Democratie in de maak. Met Rawls en Margalit naar Rwanda

Abstract

Abstract: The making of democracy. Rawls, Margalit and Rwanda. In this article we intend to describe the tension between Margalit's decent society and Rawls' theory of justice. We use Rwanda as a case study, the country where a genocide took place, killing millions of Tutsi’s and Hutu's. Our statement is that the conceptual frame of Rawls is hardly useful for this analysis and the judgement of the contemporary history of this African country. Of course, like in so many Third World countries, there was a severe violation of the human rights and an unequal share of the most basic of goods, both material and immaterial, the last one including self-respect. Though, the main cause of the outburst of violence which set fire to this country from 1994 onwards is not the violation of rights and the gap between rich and poor, how unjustified this all seems from the rawlsian point of view. The civil war was, and still is, being fed by the overwhelming fear for suppression by the enemy, and this fear, we will argue, is mainly caused by the still existing forms of institutional humiliation. To understand how the Rwandese interpret their problems and to reveal the mechanisms behind the violence, the work of Margalit plays a key-role.