NORTHERN PROVINCE

One hundred years before the Genocide of 1994, the then King of Rwanda welcomed Gustav Adolf Gotezen, a Germany attaché, to his palace.

Little did the King know that ten years before, at the Berlin Conference of 1884, the European super powers had agreed to divide and share the African continent. Rwanda was given to Germany.

However, Germany rule ended after World War I. All her colonies including those in the Eastern African region were shared. Rwanda then fell to the Belgians under a League of Nations’ mandate

The Belgian colonialists eroded the powers of the King, structured the Rwandan society by giving ethnic classifications. People were being indentified by cards. Ethnic divisions were based on physical appearance. This set out a strong foundation for the ideologies of the Genocide and thus the bloody events in 1994.

Seeds of hate which had been sown right from the colonial days to post colonial independence had reached a stage, where shedding blood of an innocent child was as normal as killing a poisonous snake.

On 7th April 1994, the darkest hours befell Rwanda for one hundred days, and the human tragedy occurred when the ‘Apocalypse’ ensured no one should be left to tell the story.

It is well documented today that genocide was taught and an ideology of hate and extremism were preached in all circles of life,

The gospel of ‘hate thy neighbour’ was quite successful as victims were hacked.

The coordination of the killing was well managed largely because an ideology of genocide had taken root. A sense to kill had been planted into the majority of the common men, so its execution was just a question of time.

"After my family members were killed, I escaped into a game park I risked living with animals in the forest but managed to travel for three days to Uganda,’’ Faustan Ndayambazye, a survivor, recalls.

The campaign to kill was done by well-educated patrons, grass root authorities, using ‘hate media’ to pass on the word.

Julian Mukagakwaya, 51, the only survivor from a family of ten, says that whereas the genocide anniversary is a trying moment bringing back bad memories of darkness, with the support of people they feel strong.

Maybe if the ideology had been fought and the politics of extremism silenced, Genocide in Rwanda would probably not have taken place.

Ends