DON MAKATILE | Rwandese must never be left for dead ever again

On Sunday, Big Brother in Rwanda took to the podium in Kigali to lament the supposed global indifference to the 1994 genocide that unfolded in "the land of a thousand hills."

“It was the international community which failed all of us, whether from contempt or cowardice,” president Paul Kagame said in a speech after lighting a flame of remembrance and laying a wreath at the memorial site where the remains of 250,000 genocide victims lie.

Ask any South African who was alive at the time what they were doing in the first quarter of 1994 and they are likely to tell you about the historic democratic elections that ushered in a whole new dispensation.

America and France, through their respective head honchos Joe Biden and Emmanuel Macron, had by Sunday, through statements, accounted for their lack of action, the contempt or cowardice of Kagame’s lamentation.

Though we were caught up in the jamboree of Uhuru, it is gratifying to know that we did our bit to help in Rwanda, and the recipients of our largesse are eternally grateful.

In a moving speech, Kagame said in part: "A notable example of solidarity came to us from South Africa, one among many. Indeed, the entire arc of our continent’s hopes and agonies could be seen in those few months of 1994. As South Africa ended apartheid and elected Nelson Mandela president, in Rwanda the last genocide of the 20th century was being carried out.

"The new South Africa paid for Cuban doctors to help rebuild our shattered health system and opened up its universities to Rwandan students, paying only local fees.

"Among the hundreds of students who benefitted from South Africa’s generosity, some were orphaned survivors; others were the children of perpetrators; and many were neither.

"Most have gone on to become leaders in our country in different fields. Today, they live a completely new life."

The Hutu has never known peace so much so that they could be inured to the Orwellian slogan: "war is peace."

"Freedom is slavery."

It is under Kagame that the vanquished Hutu and, to some extent, the Tutsi aggressors, have tasted a semblance of normalcy in their relations, at least in Rwanda. 

"In 1972 in Burundi, more than 200,000 Hutus, the majority tribe, were slaughtered in barely two months, their homes and schools destroyed by the government run by the Tutsi, a minority tribe. August 1988 witnessed a repeat of the massacre, with some 10,000 Hutus slain, some reportedly machine-gunned from army helicopters," one of many reports chronicling the Broedertwis says.  

Does it really matter if Kagame is not everyone’s favourite uncle?

Wherever he may take the country after 30 years in power (and counting), the Rwandese are better off as characters in George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, with him as Big Brother at the helm.

The opposite of the relative calm under Kagame, more bloodletting, is too ghastly to contemplate, lest the world look away again.

In his own words, Kagame said, concluding his speech: "Our people will never – and I mean never – be left for dead again."

Rwanda's ethnic composition remains largely unchanged since 1994, with the Tutsis accounting for 14% and the Twa just 1% of the Hutu-dominated  Rwanda's population of 14 million. Reports say Kagame's Tutsi-dominated government has outlawed any form of organisation along ethnic lines, as part of efforts to build a uniform Rwandan identity.

National ID cards no longer identify citizens by ethnic group, and authorities imposed a tough penal code to prosecute those suspected of denying the genocide or the "ideology' behind it". Some observers say the law has been used to silence critics who question the government's policies. 

Who cares by what means a new Rwanda is achieved?

The Rwandese must never be left for dead ever again.

• Makatile publishes The Sentinel