Twenty six years ago today, and for the next one hundred days, this country was unrecognisable from what it is today.  

Then the land was covered in blood. Cries of terror, anguish and incomprehension filled the air. Bands of militia on a killing frenzy backed by soldiers scoured the countryside and city streets looking for their next victim.

Senior state officials directed these operations.

These are terrible scenes one would rather not recall to mind. But they are so deeply etched on our minds and part of our recent history that no one can banish them into oblivion even if they tried. They will always be a part, not only of our past, but also our future.

The world media covered these gruesome events in all their gory detail. People of goodwill (in short supply at the time) sent out urgent pleas for help to arrest the situation. Nothing happened. The world’s leaders were apparently deaf and blind, and immobilised by a lack of conscience or active involvement in the massacres.

Even those whose job it is to protect the defenceless or at the very least stand between belligerents inexplicably went missing, or also turned wilfully blind and deaf.

And so in this way more than a million Rwandans perished in the genocide against the Tutsi. They shouldn’t have.

It took the Rwanda Patriotic Army (RPA) to end the carnage and put the killers to flight. Interestingly, only then did the world seem to wake up to the situation in Rwanda. Even then it was the masses of people on the road, herded into Congo by the murderous soldiers and militia of the defeated genocidal regime that attracted their attention.

Not the groans of the wounded and dying, or the thousands of unburied bodies still lying on the hills and in streets of the towns. Not the terrified and bewildered little children lost among the bodies, left with no one to look after them. Or the old people with a vacant look into the distance, unseeing, whose entire progeny had been hacked in front of them.

Not these, but the fleeing masses, among them thousands of killers, galvanised the world into action. The irony and hypocrisy of this belated concern, where the victim has no help but the villain gets a lot of compassion, has not been lost on Rwandans. Instances abound, of attempts to sanitise the killers of twenty six years ago and turn them into victims today, and conversely demonise the victims of then and make them authors of their own extermination.

If we bring out these nasty events in our history, it is not to glorify them or cause fresh pain, but to underline the enormity of the crime and the heroism of those who stopped it and unbreakable spirit of the survivors.

Today the country remembers and honours the memory of those million plus innocents. It stands with the survivors of that horror. No one can ever feel the depth of their loss, the scars and pain they live with, and the weight of the burden of memory they carry. None can understand where they get the strength to forgive those who took the lives of their loved ones.

In honouring the dead and applauding the resilience of the survivors and all Rwandans in general, we express our gratitude to them for showing us how to be really human as our maker intended us to be. We also celebrate the resolve of Rwandans to rebuild the country, put it on the road to prosperity, and in this way shame the authors of the genocide.

The remembrance of today takes place in an environment markedly different from 1994. Exclusion was once the order and ran through the fabric of society tearing it apart. Today unity has repaired that fabric. But it is more than that. Unity is the robe we wear, the crown on our head, the staff in our hands, and the content of our hearts. It is everything we are.

Life was once nearly worthless; it could be taken away on the whim of a powerful person, or lived at their pleasure. Now its sanctity has been restored. It is a right no one can take away. Doing so is not only a crime, it is also a sin.

The advancement of all to a bright and secure future, with none left behind, is now the national goal.

We need not mention the physical and social environment, both rural and urban, or the economic conditions. These are visible to all.

Still, there are people who continue to deny or trivialise the genocide against the Tutsi. They continue to push against the unity of the country and try to breach it, but so far they have failed.  They have found it impregnable and none will prevail against it.

They have tried to hold back our progress but have found the force of our forward momentum too strong. Inevitably they will be left behind and be forgotten.

That is the best gift we can give to the memory of those we lost and the spirit of the living. This is even more so this year when remembrance is being done under the shadow of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The views expressed in this article are of the author.