Kagame | Nyaruguru district commemorate 18 years after the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi

Slightly over 200 people, a good number of them with pink scarves around their necks, gather at Ndago Memorial Site right in the district domain where 31 bodies, retrieved from nearby areas, were given a decent burial some time back.

In front of a white, pink tent stands a man in black suit with a microphone, whose message is passed on through loudspeakers. The man, François Habitegeko, is the mayor of Nyaruguru district.

“The Genocide repercussions did touch all of us here”, Habitegeko says, “We will keep dealing with these repercussions it [Genocide] left behind till their mitigation. Where there is hatred, we will replace it by unity”, the mayor added.

The audience has a wide range of age. From the apparently under ten years old to the grey-haired, some of whom even shelter under the shade of a dozen scattered umbrellas to resist the aggressive, sporadic sun shines.

Most of the questions that the Genocide survivors did raise, as part of the audience, mainly rotated around some Genocide memorial sites that are “poorly looked after” and the delayed payment of damaged properties during the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi. At one Genocide memorial site, in Cyahinda sector, rain, as a survivor puts it, still leaks in, and is likely to wash away, in the long-run, some of the bodies decently buried there.

The district mayor sounded reassuring.

“We are equally concerned with the situation at Cyahinda. We have already fundraised four million Rwandan francs and we will get the problem fixed as soon as possible”, said Habitegeko.

He also called upon survivors who still await the payment of their properties from those who either looted or damaged them, to consider “home-grown solutions” as well, apart from payment of money in cash.

“Once you [Genocide survivors] are building a house, you can hire them [those who owe survivors payment] as brick-layers, for instance. Another time, you can hire them for cultivating, and you can convert their work in terms of money afterwards”, the mayor recommended.

According to Bertin Muhizi, the Nyaruguru district head of IBUKA, an umbrella organisation of the 1994 Genocide survivors, over twenty-six thousand bodies have been buried at a nearby Kibeho Memorial Site and so have been thousands more across the district.

Similar gatherings were held in different areas of Nyaruguru district and across the country.

But possibly, the most memorable moment of the day came in around noon local time. With the speech of Rwanda’s President Paul Kagame. As he spoke simultaneously on the state radio and TV and the message transmitted to this local, Nyaruguru audience through loudspeakers, some in the audience showed off their mobile phones, apparently to record the President’s speech for a further listening.

“We will always remember them”, President Kagame said.