Freddy Mutanguha, an ethnic Tutsi, was 18 years old when in 1994 one million Rwandan Tutsis were slaughtered in a Hutu-led genocide that shook the world. Freddy and his sister Rosette were the only members of their family to survive, hiding in the roof of a neighbour’s house.
Genocide is the culmination of what hatred can lead to when left unattended. This is what happened in Rwanda.
In April 1994 we saw militias organising themselves near my village; some were our neighbours who had been given weapons. Soon they started establishing roadblocks and killing people on the street. We were full of fear. I was hiding at a neighbour’s house when my mother came to see me. She brought me all the food she had left – vegetables and passion fruit. She was different that day and didn’t talk much. She just said, “If you survive, I want you to be strong, to be a man”. These were her last words. She couldn’t say goodbye because she knew it was the last time I’d see her. The passionfruit has become my memory of my mother.
The following day at 11am I heard a large group of militias go to our house. They took everyone and they killed them with clubs and machetes. I could hear the screaming and my sisters calling my name. It took about 15 minutes until I realised that all had died – my mother, my father, four of my sisters, together with 80 members of my extended family. It is so terrible to listen to your family being killed. You want to go and help but you’re powerless. To this day these terrible sounds come to me in my nightmares.
The genocide destroyed the very fabric of our country because doctors, lawyers and teachers (like my mother) were either killed or became perpetrators themselves. The intimate nature of this killing is very hard to comprehend. The killers who came to attack our home were people we knew well. The person who took and slaughtered my mother was a student at the school where she‘d taught. At some point, whether at school or in his home, he learnt to hate. Most of his family were also involved in the genocide.
Those of us who survived were left traumatised and without hope. I thought how on earth can I live without my family, but I kept hearing my mother’s voice telling me to be a man. She wanted me to have courage and to lead a better life. These were the values my mother left me, and they have saved me.
After the genocide the group who attacked our house were caught and imprisoned; but most are now released. This is why forgiveness is so important. We can’t rebuild this nation without forgiveness. As survivors, we need to combine our energy to develop Rwanda, and part of this means forgiving the perpetrators, many of whom are back living among us. We are the only ones with the authority to do this. Through grass roots initiatives some perpetrators have had the courage to ask for forgiveness and there are even reconciliation villages to support this.
It was after having a family of my own that I realised our country’s future depended on us survivors looking forward. Forgiveness is not only for the perpetrators it’s for us too because otherwise carrying the heavy burden of anger and hopelessness will start to kill us, and even get into our children’s DNA. So, I began by loving myself, and then considered how I could forgive the perpetrators.
Three years ago, I learnt that the Hutu man who led the attack on my family had been the leader of the militias in my village and he was still in prison in the south of Rwanda. It took another two years for me to find the courage to face him, and to make sure my sister was willing to go with me. I thought, if he tells me the truth I will forgive him. When we went to the prison these terrible memories of the genocide came flooding back to me. I was imagining this man had a machete in his hand, that he was a monster about to kill me. It was so hard to go through the prison gate but eventually I did. And there he was, just sitting there, not saying anything, looking all innocent. He told me nothing; there was no accountability, and so I thought why should I forgive this person who isn’t ready to tell me the truth? I said to him: “When I return you need to tell me the truth because you were there.” Only when this happens will I forgive him.
I also met another perpetrator whose role had been to tell the killers where my family were hiding. He told me more of the truth and I was therefore able to tell him that I forgave him. When you embark on the journey of forgiveness there are a lot of pushbacks and while I haven’t yet forgiven the person who killed my family, in my heart I have received all the benefits of forgiveness, because I don’t hate him and I hold him no ill will.
