Epilogue

Soon after my departure from Rwanda, ex-pat unease was compounded by an unwholesome political development.

Enter the unsavoury Colonel Alexis Kanyarengwe – Ruhengeri-born, a Hutu Power fanatic in his youth, later a useful ally of Habyarimana during the 1973 coup. In 1980 Kanyarengwe was involved in an abortive attempt to overthrow his friend and had to move house rather rapidly, settling in Tanzania. Ten years later he joined the RPF (then eager to acquire Hutu members, not to be seen as exclusively Tutsi) and became its Secretary-General – a cosmetic post, allowing him little influence. Although appointed Vice Prime Minister – more cosmeticism – in July ’94, another year passed before he attained real power, on replacing the sacked Hutu Minister of the Interior, Seth Sendashonga.

Throughout Ruhengeri prefecture Kanyarengwe was seen as the Hutu peasants’ protector (shebuja) within the RPF and he soon demonstrated his regional power by recruiting a considerable number of Hutu into the RPA. Then, as the insecurity situation worsened in January and February ’97, he found himself in an awkward – not to say potentially lethal – position. On the Ruhengeri hills, hundreds of people, including many members of his own family, were being killed during RPA crack-downs. On 3 March the murders of two RPA soldiers provoked the ‘reprisal’ deaths of more than 150 Hutu in three communes and Kanyarengwe realized he must take action. At a public meeting he supported the préfet, Ignace Karuhije, who had already condemned the army’s indiscriminate violence and demanded the arrest of Major Rugambwa, Commander of Battalion 199. The major was arrested, but soon freed. Then the préfet was arrested, reprimanded – and dismissed.

On 27 March Kanyarengwe was compelled to resign as Minister of the Interior and the Vice Prime Minister pretend-job was scrapped. A cabinet reshuffle followed – and firmly nailed the lid on the coffin of Rwanda’s Coalition Government. (It had never had much life in it.) The five changes, out of eighteen ministries, marked the rejection of Hutu participation in the running of the country. Kanyarengwe was replaced by a nonentity, a Muslim reared in Tanzania and belonging to no political group. Marc Ruganera, the last surviving leader of the Hutu moderates’ Parti Social Democrate, was downgraded from the Ministry of Finance to the newly invented Ministry of Tourism, Mines and Crafts. (Gérard Prunier dryly commented, ‘Since there is no tourism and there are no mines, this minister’s job is to administer a handful of arts and crafts co-operatives.’) As Minister of Finance, Ruganera had persistently queried the unauthorized allocating of vast sums of money to the RPA. His replacement, Jean Birara – Director of the Central Bank under Habyarimana – was an apolitical administrator who had already proved his pliability in the hands of the RPF.

Patrick Mazimpaka, a founding member of the RPF, was also downgraded; a moderate Tutsi who had spent his exile in Canada, he lacks an influential support group such as most Tutsi returnees have – whether returned from Uganda, Zaire or Burundi. His Ministry of Rehabilitation and Social Solidarity (its Orwellian ring slightly startling) was abolished on 28 March, despite the return of over a million refugees only four months previously. Mazimpaka was then given another of those pretend-jobs – ‘Minister in the President’s Office’ – while Rehabilitation and Social Solidarity, now a mere Secretariat d’Etat, was abandoned to Beatrice Sebarware-Panda whose infamous father is on the ICTR’s ‘wanted’ list. Given her need to counteract this paternity, she was expected to look at things uncritically, through RPF/RPA eyes, and make few demands on behalf of the Hutu returnees.

Two other changes – Bonaventure Niyibizi to the Ministry of Trade and Dr Vincent Biruta to the Ministry of Health – promoted highly qualified but politically inexperienced young Tutsi, unlikely to argue with their elders.

Secrecy enveloped this reshuffle, completed within forty-eight hours. Disregarding the Arusha Agreements and the Government Convention of 24 December ’94, the regime ignored the other political parties – which had never provided more than a ‘Government of National Unity’ façade behind which the RPF/RPA got on with their own thing. However, as Gérard Prunier observed, ‘The fact that they were unceremoniously buried signalled an end to any pretence of a democratic regime in Rwanda. The symmetry between the political promotion of the Army and the disappearance of the political parties has turned Rwanda into a de facto collegial military dictatorship.’

In mid-March Radio Rwanda reported the ‘disappearance’ from Rubungo of forty-seven ex-FAR officers who had recently returned from Zaire and been placed under the ‘protection’ of the 42nd Brigade of the RPA. By then it was evident that the RPA had become either an outrageously undisciplined force or a force that was being deliberately used to punish Hutu per se. One would prefer to see it as the former. But those political development outlined above suggest that it is more likely to be the latter. Was my initial belief in the sincerity of the RPF’s reconciliation crusade naive? Even in Rwanda (perhaps particularly in Rwanda, where one clutches desperately at every straw of hope), I was predisposed to ‘think positive’, a trait which rather lessens my value as a commentator on current affairs.

As one ages – snowballing through the decades, collecting more and more friends – this small world gets even smaller. In December ’97, at the beginning of a journey through Laos, my hostess in Vientiane was one of the three evacuees from Cyangugu first met ten months earlier in Butare. I didn’t at once recognize Sheila, so traumatized had she been on that occasion – immediately after her friend’s murders.

For hours we talked about Rwanda, swapping gloomy scraps of information. It seems the grenade that failed to go off in Kigali’s bus-station, in early February, was of more significance than appeared at the time. It had been planted to frame one Lieutenant Dr Mugemanshuro, who in due course was arrested and charged with ‘attempted terrorism’. The doctor, an ex-FAR returnee, had just found a job with the Pallotin Fathers’ Gikondo Health Centre and this was more than the local Tutsi survivors could stomach. As the months passed educated Hutu returnees found it increasingly dangerous to work in their former professions. Many have taken refuge on the ancestral hills, resigning themselves to a lifetime of subsistence farming. In general, however, ordinary peasants are not seen as ‘legitimate targets’ by vengeful freelance executioners. But relations between the Hutu returnees and the regime continue to deteriorate. The RPA accuses the returnees of sheltering the militia – and no doubt they do, as anyone would after looking down the barrel of an AK-47 held by a professional killer.

Even the theoretically highest in the land, President Pasteur Bizimungu, cannot insulate himself from the thickening miasma of ethnic animosity. Many outsiders are confused by his being Hutu – surely this means the regime is power-sharing? But of course the misfortunate Bizimungu is no more than a figurehead and all real power was then being wielded by Paul Kagame, Vice President and Defence Minister, and is formidable following of Uganda returnees, known as ‘the Uganda Colonels’. (The Tutsi returnees from three distinct factions, according to their country of exile.) As is usual in Africa, ‘followers’ are of primary importance on Rwanda’s political scene and Bizimungu – formerly a civil servant and one of the Arusha negotiators, a man widely respected for his integrity – has none. (Perhaps one reason for his being appointed President?) He lives in isolation, enduring severe and relentless emotional pressures. Because a Hutu President is seen as a mere public relations gimmick, useful to the Tutsi regime, his children were mocked at school as ‘children of the Protector’ – the Protector being a brand of condom popular in Kigali. Eventually, unable to withstand daily bullying by Tutsi classmates, they had to be taken away from school and given private tutors. Even the President’s Tutsi aides taunt him subtly, sometimes in the presence of distinguished visitors. He has on occasions retaliated physically by slapping or spitting at his tormentors – thus prompting gossip about ‘mental instability’. Said I to Sheila, ‘If I were him, I’d resign and settle in the Southern Highlands of Tanzania.’

Something baffling and extremely disquieting happened in June ’97: the appointment of Boniface Rucagu as préfet of Ruhengeri. Rucagu had been arrested and freed three times in the previous two years; at one stage he was no. 120 on the list of 2000 Category 1 prisoners. When Parliament challenged his appointment and demanded that he be rearrested President Bizimungu insisted that his inclusion on the list had been ‘a mistake’ and the Minister of the Interior stated defensively, ‘There is no concrete evidence Rucagu committed genocide.’ Yet it was/is common knowledge (documented) that he had been a founder shareholder of Radio Milles Collines and a regular contributor to Kangura, in which journal he gleefully predicted the genocide. Video tapes existed showing him in rabble-rousing action at anti-Tutsi meetings in Gitarama. However, when Deus Kagirancza, a Tutsi survivor MP, asked why all this evidence had not been used he was told, ‘The Rucagu file has been lost’ – whereupon he swiftly pointed out that the witnesses had not been lost. A former préfet of Gitarama is still prepared to testify that he saw Rucagu personally murdering six people. And other equally courageous witnesses, men and women, are willing to swear that they heard Rucagu publicly urging peasants to kill Tutsi. For three days Parliament debated the issue, the ordered the administration to sack – and rearrest – Rucagu. Six months later he was still in office.

What goes on here? There is something downright sinister about an alliance between the Tutsi regime and one of the most notorious génociaires, a man who killed with relish and boasted of his part in priming the country for genocide. Did the government hope that, having given the hard-line Ruhengeri Hutu ‘one of their own’ as préfet, some degree of order might replace the region’s prevailing near-anarchy? Maybe – but this is no excuse for co-opting one of the leaders of the genocide after colluding in his evasion of the judicial process. Evidently the RPF/RPA are willing actively to promote the culture of impunity if by so doing they can strengthen their own position. At this point I despaired of any of the genocide Tribunals of Courts, at home or abroad, ever taking their duties seriously.

Sheila’s South African partner shared our rage as we recalled his government’s shameful decision, in July ’97, to resume arms sales to Rwanda – their derisory excuse being Paul Kagame’s assurance that South African military equipment would be used ‘only for the legitimate defence of Rwanda’. Then our conversation was interrupted (it felt like an eerie coincidence) by the World Service reported that on 4 December the Hutu militia had freed all the prisoners (more than 600) from Bulinga gaol, thirty miles north-west of Kigali.

This feat must have badly shaken the government. Never before had the militia attacked so close to Kigali – moved so far from their ‘homeland’ in the north-west. At least ten people, including four prison guards, were killed by some 300 militia armed with guns, machetes and spears. Following the release of those prisoners, the death-rate among local Tutsi survivors was said to be rising rapidly.

A few days earlier – continued the BBC – more than a hundred were freed from a gaol near Ruhengeri. And a fortnight before that some 300 people died when 1200 militia (the RPA’s figure) tried to dynamite their way through the walls of Gisenyi gaol and burn down buildings. Next day they attempted to take control of Gisenyi airport but were unsuccessfully resisted at the cost of eighty lives.

On 11 December the World Service reported another night-time raid on Mudende camp, fifteen miles from Gisenyi, where 17,000 or so Tutsi refugees from ex-Zaire (citizens of Zaire) were being sheltered – but not protected. During the last raid, in August, a Hutu gang had murdered 148 men, women and children. At 2.00a.m.-ish on 10 December, 230 were killed with machetes and about the same number seriously wounded. Before leaving, the attackers set fire to 200 tents. No muzungu witnessed the attack; every afternoon at 3.30 the UNHCR staff had to return to Kigali under armed escort. Next morning the camp-site was deserted and the food store had been looted.

The World Service added a quote from Madeleine Albright, US Secretary of State, then visiting Kigali: ‘The US pledges to Rwanda full moral and financial support, the country’s future is critical to the region. We congratulate Rwanda on the remarkable accomplishment of repatriating hundreds of thousands of refugees.’

While rambling around Laos I sometimes reviewed my Rwandan visit – an experience not easily put to the back of one’s mind. And I asked myself if my conviction that only the death sentence (carried out) could be regarded as a just punishment for the génocidaires was an over-reaction? But can one over-react to genocide? And yet – is there any moral difference between the Rwandan killings and the Gulf War massacring of defeated and retreating Iraqi conscripts, wretched young men who had not chosen to invade Kuwait or fight the Allies? Emotionally, I have noticed, many people react differently to the two crimes. The intimacy of the genocide – so often neighbour killing neighbour as an animal is butchered – can seem more incomprehensible, chilling and (somehow) culpable than an impersonal attack from the air on fleeing troops. Yet in fact the trigger-happy fighter pilot, ignorant or contemptuous of international law, is a phenomenon of no less incomprehensible, chilling and culpable than the Hutu wielding a machete on his hilltop. Granted, the fighter pilot, too, had been conditioned – conditioned to have such contempt for Iraquis that from the safety of his plane he could shoot them in the back for fun. Not because they were threatening enemy but because – ‘It’s almost like you flipped on the light in the kitchen at night and the cockroaches start scurrying, and we’re killing them.’ (The words of one American fighter pilot, Colonel Richard White.) According to the Hague Convention and the Geneva Convention, those mass-killings were war crimes. As for the brutal General Schwarzkopf, whose blanket bombing of Basra, Iraq’s second city, killed between six and seven thousand civilians – he broke every article of the Geneva Convention. And his bombing of two nuclear reactors, twelve mile from Baghdad, was in defiance of the UN General Assembly’s ban on attacking nuclear installation. Yet he was soon rewarded with an honourary knighthood by Queen Elizabeth II and spoke of back home as a suitable candidate for the Presidency of the United States. The fact that the charging of such a ‘hero’ with war crimes is unthinkable – laughable, many would say – proves that a culture of impunity exists far beyond Rwanda.

In March ’98 I returned from Laos and anxiously sought the latest news of Rwanda. I wasn’t expecting any very cheerful tidings but the reality appalled me. I remembered then my conversation with Pius in Kigali on 11 February ’97. What he most dreaded – regular Burundi-type violence – is now happening. It could be argued that the government is no longer in control of Rwanda. Or, if it is, its form of control is little better than (though in style very different from) the Hutu tyranny it set out to replace.

During January, Gisenyi became a war zone. A bus carrying forty brewery workers was attacked near the town; when the Hutu and Tutsi refused to separate the militia murdered everyone. Local people gathered to applaud them, then helped by hacking to death those who tried to escape.

In the Rugerero sector, seventeen died when their bus was set alight.

A few miles from the Rwewere sector, machetes were used to murder nine nuns as they worked in their convent’s clinic.

In the Kabilizi sector an RPA crack-down left more than 500 dead As no land was available for a mass grave, many bodies were eaten by pigs.

On the night of 3 February hundreds of militia – armed with many machetes and a few guns, some wearing RPA uniforms as disguise – invaded the Tutsi refugee camp at Kinigi, near Ruhengeri. Thirty were killed, 350 seriously wounded.

Four days later Reuters quoted ‘the governor of Ruhengeri, Mr Boniface Rucagu’ (the name made me shudder involuntarily) – ‘This week a large group of militia armed with guns, machetes, axes and clubs raided Jenda settlement, broke into houses and thirty people died on the spot. Three of thirteen wounded later died. The rebels didn’t distinguish between Tutsi and Hutu.’

On the same date Paul Cullen, the Irish Times’ brave and astute Development Correspondent, reported – ‘Rwanda is host to a massive array of human rights organisations. Yet the presence of the UN and many NGOs has made little impact on an increasingly bloody conflict. Gisenyi, where there has been shelling and aerial bombardment, can be reached only by plane. As a result, no one knows how many people are dying.’

Some observers within Rwanda were by then convinced that Paul Kagame is no longer ‘the Boss’, that the civil war in the north-west (its admitted casualties for ’97 approximately 600 but probably many more) has given three or four ruthless generals the opportunity to take direct control of that area and indirect control of the whole troubled country. This very plausible theory accords with my (naive?) belief that the pre-invasion RAF/RPA really was idealistic/foolish enough to imagine that it could lead Rwanda into an stable future – that reconciliation was possible. In October ’90, when Fred Rwigema and Paul Kagame launched their War of Liberation, they could not have imagined what they would be required to cope with, as victors, in July ’94. How to govern a country totally devastated by genocide? There are no models to be referred to for guidance. The new regime was dependent on its army for everything: transport, communications, electricity and water supplies, medical care, policing, repairing the infrastructure. Perhaps the rot set in then – the RPA acquiring a taste for power while recruiting more and more troops of doubtful quality.

In an article in the Guardian Weekly (21 March ’98) Victoria Brittain reported the completion of 300 genocide trials during ’97, with fifteen acquitted and 100 death sentences passed – but no one, as yet, executed. The 130,000 still in gaol ‘now see themselves as victims’. Miss Brittain accepted the government’s argument that the judicial process must be seen to be fair, however long it takes, and that the annual spending of US$12 million (a third provided by the Red Cross) to keep so many in gaol ‘while society stabilises’ is ‘money well spent’. There is a certain ambiguity here. Concern about ‘justice being seen to be done’ may not be the main motive for the long-term incarceration of the accused. From the regime’s point of view, it makes sense to keep under control a segment of the population quite likely to rejoin the militia – or at least support them – if released.

Victoria Brittain reproached Mary Robinson (Ireland’s ex-President, now UN High Commissioner for Human Rights) for her criticism of the government’s lack of commitment to reconciliation. Miss Brittain saw this as a clear case of ‘blaming the victim’ and a year ago I might have agreed with her. Now, this seems to me too simplistic a view of an extremely convoluted situation. Yet Mary Robinson’s criticism is also too simplistic, for reasons succinctly stated by Gérard Prunier:

The total failure of the International Tribunal to produce anything like a modicum of justice reinforces the complementary attitudes of the two communities. For the Tutsi it is: ‘We have our backs to the wall. Unless we maintain absolute control they will finish us next time.’ And for the Hutu: ‘We only have to wait, numbers will play in our favour and the so-called international community will neither want nor be able to stop us.’ It is difficult to see how in such a context governmental control can be exercised except by repression, and natural reconciliation is still a very remote prospect indeed.