Looking at the last congress of the Rwanda Patriotic Front at the party’s headquarters in Rusororo, when its members gathered to choose not only their standard bearer in the upcoming presidential poll, but also its parliamentary representatives, my mind wandered back in time, to a period about three and a half decades ago. Back then our family was part of a community of Rwandans in the Jinja-Njeru area of Uganda, our story the same as that of other communities of fellow Banyarwanda all over Uganda, the same as others in all neighboring countries and further afield. We were exiles, our elders having fled years ago, escaping anti-Tutsi pogroms in their native Rwanda. They fled in waves, some as far back as 1959, and 1962, 63, or 73. Their children, us, would be born into exile; stateless refugees coming up in different cultures, speaking the native languages of wherever we found themselves. Today many people are cognizant of one fact: had there been no liberation movement to get the exiles back home, to forge a home for all Rwandans, it would have spelt the end of “Rwandaness” for any new generation born in refuge. That generation would have acculturated, out of sheer necessity. Many simply would have passed themselves off as part of whatever group of people they lived amidst, and would neither learn their ancestors’ language nor culture. Put simply, the genocidal process started by Gregoire Kayibanda and the extremist Parmehutu ideology of erasing a part of Rwanda’s ethnicity would have succeeded. That never happened thanks to a movement of determined Rwandans that came up to save the situation. In Uganda, growing up, what I remember most is that this was a beautiful, welcoming country. But it was never home, not even one moment. As a community we were reminded of it, on a daily basis. Whenever one found themselves in a quarrel with a neighbor, a schoolmate, a rival for some kind of property, normal human stuff, someone was sure to shout at you: “go back to Rwanda!” It was the same for counterparts in every country with populations of Rwandan exiles, according to many a story I’ve heard. Many in our communities saw the necessity to call themselves indigenous Ugandan names, and no one ought to pass judgement on any that did. That was what life dictated in many cases. That was what quite a few individuals had to resort to, if it was what would boost their life chances, coming as they did from the most impoverished demographic: refugees. Few things are worse than that life. Now, this is not to badmouth, or cast aspersions at countries or people that were kind enough to take our parents in, and those of us born thereafter. This is only to put things in context; to illustrate the enormity of what the Rwanda Patriotic Front would accomplish, for so many. The first time I, and those of my generation (at least in our community) first heard of a movement of exiles to return all Rwandan refugees back home was around 1989. I remember a Kinyarwanda speaking man turning up at our doorsteps, and introducing himself as Ruhakana, an RPF cadre. He was a light-skinned man of slight build wearing rimless eyeglasses, who walked with a file, and who had an array of pens in his shirt pocket. Ruhakana was a tireless man who walked everywhere on foot, to any house he was told Banyarwanda lived. When he came to our place, the parents welcomed him, and we kids were ordered inside to listen to what the man of Umuryango had to say. Reading from the RPF ten-point program, he told us (with much emphasis) that all Rwandans whatever their ethnicity were one and the same; had the same language; the same cultural practices; and had mingled for hundreds of years – herders, farmers, and artisans. The cadre then outlined the terrible history of how that unity, that oneness of Rwandans was torn asunder – a process that began (just like so much that afflicts Africa) with European colonialism, and culminated into the terrible events which the likes of Kayibanda, Gitera, Mbonyumutwa and others of that ilk baptized “the Hutu revolution.” That so-called revolution constituted nothing but a violent power grab by a handful of extremists who, with the backing of the departing Belgian colonial administration, overthrew the traditional monarchy claiming “they were getting rid of a feudal system to replace it with a republic.” The first obvious lie here was that “the feudal system” – the Tutsi monarchy – that they claimed to overthrow had itself long been subjugated by colonial rule. The second obvious lie was that “all the Tutsi” were part of the traditional ruling class. They only happened to share an ethnicity with the monarch. Tutsi, Hutu, Twa, all the people of Rwanda had suffered under the same colonial yoke. Following the so-called independence in 1962, Kayibanda merely was a sordid instrument of the Catholic Church (headed by one Monseigneur Perraudin) which at that time was the most powerful institution in Rwanda. Basically, Perraudin controlled Parmehutu and its leadership in Rwanda, in the interests of the departed colonial power. In return, Parmehutu chose violent pogroms, ethnic cleansing, and disenfranchisement of the Tutsi as the policies to entrench itself in power – a process that played out in hordes of extremist militias attacking Tutsi civilians, killing them, burning their homes, looting their property, eating their livestock, sending multitudes of refugees fleeing across borders. (Feel free to make comparisons with the place where events similar to these, following the same inhuman ideologies, currently are playing out). Following our first days of political awakening in our corner of exile, after we got to know Ruhakana, there followed more RPF cadres who taught us more of what the movement stood for: a prosperous Rwanda with no discrimination of any kind; where there no longer would be reason for any of its people to be refugees; where every Rwandan enjoyed all human freedoms. By the late eighties, long after Kayibanda was dead, the ideology of which he was a principal founder (his master Perraudin was its real architect) lived on in the governing policies of Juvenal Habyarimana and his MRND party. When the RPF as a movement called upon the MRND to open up Rwanda as a home for all her children, and let all those in exile back home, Habyarimana, his party, and the big politicians of “Hutu Power” politics scoffed. They advised “those Tutsis in exile to find a home where they had fled.” Imagine how that hit! We were being told, basically, that we had to embrace our fate as a homeless, stateless group at the mercy of whatever political winds blew in the various countries of refuge. When the RPF told Habyarimana his stance was very unreasonable, Habyarimana responded by giving a speech in his parliament, during which he held up a glass full of water (he compared it to Rwanda as a country) to indicate there was no space for any more water in the glass. Other politicians of the “power” ilk repeatedly asserted that the Rwandans in exile weren’t even “real Rwandans” – a claim that referenced bogus old theories that started in the colonial era, that the Tutsi weren’t native to Rwanda. In the end, the RPF had to resort to its armed struggle to achieve its goals of a Rwanda that was a home for all of its people. Ultimately the struggle succeeded, but not after the forces of evil perpetrated the single greatest tragedy in our history. To its massive credit the Rwanda Patriotic Front ensured all the sacrifices that went into achieving this new Rwanda – all the fighters that lost their lives, all the innocent Rwandans that the forces of darkness slaughtered, all the destruction wrought upon the country – were never in vain. Fast forward, from 1994 to that recent gathering at the RPF congress in Rusororo – a party gathering representative of all Rwandans, from the lowest levels to its highest ranks. Looking at it I thought: wow! The dream actually happened! The things we had thought impossible: a country to call home; a prosperous home where tribal hatreds are a thing of the past; a place where no one has ever called my children refugees, what can I say! And then there was the President giving his speech, envisaging a time when the torch of leadership will be passed – to a younger, more energetic generation. The promise inherent in those words was: also, when that happens it will be an orderly transition. What more should a Rwandan ask for?
