Rwanda: 1000-page new version of history due for publication

By RNA Reporters
July 22, 2009

Kigali: A team of academics have completed a new version of Rwanda’s history following up a plan by the post Genocide government to rewrite what they say has been published over the years by “colonial academics”, RNA reports.

Government, especially President Paul Kagame himself has accused the mainly Belgian academics who have published widely on Rwanda of viewing Rwandan “society through racial lenses like their fellow colonial administrators”.

In London last month, Mr. Kagame again lashed out at history books for the bad image of his country. “The media and history books have continued to show Rwanda more-or-less in its past”, he said in an interview on BBC radio.

Now, under the auspices of the National Unity and reconciliation Commission, an 8-member panel of local academics led by Prof. Deo Byanafashe has researched and compiled new data totaling about 1000 pages. The team submitted the preliminary research about three months ago to the commission, according to Prof Byanafashe.

The information surfaced last week when the Commission’s Executive Secretary was put to task in the Senate to explain why the supposed history research had not yielded any progress. Ms. Fatuma Ndangiza told Senators that the research is yet to be put to discussion by several stakeholders including cabinet, parliament and the Ministry of Education – before it is published.

Prof Byanafashe told RNA Wednesday that the book is “a long way” to be being published because it was written in French, but has to be also translated into English and Kinyarwanda. “Publication does not end at just researching and writing, it takes sometime before a book of that magnitude goes into the public domain”, Byanafashe said.

He however declined to give any details particularly the new aspects that the new history version will contain. In March last year, as the research project was being launched, he said "It is high time Rwandans started writing our own history", instead of foreigners who had “their own interests”.

No time-line for publication of the book has been communicated.