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'Michael Ignatieff says 'It's a very impressive piece of work, a scholar's attempt to move beyond the cliches of horror towards a genuine understanding of the social dynamics which made horror possible. It's a good example of relevant, committed and passionate scholarship' 'Daring, knowledgeable, and wise, Mahmood Mamdani places the terrible massacres of 1994 in historical, regional, theoretical, and moral perspective. His analysis of Hutu and Tutsi as historically-grounded and incessantly changing political identities not only clarifies struggles in the 1990s in Rwanda, Burundi, Uganda, and Congo but also helps identify ways of preventing future bloodshed.' - Charles Tilly, Sociology, Columbia University 'The strengths of the book are clear and admirable... his understanding of the Social Revolution and of Rwanda in the 1980s and 1990s commands attention as an important and provocative reinterpretation of the country's recent history. Anyone from now on who writes on identity in Central Africa - and there will be many - will have to wrestle with the case that Mamdani has made.' - Jeffrey Herbst in Foreign Affairs 'The historical context is crucial to any understanding of what happened and why. Few are better qualified to explain the tensions of post-colonial Africa than Mahmood Mamdani, a Ugandan political scientist with a sharp perspective on the colonially inspired differences between subject races. His Rwandan case-study provides powerful evidence that the Tutsis came to be crushed between colonist and native, in much the same way as the Asians were in Uganda.' - Richard Synge in The Independent '... his analysis of Rwandese society, in particular the role of the church in the genocide, is fascinating, and explains much about recent genocide trials of priests and nuns.' - Victoria Brittain in The Guardian 'What remains at issue are the roots of this huge bloodletting, the fourth biggest genocide in the last century. This is where the argument set forth by Professor Mamdani is likely to generate considerable controversy... 'it is in the production of new facts - the curse of area studies! - that Professor Mamdani is at his best. I refer to his illuminating analysis of the politics of indigeneity in Uganda, in chapter 6, which brings out a number of facts of critical importance to an understanding of the circumstances leading to the RPF invasion. Contrary to what most analysts assume, the constraints faced by the Tutsi refugee population in Uganda were a key factor behind the RPF decision to fight its way into Rwanda. Mamdani brilliantly shows how the Tutsi refugees, while denied citizenship rights, became a focal point of resentment among Ugandan citizens: anti-refugee sentiment was particularly intense among the non-commissioned officers within the National Resistance Army who saw the predominance of Tutsi officers in the higher ranks as a hindrance to their promotions, and among the indigenous ranchers of the Mawogola district, many of them bureaucrats and notables, who would settle for nothing less than the expulsion of non-indigenous Banyarwanda (i.e. predominantly Tutsi). In the combination of push and pull factors behind the RPF invasion, the former merge as the really decisive ones...by emphasizing the critical significance of the issues of indigeneity and citizenship rights in the Great Lakes region, he provides the reader with a major point of entry for grasping he complexity of refugee politics in Uganda, the Congo and Burundi. Finally, his analysis of Tutsi Power in post-genocide Rwanda is more lucid in its underlying pessimism than most other assessments.' - Rene Lemarchand in Journal of African History

Introduction: Thinking about genocide - Defining the crisis of post-colonial citizenship: settler and native as political identities - The origins of Hutu and Tutsi - The racialization of Tutsi under colonialism - The 'social revolution' of 1959 - The second republic: redefining Tutsi from race to ethnicity - The politics of indigeneity in Uganda: background to the RPF invasion - The civil war and the genocide - Tutsi power in Rwanda and the diaspora in Kivu - Conclusion: political reform after genocide - Bibliography - Index