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It was inevitable that crime fiction would feature amongst the writings that make up the ever-growing literature set in Rwanda. This is primarily for two reasons. Crime and blood are, of course, the necessary ingredients for this type of story and it is not therefore surprising that the most important genocide of the 20th century should attract those who are looking for a setting for their crime story. As well, and this is the second reason, the modern-day crime novel, whether it is a mystery novel or more hard-boiled, is no longer set in an indeterminate time and place, as in the days of Agatha Christie. Rather, such novels aim to engage directly with harsh realities. The Rwandan genocide could therefore attract different schools of crime writers because, above and beyond the bloody setting, it allows the writer to capture the madness and murderous excesses of a society in crisis

In the beginning, a white police investigation

Two of the great novels which retrace the period of Belgian colonial administration are partly structured around a crime intrigue without for all that belonging fully to the genre. This is because, in these cases, the investigation is not the main focus of the text but rather a narrative thread that acts, in one book, as a pretext for an investigation of Rwandan reality and as a description of a country in the throes of transformation in the other. The Man Who Asked for a Light by Ivan Reisdorff¹ has an emblematic title in this respect since it refers of course to Rwandan culture, a culture that the novel aims both to describe and to bear witness to through the use of a typical crime fiction procedure: the reference, immediately evident from the title, of the one of the main protagonists, the victim of the crime. The novel adopts the classical structure of the mystery story as the crime is solved by an official representative of the justice system or police. The time frame of the story is inverted since the scene where the crime is discovered opens the story and sets up the roles of the victim, the investigator, who sets out the first interpretative analysis, and the forensic surgeon, who provides the first clues. The narrator explicitly states: ‘The murder of Minani was in itself a banal event, a vile crime where the victim was a Tutsi without cows and the perpetrator some or other Kiga who plundered the forests’.

But this investigation is but the pretext for a fresco of Rwandan life undergoing great changes. The author and narrator (it matters little that they are interchangeable) play few textual games with the reader. There is clear crime, followed by an investigation which ends, after a number of inquiries and interrogations, with the arrest of a suspect and his sentencing. But this crime intrigue is but a small part of the book, only giving the narrator the opportunity to question his vocation and what will become of an increasingly contested colonial regime.

The same applies to the novel of Omer Marchal, Africa, Africa², which is also centred on a local administrator whose investigation of the death of a young mixed-race man, killed by accident, leads him to evoke a colonial Rwanda where the Belgian residents bring a civilizing influence that is in tune with the inhabitants of a country that they have come to love. This love is even easier for the narrator to assume as he endlessly compares the Rwandan mountains to the Ardennes valleys of his childhood and proceeds by assimilating one culture to the other, ‘simply’ considering that Rwanda will soon make up its backwardness in relation to Western civilization. Yet again, the crime intrigue is reduced to the simplest formula since it only begins after 160 pages and is speedily resolved. But if the incriminating facts are quickly unearthed, they are have their origins in clan rivalries that go back more than four generations and are tangled up in magical rituals and the lust for power and political infighting. At this point, the investigation and the cross-examinations at the trial, which make up only a few dozen pages out of more than 500, provide the opportunity to review the history and genealogy of the different clans that live in the hills and the rivalries that separate them.

What is significant is the choice of narrative form, above and beyond the ideological positioning of the two authors. Both have chosen the classical form of the whodunit, using a linear investigation headed by an official figure who represents the justice system and the police. This is made possible due to the powers of these local agents who take on the administrative and judicial responsibilities for the areas they oversee. And this is even more evident as, in every instance, the victim is a young black man, while justice is white and applied according to the conventions of the home nation, even if the two investigators are sensitive to the local customs and values which they attempt to respect. This type of crime narrative is also the least restrictive in terms of generic conventions. The solution to the mystery is not the central concern of the investigator, neither is it for the reader. It merely provides a narrative thread that the reader can put to one side if they wish in order to develop the more autobiographical or political issues that arise on every page. Finally, the investigation, in both the books by Reisdorff and Marchal, ends positively because both love Africa, are conversant with its ways and had good relationships with local tribes. But that too is part of the cliché of the crime investigation. The clairvoyant detective is the one who can, like Commissioner Maigret, share the life of his suspects and proceeds by empathy and immersion, whilst the truth that he discovers comes as much from within himself as from outside. The criminal investigation here uncovers the depths of the detective’s soul and shows the symbiosis between the colonial spirit created from a fusion with the much-loved country and an African tradition that reveals itself to those who are prepared to understand it without contempt. This state of affairs is not given to all to experience as the following example demonstrates.

SAS: a well informed racist

The mystery novel is a genre that belongs to peaceful times. A murder takes place of course but it scarcely traumatises those who witness it. This idyllic framework was to be overturned by the 1994 genocide for the murder-mystery could no longer act as a narrative model as it was too civilized and used mainly for stories of domestic crime committed by well-brought up people. When murder becomes the norm, when crime is no longer the affair of a small-time criminal but a State-sanctioned event on a grand scale, only the most hard-boiled roman noir or spy novel can accommodate the facts depending on whether one wishes to highlight the exceptional violence or the political, national and international dimensions of genocide.

Firstly, it must be stressed that if Rwanda is the setting for some crime novels, they are few in number. Several of these novels are published by small publishing houses alongside either autobiographical or more fictionalised accounts of the genocide by those who lost loved ones³. There is no great wave of Rwandan-inspired writing in the world of crime fiction, even if some of the best selling writers and collections have all produced a Rwandan ‘episode’ in the years following the genocide. This is the case for Fleuve Noir and Jean-Paul Nozières, and for the serial characters of SAS and the ‘Poulpe’.

Gérard de Villiers sends his SAS hero into every trouble spot in the world, be it State-sponsored violence, wars, revolutions, massacres, in order to defend the interests of his employers with little concern for the methods used. His perspective on Rwanda must be considered in the context of the stereotypes which have characterized all his novels, since the world vision of the author is based on a series of clichés that are never contested. In SAS: Investigation into a Genocide, Gérard de Villiers, uses the same methods as ever: he does some excellent research into the topography of the country in an attempt to provide a realistic yet also exoticized picture; he has a good understanding of the strategic and political facts drawn from a wide range of sources and arranges these factual elements according to highly stereotypical conventions that implicate the American secret services for whom SAS undertakes clandestine operations.

If places are faithfully represented, it is of course from the viewpoint of a privileged European who visits only the luxury hotels and the clubs of the classiest districts of town. There is no investigation here into the daily lives of ordinary Rwandans, the life in the villages or the difficulty of having Hutus and Tutsis living together after the genocide. In addition, all black women are sluts, indeed scarcely human (‘He felt himself incapable of courting a Rwandan women; it was almost zoophilia'⁴) and all African men think about is sex (‘That’s all people think about. There’s nothing to be done about it and the girls are all hot for it. People are very free and easy in Africa’). On top of this, all Africans are of course unfaithful, lazy and treacherous. As for Rwandans, they are ‘millions of poor souls who overrun the earth like ants and aren’t aware that the Middle Ages have been and gone’. But these xenophobic and degrading clichés are also used for Asians, Arabs and South American characters when the action takes place in those areas. They are but the mark of the explicit racism of the series which presents the white race as superior to all others and the only one capable of saving sub-human others.

Yet leaving aside the racist clichés, de Villiers clearly sets out his views on a Rwandan conflict about which he seems to know much. He summarizes in less than one page the history of Rwanda from the 1900s and sets out the main events of the genocide in the first few pages of the book, questioning the French government’s Operation ‘Turquoise’. His position is clear: De Villiers is on the side of Kagame’s FPR and denounces the French position, one that is complicit with those in power. He exempts the French military of any responsibility in events because they are deceived by the politicians. This allows him to preserve the honour of the French military whilst castigating the politicians, an approach that accords well with the militaristic and populist stance of the author. It also explains in part why the plot of the novel is focused on the American and not French secret services (the author likes to be controversial but is not so foolhardy as to alienate an essentially French readership a tune to the value of the military). In narrative terms, it also provides the opportunity to bring SAS into the action.

The events of the novel take place in 2000 since the title refers to an investigation and not the period of the genocide itself. It is set at the time of the Arusha trials which the author presents as a farce overseen by the UN to clear itself of its responsibility for not intervening at the start of the genocide. President Kagame is presented as a ‘one of the rare black leaders of integrity, a courageous and patriotic man’ but one who was manipulated because he believed that President Habyarimana was going to kill the Tutsis. It is Kagame who apparently asked an American friend, close to the CIA, to carry out the operation in order to avoid the genocide. The killing of Habyarimana was allegedly carried out using two Ugandan missiles. In this way, de Villiers successfully manages to edit out any French involvement in the story since the Army was only obeying the orders of incompetent politicians, thus passing over any role France might have played in what then happened. Also the current regime in power is given legitimacy by stressing such motivations. Kagame believed that he was doing the right thing in eliminating an extremist and did not think through the consequences of his actions. Finally, the Americans and all the other international organizations have let down Rwanda, either through cowardice or for fear of compromising their own interests.

Suspicious Frenchmen

The perspective of the Poulpe, another private investigator, is very different. If SAS can be aligned with an extreme right-wing position that is nationalistic, hostile towards politics in general and committed to safeguarding national honour, warrior-like values and macho language, the creation of Jean-Bernard Pouy is at the other end of the spectrum. The Poulpe draws on left-wing anarchism. He is anti-militaristic; takes a stand against the established order and questions national, personal and sexual identities… Therefore, in the novel by Catherine Fradier (one of the key features of the Poulpe books is that they are all written by a different author but conform to a set of principles that is quite restrictive, particularly in ideological terms), how the genocide is interpreted is quite different.

A scene from the genocide acts as a preface to the novel, following an epigraph taken from Théoneste Bagosora, so that the context cannot be mistaken. If the story takes place in Paris in Cheryl’s hairdressing salon, the Poulpe’s lover, the dramatic events in Rwanda are at the heart of the intrigue. And if a Rwandan is killed in the opening pages, his brother is an integral part of the rest of the narrative to such an extent that Blacks and Whites are treated equally in the search for the truth. To begin, Cheryl refuses to become caught up in ‘State affairs’ and claims her right not to assume a political or militant stance. It is only when her hairdressing salon is wrecked that she feels forced to become involved in events that go beyond her own life history. At this point, as in de Villiers’ novel, a character summarizes the historical situation, here a Rwandan, highlighting the role of the colonizing powers in exacerbating ethnic conflict. The Belgian colonial regime is clearly shown as the cause of ethnic tensions but the French military authorities are not exempt from criticism. They are seen as responsible for the attempted murder of President Habyarimana and are protected by the African division of the Elysée and Papamadi ‘the name given to the son of your ex-President’⁵. As for Operation’ Turquoise’, it is ‘above all a shield to protect all those killers and allow them to carry out a scorched earth policy’. The rest of the story focuses on extreme-right-wing militants who are used by the French secret services to recover photos that show French military participation in the genocide, undertaken with the agreement of the government, unlike in de Villiers’ novel. The alliance between Rwandan and French democrats, symbolised by a love scene between the French hairdresser and the Rwanda resister who has AIDS (melodrama is never far away), allows the author to uncover such shameful collusion and the novel ends with a pacifist message that makes a case for the rebirth of Rwanda.

Jean-Claude Patrigeon also suggests that French networks of influence were involved in the assassination of Habyarimana and the genocide, whilst also denouncing the murdered President’s totalitarian vision. Kaplan, a trouble-shooting investigative journalist, makes this clear when he compares this regime to ‘nazism, a tropical nazism with the inevitable militia groupings, elite corps and unbelievable racist propaganda. The poison of racial hatred flowed through people’s veins and infected their brains. A truly murderous paranoia took hold of this corrupt regime’⁶.

The Hutu regime exercises a bloody hold on power, supported by the French military who take part in torture sessions. The accusations are clear, referring to the Focart networks (which also appeared in the SAS investigation but was never named) and the postcolonial policy of the French government, operating in the background to defend its interests in francophone Africa. The relatively conventional crime intrigue, closer to an adventure or spy novel, opens the way for a short history of Rwanda and the ‘Françafrique’ policy, showing how, from de Gaulle to Mitterrand, French political leaders have always backed corrupt and authoritarian regimes, including providing more or less secret military aid, in order to defend French economic and geo-political interests in the region.

These three novels, which all draw more on the adventure and spy novel than a crime investigation, have one thing in common. It is always Westerns who are the main protagonists and if the proxies and actual killers of Habyarimana are sometimes French and sometimes American, the point of view is clearly almost exclusively ‘white’. The Rwandan characters remain in the background as if their country were only a setting for the power games of the great Western nations and for competition between the superpowers, mainly represented by their secret services and underground groupings. The genocide itself is almost of secondary interest since the African actors in the conflict seem to be pawns in much larger game. No Rwandan is a main character or is able to outline his position or beliefs as if these novels for ‘white’ readers can only offer white characters as the main protagonists. It is therefore only by looking at authors born in Africa that a ‘Black’ perspective on the conflict can be found.

A black perspective on the genocide

Tierno Monénembo shifts things twice over: his narrator is not a white investigator; he is Rwandan and is in prison. Young Faustin, the son of the village idiot, recounts a story of noise and fury which we discovers in snatches as the story goes back in time to the days of the genocide which end the novel. To start, we do not know why he is in prison, the crime he is accused of, if he is a victim or the guilty party, if he is a scapegoat, a perpetrator or a victim of circumstances. The story proper starts after the genocide, about which he has only the vaguest memories, even inventing his parents’ crime scene for the benefit of foreign TV. We slowly learn that he is in prison, not for having taken part in the genocide but for a crime of passion. He shot dead the lover of his sister after finding them sleeping together. After 3 years in prison, he is brought before the court and aggravates the judges so much that they condemn him to death. ‘Just because there was a genocide here does not mean that Rwandans have lost all moral sense’ declares his lawyer⁷. Because the present regime failed to prosecute the perpetrators of genocide, it is a victim of the genocide who pays the price for re-establishing a sense of justice in the new State. This mockery of a trial does not take into account the confusion of a child, Faustin, who remains at the heart of the tragedy, since his father, a Hutu, refused to escape from his killers and stayed at the side of his Tutsi wife and their children. It is only by sheer luck that the young Faustin survived, burying the memory of the crime scene deeply in his unconscious, and choosing to live like an animal as he felt abandoned by all.

The narrative, at this point, is not a detective story even if there is a crime, investigation and trial. But the criminal figure here is not responsible for his actions as, almost against his will, death has become his only point of reference and he succumbs to periods of illness and delirium. The novel ends on the words: ‘You are not like other men. You were born twice as they say: the first time you were feed on milk, the second on blood… My God, three survivors and 7 days after the massacres! Life goes on even after such devilry’. The investigation is almost non-existent, as the story of the crime only returns intermittently in flashback and the trial does little to unravel the underlying reasons for the crime.

And yet, we are in the world of the roman noir. Firstly, because the novel allows Rwandans to express their views through the character of the main protagonist, Faustin, and what he tells us about his father, considered the village idiot but who spoke simple truths based on common humanity. He is the only one to have refused to carry out such violence, who rejected the ethnic divisions and who believed in the goodness of man but who died because of his innocent beliefs. The few white characters are journalists and cameramen who come to steal a few images of horror like the ‘great shit dogs’ who ‘haunt the sites of genocide’ because ‘the dead are the stars, even when all that remains is their skulls’. Or they are representatives of the UN or religious charities who either get killed in the genocide when they become too involved in their mission or flee the country in despair at developments or through fear. The only person to wish to help Faustin is a young Rwandan social worker, born in Uganda, who therefore partly escaped the build up of ethnic tensions and who is able to give a compassionate and objective perspective on events. But this is not enough to help the young adolescent escape his psychic trauma.

It is also a roman noir, in the generic sense of the word, in that the novel does not focus on the police investigation but rather privileges situations of crisis in an attempt to denounce society as in the tradition of US roman noirs beginning with Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler. We should be wary of making too close a comparison since the roman noir sets out characters who are deeply involved in the criminal underworld, with a sizeable amount of the narrative devoted to action scenes, and the denunciation of social and political corruption (and this varies from the extreme right to the extreme left in its tenor). Here the world of juvenile crime in which the narrator is immersed is but a consequence of the genocide and the need to comment critically on social and political developments is only a background theme as it relates to the tragic life of the hero overwhelmed by forces that he cannot control and that he cannot analyse with any notion of their social and political foundations. It is up to the reader to provide such an interpretation and to confront the absolute horror that is increasingly touched upon as the novel progresses.

But it is to the credit of the novel that it does not fall into the trap of providing social denunciation and political critiques with little meaning; that it refuses to give into the facile clichés of the crime novel, sensationalism of all kinds and instead compels the reader to take a more reflective view on events. For all that, it is the only novel that really talks about the genocide; that deeply touches the reader, because it avoids clichés, action or war scenes in order to concentrate on human tragedy. It puts the impossible work of grieving and the duty to remember at the heart of the novel, both of which were its objectives from the beginning.

1. Reisdorff, L’Homme qui demanda du feu, Brussells, P. de Meyere, 1978. | back |
2. O. Marchal, Afrique Afrique, Paris, Fayard, 1983. | back |
3. I would like to thank Pierre Halen whose bibliography helped me to locate some of these crime novels. Many are no longer available in bookshops or no longer in print. This is the case for Guy Pascal, Mille collines. La saga gore Rwanda, Paris, Ed du Moine Bourru, 2000, Jean-Paul Nozières, Billi Joe, Paris, Fleuve noir, coll, ‘Crime’ 1997, Elmore Leonard, Pagan Babies, New York, Delacorte Press, 2000. The same author has also published Dieu reconnaîtra les siens, Paris, Rivages, col. Thriller, 2003 where the story begins in Rwanda a short time after the genocide, although the crime intrigue has nothing to do with its events. | back |
4. G. de Villiers. SAS Enquête sur un genocide, Paris, Malko Productions, no. 1401, 2000. | back |
5. 5. C Fradier, Un poison nommé Rwanda, Paris, Baleine, coll. Le Poulpe, no 110, 1998. | back |
6. J-Cl. Patrigeon, L’ombre de Némesis, Vallauris, Atout Publications, 2003. | back |
7. T. Monénembo, L’aîné des orphelins, Paris, Ed. Du Seuil, 2000. | back |

	European crime fiction in the crosshairs

	n°2 July-August-September 2005