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In Africa many victims of violence are killed by necklacing, which is burning people alive with a tyre wrapped around them
Photo: venetia joubert sarah oosterveld

With the weakening grip of imperial powers like Britain and France after World War II, was the world going to care enough about what became of Africa’s emerging nations? As dozens of newly formed republics struggled to find their feet without a helping hand, the borders drawn up during the bygone colonial era were never likely to be grounds for a long lasting peace. The facts are there in the fallout.

Since colonialism, instability, corruption, violence and despotism have marred the histories of many African states, obstructing the path to a better future. Far from setting the tone for freedom, democratic governments have proven difficult to sustain in most cases, leaving many republics to instead cycle through a series of coups giving rise to military dictatorships. Civil war and grave human rights violations have never been far from the picture, as names like Sierra Leone and Rwanda bear witness.

Sierra Leone

The government’s election slogan in Sierra Leone in ‘99 was ‘The future is in your hands,’ so the RUF rebels amputated people’s hands to intimidate them into not voting. This boy is 13
Photo: American Embassy in Freetown via Travlr

The West African country of Sierra Leone was host to a bitter civil war between 1991 and 2001 in which at least 50,000 people were killed and hundreds of thousands more tortured or forced to flee their homes. Triggered by the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) under Foday Sankoh – students but also trained killers opposed to military leader Joseph Momoh – control of Sierra Leone’s diamond industry was a prime objective for the war. Coup after coup occurred over the ensuing decade.

Violence, mutilation and sexual violence were rife
Photo: American Embassy in Freetown, Sierra Leone via Travlr

When the RUF launched their first attacks in Sierra Leone in March 1991, the rebels were quick to demonstrate their brutality, decapitating community leaders and putting their heads on stakes. The signature terror tactic employed by the bands was physical mutilation: they severed the hands, arms, legs, lips, ears or genitalia of an estimated 20,000 civilians using machetes and axes. Whole villages were destroyed, with the majority of civilians killed as well as anyone trying to escape.

School destroyed by the civil war in Sierra Leone
Photo: Laura Lartigue

The use of child soldiers was part of the strategy of both the rebel and government militia during the war. The RUF used horrific methods to numb new recruits to barbarity and thousands of abducted boys and girls – often between the ages of 7 and 12 – were forced to serve as soldiers or prostitutes. Those chosen to be fighters were sometimes forced to murder their parents, and horrendous bets took place over the sex of unborn babies before their mothers proceeded to be sliced open.

Rwanda

During the 1994 genocide, Ugandan fishermen found themselves pulling dozens of bodies out of Lake Victoria. The badly decomposed bodies had travelled hundreds of miles by river from Rwanda
Photo: daveblume

It is ironic that the beautiful green equatorial country of Rwanda is now synonymous with slaughter on a massive scale. The 1994 Rwandan Genocide was the mass killing of hundreds of thousands of Rwanda’s Tutsis and Hutu political moderates by Hutus under the extremist, Tutsi-opposed Hutu Power ideology. Over the course of just three months, at least 500,000 people were killed, though most estimates propose a death toll of between 800,000 and one million.

Rwandan genocide victims taken out of Lake Victoria by Ugandan fishermen, 1994
Photo: daveblume

The killing was well organised, and by the time it began there were agents of the Rwandan militia in every neighbourhood. From Prime Minister Jean Kambanda down, the genocide’s organisers included many top ranking government officials and members of the army, and at a local level officials like mayors and police. Local newspapers and government-sponsored radio also deliberately incited the violence, fanning the flames of ethnic hatred.

Skulls at the Nyamata Memorial Site, Nyamata, Rwanda
Photo: Fanny Schertzer

Most victims were killed in their own villages and towns, often by fellow residents. Militia members typically hacked victims to death with machetes, though some army units fired rifles. Victims were often found hiding in churches and schools, where they were massacred by Hutu gangs. Ordinary citizens were called on to kill neighbours, and those who refused were often murdered themselves. Horrific sexual violence and war rape was also integral to destroying the Tutsi ethnic group.

Rwandan Tutsis travelling toward the Tanzanian border, fleeing the genocide, 1994
Photo: daveblume

The igniting spark for the genocide was the assassination of Rwandan Hutu president Juvénal Habyarimana on April 6 1994, but its underlying causes were much deeper. The 1990–93 Rwandan Civil War, fought between the Ugandan-backed Rwandan Patriotic Front, a rebel group comprising mostly Tutsi refugees, and the Hutu regime, supported by Francophone nations, greatly increased the ethnic tensions in the country and led to the rise of Hutu Power.

Zimbabwe and beyond

Many African nations such as Zimbabwe have been divided throughout history by violent conflicts between rival factions
Photo: venetia joubert sarah oosterveld

Although not as notorious for violence due to the absence of recent civil war, Zimbabwe has experienced its share of bloodshed under Robert Mugabe, whose rule has been characterised by widespread human rights abuses. Opposition gatherings are frequently subjected to brutal attacks by the police and activists severely beaten. In the build-up to the 2008 election, the wife of one opposition head had one of her hands and both her feet chopped off before being burned alive.

Zimbabwean burn victim
Photo: venetia joubert sarah oosterveld

In southern Africa many victims of violence are killed by necklacing, the appalling method of killing that involves burning people alive by forcing a petrol-filled tyre over the victim’s midriff and setting it ablaze. A common method of lynching during disturbances in South Africa in the 1980s and 1990s, necklacing returned to South Africa in 2008 when people in some of the country’s poorest areas turned against immigrants from Zimbabwe fleeing violence and poverty in their own country.

Democratic Republic of the Congo: War wounded rebels being provided with medical treatment and support for their reintegration into civilian life
Photo: Spyros Demetriou

The atrocities don’t end here. People are still dying as a result of war closely associated with the carnage in Rwanda in the Democratic Republic of the Congo – the world’s deadliest conflict since World War II, killing 5.4 million people. Meanwhile, in Darfur, Sudan, charges of genocide and other atrocities have been levelled at the Sudanese government in its ongoing conflict with rebels recruited from non-Arab ethnic groups, notably the Sudan Liberation Army.

War wounded rebels in North Kivu, DR Congo
Photo: Spyros Demetriou

Is there hope amidst the picture painted here? It seems at least that there are signs of increased networking among African states. In the civil war in the DR Congo, for example, instead of rich, non-African countries intervening, neighbouring African countries became involved. More promisingly, political associations such as the African Union offer hope for greater co-operation and peace between the continent’s many countries – all of which are eager to rebuild.

Sources: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10

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