The Star FRIDAY JULY 25 2008

17
INSIDE
In April next year,
it will be 15 years
since the genocide
began in Rwanda, a
three-month killing
frenzy in which
nearly one million
Tutsis and
moderate Hutus
were murdered by
their extremist
Hutu neighbours
and relatives as an
uninterested world
watched and the
UN stood by. Heidi
Kingstone reports
A
pril is a month of remembrance.
Nightclubs close and there is no
music from the evening the
massacre started, April 6 and 7,
for a week. It is then the country feels the
pain, and hears the screams of trauma-
tised survivors.
April, as TS Eliot wrote in The Waste
Land, is the cruellest month. But, there is
good news from Africa.
It is not modern-day Rwandas way to
dwell on the past, but the past is inevitably
always there, in the land of a thousand
hills.
Under president Paul Kagame, the phi-
losophy has been national reconciliation,
not retaliation. Rwandans today think of
themselves as Rwandan, not Hutu or Tutsi,
because they fear if they dont, genocide
could happen again.
Inevitably, controversy surrounds the
policy of forgiveness, and oneness, but
compared to other African countries, espe-
cially its next door neighbour, the Democ-
ratic Republic of Congo, Rwanda looks like
it is on the right path.
It is too soon to tell if the changes are
real and sustainable, and that enough is
trickling down to the vast majority, who
remain extremely poor and rural.
Only on June 23 did the Gacaca courts
the modernised traditional systems of
justice used to deal with these crimes
start to hear the testimony of the geno-
cides worst perpetrators, the planners,
rapists and mass murderers.
By 2009 Rwanda intends to have tried
the remaining 10 000 cases.
In Kigali, on the drive from the airport,
the buildings, the rolling hills, the scenery
seem eerily familiar. The road goes to the
Hotel des Mille Collines, made famous in
the Hollywood movie Hotel Rwanda.
Here hotelier Paul Rusesabagina
opened the grounds to allow terrified citi-
zens to escape the murderous militia, the
Interahamwe.
Some, especially those close to the pres-
ident, say the story is more complicated,
and that rather than helping the fleeing
mobs he insisted on being paid.
Today it is a busy hotel once again in
need of refurbishment, the restaurant
around the pool hums with the sound of
French aid workers, and tourists en route
to see the gorillas.
Rwanda has one of the fastest-growing
economies in Africa, with an improved
business climate and open economy.
Rwanda Vision 2020 is a result of a
national consultative process in 1998-99
that defined the future path the country
should take. Rwandans, too, have returned
for those opportunities, as well as to make
a contribution. The suburbs are rapidly
expanding, with big houses being con-
structed and a golf course, and five-star
hotel on the way.
Shopping malls pop up around the city,
full of Rwandas elite. They congregate at
Rue Bourbon, a cafe that aspires to make
people feel they are back in the US.
At another restaurant, Republika,
sophisticated by any standard, Rwandan
doctors, judges, businessmen and women,
many of whom have decided to return
recently, bounce from table to table social-
ising with friends and colleagues.
From here, Rwanda seems like Africas
model society. It is ranked No 1 in the world
for an important indicator of gender
equity: it has the highest percentage of
female parliamentarians of any country.
There is a sense of order, a clear vision,
and a determination. You can safely walk
the streets, which have pavements more
than can be said for Nairobi.
Implementing the plan is more difficult.
We know what we want for our people and
how to achieve it, says ambassador
Joseph Mutaboba, secretary-general of the
Ministry of Internal Affairs. We may not
have the means, but we need a break.
Ordinary people come out every month
and plant a tree or clean up the rubbish. In
1999 Kigali was a mess, not so anymore.
In Rwanda you will not find those thin
plastic bags that pollute the landscape of
too many other African countries,
as they have been banned.
National ID cards were
scrapped after the genocide: they
identified people as Tutsi, Hutu or
Twa, and the reason for Muta-
boba is obvious.
It was to remind Rwandans
we were one nation, in order to
try to put the past at the back of
peoples minds.
Rwanda feels inspirational.
We spoke the same language,
lived together, had the same cul-
ture and the same god. We have to
get the same message from
schools and leadership, and to get
back to the values we had origi-
nally.
Rwandas attempt at dealing
with the genocide has much to
offer, and Mutaboba has talked to
Israelis and Palestinians about ways of
moving forward.
Domitilla Mukantaganzwa, executive
secretary of the National Jurisdiction for
Gacaca Services, has been part of that
process from its pilot phase in 2002.
Gacaca means little grass, the place
on which the trial takes place. There are
three categories, the ones being tried as of
June, are the first and most serious
category, the planners and perpetrators of
sexual violence; the second category are
the killers, and the third the people who
committed crimes against property.
We werent competent to try the first
category until now, says Mukantaganzwa,
adding that this kind of justice was the
peoples choice, and we dont regret it.
The genocide was committed by rela-
tives. Husbands killed their wives. Now we
are seeing those men accused by their
children. We are seeing the children who
survived, marrying the children of their
parents killers.
A woman has married the man who
killed her husband. We dont understand.
We asked the survivors of genocide: What
was it between you and your neighbour.
They said there was nothing. We did this
because the authorities asked us to.
I have seen everything, says Mukan-
taganzwa, who was in the country from
1990, when the civil war began.
Its traumatising, and we are doing our
best, but its very difficult and sensitive
work. In the beginning prisoners didnt
believe survivors could forgive them, sur-
vivors didnt believe in gacaca. We made
everyone participate.
According to a 2007 Human Rights
Watch report, the Rwandan government
is particularly eager to demonstrate its
high standards in the field of justice.
Some leaders are concerned with show-
ing a level of judicial competence and
impartiality that will encourage greater
investments of capital.
In a country as religious as Rwanda, the
backlash against the Catholic Church con-
tinues. Within these supposedly sanctified
walls, people took refuge only to be massa-
cred by active and complicit Hutu priests.
The leadership, says Mutaboba,
Rwandas former ambassador to the UN,
tries to contain it so it doesnt slide into
violence, but the church has not made
amends. Instead of taking responsibility
they excuse it by saying it was individual
priests.
At the Genocide Museum in Kigali,
Serge points out the graves of 258 000 bod-
ies recovered and buried; 2 000 names are
engraved on the stone wall, with more to
follow.
Serge, who works at the museum, was
only 13 when the genocide began, and took
refuge with his mother in a church.
Before the descent into madness, he
remembers his Hutu classmates taunting
him, and his waiting with his family for
bad things to happen, but no one imagined
what it would be like.
Today he feels most Rwandans dont go
to the museum for one of two reasons:
either they are trying to forget or they
dont want to confront their guilty past.
The country cant cope with the magni-
tude of orphans, So there has been a
return to an old tradition where children
belong to everyone.
Along the route from Kigali to Lake
Kivu, about a four-hour drive, there is
much activity.
In a country with very low capacity,
boys carry crafted tables and stools on
roads that wrap round the hills of this trop-
ical paradise. The country seems to be pul-
sating to a better future.
But border issues remain. Many who
committed genocide crossed into the DRC,
and questions remain on when, how or
whether they will return.
At the Genocide Museum a female sur-
vivor, in a film, discusses forgiveness. Her
words are haunting, like the past. The
dead are at least silent.
BITTER: Two
survivors
hold pictures
of their
families,
who were
victims of
Rwandas
genocide, as
they attend
the burial
ceremony at
the Gisozi
memorial in
Kigali.
PIC: REUTERS
ALONE: A young Rwandan girl walks through Nyaza cemetery outside Kigali, Rwanda, where thousands of victims of the 1994 genocide are buried. The country struggle to cope with the orphans. PICTURE: AP
Rwanda moves ahead after the horror
REVERENCE: People pay their respects in front of dozens of coffins containing the remains of
victims of the 1994 genocide, to be buried in mass graves years after. PICTURE: REUTERS