale of “reverse discrimination” intended to “redress historical injustices.”3 Yet the diff erences between Hutu and Tutsi as separate ethnic groups are trivial. They speak the same language, Kinyarwanda; share a culture in the Kalinga drum traditions and the Imana faith; and prior to colonialism, belonged to the same nineteen clans. In other words, the causes of the genocide have been fully addressed by extant literature.
