07 04 14 Afr. Arg. Hell and healing: Rwanda twenty years on –

Drawing of the orphanage Yyundo, near Gisenyi, Rwanda (copy right Jeroen Janssen).

The horror Rose remembers
it all too well, even though she was only six: “ We lived in Cyangugu,
not far from the border with the Congo: my parents, my little brother
and I. I even have memories from the period just before the genocide:
noisy people waving machetes on the bus. And the political
assassinations. One day, one such corpse was found just in front of our
doorstep. When it became known that the President was dead, a Tutsi
neighbour came to us: “This is the end, we all are going to die soon.”
Not long after that, a militia man from the Interahamwe started to
scream from behind the fence: “Be prepared, we will soon come to do our
job.” “What job are you talking about?” father asked. “Finish your
friend off. And your wife too!” Because my mother was Tutsi, my father
decided to bring her as soon as possible to the Congo. That Tutsi
neighbour was slaughtered the same day. His wife as well, but not before
she was brutally raped. I was left alone with my brother, my father
didn’t think it would take a long time. But then people attacked our
house too. Someone tried to slash a machete into my head, but I parried
the stroke with my arm. I was seriously injured but we were still alive.
A neighbour rescued us: “Let those kids go. Their father is a Hutu,
like us.” Four days later, dad picked us up and brought us to the Congo
too. I stayed in the hospital for months. They first wanted to amputate
my arm because it was entirely inflamed. Eventually they managed to save
it. Father remained with me all the time. When I was finally better, we
returned to Bukavu and joined my mother and my brother.”

Beatha was
not in Rwanda when the genocide started. She had left the country
fifteen years earlier. She was ten. Her father directed the
administration of the municipality in Gisenyi. The family was Tutsi .
“In those days, Tutsi children had hardly any access to secondary
schools. I was a good student in primary school but there was no chance
that I would have the opportunity to continue with my studies. Because I
had a physical disability, it was not obvious what to do in life.
Eventually my parents decided to send me to Belgium as an adopted child.
I went to Bruges in 1979 and became part of a Belgian household. I kept
in touch with my family in Rwanda. My mother came over a few times and
in 1989 I returned to Rwanda to celebrate my brother’s wedding. Funnily
enough I still understood Kinyarwanda but I couldn’t speak it anymore.
Still, I was definitely coming home. The bond with my childhood was very
strong.

A
year later the war broke out. We didn’t worry very much. A lot seemed
to happen, but very far away from Gisenyi. In May ’92 , my mother
visited Belgium again for what turned out to be her last trip. She
stayed until September 23^rd.
I wanted her to seek asylum but she refused categorically. “If I have
to die, let me rather die at home.” Not that we thought there was an
immediate threat, we still believed that the war was far away. But from
then onwards, I called her every week.

In
April 1994 the horror erupted. At first we managed to remain in contact
by phone. By chance, most family members were outside Rwanda when it
started. Only my mother and one of my brothers were there, and they were
hidden by the neighbours.  He was the one we talked to, and he tried to
reassure us. But on May 15^th he
called us to say somewhat cryptically that my mum and my brother had
been brought away.   I heard he felt very uncomfortable and was choosing
his words carefully. But we understood: it was all over. He had hidden
them for three weeks, but eventually they were denounced by the house
staff. Some family members considered accusing the neighbour of
complicity, but I thought that was unfair: the man had taken huge risks,
hiding Tutsis in his house. It’s been half a miracle that he has not
been killed himself.

In
1995, I returned for the second time. That was a very alienating
experience. So many people were dead. Six years before I found my
classmates whom I used to hang around with, but they now were no longer
there. When I came back to Belgium, I thought: “I’m through with Rwanda.
This was the last time.”

Rose also
returned in 1995: “We didn’t dare to go back earlier. Daddy was a Hutu;
he had been a judge under the old regime. We were afraid that he would
be persecuted by the new leaders. And that was exactly what happened. He
spent a year in jail without being charged. Mum fought like a lion for
her husband, just as he had done for her during the genocide. But no
matter how small I was, I understood that the Tutsi part of my family
had been killed by the Hutu regime, and that a large part of my father’s
family had been assassinated by the new Tutsi regime . I lived in a
world of orphans. In our household, there were eight of them, from both
mum’s and dad’s side. All the parents had been killed.

I
realized even then, at the age of seven, how unjust it is if one part
of the community can mourn its dead, while a huge taboo is maintained
over the dead of the other part. We were not allowed to talk about the
victims of the army, as if only the victims of the Interahamwe had died.
I grew up with that sense of injustice. The fault line ran right
through my heart.”

A total makeover

I contact Marc Hoogsteyns,
a Belgian independent journalist and documentary maker. As a
journalist, he covered most of the violence in Rwanda and later in Congo
from the field. He established personal relationships with nearly the
entire RPF leadership since the days that they were rebels. Through his
marriage, he has family ties within the Tutsi community on both sides of
the border. He remains an independent observer, but he knows the
developments and feelings within that community very well and has a lot
of empathy with their perspective. Has Rwanda changed a lot, I want to
know.

“The
country has gone through a real metamorphosis. A total makeover, so to
speak.  The basis of the culture has changed. Socially and economically
Rwanda has improved a lot. In terms of education and health, for
example, the results are spectacular. But as far as human rights and
democracy are concerned, there has been very little change. It used to
be a one-party state, and even though they do their best to embellish
it, essentially it still is.”

I call Aloys Habimana.
We have known each other for more than ten years. He was one of the
leading personalities in Liprodhor, perhaps the bravest human rights
organisation Rwanda has had. Several generations of their activists had
to leave the country because the authorities reacted very strongly
against their watch dogs and criticism. Aloys left too, but he later
reappeared in other places. In New York, for example, where he held
executive positions at the headquarters of Human Rights Watch. Today he
coordinates the programs of the international human rights organisation,
Front Line Defenders, in Sub-Saharan Africa.

“Rwanda
has indeed changed a lot in all these years, in the most diverse
fields. There have been a lot of positive developments. The
post-genocide leadership has been quite effective in transforming
society, but the issue has been where it placed its priorities. We
should not underestimate what a complex, nearly impossible task it is to
rehabilitate an entirely destroyed country from scratch and to rebuild a
society which is deeply traumatised. But I believe the first priority
should have been to address past grievances, the root causes of conflict
and genocidal violence. Have we solved the issue of refugees for
instance? Today, more Rwandans than ever live abroad because they do not
feel safe in Rwanda…”

Beatha also
noticed the change. In 1995 she had returned from Rwanda, determined
that she would never go back. In 2011 she went anyway. “There was a
wedding. I did not want to go but they nagged me so long that I finally
ceded. Once more it was alienating. Honestly, I did not recognize
anything. The mentality and lifestyle had completely changed. There was
no place for ordinary people. Everything was so clean. Fantastic of
course, but I couldn’t find the poor. So many houses and land had been
expropriated, but where did the people go? The ordinary people
apparently vanished in the decor. I felt very uncomfortable about it.
Anyway, I never regret that I went, though I am still convinced that it
was my last time. Next year there is another wedding. I hope I will
resist better to the pressure. I am not looking forward at all to go
back to Rwanda. I simply want to stay at home.”

The whole truth

“The regime is very ambiguous about the division between Hutu and Tutsi,” says Rose.
“For years and years, they explained to us that Hutu and Tutsi were
categories that the Belgians had invented to silence and divide us and
to maintain their control. It became a crime even to pronounce the words
Hutu and Tutsi. They labeled you as a divisionist. You wanted to divide
the community. Or worse, you became a nostalgic for the old regime and
still adhered to the ideology of genocide. But now they come forward
with their new program Ndi Umunyarwanda (“I am Rwandan). They
want individual Hutus to ask for forgiveness on behalf of all Hutus, and
individual Tutsis to forgive them in the name of all Tutsis. Even
ministers are forced to do it. I must admit I can’t follow anymore. Do
Hutu and Tutsi exist, or are they mere inventions?”

“Programs like Ndi Umunyarwanda now and the gacaca courts
before… They all exposed one side of the story. They don’t help our
country to move forward and they do not bring the people closer
together. The citizens are aware of this. I really think the community
participates in these programmes just because they are forced to; not
because they believe they can help,” comments Alloys Habimana. 
“Whichever way you look at it, every attempt to deal with the past
which is not based on the entire truth has no chance to succeed.”

Time to bring in my last interlocutor, David Himbara. Himbara
once was one of the closest collaborators of president Kagame. He left
the regime and the country in 2010, together with other key people from
Kagame’ inner circle of power, with General Faustin Kayumba Nyamwasa as
their leader. It was an awful moment for the regime. All of a sudden the
biggest threat did not come from its traditional enemies, the armed
opposition in the Congolese bush or the opposition parties in Kigali,
but from within. The regime was struggling to prevent its own disintegration.

Since
then David Himbara has lead a public life as one of the most critical
and best documented sources on Rwandan politics, but he has never joined
one of the opposition parties in the diaspora: “Under the current
regime in Rwanda  reconciliation is no option, because the climate is
intoxicated.  Reconciliation can only be the result of a process in
which two parties enter into a dialogue. Such dialogue cannot exist in a
paranoid North-Korean style state that is afraid of itself.

But
it is outdated to be obsessed by the Hutu – Tutsi issue. Rwanda is a
violent state, but there is a strict policy of equal opportunity
violence: we all get our fair share of the whip. Of course Hutu are
marginalized today, they are barely represented in the institutions that
govern the country. And when they are, it is not because they are
elected but because they are appointed as window dressing. But does that
make the regime a Tutsi regime? I don’t think so. Kagame juggles with
individuals to mobilise the two groups against each other. It narrowed
down the state from a one party state to a one man state.”

And
what about the ordinary people, I want to know. “The repression and
intimidation are organized to the level of nyumbakumi, the cell of ten
households as the lowest level of government. The fault lines run
through families. For example, my father was an old school Tutsi
patriarch. I have thirty siblings. Several still live in Rwanda. Some
even do not want me to call them. They fear that I could put them in
danger. I basically want to say this: all society has vanished from
Rwanda, mistrust is complete. It has turned Rwanda into a time bomb. ”

Marc Hoogsteyns is
much milder in his judgment: “Rwanda is a beautiful country with many
strengths and opportunities, but at the same time it is some kind of
African version of Brave New World. People are afraid to talk. But they
live more comfortably and safely than ever before, they enjoy high
quality education and health care. They are very happy with that. The
Tutsi community stands almost entirely behind Kagame and also most Hutu
can live with it. They obviously don’t like the fact that they do not
count on the political scene, but they can do what they want in all
other spheres of live. They can study and do business etcetera. They can
deal with the level of repression, because they know that countries
such as Burundi, Congo or Kenya are not  the slightest bit more
democratic. Honestly, if we would have known twenty years ago, just
after the genocide, that Rwanda would achieve this in two decades, we
would have signed for it immediately.”

Lessons from the past

So how should Rwandan society move forward from here, I ask Aloys Habimana.  In many ways, the country seems ready for the future, but how to deal with the shadow the past throws over today?

“The
common people on the hills and in the suburbs have found a certain
balance, a way to live with the past. For example, you see more and more
mixed marriages. Time is the best healer. When people live in the same
community for long, sharing their problems and successes and finding
common interests, they end up finding a way out. There are opportunities
that bring people together and consolidate social ties. Churches and
charity organisations are trying to create such moments, often with some
results. But the potential for violence did not disappear, it is only
kept under the surface with much pressure and intimidation. Looking at
what led to past waves of violence, you wonder if our leaders have
learned anything at all from the past. This country went through the
hell as a result of a policy of exclusion. The elimination of political
opponents and critical voices in general. Greed. These still are
important features of our political system. As long as we do not
effectively deal with them, we will not get the risk of violence under
control. The priority should be on consolidating responsible leadership
and building strong institutions. They do not exist today. Leadership is
the key issue. It’s not because you managed to silence everybody that
you are effective. Decision making is an extremely top down process and
the ordinary citizen is silenced, infantilized. It is most important
that the space for public debate is opened up so that people can air out
their grievances.”

Kris
Berwouts has, over the last 25 years, worked for a number of different
Belgian and international NGOs focused on building peace,
reconciliation, security and democratic processes. Until 2012, he was
the Director of EurAc, the network of European NGOs working for advocacy
on Central Africa. He now works as an independent expert on Central
Africa.

This article was first published in Dutch in Mo Magazine (March 2014) and has been written with the support of the Pascal Decroos Fund for Investigative Journalism.