Yesterday, the country woke up feeling low, a feeling that usually engulfs it this time of the year as it commemorates the savagery that was the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi. Messages commiserating with the nation poured in from all corners of the world, but Cameroon went a notch higher when it arrested a notorious genocidaire wanted for orchestrating mass killings in the southern part of the country. It is one thing to send solidarity messages this time of the year; it is another to do nothing about the thousands of suspects roaming all over the world. But that is not the end of the world. We will continue to trudge on regardless whether we get the justice we seek or whether more hurdles are thrown in our way. Because, at the end of the day, we come out stronger and move forward with a purpose Those who planned and executed the Genocide, thought the ethnic hatred they sowed would reign over the country forever, if not, the Tutsi will have been wiped of the face of this earth. They failed in both quests. Today the country is united more than at any other time, the ethnic tag has been removed and what has remained is our shared Rwandan-ess. Of course some remnants of the old ghost of extremism is still alive, though it rarely raises its heads within our borders. But out there, mostly in western capitals, the frustration of seeing the strides this country is making, the solid social knots it has tied, the people who threw this country into the pit are seething. They still carry the flame of extremism, but sooner than later it will be extinguished with reason. In the meantime as we mourn our dead, let us do so with the solid conviction that, 24 years ago, we were down but we were not out.
