At the same time, an unprecedented free and fair election campaign was being fought in South Africa. On April 27, while the genocide in Rwanda raged, the incomparable Nelson Mandela was elected the first democratic president of South Africa.
History had contrived to fashion one of Africas worst tragedies and one of its greatest triumphs all at the same moment. While the genocide confirmed for many the utter hopelessness of the continent, Mr. Mandelas victory and his own unique qualities of leadership suggested a shining new era was yet possible. As it happens, over the past half century a remarkable number of Canadians have been involved in both these countries, for better and for worse.
This week, South Africa and Rwanda made international headlines again. In Canada, the government hopes very shortly to return to Rwanda for trial a man named Leon Mugesera, who for years has exploited the Canadian justice system to escape true justice at home. Mr. Mugesera played a significant role in poisoning the atmosphere in Rwanda that ultimately enabled the genocide. In 1992, in a recorded speech to 1,000 followers of the government party of which he was an important member, he called repeatedly for the extermination of all Rwandan inyenzi cockroaches the familiar dehumanizing name that Hutu extremists gave all Tutsi. Although Mr. Mugesera fled to Canada, where Rwandas French-speaking Hutu had many unconditional Quebecois friends, other Hutu extremists took up his genocidal exhortation. The plane crash was the trigger for the genocide they were preparing for.
But Mr. Mugesera has had to share the headlines this week with a far more momentous event for post-genocide Rwanda the finding by a French inquiry that the plane had been shot down by Hutu extremists, not by their Tutsi enemies under Paul Kagame, today Rwandas president.
From the beginning, the killers shrewdly and cynically pointed the finger at Mr. Kagame. This accusation made no logical sense at all yet was taken up by a motley band, including some Canadians, who for a variety of dubious reasons chose to deny the genocide ever happened. The significance of the 18-year battle to establish responsibility for the crash was enormous. If Mr. Kagame did it, then the crash could not have been intended to launch the genocide, and so it could be argued that there never was a conspiracy to commit genocide at all.
Now a comprehensive new report by two French judges should satisfy anyone open to reason and evidence that Mr. Kagame could not have shot the plane down. A large cloud of illegitimacy has been lifted from the reputation of the present government in Rwanda.
As for Leon Mugesera, whose infamous speech constitutes one link in the chain leading to the crash and the genocide, he will soon return for trial to a country that, controversial as it is, has undeniably made unimagined progress in the past 18 years. Rwanda has troubles a-plenty, including a government apparently determined to remain authoritarian. It also remains very poor. Yet the countrys economic and social progress since the genocide is nothing short of startling. It is stable, at peace, largely safe and secure. Corruption is minimal. Mr. Mugesera will be convicted not because the Rwandan legal system is rigged but because his own incendiary words will convict him.