Many members of Rachel Mukantabana’s family were killed during the 1994 genocide.
Jacques Nkinzingabo for NPR
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Jacques Nkinzingabo for NPR
Many members of Rachel Mukantabana’s family were killed during the 1994 genocide.
Jacques Nkinzingabo for NPR
NYAMATA, Rwanda — Rachel Mukantabana was a teenager when the devastating genocide unfolded in Rwanda.
“I was 15 and I knew exactly what was going on,” she told NPR. “Even a five-year-old knew what was going to happen.”
Two days after the start of the 100-day genocide, Mukantabana and his family fled their homes. They first went to a church, then to a school, before hiding in a large swamp, hoping that no one could reach them in the water.
This week, Rwanda marks the 30th anniversary of the genocide in which nearly a million people, mostly Tutsis, were killed.
At least a quarter of a million Rwandan civilians participated in the massacres. Across the country, neighbors have brutally attacked neighbors with machetes, sticks and clubs.
The violence was intimate and vicious.
During those first days in the swamp in 1994, Mukantabana and his family were safe. But by the end of April, she said, hundreds of soldiers and Interahamwe Hutu militiamen came.
“They surrounded the entire swamp and killed people until the evening,” she said.
They returned the next day, even more numerous, to kill again. Mukantabana’s younger sister was killed with a spear and Mukantabana was captured.
She begged for her life, trying to convince the soldiers that her father was a Hutu.
“They were checking my legs and told me: ‘Your legs look like those of Tutsis,'” she said.
The soldiers hit her legs with a hammer, but she managed to escape and hide again in the swamp. She hid there for weeks with others, she said, as a brutal pattern unfolded.
This Catholic church in Rwanda’s capital was the scene of a massacre during the 1994 genocide. Across the country there are signs and scars of the violence.
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This Catholic church in Rwanda’s capital was the scene of a massacre during the 1994 genocide. Across the country there are signs and scars of the violence.
Jacques Nkinzingabo for NPR
“The way we knew the killings had stopped was they would shoot a bullet in the air,” she said. “That meant the killing was over for the day. They will return tomorrow.”
In May, a group of rebel soldiers brought them out of the swamp.
Mukantabana said his mother, four siblings and more than 50 members of his extended family were killed during the genocide.
Today, Mukantabana lives in a “reconciliation village,” where survivors of the genocide live alongside the very people who killed.
Measuring reconciliation
Forgiveness and reconciliation are personal. But in Rwanda today, they are also orchestrated by the government.
The Rwandan government, led by President Paul Kagame, has banned any speech drawing distinctions between ethnic groups. National identity cards no longer identify ethnic groups. Laws prohibit so-called genocidal ideology.
The government has an official “reconciliation barometer”, which looks at various factors to determine how people live together. In 2020 – the latest year for which data is available – the country estimated that the reconciliation rate in Rwanda was 94.7%.
“Rwandan people generally revere the government. So I really think the state is very involved and in some ways it’s difficult to disentangle anything from such a powerful government,” said Hollie Nyseth Nzitatira, associate professor of sociology at Ohio State University, whose research focuses on why genocide occurs and how countries rebuild.
She conducted in-depth interviews with survivors and perpetrators of the genocide.
“I think reconciliation is happening in Rwanda, but most people I have spoken to would not say it has happened, but rather it is a complicated process” , she said.
Nyseth Nzitatira said what happened in Rwanda could be instructive for other countries.
“What many countries could learn from Rwanda is the importance of explicitly addressing one’s past, of talking about what happened, of accepting what happened, of commemorating what happened,” she said. “And that’s something that Rwanda has done incredibly well.”
At the reconciliation village, we tell Mukantabana that we plan to also meet with the perpetrators of the genocide, including a man who lives a few minutes’ drive from her. And we ask her what kind of questions she thinks we should ask her.
“What I would ask them is: When they were killing people, inside themselves, did they feel human or (like) animals?”
Didas Kayinamura served more than six years in prison for her role in the genocide.
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Didas Kayinamura served more than six years in prison for her role in the genocide.
Jacques Nkinzingabo for NPR
We asked Didas Kayinamura this question when we met him at his home shortly after.
Speaking through an interpreter, he said he had been forced by a group of assassins and that they had threatened his life. They pushed him, he said, to kill a man.
“They gave me a stick, a very strong stick, and they told me: you had to kill him with this stick,” he said.
Kayinamura said he tried to kill the man twice, but ultimately someone else delivered the fatal blow.
He said that despite pressure, he never participated in the violence again.
“One guy. That’s it. I stopped. I killed once,” he said.
Two identities
First-person accounts of genocide are complex. Experts say there may be a tendency among genocide perpetrators to downplay their role — sometimes in the hope of a shorter prison sentence, sometimes because the trauma of genocide impairs the perpetrator’s memory.
“I’m not saying I’m not a killer. I’m not saying I didn’t participate in genocide,” Kayinamura said. “I committed genocide. Why? Because when this group of people went to kill this gentleman, I went with them.”
Perpetrators of crimes like Kayinamura were tried in community courts that quickly emerged. The accused were tried by their neighbors. The proceedings relied on eyewitness accounts of violent and rapid incidents.
These Gacaca courts tried criminals, but also promoted interpersonal forgiveness and reconciliation.
“The first thing they said in the Gacaca courts was to say that if someone… asks for forgiveness… they will get out of prison,” Kayinamura said. He ended up serving more than six years in prison.
“My identity is genocidal,” he said, referring to a word for someone who participated in genocide.
Mukantabana has a different identity: mother. She is raising five children and sees a clear future for herself.
“For me, having children gives me the confidence to rebuild my life,” she said. “My children allowed me to start again.”
Students play near a genocide memorial site in Gahanga.
Jacques Nkinzingabo for NPR
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Students play near a genocide memorial site in Gahanga.
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Mukantabana’s new life involves learning to live in a community with people who, 30 years ago, might have wished him dead.
When asked if she felt comfortable living in Reconciliation Village, she gestured right outside the door. The man walking outside, she says, is a Hutu. And she’s not afraid.
“Thirty years after the genocide… things are going pretty well,” Mukantabana said. “People live together in peace. There are no more Hutu, no more Tutsi, we are all Rwandans.”
All Rwandans, all now living in the shadow of a brutal history that pitted neighbors against each other.
Those who served the longest sentences for their role in the genocide have only just returned home, and the work of learning to live side by side continues.
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