Not My Time to Die (1997), a memoir of Rawanda 1994, is the most scarifying book I have ever read. I admit I mostly ignore third world conflicts, happening to someone else somewhere else, but Mukagasana personalizes at the most visceral level how it is to be, from minute to minute, in the midst of, you and each member of your family the subject of, a genocide.
It is at least arguable I have been treating my Black Africa project as a form of tourism, enjoying the colour, the points of interest and difference, being able to say “I’ve been there”. Mukasanga’s memoir makes you aware there are people here, real people, dying pointlessly, this is not entertainment.
I read lots of ‘political’ stories, and they make me angry for the injustice. Not My Time to Die made me despair – for the pointlessness of it all; for yet another horrible situation caused by us colonising them; for all of us, at the personal level, at the national level, at the UN, looking the other way.
Rawanda and its neighbour Burundi are small countries on the western border of Tanzania. All three formed German East Africa until, after WWI, Rawanda and Burundi were ‘allocated’ to Belgium. In the early 1930s, Belgium introduced a permanent division of the population by classifying Rwandans into three ethnic (ethno-racial) groups, with the Hutu representing about 84% of the population, the Tutsi about 15%, and the Twa about 1%, [issuing everyone with] compulsory identity cards. (Wiki) It would seem this practice was still current in 1994.
The Twa are the original inhabitants of Rawanda, dating back thousands of years. The Tutsi and Hutu are racially indistinguishable and share a common language and culture. They are probably best described as ‘castes’, with the Tutsi historically taking leadership roles, reinforced by the colonial powers assigning them a mythical, superior Ethiopian origin.
During the struggle for independence in the 1950s and 60s the Hutu majority gained control and many Tutsi went into exile, forming the basis of an armed resistance (The reverse occurred in Burundi where the Tutsi were in control and conducted purges of their Hutu minority).
In 1973 senior army commander Juvénal Habyarimana organised a coup, and assumed the Rawandan presidency. In 1990 the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), a rebel group composed primarily of Tutsi refugees, invaded northern Rwanda, beginning the Rwandan Civil War. Neither side gained a decisive advantage. A ceasefire begun in 1993 ended on 6 April 1994, when Habyarimana’s plane was shot down near Kigali Airport. This was the catalyst for the Rwandan genocide, which began a few hours later.
Does Imana [God] still come to my country every evening to sleep? And was he with us on the evening of 6 April 1994? Didn’t he abandon us, leave us face to face with the devil? Perhaps he didn’t have time to return to Rawanda on that day. The night fell so fast.
In 1994 Mukagasana was a qualified nurse operating her own clinic, so that she was effectively the community GP. “Here in Cyivugiza ward, in the Kigali suburb of Nyamirambo, there is only one clinic – mine. Serving seven hundred people”. She has a husband, Joseph, and three children: Christian, 15, Nadine, 13 and Sandrine, 14 (adopted). She and Joseph have been discussing sending the children abroad to relatives, to safety, but suddenly it is too late.
For the last eight months the radio has been inciting Hutus to kill Tutsis. And for the past three months we have known that Habyarimana has been overpowered by the extremist wing of his own party. We knew that they were preparing for a massacre. I knew it, but I just didn’t want to see it…
The phone rings. Friends from Masaka, not far from Kigali, confirm that the Interahamwe [Hutu youth militia] are already going from house to house, killing Tutsis…
I turn on the radio … ‘Make use of your machetes!’ shouts the presenter. ‘Put up roadblocks. No snake should escape your grasp. You are working for the future and glory of your country.”
Mukagasana and her family and others, 20 in all, pile into her brother, Nepo’s minibus and head south for Burundi. It is too late. Road blocks are up already. They return home.
That first night they all sleep in the bush out the back. In the dark, she sees the lights come on and soldiers searching their house. They return in the morning. The radio announces her name as one of the cockroaches who has been killed. Citizens are ordered to set up local roadblocks where everyone must report. Commanders will know what to do with Tutsis. Joseph tells Mukagasana to take the children and hide. He will report. They won’t kill him while he might be able to tell them where to find the famous ‘Mugana’ [Doctor] Yolande Mukagasana.
Every night they sleep in the bush. Every morning “the radio presenter reads endless lists [of the dead] with an icy voice. Sometimes I hear the names of friends or cousins.” Their only hope is that the rebel forces, already just outside Kigali, will arrive before they are killed.
Hutus are examined for Tutsi parents and grandparents, are expected to murder their Tutsi wives and inlaws, their children. Every man has a machete which he is expected to use. Tutsi women are raped, tortured, dismembered. The streets are littered with bodies.
Mukagasana becomes separated first from Joseph and then from her children. She must go on without news of them. Only one or two neighbours are willing to hide her. She spends days contorted under the u-bend in a kitchen sink cupboard
This goes on for weeks, and we must live them with her.
.
Yolande Mukagasana, Not My Time to Die, 1997. ‘with Patrick May’. Translated (from French) by Zoe Norridge, 2019