{"id":54361,"date":"2025-06-02T11:44:53","date_gmt":"2025-06-02T11:44:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/from-oblivion-to-memory-and-the-meaning-of-rpf-s-victory\/"},"modified":"2025-06-04T15:03:24","modified_gmt":"2025-06-04T15:03:24","slug":"from-oblivion-to-memory-and-the-meaning-of-rpf-s-victory","status":"publish","type":"opinion","link":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/opinion\/from-oblivion-to-memory-and-the-meaning-of-rpf-s-victory\/","title":{"rendered":"From oblivion to memory and the meaning of RPF\u2019s victory"},"content":{"rendered":"

A sacred fire burned\u2014not in flames, but in voices, in tears, in stories told and retold. In the names read. In the lives reclaimed.<\/p>\n

They had gathered to honor what in Kinyarwanda is painfully called \u201cImiryango yazimye\u201d\u2014families that were wiped out, lineages extinguished during the 1994 Genocide Against the Tutsi.<\/p>\n

Let the weight of that word \u201ckuzima\u201d sink in.<\/p>\n

Not just a life lost. Not just a person buried. But an entire family line\u2014snuffed out like a candle in the wind, never to be seen again, never to speak, to laugh, to name a child, to offer a blessing, to bury their dead.<\/p>\n

They were the dead who left no mourners.<\/p>\n

A staggering 15,693 families. Roughly 68,871 people. Extinguished.<\/p>\n

This was not death by nature, by time, by misfortune. This was the deliberate act of genocide\u2014the erasure of memory, of ancestry, of roots and fruit, of stories, voices, names.<\/p>\n

These weren\u2019t just people killed; they were legacies burned, whole family trees cut at the roots and tossed into the abyss.<\/p>\n

Kinyarwanda, in its richness, gives us a blessing that encapsulates the essence of human continuity: “Izina ryawe ntirikazime” \u2014 May your name never die out.<\/p>\n

But what happens when it does? What do we do when names are not just forgotten, but there is no one left to remember them?<\/p>\n

We sat at Cyasemakamba. We read their names. We resurrect their presence through remembrance. Because we must.<\/p>\n

And yet, as I sat among the crowd that day, listening to the soft but resolute voice of a survivor recounting the annihilation of her entire family, a sickening question crept into my mind\u2014not, \u201cWhat if the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) had not arrived in time?\u201d but something even darker:<\/p>\n

What if the genocidaires had succeeded? What if they had finished their work? It is a darkness that nearly won.<\/p>\n

Let that sink in\u2014not just a failed state, not just more lives lost. But a nation gone mad, victorious in its madness, basking in its own bloodlust, and celebrating murderers as heroes.<\/p>\n

In this nightmare, there would be no day set for the Imiryango Yazimye event, because no one would remember. No one could. The survivors would be dead.<\/p>\n

Those who dared hide their neighbors\u2014those Hutu men and women of courage\u2014would be buried alongside them.<\/p>\n

There would be no one to whisper a name. No one to tend a grave.<\/p>\n

In this grotesque alternate Rwanda:<\/p>\n

F\u00e9licien Kabuga would be a national hero, hailed as the philanthropist who bankrolled patriotism.<\/p>\n

RTLM broadcasters like Val\u00e9rie Bemeriki would be enshrined in media schools, models of \u201cnationalist communication.\u201d<\/p>\n

Gregoire Kayibanda Airport would still be standing, but we\u2019d have new additions: Mount Kigali renamed Mount Froduald Karamira in honor of the man who coordinated extermination with clerical precision and announced Hutu-Power.<\/p>\n

April 7th wouldn\u2019t mark the beginning of mourning, but rather a grotesque National Patriotism Day celebrating “those who worked”\u2014because yes, killing Tutsi was called gukora (to work).<\/p>\n

On Labour Day (May 1st), the best “worker” would receive a Silver Machete, perhaps engraved with the year and location of their most \u201cefficient\u201d contribution.<\/p>\n

Let me ask you plainly\u2014if Hitler had won, would there be a Holocaust Remembrance Day?<\/p>\n

Would there be an International Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide?<\/p>\n

Would we even know the word “genocide”? Or would “Never Again” have meant, “Once Again”?<\/p>\n

The true horror of genocide is not just mass murder. It is the intent to erase, to deny existence, to reduce a people to a past that never was, to obliterate them not only from land but from memory.<\/p>\n

In the case of Rwanda, they nearly succeeded.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s why we don\u2019t speak lightly of ‘Imiryango Yazimye’. These are not just statistics. These are names without faces, birthdays without celebrations, songs never sung, weddings never danced at, wisdom never passed down.<\/p>\n

Each family that was wiped out was a world lost.<\/p>\n

Each name is a collapsed constellation.<\/p>\n

Among those remembered that day was the family of Faustin Rucogoza, a man of principle, Minister of Information before the genocide\u2014he dared to warn the RTLM hate broadcasters. <\/p>\n

Some names we recall are more than statistics. Take Faustin Rucogoza\u2014once Minister of Information, he dared to warn the architects of RTLM.<\/p>\n

He told Kabuga, Nahimana, and Barayagwiza that they were poisoning Rwanda. For that, he was killed. And so did his family.<\/p>\n

Imagine, if the genocidaires had won, Kabuga would have a statue in downtown Kigali. He would be a national icon. Statues of him would adorn national plazas. His business empire would be hailed in textbooks.<\/p>\n

Children would be taught \u201cThe Kabuga Doctrine\u201d in school. And Rucogoza? Buried twice\u2014once in body, again in memory.<\/p>\n

But history did not go that way. Because people chose not to watch. Because the RPF chose not to negotiate with evil. Because survivors\u2014wounded, scarred, trembling\u2014rose to testify.<\/p>\n

The \u201cTheodore Sindikubwabo Institute of Leadership\u201d would run national conferences on \u201cRwandan values.\u201d<\/p>\n

Musicians would compete for the \u201cSimon Bikindi Award,\u201d named after the genocidal composer whose lyrics were machetes set to melody.<\/p>\n

Do you feel that pit in your stomach yet? Let it grow. That discomfort? That ache? That is the reverberation of genocide.<\/p>\n

That is what we escaped\u2014barely. And that is what makes the Rwandan Patriotic Army (RPA) victory not just a military triumph, but the preservation of life itself.<\/p>\n

It is important to remember the cost and the meaning of victory. The RPA did not just stop a genocide. They prevented the end of Rwanda.<\/p>\n

Make no mistake: Victory did not mean vengeance. It meant salvation.<\/p>\n

It meant memory. It meant that someone\u2014anyone\u2014would live to say:<\/p>\n

\u201cMy father\u2019s name was…\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cMy sister used to\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cOur family used to gather under the old tree\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

Without that victory, who would say these things? No one. Because entire bloodlines would have been vaporized.<\/p>\n

If the genocidaires had won, history would have been a lie. The truth would be buried in mass graves, and journalism would be RTLM.<\/p>\n

The most bloodthirsty clerics like Athanase Seromba, who ordered his church destroyed with Tutsi inside it, would be bishops today. The most efficient killer would be the Minister of Public Works.<\/p>\n

Do you see it now?<\/p>\n

The RPA did not just win a war. They rescued the truth from being rewritten by murderers. They saved dignity from being raped by hatred. They restored Rwanda from the brink of eternal shame.<\/p>\n

Think about and remember that \u2013the death of the Family is not just tragedy\u2014it is terror.<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s return to the word \u201ckuzima.\u201d To go out. To be extinguished.<\/p>\n

When a person dies, we say they passed away. But when a family dies out, when there\u2019s no one left to remember, no child to carry the name, we call that kuzima.<\/p>\n

It is not simply tragic. It is devastating. It is like watching the last spark go out in a land of darkness.<\/p>\n

They were murdered, not forgotten. Not by time, but by men.<\/p>\n

Do you understand what it means to sit in a crowd, and hear a name read that no one remembers? That the person exists only on paper? That the family has no living members?<\/p>\n

You sit in the silence of ghosts. You breathe the air of absence.<\/p>\n

And you understand, in that sacred moment, that forgetting is the final victory of genocide.<\/p>\n

Hadn\u2019t it been RPA under the command of President Paul Kagame, Rwanda could have been a museum of its own death.<\/p>\n

If the genocidaires had won, Rwanda today would be a cemetery of lies.<\/p>\n

Tourists would come to see the skulls of “terrorists”\u2014the same Tutsi victims whose murderers rewrote history.<\/p>\n

International conferences would applaud the “peace process” and shake hands with men who drank wine over bodies.<\/p>\n

Those who tried to hide or rescue Tutsi would be remembered as traitors.<\/p>\n

Somewhere, a boy would grow up being told that his father was a hero for killing \u201ccockroaches.\u201d<\/p>\n

He would carry his father\u2019s machete as a family heirloom.<\/p>\n

He would tell his son: \u201cThis is the tool of our independence.\u201d<\/p>\n

That did not happen. Because some fought back.<\/p>\n

We live in a world where that nightmare did not become reality. Not because of luck.<\/p>\n

But because of the sacrifice and determination of the Rwandan Patriotic Front and its army of sons and daughters who knew what was at stake.<\/p>\n

They were not just fighting for territory.<\/p>\n

They were resurrecting a future, refusing to let Rwanda be devoured by its own demons.<\/p>\n

In 1994, when the world turned its back, they did not. When the United Nations failed, they stepped forward.<\/p>\n

When international powers argued about \u201cacts of genocide,\u201d the RPF fought to stop the act itself.<\/p>\n

That is why, today, children know the names of their grandparents.<\/p>\n

That is why, at Cyasemakamba, we could weep, not in hopelessness, but in defiance of erasure.<\/p>\n

{{Memory as Resistance and Resurrection}}<\/p>\n

Let the world hear this: We did not gather at Cyasemakamba merely to mourn.<\/p>\n

We gathered to say: \u201cYou did not win.\u201d<\/p>\n

To the genocidaires\u2014dead or still hiding\u2014this is our message:<\/p>\n

You tried to make Rwanda a grave.<\/p>\n

We made it a garden.<\/p>\n

You tried to kill names.<\/p>\n

We resurrected them.<\/p>\n

You tried to extinguish a flame.<\/p>\n

It burns brighter than ever.<\/p>\n

Because of that victory, Rwanda is not a museum of its own death, but a living, breathing nation. One that remembers. One that mourns. One that rebuilds.<\/p>\n

But let us dwell just a moment longer in that nightmarish alternate universe\u2014where the genocidaires completed their \u201cwork,\u201d and the fire of Rwanda was not just dimmed, but extinguished.<\/p>\n

Imagine the global silence, the chilling indifference, the revised history books that would cast the killers as defenders of the nation, the mass murderers as \u201csaviors of culture,\u201d and their blood-soaked machetes as symbols of \u201cRwandan resilience.\u201d<\/p>\n

Imagine the children of killers proudly reciting lines from Bikindi Simon\u2019s songs in classrooms, being taught that \u201cIbinyoma by\u2019Inyenzi\u201d was a patriotic anthem rather than a call to exterminate a people.<\/p>\n

Imagine Seromba preaching from a cathedral rebuilt over the rubble of murdered congregants, urging the faithful to forgive their \u201cown people\u201d for “cleaning the nation.\u201d<\/p>\n

And yes, imagine a national \u201cRTLM Day,\u201d honoring \u201cthe power of free speech.\u201d Imagine \u201cKANGURA Avenue\u201d or \u201cHassan Ngeze Street\u201d.<\/p>\n

You think this is absurd? Of course it is. That\u2019s the point. Evil, when victorious, rebrands itself as virtue.<\/p>\n

We know this because history offers us grim blueprints. If Hitler had won, we wouldn\u2019t have had The Diary of Anne Frank, we\u2019d have had \u201cThe Chronicles of the Aryan Triumph.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Holocaust would have been a \u201cnecessary purge.\u201d And yes, the world would have never signed the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide\u2014because there would have been no one left to demand it.<\/p>\n

No Nuremberg Trials. No \u201cNever Again.\u201d Just silence. Just ash.<\/p>\n

So when we remember at Cyasemakamba, we are not just mourning. We are declaring a moral victory.<\/p>\n

We are affirming that the arc of our history, though scorched and scarred, did not bend to evil. It was pulled back, corrected, and lifted by the resolve of those who refused to let Rwanda vanish into darkness.<\/p>\n

The power of remembering \u2013 is not just the names, but the absences of those who had the names.<\/p>\n

A name, when spoken, resists extinction. But a family, when entirely wiped out, falls into a deeper abyss. That\u2019s what makes \u2018umuryango kuzima\u2019 such a haunting word. It isn\u2019t just death.<\/p>\n

It is disappearance. It\u2019s the vanishing of memory. The rupture of lineage. A whole constellation of love, struggle, joy, and hope\u2014snuffed out. As though it never existed.<\/p>\n

At Cyasemakamba, people were not just reading names. We were reconstructing shattered lineages with trembling hands.<\/p>\n

Each \u201cumuryango wazimye\u201d was a void too vast to comprehend\u2014a mother, a father, children, uncles, cousins, grandmothers, neighbors, dreams\u2026 all gone. Not buried. Obliterated.<\/p>\n

And yet we remember. Because we must not let silence win. We must not allow the killers a second victory through forgetfulness.<\/p>\n

The list\u201415,693 families, 68,871 lives\u2014is not finished. The count continues, like a wound refusing to scar over, each name surfacing like a ghost who refuses to go quietly into history\u2019s grave.<\/p>\n

In Rwandan culture, there is a blessing: \u201cIzina ryawe ntirikazime\u201d\u2014may your name not be extinguished. It\u2019s not just a wish to the loved one. It\u2019s a vow. A sacred responsibility. And so, we speak the names. We refuse the silence.<\/p>\n

{{The Theology of Horror}}<\/p>\n

If the genocidaires had won, Rwanda would have become a church of horror, with bishops who bless killers and sermons praising purity through murder.<\/p>\n

Athanase Seromba would have been elevated to Archbishop of Rwanda. He would have been celebrated as the \u201cBuilder of Faith,\u201d never mind that he ordered the destruction of a church with 2,000 Tutsis inside.<\/p>\n

Those martyrs would be erased\u2014casualties of \u201cjust war.\u201d<\/p>\n

Leon Mugesera\u2019s infamous words\u2014 \u201cthrow them in Nyabarongo\u201d\u2014would be recited as sacred prose, perhaps even included in a national catechism of patriotic speech.<\/p>\n

And Nyabarongo, renamed \u201cUmugezi w\u2019Ibyiringiro\u201d (The River of Hope), would host annual commemorations for the day the river \u201ccarried the enemies away.\u201d<\/p>\n

A Silver Machete for the Worker of the Year? Why not? When genocide becomes policy, then cruelty becomes merit. Then machetes are medals. Guns are garlands. And murderers are heroes.<\/p>\n

The President\u2019s office would have installed a portrait of Th\u00e9oneste Bagosora above the constitution. Kigali would rename itself \u201cBagosora City.\u201d<\/p>\n

And on 7th April, instead of mourning, there would be parades. Floats of dancers in red\u2014symbolizing blood\u2014singing of \u201cAkazi kageze aho kagomba kugera\u201d (the work reached where it had to).<\/p>\n

You shudder? You should. Because this is not just dystopian fiction\u2014it is the future that was within reach. The rope was tied. The matches were lit. And the world was looking away.<\/p>\n

{{Flame bearers Against the Darkness}}<\/p>\n

The Rwandan Patriotic Front, and its armed wing, the Rwandan Patriotic Army (RPA), did more than stop a genocide. They interrupted hell.<\/p>\n

They arrived not as perfect angels, but as human beings armed with an impossible mission: to outrun death itself.<\/p>\n

They did not ask, \u201cCan we negotiate?\u201d They did not wonder, \u201cWill the international community act?\u201d<\/p>\n

They did not hesitate when the world\u2019s powerful institutions\u2014the UN, the Western governments, the media\u2014chose platitudes over intervention.<\/p>\n

They saw fire and walked into it. They met the machete with courage. They answered annihilation with defiance.<\/p>\n

That is why RPF victory is not a political event. It is a moral axis. It is the thin red line that prevented evil from rewriting history.<\/p>\n

Without the RPF, there would be no Rwanda. Only a killing field. Only unmarked graves. Only silence.<\/p>\n

This is why it is not only appropriate but necessary to compare the RPF\u2019s role to that of the Allied forces in World War II.<\/p>\n

Had the Allies failed, the Nazi flag would wave across Europe, and Anne Frank\u2019s diary would be ash in a stove.<\/p>\n

Had the RPF failed, Gisenyi would be named Barayagwiza City, and the very notion of \u201cGenocide Against the Tutsi\u201d would be a punishable lie.<\/p>\n

The United Nations would never have dared to define genocide. Because who defines what they allowed to happen?<\/p>\n

But they failed. The genocidaires failed. Evil was not the last word.<\/p>\n

We rose from the ashes. Rwandans reclaimed themselves. Today, we speak in defiance of death. We write in resistance to erasure.<\/p>\n

We remember not only the names, but the love stories, the lullabies, the school songs, the dances at weddings, the family jokes\u2014everything that makes a people whole.<\/p>\n

We speak because we can. We remember because we must. We live because others died refusing to surrender.<\/p>\n

Let no one romanticize the killers again. Just like the old National Anthem praised the PARMEHUTU criminals.<\/p>\n

Let this be said clearly for every denier, every revisionist, every clever apologist who tries to \u201ccontextualize\u201d genocide:<\/p>\n

There was no justification. There was no war. There was only a planned, systematic annihilation of a people.<\/p>\n

To defend the genocidaires is to wish for the triumph of death over dignity. It is to spit on the graves of children. It is to declare war on truth.<\/p>\n

And to minimize the RPF\u2019s role is to deny the miracle of Rwanda\u2019s survival.<\/p>\n

Let us not pretend neutrality where there was none. Let us not balance horror with false \u201cboth-sides\u201d discourse. If the RPF had not won, then \u201cNever Again\u201d would have meant \u201cAgain and Again.\u201d<\/p>\n

{{The Fire That Did Not Die}}<\/p>\n

The word kuzima must haunt us. Because what was extinguished can never be relit.<\/p>\n

But let us take solace that some fire did survive. That amidst the ashes, some embers remained. And the RPF\u2014the improbable, determined, defiant RPF\u2014fanned those embers into life again.<\/p>\n

Rwanda today walks because it did not perish. It speaks because it was not silenced. It remembers because its memory was not entirely murdered.<\/p>\n

The genocidaires tried to kuzimya u Rwanda. But they failed. The light burns still.<\/p>\n

We who live now carry a duty more sacred than breath itself:<\/p>\n

To remember. To bear witness. To ensure that \u201cNever Again\u201d is not an empty phrase, but a lived truth.<\/p>\n

When we say \u201cIzina ryawe ntirikazime,\u201d we do not whisper it into silence.<\/p>\n

We shout it into history.<\/p>\n

We teach it in schools.<\/p>\n

We paint it on memorials.<\/p>\n

We sing it in poems.<\/p>\n

We write it in books.<\/p>\n

We weep it at Cyasemakamba or anywhere else.<\/p>\n

And when our time comes, we will pass it on\u2014not as burden, but as testimony.<\/p>\n

Because if the flame of a family goes out, and we let it, then genocide wins.<\/p>\n

But if we remember\u2014truly, deeply, defiantly\u2014then the very act of memory becomes resistance.<\/p>\n

So let us say it again:<\/p>\n

Not for one name.<\/p>\n

For 15,693 families.<\/p>\n

For the 68,871 souls whose fire they tried to kill.<\/p>\n

But above all\u2014let us say it for the ones yet to be born.<\/p>\n

So they may know, and say with pride:<\/p>\n

\u201cWe come from a people they tried to erase. But we are still here.\u201d That is the sacred duty of the living.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On May 31, 2025, close to 9,000 people stood or sat beneath the open sky and tents at Cyasemakamba in Ngoma District, not in celebration but in solemn remembrance.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":62,"featured_media":2000088513,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[72,75],"byline":[271],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-54361","opinion","type-opinion","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-opinions","tag-featured-news-home","tag-homenews","byline-tom-ndahiro"],"bylines":[{"id":271,"name":"Tom Ndahiro","slug":"tom-ndahiro","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":null}],"contributors":[{"id":271,"name":"Tom Ndahiro","slug":"tom-ndahiro","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":null}],"featured_image":{"id":2000088513,"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/gisz-c2b08.jpg","alt":"","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","width":0,"height":0,"sizes":{"thumbnail":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/gisz-c2b08.jpg","width":1,"height":1},"medium":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/gisz-c2b08.jpg","width":1,"height":1},"medium_large":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/gisz-c2b08.jpg","width":1,"height":1},"large":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/gisz-c2b08.jpg","width":1,"height":1},"full":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/gisz-c2b08.jpg","width":0,"height":0}}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/opinion\/54361","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/opinion"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/opinion"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/62"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=54361"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/opinion\/54361\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2000088513"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=54361"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=54361"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=54361"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=54361"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=54361"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}