A society sent into hell that, despite all, rose as compassion personified

The official one-week Genocide against the Tutsi commemoration may be over but the hell of those 1994 three months will be with Rwanda and the sane of the world until the end of time. The hell? Let’s not be unfair to hell. It may be all fire and brimstone (as told), but let’s admit it. It cannot be equal to what happened to this land. You are a human being with all your wits about you. You have fully functional brains. You have a mind and conscience. You have a body like the next being: you see, feel, smell, taste, hear. In short, you have all the senses and, in fact, scientists tell us we have over thirty senses. That’s why many humans are rational. As a rational being, wherever you are on this globe, try to absorb this. A man like any other gets up one day and picks up a machete and starts hacking at his innocent neighbour’s neck and chops off his head. He chops off his arms, legs and that’s not enough. He continues slashing at his torso, stomach. Meanwhile, his wife goes for the victim’s genitals. Then both of them call up their children to help do the same to the victim’s wife, children. They hold babies by their tiny limbs and repeatedly hit them against a wall till their last breath. They tear a foetus out of the womb for the same grisly treatment. After which, they go celebrate the good work done. Sane of the world, wrap your mind around that if you can. But, gory as this was, it was not all. This family victim, multiply it over and over and you have one million and more victims. Many have been identified but others could not be accounted for, with some being discovered as we speak. There are innumerable others who’ll never be identified because their mutilated and abused-in-all-ways bodies were thrown into pits, rivers, lakes and other ugly places fit for dirt. The génocidaires called them “vermin”, to boot. Yet those were their neighbours, hill mates, work colleagues, drinking mates. Bed mates if they were their own wives, husbands. Home mates, if children. The death tools included not only machetes but other regular farm implements. Which is why when these génocidaires killed, it was “work” for them? Bizarre does not begin to describe them. For the victims, it was ‘kinder’ death if it was by bullets, grenades. Or, better still, if their church ‘sanctuaries’ were bulldozed to summarily bury them all under the rubble. Now, let’s return to the celebrating génocidaire family after putting to the most horrible death their formerly intimate and neighbourly family. In their celebration, they did not hear the approach of two ‘strangers’. Two armed young men, each wearing a pair of long bullet chains running around their necks to cross below the chests and wrapped around the hips. The celebrating family heaved a sigh of relief when they realised the two young men were in government military fatigues. And then, to their horror, discovered one was their son and, the other, that of the neighbours they’d just butchered. The victims’ son collapsed into tears. But not before shouting “No!” to the génocidaires’ son’s cry of “No! I must kill these brutes!” And, in tears, reminding him: “Strictly no revenge killings, remember? Follow the command!” So, the liberation comrades scared the killers off and continued with their mission. They had to search for those still breathing, in hiding, rescue and take them to their safe side. If you haven’t cottoned on, these were members of the RPA liberation force disguised as government soldiers. This was so they could command their way through Interahamwe-manned roadblocks, after reprimanding them for doing a poor job. For that, the ‘government soldiers’ were going to do a better job with the long line of “cockroaches who had escaped your notice, you, careless bunch of idlers! Go back and drink yourselves silly, you good-for-nothings!” But an interruption. Note the paradox that Rwanda was made to be. Two comrades, one supposed to belong to the group of Rwandans who perpetrated the genocide, the other, to the victims! There was also a Murigande in the liberation front, remember? Any idea about his whereabouts? The colonialists had determined that Rwandans were, first, three different races, then tribes, then, finally, settled for ethnic groups. Shared settlement area, language, culture, more, but different ethnic groups? Can it get any sillier! But maybe silliest were Rwandans who swallowed such rubbish hook, line and sinker and were ready to exterminate their own brothers and sisters in its name! Back to the forgiveness. That compassion ethos ran through the RPF/A liberation front and guided it into the Government of National Unity and marks this government to this day. No felony under the sun is too egregious to attract forgiveness. From the day the liberation call was made, it has only been enough for the transgressor to own up to their felony, repent, ask for forgiveness, commit to regaining the correct path and forgiveness was granted. If anyone knows any society capable of that, I am all ears.

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A society sent into hell that, despite all, rose as compassion personified