Inside Africa: More Than 25 Years After the Rwandan Genocide

Patrick Robert / Corbis

Rwanda has shown tremendous growth and taken major strides forward in the last decade. It’s population, gross domestic product, school enrollment rates, and its life expectancy have all been taking an upward trajectory in the landlocked East African country. In August 2018, its president, Paul Kagame, was re-elected to serve a third seven-year term in office. Just before that, more than half of the seats in Parliament were filled by women. The country has high aspirations to be classified as a middle income country by 2035 with a greater emphasis in the private sector and job creation. However, all these charts show drastic dips - or break off all together - around 1994. Data for school enrollment was not recorded from 1992 to 1997. Life expectancy dropped to around 27 years old in 1994. Population in 1994 was about half of what it is today.

What happened in that time period displaced millions of Rwandans. It led to a young woman standing on the TedxPortland stage on April 27, 2019, telling her family story, a story she told the crowd she inherited even though she was only a year old at the start of it. Carine Kanimba told her family’s story on its 25-year anniversary, explaining how she lost her parents in the 100 days after the Rwandan Hutu president’s plane was shot down near Kigali, Rwanda’s capital. Immediately following the incident that killed both Rwandan and Burundi presidents, Hutus started systematically killing Tutsis and moderate Hutus in the infamous Rwandan genocide of 1994. Kanimba said her father had been warned ahead of time that her family’s lives were in danger. She said they decided to try to escape “was also the day everything changed for my family.” Her and her sister were gathered with her father, aunt, and neighbors, but the bullets were flying. “In the midst of the chaos, my sister started laughing,” Kanimba explained. “At the age of two-and-a-half years old was too young to understand that this wasn’t a game.”

Kanimba’s story is not unlike many. She and her sister were raised by her aunt and uncle, but because she was so young, she did not realize they were not her biological parents until years later when her aunt, while they had made a life for themselves in Belgium was showing pictures of their family and explained what had happened. The Hutu militia had killed her father and returned for her mother while she and her sister were hidden away in a pantry, never to be seen again. The story differs slightly from some, though. “Hotel Rwanda,” the 2004 movie, was based on her uncle, Paul Rusesabagina, who became known for how he helped over 1,000 Tutsi refugees during the genocide. 

The genocide lasted from April to June 1994. It is expected that approximately 800,000 Rwandans were killed in the short time period, most of the dead being Tutsis. For a long time before, tensions between the Tutsi-minority and the Hutu-majority. Despite the similarities between the two groups - both speak the same language and generally share traditions - colonialism exacerbated tensions between the ethnic groups when the Belgian colonists, who arrived in the early 1900s, began to favor the Tutsis. Some suggest that the Tutsis were originally from Ethiopia, but, for the most part, the Tutsis and Hutus had gotten along. Once the colonists arrived, the Tutsis were considered the “superior” of the two groups. The Belgian colonists had Tutsis and Hutus hold identification cards stating their ethnicity while providing the Tutsis more job opportunities and greater access to quality education. The longer this went on, the more tensions grew. Over several decades, attacks and riots in which Tutsis were the main targets occurred. In 1959, more than 20,000 Tutsis were killed. Many more fled to Uganda, Burundi and Tanzania, where the Rwandan Patriotic Front, a group of Tutsis refugees and moderate Hutus, was gathering with Kagame at the helm. By the time the airplane was shot down in 1994, though no one really knows what happened that day that led to the presidential-guard backed militias that went through the country killing Tutsis. 

Kagame can be seen in original news footage from the South African Broadcasting Corporation from the genocide. He explains where they get weapons and that he “must” help RFP in the fight against the militias seeking retribution for the death of the former president. Following the 100-day genocide, when RFP took control of the country’s capital, Kagame was named vice president to serve alongside the Hutu president, Pasteur Bizimungu. In 2000, Kagame, a RFP veteran who helped lead the counter-attack against the Hutu militias and gain control of the capital, was elected. He goes on to serve in a third term made legal with a constitutional amendment. 

Now, Kagame is viewed through two different lenses. Many see him as an authoritarian figure who does not tolerate dissent or opposition, limiting free press and what can be viewed as a refusal to step down from his position of power. Others see him as trying to rebuild and reunite a country that has seen too many die or flee to other countries due to ethnic strife. Initiatives to help poor and rural populations have taken place with Kagame in office and “Umuganda,” a nation-wide community service project all must participate in, or risk being fined or arrested, that is meant to encourage reconciliation and development post-genocide. 

The 1994 genocide still shapes much of the news that comes from Rwanda. Twenty-six years later, a French probe looking into the events that led to the airplane with Rwanda’s president going down was rejected in the French appeals court. The plane was struck by a missile, which the probe initially thought was orchestrated by Kagme’s allies, but in 2012, the camp of Kanombe was identified as the launch site for the missile, and it was controlled by Hutus who believed the president at the time to be too moderate in his dealings with the Tutsis. The probe was dropped by French judges in 2018, but not before Kagame cut diplomatic ties with France due to arrest warrants issued for his allies. There were even accusations that France was involved in the attack leading up to the genocide, but not much came from that. The airplane crash remains somewhat of a mystery as Rwanda continues to rebuild. 

Kanimba tries to tell the world about talking about her life and her story with her Ted Talk. Her dialogue with her peers helped her come to terms with what she survived. She explained, “Through sharing and dialogue, I began not seeing surviving a war not as shameful but as strength.” The war is something all Rwandans have to come to terms with, finding ways to reconcile and move on from the tragedy.