Second Reading
Fr Kevin Hegarty
The BBC reporter Fergal Keane is one of my favourite journalists. His work combines a forensic ability to get to the truth of things with a sense of moral integrity. He has a way with words and a story-telling facility that befits the nephew of the dramatist, John B Keane.
In 1994 the BBC sent him to report on Rwanda. His reportage from that beautiful African country awakened the western world to the horror of the genocide then taking place there.
In April of that year the plane carrying the President of Rwanda, Juvenal Habyarimana, was shot down as it attempted to land at the airport in Kigali, the capital. His death sparked a murderous phase in the ancient conflict between the Hutus and the Tutsis, the main tribes inhabiting the country.
The Hutus, who ruled Rwanda since 1959, are, by far the most numerous; they compose 85 per cent of the population while the Tutsis make up most of the rest. The Hutus, generally, despise the Tutsis because when Rwanda was a Belgian colony the Tutsis collaborated with the colonists in the running of the country.
Within a month of the President’s death up to a million Tutsis were murdered in reprisal. It seemed that the Hutus were determined to wipe the Tutsis from the face of the earth.
The writer, Primo Levi, has written about Auschwitz being a place where the atmosphere was ‘impregnated with evil’. Keane’s report on what happened in Nyarabuye, a village near the Tanzanian border, shows that a similar atmosphere prevailed there in April 1994.
Nyarabuye is the administrative and religious centre of its district. The Hutus and the Tutsis of Nyarabuye share the Roman Catholic faith. Every Sunday they prayed together in the huge church built in the 1930s.
The mayor of the district in 1994 was Sylvestre Gacumbtsi. Though a Hutu, he had up to then won the trust of his Tutsi neighbours. As the genocide raged through central Rwanda, he promised the Tutsis in his region that they would be kept safe.
In mid-April he instructed all the Tutsi population to come to the church. As they trusted him, it never occurred to them that they were being led into a trap. As one Tutsi later reflected: “A church is a respected place. We thought nobody could be killed in a church.”
Unknown to them, Gacumbitsi sent orders for all the Hutu men in the area – up to 7,000 – to march on Nyanabuye church, led by the local police and military.
The slaughter began on April 15, 1994. The police and military started the onslaught. Then Gacumbitsi ordered the ordinary Hutus to move in. For three hours they hacked, slashed and bludgeoned their neighbours to death.
A 12-year-old girl, Valentina, was one of the few survivors. She became unconscious after a heavy beating, wherein she lost some of her fingers, and her attackers thought she was dead. For over a month before she was rescued she lingered among the decomposing dead.
She was brought to a clinic where she first met Fergal Keane. He eventually won her trust and she now refers to him as her ‘white’ father. Her evidence and Keane’s reports proved pivotal in the eventual UN trial that brought Gacumbitsi to justice. She now lives with her aunt in a happier Rwanda. She has visited Keane and his family in London and spoke publicly there of her experience. On the day she was to return to Rwanda, Fergal brought her to the airport. She clung to him as the flight was called. He asked her would she like to stay. “No, I want to go home to my own country,” she said. Keane has written: “It was the best thing I’d ever heard about Rwanda.”
There are now other good news stories out of Rwanda. Since the end of the attempted genocide, Rwanda has emerged as a leading example of how empowering women can transform post-conflict economies and fight poverty.
The evidence has been accumulating for years. In 1990 a major study on Brazilian poverty revealed that money and resources managed by women were 20 times more likely to be spent on improving conditions in the home than money managed by men. In Bangladesh the Grameen bank has concentrated its loans on women. Micro-loan programmes in Africa, Asia and Latin America have shown similar results.
The growing influence of women on the economy of Rwanda has happened more by default than design. The 1994 massacre and its aftermath left the country with a population that was 60 per cent female and 40 per cent male. Women had to take over the running of farms and businesses.
Although women had a higher social status in Rwanda than in neighbouring African countries they had weak property rights. The Government recognised that they would need new legal status. In 1999 laws were passed allowing them to inherit property. Women today hold 40 per cent of the seats in Rwanda’s parliament and make up 36 per cent of President Paul Kagame’s Cabinet.
An example of the positive change in Rwanda is provided by what has happened in Maraba. As survivors there began to rebuild coffee plantations, with assistance from international organisations, the women, most of them farming for the first time, were the most enthusiastic students. They were more eager to embrace new techniques to improve quality and profit. Now Maraba’s female farmers, who are 50 per cent of the members in the local coffee co-operative, produce 90 per cent of its finest quality beans for export. Agnes Kalibata, the Rwandan Agricultural Minister, has asserted: “Bringing women out of the home and fields has been essential to our rebuilding. In that process Rwanda has changed forever. We are becoming a nation that understands that there are huge financial benefits to equality.”
Rwanda’s recent history is a parable on different levels. The genocide shows the human capacity for evil. Its rebuilding shows the majestic capacity of humanity in the face of adversity. And, though now sometimes disparaged as mere political correctness, it shows the relevance and value of gender equality.
