Without state, leaders, national reconciliation remains a mirage

Christopher Kayumba 

By Christopher Kayumba

The past two weeks have been hectic with, among other things, journalists from different parts of the world calling or visiting for interviews about the legacy of the Genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda and what the world might have learnt from this dark episode in human relations.

One of the hardest questions is how to explain the ability of victims and perpetrators to reconcile and agree to live side by side in such a short time.

I told one journalist that while claiming that people have found it “easy” to forgive is to be oblivious of each individual’s inner conversations with self, pain, prior rage, anger, frustrations and journeys, reconciliation is a process that takes place at several levels rather than an event.

To understand why most individuals say they have reconciled, requires interrogating reconciliation at personal, family, village and group levels to be able to arrive at the collective national level, where the role of leadership and the state is monumental.

For starters, at the end of the Genocide against the Tutsi in 1994, the approach adopted to deal with perpetrators was not reconciliation with restorative justice through Gacaca as it eventually turned out to be, but traditional retributive justice.

In fact, some of the first big convicts of this crime under this approach, including Froduald Karamira, were publicly executed in Nyamirambo stadium in 1998.

However, after some soul searching, the leadership realised that healing the nation would take more than traditional justice as taking this path not only meant that it would take at least 100 years to try more than 100,000 suspects then in prison —with many still at large, but it also wasn’t appropriate for rebuilding the nation. Diagnosed thus, reconciliation with restorative justice was embraced.

Secondly, unlike surviving Jews of Europe who had to be relocated after the Holocaust to a new home they historically called theirs, neither Hutus nor Tutsis were connected to any other home except Rwanda.

Thirdly, historically, there has never been exclusively a Hutu or Tutsi hill or villages or town or districts; they have always lived in the same localities unlike, for example, the Catholics and Protestants of Northern Ireland who live in different areas.

Therefore, because Rwandans are irreversibly connected by history, geography and culture, individuals, at a personal level, took in this reality, reconciled with their circumstance and agreed to live together again as was advocated by the leadership.

Reflecting on this triple circumstance, a young former student of mine, who at the time of the genocide was only two years old and has never known her parents or place of birth but a good Samaritan who found her abandoned in a refugee camp and took her on after the genocide reflects: “Reconciliation…is a very good and necessary programme for our country and citizens. So, what can you do if you don’t reconcile with your enemy? Fight or kill each other again?

"The experience of hate and killings we have gone through is enough; let’s experience other things like peace... On my part, I understand I have to reconcile with my heart as I don’t know anything about my people or their killers. The essential thing… is, I keep my mind strong and focused…I left my past behind”


Incredible wisdom. And there are many like her.

As she states, however, reconciliation also takes place at other levels such as at interpersonal, village or national levels. Needless to say, therefore, for reconciliation to take root, say at the national levels, it requires a supportive policy, a healing discourse and the co-operation of the political class.

The above is especially true considering that political violence, including genocide, is normally perpetuated by politicians in organised groups or in government; to engineer successful national reconciliation also requires recruiting the same elite to embrace and own the project.

And once the elite are on board and advocating reconciliation in speeches and villages, in societies like ours, it follows that the ordinary citizen will inevitably follow suit.