Citation
Francois Mitterrand has lost none of his talent for showmanship.
France's Socialist government refused almost to the last even to admit
the possibility of a happy end to apartheid in South Africa. French
backing for African National Congress radicals did nothing to ease the
difficult negotiations between Nelson Mandela and F.W. de Klerk. Yet
there was the French President in Cape Town this week, with an
entourage of 200, underlining France's claim to be the pre-eminent
Western power in Africa by becoming the first Western head of state to
be officially received by President Mandela.
For once, however, Mitterrand found himself on the defensive. At least
half his press conference yesterday was spent justifying France's
actions in Rwanda and being forced to listen to Mandela's oblique, but
telling, criticisms of unilateral
intervention in Africa.
What made this particularly galling was that Mitterrand's strategic
goal is to fold South Africa into la grande famille franco-africaine
the web of alliances through which France binds to itself African
countries which contain, at least theoretically, four times as many
French-speakers as are found in France. Hence the pressing invitation
to Mandela to attend this year's Franco-African summit. Quite apart
from the language barrier, French involvement in South Africa is
negligible. That does not diminish French interest in associating the
new South Africa with its mission civilisatrice. But the French
interpretation of this mission
in Rwanda should warn Mandela to keep
his distance.
In times of crises the French press is a wonder to behold, but the
government line that its abrupt decision to rush French troops to
Rwanda was an unalloyed act of mercy has been too much for all but the
most loyal French journalists to swallow. France, after all, voted with
the rest to pull the United Nations out of Rwanda after April 6.
Mitterrand discovered that every hour counts
only after 500,000 Tutsi
had already been slaughtered at the instigation of men armed and
trained by France and when the rebel Rwandan Patriotic Front, which
French troops had helped to beat back in the past, was closing in on
the capital, Kigali. Paris could hardly claim to be neutral, given 20
years of unwavering French support for the Hutu dictator, President
Habyarimana, and France's close links with the interim government
which planned the massacres.
That government is now holed up in a comfortable hotel on the Rwandan
border, under French protection. French troops negotiate
with local
strongmen, such as the prefect of Kibuye, clearly identified as leaders
of the massacre. And without clearance from the UN, France has now
declared a safe haven
in the southwest safe from the advancing RPF,
and thus safe for the murderers. Well may the French Foreign Minister
say that France is not at war
and has no war aims. It has put its
troops in the line of fire against the Tutsi-led RPF men whom French
officials used to describe as khmers noirs and can hardly escape the
charge of throwing its old allies a lifeline, in the full knowledge of
their genocidal guilt. By insisting that the two sides must now
negotiate, France is behaving as though neither side is in the wrong.
It is also behaving in high disregard of the facts on the ground. An
RPF victory could end Rwanda's horror, and France is obstructing it.
A few years ago, in the wake of the Carrefour aid scandal and under
pressure from African democratic movements, France overhauled its
African policy. The new strategy, dubbed Paristroika, broke with the
French practice of protecting its sons of bitches
, the dictators who
rewarded France with unfailing support for French diplomatic
initiatives elswhere. France would seem to have nothing to gain by
throwing this strategy out of the window, in a country of no strategic
importance, in order to prop up an appalling regime which has murdered
Hutu moderates and human rights advocates as well as the Tutsi.
The most charitable explanation is cynical enough: French officials
privately say that since half the Tutsi have been murdered and
four-fifths of the remaining population are therefore Hutu, the only
hope for stability in Rwanda is a Hutu government. There would be a
dreadful price to pay for such stability
: Africans who want to keep
minorities
under control would draw the lesson that the most
efficient method was to murder so many that they become demographically
insignificant. But another, still more cynical, explanation suggests
itself. The RPF's leaders grew up in exile in Uganda. They are largely
Anglophone. Donc, ils ne passeront pas.
The French position, untenable now, will become more so within days,
when the RPF forms a government of national unity, including Hutus
belonging to the democratic opposition to Habyarimana's regime who
escaped the manhunt. France's best course would be to recognise this
government immediately and hand over the men who organised the
massacres to internationally monitored trials. The RPF would then
probably accept France's continued humanitarian
presence until it
could be relieved by UN reinforcements. Had France offered them a few
cargo planes and troop carriers, of course, they could have achieved
the ostensible French goal: saving lives.
