A Frenchman once said “A vaincre sans périr on triomphe sans gloire!” which literally means that victory without risk is triumph without glory! When on October 1, 1990 a few Rwandan young men and women launched a struggle for the liberation of their country, they knew too well the risk involved, they knew that this was a herculean task. However, they had no other choice. After weighing all the pros and cons, it was decided there was no worse death than to die a stateless person, in exile, undignified. In 1959, thousands of Rwandans had been scattered all over neighbouring countries in the region, by a sham revolution that was engineered by the colonialists. They were living as refugees wherever they got a haven, some had even gone as far as Europe and the Americas in order to escape the persecution of a hateful, ethnocentric administrative ideology. By 1979, many of these had passed away, but their sons and daughters lived on. Cornered and driven against the wall by the persistent problems of refugee life in their countries of asylum, frustrated by the entrenched divisive and genocidal ideology combined with periodic massacres in their native country and the lack of any other avenues for peaceful political change, these gallant sons and daughters formed a group they called the Rwanda Alliance for National Unity (RANU). The main objective of this group was to mobilise other Rwandans wherever they were, into resolving these problems all by themselves. In 1987, the Rwanda Alliance for National Unity changed its socio-cultural name to a politico-military movement, the Rwandese Patriotic Front (RPF-Inkotanyi). At this time, the alliance had matured to a level where all Rwandans living outside Rwanda could see no other avenue of ever returning to their motherland, except through war – to liberate themselves. They had then decided they were going to fight in order to facilitate the return of all Rwandan refugees to their motherland, as well as put an end to ethnic segregation that had been entrenched in all spheres of the country. The RPF leadership was under no illusion that the task would be simple, but this was a risk they were prepared to take. So it had been carefully planned. It had a clear ideology and well thought-out policies, and a cause to fight for. Both political and military cadres had been mobilised for an all drawn-out war. At one given time Juvenal Habyarimana, then president of Rwanda made a blunder. He publicly declared at a function, that there was no more question of Rwandan refugees ever returning home. They should seek citizenship in which ever country they were, as the country was full to the brim, like a glass full of water. Preposterous! The RPF then launched its first offensive operations in 1990, against the regime in Kigali, and to assert the Rwandans’ right to return to their motherland. They would fight until they attained that right, or they would all die trying. Victory without risk is triumph without glory As had been expected right from the start, their opponents, the Rwandan Armed Forces (FAR) were numerically superior and militarily stronger, as they possessed armoured vehicles and helicopters supplied, first ,by Belgium, then later on by France. So it was a risk the RPF took, even though calculated, fighting blind like that on an unknown terrain, knowing that it was at a disadvantage. Maybe this is why they suffered a setback when their commander fell to an enemy stray bullet, at the outset of the invasion. It must be clearly restated here that when the RPF invaded Rwanda in 1990, its objectives were and always had been to reinstate into their country all Rwandan refugees who had been banished, and to liberate all those inside who had been taken hostage. Little did the RPF leadership know that in their quest for the liberation of their country, they would have to contend with a super power, nor that a diabolic plan was underway to blot the people out of existence, in a very well organised genocide. So, when then Major Paul Kagame, who had been away attending a military course at the General Command Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, US, came back, he reorganised the forces that had been utterly demoralised, and decided to take them to the mountains in the north of the country and adopted a guerrilla warfare strategy. In 1991, the RPF forces re-launched the war and dealt the Rwandan government a devastating blow, which left the country reeling in fear. The northern town of Ruhengeri, chosen due to its proximity to the mountains and its perception as being a stronghold of the Habyarimana regime, was taken in a surprise attack. During its occupation, they captured weapons and equipment from the Rwandan army, stormed Ruhengeri prison, freed political prisoners, and then vanished back to the hills. Later, on April 8, 1994, as the RPF launched a major offensive to end the Genocide, more fighters continued to join the struggle from within Rwanda and the wider Diaspora and eventually stopped the Genocide one hundred days later, but over a million people had been mercilessly killed. As we celebrate the 21st anniversary of the Liberation Day, we must bear in mind the fact that, indeed, the military success of the struggle to liberate Rwanda and stop the Genocide was achieved through the resilience and determination of the Rwanda Patriotic Front/Army (RPF/A), under the strategic leadership of its patriotic commanders. The writer is a linguist based in Kigali
