There is this column in the New Times that recalls the genocidal events of every date during the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi. Reading it is like going through a mincer. Still, compellingly, I always find myself drawn to it. No doubt, to feel the victims’ anguish; empathy with them; share in their agony. It’s the only way to feel you are part of them. Most painfully, of those departed at their tender age. Example. On the night of May 7 – 8, at the SOS Centre in Nyamagabe District, Head-of-the-Centre Venuste Nyombayire led a group of Interahamwe to butcher all the Tutsi children under his care. Venuste had separated them from their friends, playmates, etc., to lead them to a secluded room. That room became the children’s slaughterhouse. Not even Satan can allow what happened in Rwanda to sully his hellfire. In fact, looking at Rwanda, he must have wondered what kind of ultra-monstrous hell those génocidaires came from! And, indeed, if he has some corner of sympathy in his heart, that corner must be pushing him to wonder. Those butchers that are more Satanic than he is, which babies did they torture most? Those they killed as fetuses in wombs? As crawling babies? Or as tottering tots? Which genocidal cruelty was less painful for the kids? Torture and death or torture and survival? A baby girl as an example again. When she came to, she resumed her preoccupation but did nothing. There was nothing to suckle; the breast was like dry rubber. She didn’t know it, but her mother was dead and lying in a heap of corpses. Father, siblings, aunts, uncles, other relatives and neighbours, all formed the heap of bodies, lying in different grotesque forms of death. She lay there, shivering as she stared at her mother’s blank face. And sobbed silently. Luckily, the following day, a Rwanda Patriotic Army (RPA) group of fighters reached them. No motion of any kind could be detected. One detach was left behind to take charge of the situation, while the rest of the fighters trudged on. There were more victims to rescue. And many more government soldiers and Interahamwe to pursue and rein in. With more care now, the detach left behind searched exhaustively until they found the baby; barely breathing but still alive. She was taken to a makeshift clinic, where a machete gash on her head received rudimentary treatment. Meanwhile, a makeshift home had been made for her and others already there, together with more who were subsequently brought in from different slaughter scenes. Today, Felixia, that 1994 survivor baby, is in her thirties and a married woman with two children. She has recounted the titbits of her story that she is able to recall. She could have opted to remain blissfully oblivious to her survival story but knows well her conscience will not give her peace of mind. The dead need their story told. Moreover, her case being only one in multitudes gives her some measure of comfort. For, if it was in the western part of Rwanda, there were a slew of others in all the nooks and crannies of this country. For instance, again, a month earlier, there had been a case of one toddler-brother miracle survivor. A big group of Tutsis who’d taken refuge in a church in the east were set upon with machetes, clubs, hoes, sharpened tree-stems, raping, say it, after which the church was grenade-bombed down. The Interahamwe presumed everybody dead and left. After a while, however, two toddler brothers emerged from the rubble and limped off, holding hands. But they hadn’t walked even a km when a lone Interahamwe spotted them. With a machete dripping blood, he hacked at them and saw them both fall. He left, satisfied they were dead. One of them had his neck half-severed but he was not dead. Pushing his head into his neck, he rose and hobbled forward, sucking in the air with difficulty, to breathe. Unfortunately, within a few kilometers he encountered a number of Interahamwe but had no energy to crawl for cover. One of them cursed about “cockroaches that never die” and chopped off his arm. The boy fell with a groan and was left to bleed to death. After eternity, he felt arms shaking at him and lifting him, before he fell back into a coma. When many days later he opened his eyes, he could see he was in a makeshift clinic whose floor was filled from wall to wall with wounded victims. RPF doctors and nurses were busy attending to everyone, starting with those who screamed most. Mpore, now in his late thirties, the toddler-brother miracle survivor, has lived to tell his gory story. The génocidaires of Rwanda, men, women, children (Yes!), are a thing beyond Satan. And if they are so, what are especially two superpowers that could have saved Rwanda but didn’t? The North American power that didn’t stop the hate speech on the airwaves. But, worse, the European power that taught the génocidaires on how to fine-tune their genocidal enterprise. Alas, the same powers are playing inane, divisionary games as DRC enacts a similar campaign.
