ABSTRACT
The outbreak of genocide, anywhere, brings in its wake enormous shame and lasting burdens. A nation that murders a segment of its population or fails to prevent a group of its citizens from murdering others within its national boundaries is bound to become an object of global ridicule. Germany, the site of the Holocaust, was the twentieth-century home of the sixteenth-century Reformation of Christian religious thought in Europe. National laws and international conventions have not fared any better. Idealistic pronouncements, in statements and texts, may sooth the human conscience, but unless people and their neighbors decide to live in shared environments free of combustible impulses, no soaring rhetorical exhortations about genocide prevention can, or will, prevent genocide. Notwithstanding the diversity of the African historical experience, there was a time, in the depths of the African past, when interdependence was necessary for collective survival.
