Hanno Brankamp

With looming refugee and forced migration crises in the Mediterranean, Kenya, Myanmar, Syria, Burundi and elsewhere hitting international headlines, public attention is rightfully drawn to those people immediately affected by war, poverty, and persecution.

Colonialism is often understood as a system of domination reincarnated throughout history in manifold forms and manifestations. The question of what makes a political system explicitly colonial, and not – for that matter - simply exploitative, is hereby central.

On 6 April 1994 the plane carrying President Juvénal Habyarimana of Rwanda and his Burundian counterpart Cyprien Ntaryamira was shot down while approaching Kigali airport. Returning from a regional summit in Tanzania, the two statesmen died when two surface-to-air missiles downed the aircraft.

‘[…] it appears impossible to believe, judging from the physical appearance of the Wahuma [Batutsi">, that they can be of any other race than the semi− Shem−Hamitic of Ethiopia.’ John Hanning Speke, (The Discovery of the Source of the Nile, 1863, Chapter IX.) [1]