Independence Without Accountability: A Psychoanalytic Critique of Post-Colonial Governance in Hotel Rwanda

The 1994 Rwandan Genocide The 1994 Rwandan Genocide is the most catastrophic in recent human history, killing about 800,000 in a mere 100 days. Though the Belgian colonial period enshrined political distinctions between the two dominant ethnic groups – Hutu and Tutsi – through discriminatory policy and administrative practice, post-independence continued violence against people throughout Rwanda forces critical inquiry into post-colonial leadership responsibility. This article argues that while colonialism was a foundational contributor to structural inequalities in Rwanda, successive regimes within post-colonial Rwanda made political choices to continually reproduce ethnic divisions for political expediency rather than dismantle them, therefore cannot account entirely for the genocide nor the subsequent governance failures. Using Terry George’s film Hotel Rwanda as a cultural lens to represent the complexities of the period, this paper engages psychoanalysis in the terms of Sigmund Freud, utilizing repression, denial and projection to understand the ways in which political leadership psychologically exiled responsibility for the government’s failure on the legacy of colonialism. Instead of confronting its own agency and manipulation of ethnic identity, leadership repeatedly and consciously returned to colonial oppression as an explanation, absolving political figures from both moral and political culpability. Employing a qualitative approach, the article uses historic documentation relevant to Belgian colonial governance, the Hutu Revolution and the run-up to genocide, analyzed along with cinematic depiction found in the movie, and utilizes Freudian psychoanalysis as its theoretical backbone for analyzing government as individuals in employing defense mechanisms to preserve political legitimacy. The paper concludes by offering that sustainable national healing will necessarily require engaging with colonial injustice and post-colonial political responsibility as mutually related and equally essential elements. By illuminating the psychological nature of political denial as portrayed in Hotel Rwanda, this article contends that reconciliation necessitates truth-telling and institutional reform rather than constant invocation of colonial victimhood. Through integrating film criticism with post-colonial theory and history using Freudian psychoanalysis, this article contributes a multidisciplinary reading on responsibility, trauma, and reconciliation in post-colonial Rwanda.