Like co-wives, France and Rwanda are at it again. Some have expressed surprise; even bewilderment. Not me! And not those who understand how genocide affected the discourse of barbarians or geopolitics.

The squabbling between the two nations was sparked off by news a couple of days ago indicating that French investigators had reopened investigations into the shooting down of former Rwandan President Juvénal Habyarimana; an incident that triggered the genocide.

Rwanda’s response was swift and uncompromising. President Paul Kagame said while officiating at the opening of a new judicial year that “It should be France in the dock being tried…not Rwandans.”

The French’s decision to reopen investigations was reportedly prompted by Gen. Kayumba Nyamwasa, an exiled former head of the Rwandan Military’s deposition to French investigators and willingness to testify.

Gen Kayumba, now exiled in South Africa is one of nine individuals indicted by France in 2006. While he denies involvement in bringing down the plane, he accuses his former boss, President Kagame of ordering it.

Is it justice, discovering who brought down the plane and holding them accountable, or is there more at play?

According to Rwandan officials and their supporters, the investigation is politically motivated and aimed at destabilising the country. Regime critics, particularly some members of the opposition in exile see the move as a Godsend to weaken Kagame’s alleged “dictatorial” rule.

Family members of the three French crew who perished in the plane crush might perceive the move as advancing the cause of justice and closure to their pain.

It’s fair to say that the continued search for “who shot down” the plane is unlikely to discover new evidence and is therefore less about the facts and more about a contest to re-define the villains and angles of the genocide.

This will be the 11th investigation; so far, there have been 10 before it including one by the UN and another by the precursor of the AU, the OAU.

The last investigation was led by French Judges Marc Trèvidic and Nathalie Poux whose findings, like the rest except one by Brugierre, concluded that the plane was shot down by two missiles fired from Kanombe area; at the time controlled by Habyarimana’s army.

When this report was released, Rwanda’s foreign minister announced that “With this scientific truth, Judges Trèvidic and Poux have slammed shut the door on the 17-year campaign to deny the genocide and blame its victims.”

But as we wrote in The Chronicles at the time, while the Trèvidic findings discredited and even killed judicial cases pending against nine Rwandans, politically, the case was still alive since the question of “who exactly” shot the plane down wasn’t resolved and France was yet to acknowledge its role in the genocide.

This observation might still stand after Kayumba testifies since, according to what he has said before, he neither saw nor participated in the plot but only allegedly “heard” Kagame saying his soldiers shot down the plane.

Despite this, our prediction is that the quarrel is unlikely to end especially that it touches on who the perpetrators, victims and accomplices to genocide are.

And since Kagame and his forces stopped the genocide and Hutu hardliners allegedly supported by the French politico-military establishment carried out the genocide, the latter cannot rest until cleared.

For unlike in colonial theology that colonialism was a Whiteman’s burden and for the first time in post-colonial Africa, a supposed “civilising” power is, in black and white identified with supposed barbarians.

Prior to that, Hutus and Tutsis were, in dominant writings, including during the genocide, as possessed by atavistic rivalries; a people destined to kill each other because it’s in their blood; they needed to be “saved” by foreigners.

Thus, identifying the French political establishment with genocide turns this narrative upside down; for a black man and his forces gain the quality of the “civilising” agent for stopping the genocide while the French accomplices gain the quality of barbarians.

And, considering that the RPF defeated a French supported regime and continued the humiliation by expelling its ambassador is unlikely to be forgotten; especially that this could encourage other Africans on the continent to do the same.

We could say that while, in the short to medium term investigations might be aimed at discrediting Kagame and undercutting his rising star as we enter the election year in 2017, the long game is to rescue France’s lost moral edge by deleting itself from the list of accomplices to genocide.

Christopher Kayumba, PhD. Senior Lecturer, School of Journalism and Communication, UR; Lead consultant, MGC Consult International Ltd. E-mail: [email protected]; twitter account: @Ckayumba Website:www.mgcconsult.com