One objective account of the Rwandan genocide

By Ambrose Nzeyimana
The Rising Continent

December 6, 2011

Most of the time, it appears too difficult to be objective about matters or issues one is linked with in some ways. How do you talk about a chair you are sitting on without feeling its contours, or a pen you are writing with without seeing the colour of its ink? Whatever high could be your standard of objectivity, you will struggle to detach yourself from the object you are called to discuss without its influence in your narrative.

For many Rwandans, particularly those who experienced the 1994 genocide, besides the impact it had over their psyche, the horror and context within which it took place, are somehow indescribable. The whole tragedy seems multi complex to grasp. It is multi-dimensional in several ways. This aspect explains at some extent the difficulty of understanding what happened for those who are foreign to Rwandan history, and even those among natives who didn’t have a particular interest in searching the root causes of their suffering, if they managed to survive.

The complexity of issues has also helped those among Rwandans, especially the ruling Rwandan Patriotic Front of Paul Kagame to fool everyone about the true picture of problems which were [and continue to be] at stake, and for which millions of people have died inside the country and the Congo. Those hidden truths are still fuelling ongoing oppression of the Rwandan population, getting women and men raped in the thousands in Kivu provinces of Eastern Congo, and enabling the plundering of Congo’s minerals.

While reading Claude Gatebuke’s interview as published on SFBV, I found it close to the way I would myself tell the story of that horrible time in the past of my country. And I would also invite you too read the whole interview, as you will certainly find new elements of the Rwandan puzzle you didn’t know.

Link to the interview at San Fransisco Bay View.