Reuters
October 1996
Drunk and loaded with an assortment of weapons, Zairean troops in the town of Bukavu started hunting for ethnic Tutsis. Hundreds of civilians gathered to watch the spectacle of the notoriously ill-disciplined Zairean army at work after the authorities had given an estimated 300,000 ethnic Tutsi Banyamulenge one week to leave. The ultimatum gave civilians and soldiers licence to start an open season against the ethnic Tutsis, and even non-Banyamulenege-myself included-were trapped in the spiral of popular hatred.
The Tutsi Banyamulenge arrived from Rwanda up to 200 years ago but are still denied Zairean citizenship. They have, nevertheless, thrived in eastern Zaire as cross-border traders and cattle farmers, turning their knowledge of Kinyarwanda, Rwanda's national language, to advantage. Accor-ding to Banyamulenge refugees who fled to Burundi, their troubles started in 1994, when Rwandan Hutus came to Zaire as refugees after the genocide and started denouncing them to the authorities.
When I arrived in Bukavu on an aid flight from Kenya, within one hour residents had tipped off Zairean state security that I, a tall, black British journalist, was a suspected Banyamulenge. State security agents and soldiers picked me up from my hotel. I was arrested, strip-searched, locked in a small cell (after my shoes and socks had been confiscated) and screamed at by a prison guard wielding a crowbar. Only the intervention of UN officials and the deputy governor of South Kivu secured my release after an hour. The soldiers who had made the arrest saw no reason to apologise for their mistake.
The next day a group of foreign journalists watched as a contingent of Zairean soldiers decided to give us a military escort to the troubled town of Uvira, south of Bukavu. The soldiers ordered an aid agency employee to hand over the keys to two pick-up trucks at gunpoint and loaded them with an assortment of weapons including machineguns, rocket-propelled grenade launchers, and a cannon.
Again one of the soldiers decided I might be a Banyamulenge. Showing a British passport and other documents did not help and an ugly scene was starting to develop. Most of the time Zairean soldiers simply want money. This time they wanted blood.
The soldiers who had been ordered to release me the previous day did nothing to intervene and the deputy governor's envoy, detailed to guarantee our security, could not stop the soldiers trying to arrest me. A senior officer, educated in the US, secured my release. "These people are little more than animals, especially when they start drinking," he said of his own men. "While I'm here there's nothing they can do, but if you let them escort you to Uvira you will arrive there but your head will be left behind on the road." I pulled out of the trip.
The episode illustrates the frenzied climate of ethnic hatred at that time. Since then quite a lot has changed. Zairean troops have been driven from the three key towns in eastern Zaire-Uvira, Bukavu and Goma. The Banyamulenge are in charge having capitalised on low morale in the Zairean army and Kinshasa's weak grip on its eastern frontier. Rwanda and Burundi could create a buffer state in eastern Zaire, policed by the Banyamulenge and protecting them from the Rwandan government army that fled after the genocide of 1994.
But few are optimistic about the chances of a lasting solution. Around 850,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus died in the Rwandan genocide, perhaps 150,000 more have been killed in Burundi since an attempted coup in October 1993. The fear of genocide has generated in the Tutsi armies of Rwanda and Burundi an obsessive concern with security. At the same time, Hutus in eastern Zaire and Tanzania have coordinated a military strategy to win back power. At root the problems are political and economic rather than tribal. But while politicians stoke up the tribal issue, ethnic hatred will rage.
