Rwanda

Posted on | April 19, 2006

Just returned from a very short visit to Rwanda staying in the capital Kigali for 24 hours. Not the wine capital of the World but as the country grows at a rapid rate the demand for wine is increasing. As with most of the East African countries wine for them means South Africa.

I was also able to spend time in the Museum built to commemorate the Genocide of 1994. As an outsider who has only read what western journalism has been able to report it was a shuddering exposure to one of the most ruthless acts in history. For a good background to read The Shackled Continent by Robert Guest pages 111-120.

Rwanda has two main tribes the Hutus and the Tutsis. Before colonisation first by the Germans and then the Belgians the two tribes lived side by side. The Hutus were mostly peasant farmers and the Tutsis owned cows. Small wars were common but there were traditional mechanisms for ending them.

Colonisation and the nineteenth century European obsession with race changed all that. The Tutsis were thought to be descended from a tribe from the north, were naturally more intelligent and so got all the important jobs. Following Independence in 1960 there was then 34 years of rule by the Hutus. In 1973 a Hutu General Habyarimana seized power and established a police state. Hatred was institutionised for the next 20 years with the Kangura - a paper which demonised the Tutsis - publishing the ten Hutu commandments. The eighth was “Hutus must stop having mercy on Tutsis”.

On the 6th April 1994 Habyarimana’s plane was shot down and he was killed. Whether by the Hutus nobody knows but the genocide that followed was certainly well planned and the death of their man seemed to be the pre-cursor to the frenzied killing of 800,000 people in the next 6 weeks. As with the Nazis the intention was to purify the race and rid the country of the Tutsis - referred to as cockroaches in Kangura.

What the museum tries to do is tell the truth about what happened before during and after the genocide. You begin with a walk around the garden - beautifully laid out on a hill opposite Kigali. In the middle of each border of plants is a massive concrete slab. Our guide explains that 200,000 victims are buried here - one has been opened and a coffin is visible in the mass grave. Bodies are still being found.

The museum begins by explaining the background - in addition there is obvious anger that we in the rest of the world did nothing. I think that the trigger for removing the UN peacekeepers was the death of 10 Belgians from the force. The team on the ground begged the UN t0 stay but Koffe Annan decided that they should withdraw. It seems certain that this enabled the killing to go unchecked, whilst even a small presence would have prevented the majority of the killing. Each area had a short film with the survivors talking about what happened - as Hutus and Tutsis lived side by side it was impossible for the Tutsis to escape. The weapons used were clubs and machetes - whole families were beaten to death, raped and submitted to the most unimaginable torture. I just about managed to survive the emotional onslaught until we got to the last room. Here there were about a dozen pictures of children each one on a separate easel. There was little information about each child but it was heartbreaking - their favourite food - their favourite relative or friend - how old they were and how they died. All death is horrible but as a father this particular image had tears falling down my cheeks.

Sadness, anger and a fear that we haven’t seen the last of such events in our history left me feeling exhausted but pleased I had been able to increase my understanding of Rwanda’s painful past.

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