"Only those who went through that night can perhaps forgive and in doing so give the gift of forgiveness," said French President Emmanuel Macron this week as he acknowledged France's "overwhelming responsibility" in the 1994 Rwandan Genocide. Meanwhile, German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas said Germany had caused "immeasurable suffering" to the Herero and Nama people in today's Namibia, formally recognising as genocide the crimes committed by German troops in the region in the early 20th century. So, is Europe finally facing up to its colonial past? Does it want to write a new chapter in its relations with the African countries while China and the US are caught up in heated rivalry and the economy of some African countries is rising? In Europe, France is the most focused on Africa, and its "colonial memory" is giving it a headache, whether in Algeria, an immensely complicated issue, or as it faces accusations of grave violations in Central Africa. Last week, Macron visited the Rwandan capital Kigali and stood in front of the country's Genocide Memorial where more than 250,000 Rwandans are buried to ask for forgiveness for his country's role in the 1994 genocide. "Standing here today with humility and respect by your side, I have come to recognise our responsibilities," Macron said. Rwanda and Burundi suffered 100 days of genocide committed by Hutu militia between April and June 1994. Some 800,000 people were killed, most of them Tutsi and Hutu moderates. Rwanda was ruled by the country's Hutu elite after its independence from Belgium in the early 1960s until Belgian troops were ousted by the Tutsi's Rwandan Patriotic Front led by president Paul Kagame. In March, a French panel of experts found that France under former president François Mitterrand had "heavy and comprehensive responsibility" for the genocide but that it had not been complicit. The panel's report said that France had been "oblivious" to the preparations for the genocide, with Macron saying last week that Paris had "for too long valued silence over the examination of the truth". "France did not understand that while trying to prevent a regional conflict or a civil war, it was in fact standing by the side of a genocidal regime," Macron added. Mitterrand had close relations with former Rwandan president Juvénal Habyarimana, who hails from the Hutu ethnicity. The genocide occurred after a plane crashed with Habyarimana and his Burundian counterpart Cyprien Ntaryamira, also a Hutu, on board on 6 April 1994. Most historians agree that France should have been able to alleviate the horrors of the genocide. Paris provided political and military support to Kigali during the civil war that preceded it, and it has long been accused of turning a blind eye to the danger that Hutu extremists posed in a country that had suffered widespread massacres in the past. However, despite Macron's stance, which Kagame described as "more important than an apology," praising his French counterpart for "telling the truth," Rwanda's genocide remains an open subject. Kagame, who led the Tutsi rebellion that ended the genocide, has long accused France of complicity in the crimes that have plagued Rwanda. The Rwandan president asked his French counterpart to respect the pledge he had made during the visit to bring to justice people in France who are accused of involvement in the genocide, but he did not insist that they should be extradited to Kigali. For many, Rwanda's distancing itself from Francophone Africa, abolishing French as the country's official language and replacing it with English, together with its expanding economy, could have been behind France's seeking the "forgiveness" of Rwanda. The growing Chinese presence on the African continent has also been a source of tension for Europe. Some African countries are also playing a larger role in Africa that could reduce Europe's share. Egypt is building the Julius Nyerere Dam in Tanzania, for example, and it is also implementing several projects in Rwanda. It is building schools and hospitals in South Sudan, and it has various interests in Uganda. West Africa is witnessing the continuing growth of Nigeria, as well as the growing roles of South Africa, Morocco and Algeria in the region. All these countries can offer development projects at cheaper prices than those offered by Europe. Meanwhile, France is also being hard hit in the Sahel region, where it is leading Operation Barkhane, an anti-terrorism campaign in the region extending from Chad, the headquarters of French forces in the region, to Mauritania. Paris lost its strongest ally in the region, former Chadian president Idriss Deby, after he was killed at the hands of a rebel movement. Another traditional French ally, Mali, is also suffering from its second coup in a year. Such multiple tensions are obstacles to France's policies in the region, and they are weakening its efforts to fight terrorism in the Sahel region of Chad, Niger, Mali, Burkina Faso and Mauritania. Meanwhile, Maas's speech about German atrocities in Namibia was not the first by a German official on the subject. In 2004, German minister for economic cooperation and development Heidmarie Wieczorek-Zoll gave a speech in which she said that "I ask you to forgive us for our transgressions and sins. Without conscious memory, regret and apology, there can be no reconciliation." Wieczorek-Zoll's request for Namibian forgiveness came during a ceremony marking 100 years of the beginning of a rebellion against German colonialism in the region that ended with German forces committing massacres in former German Southwest Africa, present-day Namibia, before World War I. Germany said earlier this week that it would pay Namibia 1.1 billion euros as part of its official recognition of the Herero-Nama Genocide. "Our aim was and is to find a joint path to genuine reconciliation in remembrance of the victims," Maas said. "That includes our naming the events of the German colonial era in today's Namibia, and particularly the atrocities between 1904 and 1908, unsparingly and without euphemisms." "We will now officially call these events what they were from today's perspective: a genocide." *A version of this article appears in print in the 3 June, 2021 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly
