Rwanda: My New Home

Rwanda, in central Africa, is my new home.

After seven years living in China, and thoroughly enjoying being there, I am now back in Africa. Between the two countries I spent six months in South Africa, at the mysterious place named McDougall’s Bay.

On the first Friday I was in Rwanda, my wife Kathy and I found our way to the Nyamata Genocide Memorial. We were there towards the end of the afternoon. Singing, more mournful, soulful and grateful than I had ever heard before, came from a Catholic church about 40 metres away. We went inside the church to find people with their arms raised high and singing with unbounded belief, faith and commitment. I felt the hand of the Lord moving in the church and among the congregation. To go back 31 years, the church was housed in the building where the memorial now stands. That was the time of the genocide in Rwanda, when Hutu extremists murdered Tutsis.  Members of the Tutsi tribe at one point took shelter in the church. However, Hutu killers attacked them inside the church. The attackers killed some babies by bashing their heads against the wall of the church. The remains of 45 000 people slaughtered in the genocide around the church are now housed in the memorial. Some of the skulls are brown. Those people were burnt in fires; probably still alive at the time. Many of the clothes people died in are laid out on the pews.

I was deeply moved by the memorial and the church singing. I was a touch emotional.  

Back when I was a high school history teacher in Welkom a decade ago, I deemed the syllabus too light, and not too helpful, so introduced four new areas of study, being China since 1949, the genocide in Rwanda, the break-up of Yugoslavia and Korea. I have subsequently lived in China and now Rwanda and am open to going to Korea.

Moving further back, Rwanda had a place in my thinking from 1994. At the time I was Political Correspondent of The Daily News newspaper, Durban, based in the Houses of Parliament Press Gallery, Cape Town. I wrote much about the first democratic election on April 27 1994. There was much noise from mainly right-wing white people threatening violence against everything to do with the democratic election. At the time there were four places undergoing similar political troubles: South Africa, Northern Ireland, Yugoslavia, and Rwanda.

I hold the view that the killing in Rwanda stilled a lot of hate within angry South African hearts. I hold the view that the killing of up to one million people in the dusty streets of Rwanda to some extent deterred similar violence in South Africa.

Our guide at the Nyamata memorial said that today there were no Tutsis or Hutus in Rwanda. He declared: “We are all Rwandans.” That was such modern and helpful thinking. I wish we could say the same of South Africans. Hopefully the present crop of hot heads in South Africa who seek to benefit themselves by the race and tribal cards will cease, and start to play the we are all South Africans tune. For as long as we are divided by race, we will have a future divided.

Rwanda is attempting to improve the life of its people. One of the problems is roads – there are simply not enough paved roads. Days after the memorial visit, I went to the museum palace of King Mutara III Rudahigwa, who ruled between 1931 and 1959. In 1943, Rudahigwa was the first Rwandan king to convert to Catholicism and was the first Rwandan king to be baptised. The king effectively made Christianity a state religion. There was a replica royal hut in the grounds of the museum. To be allowed to meet with the king, his subjects had to be able to recall seven of their generations who served him. The visitors on my visit checked how many generations we could recall. I could trace three generations back to Port Erin, on the Isle of Man. The guide could trace back just two generations; her people had probably been murdered in the genocide. I was too sad to ask if that was so.

On the drive home from the king’s palace, we took a road that was being built by Chinese engineers. I was so pleased to see them as they worked into the Sunday night. I waved and smiled and blew the hooter and said thank you. And they looked at me in return with incredulity. Disbelief. Poor China has come in much criticism for being new colonialists. I am not among the Chinese critics. Compare the building of roads today with what happened in 1885. In that year, European leaders met at the infamous Berlin Conference to divide Africa and arbitrarily draw up borders that exist to this day. The border between Congo and Rwanda ignored somewhat the distribution of people on the ground. Tutsi people had migrated to Congo from Rwanda, Burundi, and Tanzania in the 18th and 19th centuries, long before Europeans in Berlin drew up the African borders. If the people living in Africa had been consulted at the time, then country borders might have been different today. Instead, here is another example of colonialism in Africa presenting an on-going disaster. There is little different between what Belgium did in Africa and, by way of example, somebody trying to take over say Greenland, Canada, the Panama Canal, or force people out of Gaza, or take over eastern Ukraine. Colonial disaster beckons.  

The Rwanda government today portrays itself as inclusive and downplays differences between Tutsi, Hutu and Twa; the third group in the country. Acts that could promote divisions between people are not tolerated. I love that.

I also love what I have seen so far of the Great Lakes area of central Africa. There are a lot more lakes than I first thought. Being African to my core, what is needed is a trans frontier national park with parks in various countries to promote the lakes as tourist destinations. The lakes, and travel between them, could become one of the tourist attractions of Africa. The people on the ground would not have to move out of their homes. People living in the Qomolangma national park in Tibet, China, have been incorporated into the life and management of the park. I know, because I have been there. So could people living around the lake today be included within the transfrontier parks. People have been incorporated into the Richtersveld national park in South Africa. I know because I have been there.

Did I saw tourists could travel between the parks and between the countries? Well, for that to happen the Chinese road engineers need to become even more busy. China builds roads. America cuts aid. Just saying.

As relations between Pretoria and Kigali sadly tumble, let me end with the prayer for Africa.

God Bless Africa;
Guard her children;
Guide her leaders
And give her peace, for Jesus Christ’s sake.
Amen.

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Martin Challenor