Cloak and Dagger

Abstract

It is not difficult to understand why the events of the Rwandan Genocide in 1994 lend themselves easily to representation in film. The genocide provoked an enduring desire to understand why its organisers were so effective in propagating the violence and why the UN, among others, failed to intervene effectively despite the events unfolding in front of its observers. Black Earth Rising, an eight-part television series aired by the BBC, is one of the first mainstream television series to approach the issue from a broader perspective, focusing on events in and around Rwanda after the genocide. It was screened in a prime-time slot for UK television and was a frequent feature of media commentary for weeks. It received largely positive reviews, in particular because of its unusually complex approach to postconflict politics. Despite this, I was hesitant about watching the series. Fictional stories inspired by ugly truths around international political involvement in the global south are a popular theme for mainstream film and television productions. These are often excruciating to watch for the wrong reasons. The tendency to critique contemporary western involvement while unselfconsciously presenting problematic, even neocolonial, stereotypes can be particularly grating. 1 Despite sincere intentions, these stories rarely escape the stereotypes about Africa that the Kenyan writer Binyavanga Wainaina forcefully protested in his article 'How to Write About Africa'. 2 Set against this standard, Black Earth Rising is a sophisticated production, delving into the complex politics of Rwanda and the east-central region of Africa in the decades since the genocide. The fictional story focuses on a legal investigator, Kate Ashby (played by Michaela Coel), a troubled Rwandan survivor of the genocide, now working in London and employed by Michael Ennis (John Goodman), an American-born barrister. Kate was found as a small child by a humanitarian worker in 1994 among the dead at the site of a recent massacre in Rwanda. Kate's adoptive mother is a well-known British prosecutor for cases held at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR). Early in the series, Kate's mother decides to lead an attempted prosecution of military leader General Simon Nyamoya, a Tutsi and former soldier of the Rwandan Patriotic Front's (RPF) army. As a member of the RPF in 1994, Nyamoya is credited with helping to bring the genocide to an end. He is badged as a warlord by the media, in command of mercenaries involved in the ongoing conflict in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and entangled with the mining and mineral trade in the region. This unfolds much to the chagrin of Kate, who views her mother's involvement as a personal betrayal, given her own history of loss at the hands of extremist Hutu g enocidaires. A tragedy then interrupts the judicial proceedings at the ICTR and, as a result, Kate and Michael become the two main, antagonistic figures intent on understanding a conspiracy that centres around the actions of high-ranking ...