Remaking Rwanda: State Building and Human Rights after Mass Violence

The Historian as Human Rights Activist

xxvii  The Historian as Human Rights Activist david newbury There is no linear relationship between the historical past and the complex present. Contemporary events emerge from the conjunction of many factors of the past—some evident, some obscure. Together, in indeterminate ways, these mold the way people choose to act in the present. Nonetheless , in making sense of the present there are lessons to be learned from the careful study of history in a manner that is methodologically sound. By allowing us to see more clearly the cultural resources and deeper structures that influence how people choose to act, the study of history brings greater understanding of the logic of people’s actions—even when we might be repelled by such actions in themselves. Only by understanding why people act as they do can we hope to address the underlying causes of current social processes. That is why it is important to understand Alison Des Forges as a historian before she was a human rights activist. Her careful work analyzing contemporary processes was marked by a refined sense of historical method, and that training gave her unusual insight into the reasons people either promoted or denied social justice. Far beyond seeing the past as simply a collection of miscellaneous facts separated from any larger context, she sought patterns of relationships among events in her search for explanations. Trained to distinguish between simplified appearances and deeper causal factors, she was quick to note that while the Rwanda genocide took the form of ethnic killings, its causes were far more complex. In Leave None to Tell the Story she traced out the causes of that cataclysm xxviii T h e H i s t o r i a n a s H u m a n R i g h t s A c t i v i s t in a manner that was both comprehensive and clear. Much attention has been given to that magisterial work—for good and obvious reasons. But less attention has been given to Des Forges’s earlier work, which provided the intellectual foundations for her insightful analysis of the genocide. Indeed, perhaps because it was never published during her lifetime, her 1972 Yale University dissertation has been largely ignored. Yet contained within that work were many elements of both method and substance that, almost thirty years later, contributed significantly to her fine-grained analysis of the genocide. Furthermore , having conducted over one hundred interviews in Rwanda as part of her dissertation research, Des Forges had become adept at identifying the ways in which words could be used as tools in this culture. At the same time, as part of her historical training she learned to assess issues fully conscious of the changing character of human society. That principle was central in drawing her to human rights work, for if history is created by human agency then it follows that humans can equally act to prevent the patterns of the past from being repeated in the future. We can prevent catastrophe if we wish to do so: that was a constant message in her later years as a human rights activist, and it is a core lesson to derive from her historical understanding. For Des Forges the historical craft was not just an analytic approach; it also consisted of the communication of a worldview. Two hallmarks of her writing style were her sensitivity in identifying relevant issues and her ability to present them in lucid, transcendent language. Explicating complex events with consummate clarity made her writing fully accessible to lay people as well as academics. Nowhere are these skills more evident than in her dissertation—a pellucid account of the politics of Rwanda’s royal court during the early years of colonial rule. For the political elite of Rwanda this was a turbulent time, as shown by the constant calculation, deception, betrayal, and (sometimes) murder that characterized the culture of the court. But this was not only a historical drama; for all the differences in context and characters it can also be seen as instructive of Rwanda’s more recent political culture, for, as everywhere, there were continuities that characterized certain components of political behavior in Rwanda. With Des Forges’s careful assessment of the culture of politics in the early twentieth century, she was well equipped to decipher the politics of a later period, and to interpret elements of more recent political culture in Rwanda that others, operating within a...