In 1970, when Ignace Rukiramacumu was thirty-seven years old, he and his family arrived in the first Hutu column that crossed the marshes to settle in the heart of the Nganwa forest, which lies along the Akanyaru River. Ignace had been twenty-six at the death of Mwami Mutara Rudahigwa, the last great Tutsi ruler, so he was quite familiar with life under the monarchy, and before the genocide he played the role of an embittered elder among his group of friends, preserving a kind of rancid memory of the bad times.
The families of Adalbert Munzigura, Fulgence Bunani, Pio Mutungirehe, and Pancrace Hakizamungili arrived soon thereafter to live in the forest of Kiganwa, which also borders the Akanyaru. Alphonse Hitiyaremye came later, starting out as a day laborer for prosperous Tutsi cattle breeders. Eventually he acquired and cleared a plot of land in the Nyamabuye forest, which lies closer to the Nyabarongo River.
Adalbert, Fulgence, Pio, Pancrace, and most of the others grew up belonging to a pack of kids who were always together. In school they naturally associated with Tutsis their own age. They hadn’t lived under the former regime and were taught almost nothing about the history of Rwanda.
As adolescents, they quit school to join their elders in the fields, where they slaved all day long. Everyone, including their enemies, agrees that they were talented farmers. They went more or less religiously to church and got together for the major traditional
ceremonies—marriages and funerals. Above all, they met every day at the end of the afternoon to drink urwagwa or, on holidays, to share some Primus and brochettes. Their favorite cabaret was in Nyarunazi, the hamlet closest to their hillside, but they readily uncorked a can of homebrew at someone’s house or walked all the way to the lively cabarets at the shopping area in Kibungo.
So the pack of kids became a close-knit gang of pals. They were joined by Alphonse and occasionally by the healer Célestin Mutungirehe, Jean-Baptiste Murangira, who lived in Rugunga on Ntarama hill, and a few other youths.
Léopord Twagirayezu was close to Adalbert and Pio thanks to soccer; he was similarly athletic, and very tall. His family’s land was over in Muyange, however, about twenty kilometers from the rivers, so he joined the gang less frequently, turning up to play in soccer matches, hang around the marketplace, or attend weddings.
Like Ignace Rukiramacumu, Élie Mizinge belongs to the previous generation. He became acquainted with the gang during the 1994 massacres and the subsequent flight of Hutus into exile in the Democratic Republic of Congo, and he was truly accepted as one of them during their imprisonment. Élie and Ignace are the two senior members of the gang. Their characters, however, are almost completely dissimilar. Élie formerly enjoyed many privileges, first as a soldier, then as a policeman, and he has been deeply shaken by his fate. The genocide and its aftermath have marked him: he walks hesitantly, with a stoop. Querulous, docile, almost obsequious, he nevertheless makes a real effort to understand his predicament and to show that he was overwhelmed by events and acted badly.
Ignace also knows that he went completely wrong, and he
broods out loud over his failure without making clear whether it’s the undertaking itself or its outcome that he most deplores. He is one of the wiliest prisoners we interview. He’ll take one step forward, two steps back, then go in the opposite direction the next day. Sometimes he affects a complete indifference to others or stares at us accusingly, uttering bizarre prophecies.
As one of Nyamata’s select group of leading citizens, Joseph-Désiré Bitero did not belong to the gang but became friends with a few of its members in his capacity as municipal chief of the interahamwe. He grew particularly close to Adalbert and Léopord, the two dynamic activists, and Élie, the retired policeman, whom he consulted before and during the killings.
The family of Jean Ndayambaje came from Gitarama in the same wave of immigration as Pio and Adalbert. Ten years old at the time of the genocide in 1994, Jean was too young to belong to the gang, but he worked with them after school in the neighboring fields, hung out at their local cabaret, and kicked the ball around on the same soccer field.
These days he does not want anything specific written about his actions during the slaughter. He speaks only of his capture by Tutsi soldiers of the Rwandan Patriotic Front several months after the genocide, when he was living among a horde of ragged pariahs trying to escape along the river, former interahamwe who were surviving by hunting and pillage; and of his incarceration at the children’s detention center in Gitagata, from which he was released after three years. He was never tried on the charges brought against him, thanks to an amnesty granted to
detainees who were younger than fourteen at the time of the massacres.
Today a stocky youth dressed in shorts and T-shirts acquired in prison, Jean spends every possible moment, from dawn to dusk, sweating over the family fields in Kibungo. He turns a distrustful eye and an enigmatic smile, which can turn sly or disillusioned, upon all his fellow men, and he no longer wishes to be involved in the affairs of the world, apart from swigging a bottle of banana beer on Saturday nights.
Clémentine Murebwayre has no ties with this gang beyond the fact that she lives in an adobe house on the hill of Kibungo. She is about thirty years old, with tiny brown freckles that make her delicate features even more lovely. She is Hutu, born in town; an uncle was the go-between for her marriage to Jean-de-Dieu Ruzindana, a Tutsi and “a very good man despite the drawbacks of the countryside, who had settled me in nicely with his family in Kibungo.” Clémentine and her husband had nothing in common with the members of the gang and did not patronize the same cabaret but knew them well because their plot of land lay next to those of Pancrace and Adalbert.
CLÉMENTINE REMEMBERS: “That bunch was famous on the hill for their carousing and tomfoolery. Those fellows did not seem so bad, except maybe old Ignace, grousing all his days against the Tutsis. But when they had been drinking, they took sport in spreading misunderstandings and wicked words from cabaret to cabaret. They used to scoff at the Tutsis and promise them serious retaliation, although they never laid hands on them. They were led on by Adalbert, the strongest, the most daring, the biggest mischief-maker, always ready to pick a bone over nothing. He could bait anyone without ever losing his temper. Among ourselves, we felt that gang was growing dangersome.”
Innocent Rwililiza, a survivor, also a native of Kibungo, agrees: “Those folks were hardworking, experienced farmers who could be very nice and very helpful. Still, they gradually absorbed the anti-Tutsi frustration and jealousy their parents had brought with them from Gitarama. During the killings of 1992, they suddenly fired themselves up against the Tutsis and turned very threatening. Those brawls ended without consequences in the neighborhood, thanks to the wisdom of the municipal judge. Afterward we sensed that cruelty had hooked them and could make them go wrong at any time. They seemed more and more hostile, on edge, especially whenever we had news about the war of the Tutsi inkotanyi. Yet never did we think they might one day kill at such a great pace.”
During the period of our conversations, the men in the gang were all still locked up in the penitentiary at Rilima. Joseph-Désiré could not leave the section for those condemned to death, but the others gathered at dawn in the common courtyard to go about their compulsory or voluntary activities together: water chores, meals, games. Adalbert, formerly interahamwe chief of Kibungo and now security captain for their block, preserved his aura intact and showed all his authority during their trial. Still shod in white, Fulgence cultivated his piety. Pio maintained his good humor. Élie played the scapegoat on occasion, while Ignace continued his role as bellyacher.
Léopord no longer tried to rival Adalbert. He displayed an equal self-assurance but stayed in the background. To this day he is the only one who in a certain sense broke down. It happened in a Congolese refugee camp, where he was still acting as an interahamwe.
Leaving an open-air mass one day, he felt the need to tell everything, to denounce himself to an astounded audience of accomplices and other interahamwe, who told him he’d gone crazy. Undaunted, upon his return to Nyamata he promptly offered to spill the whole story to the judges investigating his case. He is therefore one who plied his machete quite vigorously and also one whose confession is quite precise, with regard to both his own actions and those of his superiors.
Jean-Baptiste, too, decided to surrender to the tribunal and volunteer a confession immediately after his return from exile in 1996. His cooperation earned him the good will of the administration in prison, where he runs an association of repentant detainees. Jean-Baptiste—whom Innocent has called “as evil and cocky as he is crafty and intelligent”—is quite articulate but is more calculating than Léopord. He seems mealy-mouthed and evasive, although whether from cowardice or embarrassment is impossible to tell. He is in fact the one who has most clearly realized what they all did, and the one who best understands the nature of the gaze that the outside world, in Rwanda and abroad, now turns on them.
After years of silence, as their trial approached, most of the members of the gang began to admit—more or less, and with extreme caution—their participation in the genocide. They were prompted by the legal system’s promises of leniency, prompted as well by the desire to preserve the gang and stay part of it. Their long-standing friendship was very important to them, they explained.
PANCRACE: In the prison meetings, friction has in a way distanced those who don’t want to admit anything. Those who won’t say a bit about what happened—they have to stick together and not mix anymore with those they threaten and accuse.
But among those who agree to confess, even a little, like us in the gang, friendship is as strong as before the killings.
PIO: In prison the beds of the guys in the gang are not side by side, but the daytime reunites us and helps us exchange thoughts and affection. The bygone days bound us tightly together. Especially the banana farms—we all went from one to another for the pruning and the harvests. We pressed fruit together. We invited one another to share urwagwa. Those who weren’t so flush were included. We’d visit one who’d lost a relative to death, sharing sorrow and drink with him. We haven’t forgotten those good times. That’s why prison life keeps us close like before.
LÉOPORD: In the gang, we are not all open with one another in the same way, but we talk together in friendship, despite some disagreements. We help one another. We don’t have drinks or little things, but we share salt or sugar, we tell jokes among ourselves to keep from getting homesick, we play volleyball and indoor games without bickering.
JEAN-BAPTISTE: There’s no wrangling in the group. There are the older guys, there are the young ones—fate has not loosened our ties. Me, I try to give courage to confessions. Still, each one makes his own to suit himself. Despite the awful work of the killings and the rough prison life, the atmosphere among us remains strong. We are impatient together for an end to our difficult times. Our bad luck—I see only that as a problem for us.
ADALBERT: We avoid talking about misfortunes, like our memories of the camps or the hardships there. We form choral groups and play games. We try to protect ourselves from epidemics. We share
our provisions and news of our farms, if luck allows a relative to visit the prison. We have always remained friends, always been united the same way despite the calamities of life, exile, and prison. Whatever we have to do, we do it as comrades, in every situation.