60 years after the UN Convention - Dag Hammarskjöld Foundation

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174 development dialogue december 2008 – revisiting the heart of darkness participants is diffi cult in the Rwandan case because there were often several killers per victim and killers commonly operated in crowds. While over 120,000 suspects were jailed by the RPF government by the end of the decade, many more participated directly in the killing. 6 Even greater numbers were accessories to the crime for betraying the whereabouts of victims, urging on the killers and performing auxilliary tasks. A large part of the Hutu population was complicit by regarding the killing as necessary, turning a blind eye to it or failing to help victims. At the start of Hotel Rwanda Rusesabagina is depicted as a suave, stylish man who, through a combination of deference, fl attery and canny bribery, consciously stores up favours with the rich and powerful and, through his charm and resourcefulness, manages to keep the hotel’s clientele happy. Paul, a member of the majority Hutu group, is married to Tatiana (Sophie Okonedo), a Tutsi, which puts them and their three children in grave danger once the slaughter begins. Left in charge of the hotel by the evacuating European management, Paul has little option but to allow more and more people fl eeing the killing frenzy to cram into the Milles Collines, owned by Sabena Airlines. At fi rst mainly interested in saving his own family, Rusesabagina subsequently takes responsibility for all the refugees at the Milles Collines when it becomes clear that intervention by the United Nations (UN) is aimed solely at evacuating foreign nationals. An uncaring and racist West was turning its back on the Rwandan crisis. In a series of daring escapades the inspirational Rusesabagina cajoles, bribes, outsmarts and confronts a variety of military offi cers and militia commanders in a desperate bid to prevent the Milles Collines refugees, including his family, from being killed as the madness of the genocide envelopes Rwanda. Through a combination of luck, resourcefulness and quick-witted responses in situations of extreme danger, Rusesabagina manages to keep the death squads at bay. Surviving several narrow escapes, the Milles Collines refugees hold out until the advancing rebel army allows them to fl ee to safety behind RPF lines in a convoy of trucks made available by the sympathetic UN colonel Oliver (Nick Nolte). Through much of the fi lm Paul and Tatiana try desperately to fi nd their nieces, two young children lost in the maelstrom of violence when separated from their parents who, it later transpires, had been killed. At the end of the movie the Rusesabaginas are miraculously reunited with the children in a refugee camp on their way to Tanzania. 6 For estimates of how many Hutu may have participated in the killing see Straus (2004: 85-98) and Eltringham (2004: 69).
hotel rwanda – the challenges of historicising and commercialising genocide 175 An opportunity missed? Hotel Rwanda makes little more than a cursory attempt to explain why the genocide happened or to sketch the political and historical context in which it unfolded. The fi lm focuses instead on the intense drama around Rusesabagina’s heroic attempts to save his charges. The choice of a strong dramatic centre clearly did not preclude the director and scriptwriters 7 from providing suffi cient background to make the reasons behind the slaughter easier to comprehend. This disembodiment of Rusesabagina’s story from the complexity of its context is a central weakness of Hotel Rwanda. Most obviously, better historical and political contextualisation would have made the genocide much more intelligible, and Rusesabagina’s story more meaningful to viewers. Simply replacing some of the superfl uous and repetitous scenes, especially those involving a tearful and frightened Tatiana, with ones clarifying some of the complexities of the Rwandan situation would have gone a long way towards achieving these objectives. Appropriate contextualisation would also have helped strengthen the fl accid plot line and greatly improved the coherence of the fi lm. More importantly, being the fi rst featurelength off ering with mass appeal to deal with the Rwandan genocide – about which, it needs to be said, there is a good degree of ignorance despite widespread public interest – it would not be unfair to regard the fi lm as having a duty to inform, perhaps even educate, viewers to a greater extent than it does. This is not to advocate overt didacticism but to ask for proper contextualisation. Hotel Rwanda is, after all, not a movie people are likely to want to see purely for entertainment. On the contrary, Hotel Rwanda’s simplistic approach to the genocide is more likely to perpetuate rather than dispel stereotypes of Africa as a place of senseless violence and roiling tribal animosities. The absence of a well-founded explanation of the genocide is bound to result in many viewers falling back on shopworn, racist conventions of Western attitudes towards Africa. Indeed, the fi lm inadvertently reinforces such mystifi cation. When Dube (Desmond Dube) asks Rusesabagina how such cruelty could be possible, Paul simply replies, “Hatred… insanity”, as if the mass killing defi es logical explanation. 7 The fi lm was directed by Terry George and the script was co-written by Terry George and Keir Peirson.
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no. 50 | december 2008 Revisiting t
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Revisiting the heart of darkness -
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Acknowledgements The larger part of
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Dennis Brutus, born 1924 in then Rh
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8 development dialogue december 200
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In short, both the understanding of
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Behind most mass violence lurk econ
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ehind most mass violence lurk econo
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Is there a south perspective on gen
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is there a south perspective on gen
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The Voksenåsen Statement Genocides
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This Development Dialogue is publis
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60 years after the UN Convention - Dag Hammarskjöld Foundation

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