Africa’s violent history. Although Tutsis and
Hutus had lived together in Rwanda as neighbours
and many Tutsis had married Hutus, Hutu
extremists, armed with machetes, turned on the
Tutsis and hacked off the limbs of men, women
and children. 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus
were butchered. The genocide could have been
prevented. The UN headquarters in New York
were sent warnings three months earlier that Tutsi
extremists were training death squads. Roméo
Dallaire, the UN commander in Rwanda, pleaded
to be allowed to act in time. Led by the US, Britain
and France, the UN looked the other way. Denied
reinforcements for his 2,500 peacekeepers, when
the massacres started on 7 April, Dallaire’s coura-
geous Ghanaians and Tunisians could only save
several thousands, while hundreds of thousands
perished. The few Europeans were evacuated by
air. The Tutsi armed force in northern Rwanda,
supported by Uganda, then struck back, speedily
defeated the Hutu army and took power in
Rwanda. In the early summer of 1994 it was the
turn of the Hutus to flee, many to the neighbour-
ing Congo. Over 1 million Hutu refugees, mur-
derers and innocents alike, were crammed together
in barren refugee camps, receiving basic humani-
tarian aid from the UN. Hutu militia terrorised the
camps, and organised raids into Rwanda.
It took television cameras and a pop singer, Bob
Geldof, to rouse the world’s conscience for the
victims of famine in northern Ethiopia. Live Aid
concerts, watched by 1.5 billion people world-
wide, raised £503 million for famine relief in
- Official reactions followed rather than led
public opinion in the developed world. Animals in
the West were better fed than millions in Africa. In
the famines of 1984 and 1985 nearly 1 million
died. In the early 1990s drought and famine in
sub-Saharan Africa threatened millions of lives
again. Famine and starvation had become the rule
rather than the exception.
Tanzania, unlike Uganda, was not beset by
serious ethnic conflict. It is the largest of the East
African countries and by far the poorest. No tribe
is powerful enough to dominate the others, and
the Swahili language forms a common bond.
Here too African nomination to the colonial
Legislative Council had to wait until the end of
the Second World War. By 1960 a nationwide
election was held in preparation for independ-
ence from Britain. Dr Julius Nyerere and his
Tanganyikan African National Union (formed in
1954) swept the board. The firm unity evident in
the country facilitated rapid independence, which
was achieved in December 1961. A new election
in 1962 followed, and Nyerere became president.
Nyerere stood for African Democratic Socialism,
which in practice meant a one-party state and a
radical form of socialism particularly suitable, so
Nyerere believed, for a people who would have
to pull themselves up by their bootstraps.
The neighbouring island of Zanzibar with its
feudal sultan and mixed Arab–African people of
Muslim faith was granted its own independence
by Britain in December 1963. A month later a744 AFRICA AFTER 1945: CONFLICT AND THE THREAT OF FAMINE
Famine in Ethiopia, 1984. Mass television images for
the first time made a big impact in the West; money
was subscribed by the public to aid the needy and
governments followed suit. © Ferdinando Scianna/
Magnum Photos