The Tipping Point

Abstract

When the plane carrying President Juvénal Habyarimana was blown out of the sky as it approached Kigali airport on the evening of 6 April 1994, a marker in Rwanda’s history was laid down. This was a tipping point for this small central African state. The four-year-old war that had officially ended with the signing of the Arusha Accords on 3 August 1993 was reignited. It turned into a showdown of apocalyptic dimensions. Hundreds of thousands were slaughtered as a power struggle reached its climax and resulted in regime change. Within days of the President’s assassination the government had fled the capital, and while the national army was pinned down by the rebel army of the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), roving gangs of militia were free to go after (mostly) ethnic Tutsi civilians for murder, rape and pillage. As it gained territory, the RPF also engaged in wholesale civilian slaughter. The numbers killed, and the relative numbers of Tutsi and Hutu dead, remain disputed and differ in accordance with the political affiliations of analysts. Tutsi civilians were hunted down by militia forces, along with Hutus whom they regarded as RPF sympathisers. The RPF killed indiscriminately in a land that was overwhelmingly Hutu. One can safely say that at least half a million died in the period between the President’s assassination and the RPF’s assumption of power just over three months later. The death toll could possibly have been as much as one million.