France continues to live in the past and refuses to countenance a future in which it has a different place, plays a different role and the rules are different. That certainly seems to be the case in its relations with Rwanda over the last two and a half decades.

In many ways, the French government’s actions, especially as regards the Genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda, amount to harassment. But they also appear like the actions of a bully who no longer terrifies the kids in the neighbourhood. 

He has lost but wants to take it out on a supposedly weaker fellow to reassure himself that he still has the power to terrorise.Only it does not quite work out like that.

Of course, France is a powerful country and loves to throw its weight around. However, there have been changes over the years and some of that power is not what it used to be.

Once upon a time (that’s how it is really) the French were widely admired, their language in particular. It was the language of diplomacy and culture. Anyone who was anyone had to learn it. A word or two thrown into conversation or writing was proof that one was of superior culture.

French was supposedly more refined and elegant than English which was dismissed as rather very ordinary and the language of merchants.

Paris was the culture and intellectual capital of the world, and writers, artists and scholars made regular pilgrimage there.

Then things changed. The merchants eventually ruled over a bigger chunk of the world. Learning became more widely available and ceased to be a preserve of the privileged. And as so often happens, people adopted the language of power and influence, and knowledge.

The world has changed in other ways too, especially in information and communication technology. The technology is faster, evolves rapidly, and is used by everyone, not just the educated. For this you need a language adapted to the pace - fast, creative, flexible (can break rules), and even irreverent. The strictly grammatical French doesn’t fit the bill.

Ideas of today’s technological innovations are often hatched in college dormitories and garages, and then taken to Silicon Valley for global dissemination.  They are about apps and start ups and similar stuff, and are best expressed by the language of marketing and advertising, fast, colourful, expressive – the language of the inventive merchants, not of philosophers.

France once had many colonies spread across the world.  Not too long ago, they began to revolt, demanding independence. France wouldn’t let go easily. In Vietnam and Algeria decolonisation involved war, which the French lost. It hurt. 

In its other African colonies, the same could not be allowed to happen. France maintained a presence even after formal independence. French troops are permanently stationed in nearly all of them to make sure that the status quo is not disturbed.

They maintain control of the regional currency, the CFA. They have cultivated tastes for things French among the political, intellectual and business elite of these countries.

But even with these controls, there are periods of restlessness challenging French influence, which are usually brutally suppressed, but never totally eradicated.

Then more recently, this once insignificant country in the heart of Africa comes along and dares the bully. Rwanda has told France to own up to its role in the genocide against the Tutsi. Instead of doing that and starting on a new future, France does two things.

One is what every bully does – intimidate and shift blame to the victim and expect he will be cowered and stop demanding truth and justice, and that somehow your responsibility will be erased.

Two is what the guilty do – falsify history and hope that since your role will be out of view it will be forgotten and all will be well after that.

It does not work like that anymore. Orwellian memory holes have been plugged by new inventions. You cannot wish away a fact by simply saying it does not exist or blocking it from traditional media. Other media, more democratic and with instant and wider reach have seen to that.

Similarly, incontrovertible, independent and well- documented research by Rwandan, French and international organisations and individuals exists and debunks the French Government’s official line regarding the genocide against the Tutsi. There are also numerous eye witness accounts and testimonies of those who took part in the genocide which point to French government complicity.

Voices of sanity within France have also been telling the government to accept its responsibility and move on.

Still, France refuses to accept all the evidence and advice and sticks to a past that has long ceased to exist. But the past in which they dictated and others acquiesced cannot be reconstituted and thinking that is possible is delusional.

The French government could benefit from this advice:  Come from behind the smokescreen of investigations. Come into the present and help build the basis for a new relationship and future. 

Stop denying your role in Rwanda. Come clean and disclose all the official dealings of the presidency, the ministry of defence and the military regarding Rwanda at the time. That is the best way to reform and turn the bully into a friendly neighbourhood kid.