The Contribution of Women to Peace and Reconciliation

with the mission of evacuating or protecting some 500 French nationals
in Rwanda, the majority of whom refuse to leave. A company
of French Foreign Legionnaires occupies Kigali Airport and
guards the major roads in the capital.
In Rwanda, the Hutu, Tutsi and Twa always lived together as brothers
prior to colonization. Certainly, there were power struggles at court, but
when it came to defending the territorial integrity, the whole population
rallied without distinction. Every adult male went to the front to defend
the integrity of the country. Everything started with the colonial ideology,
which spawned the ideology of genocide against the Tutsis.
Analysis of the ideology of genocide against the Tutsis 2
The Three Pillars of Ethics in Rwanda: Rwandan ethics, the justification
for values and deeds, and even Rwandan philosophy, such as the design
and concept of the world, are based on three pillars:
The fact of being, and of being one thing or another (kuba)
The fact of being at a certain time and at a certain place (kubaho)
The fact of being with others, or the social nature of human beings
(kubana).
These three factors are necessary and sufficient. Necessary, because
we cannot conceive of a human being who is not, in one way or another,
one thing or another, or a human being who is, without being some -
where at some time. This is what philosophers have called the spacetime
nature of being. As for the social nature of human beings, it has
applied to all humanity. Attempts have been made to transcend human
society, by desert hermits, Robinson Crusoe, etc. It is the same thing
for men and women, who cannot move from one category to the other,
except in appearance or by resorting to subterfuge or substitutes, or to
ersatz love – all however without lasting success. In Rwanda however,
we are not familiar with such attempts. To see that these three factors
2 This section was written by Servilien M. Sebasoni, Kigali/Brussels, March/April
2004. He cited: “Blacks have no history”, with reference to the philosopher Hegel.
Source: Clarence E. Walker: We can’t go home, an argument about Afrocentrism,
Oxford University Press, New York 2001.
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