By Muyiwa Adetiba

I just recently finished a most gripping book. Gripping in style; gripping in freshness; gripping in vividness and gripping in message.Line after uncomfortable line, the book forcefully reminded me of the likely consequence of the dangerous ethnic game we are playing in Nigeria. ‘Left To Tell’ is a personal account of the Rwandan Holocaust by a young lady who lost every member of her family to the brutality of that insane period.

Rwanda

Surviving As A Dubai Expart

Apart from a simplicity of style which still managed to capture both imagination and emotion, what makes the book compelling is that the writer could easily have been any young, sheltered, middle class person in any African country.Nothing in her up -bringing prepared her for the bestiality and the venom she encountered from erstwhile friends and neighbours during the Holocaust.

This writer, Immaculee Ilibagiza didn’t even know what ethnic group she belonged to until she was aged ten and an ethnic roll was called in her new school because her father, a respected man in the community, had tried to shield his children from ethnic bigotry. He had also accommodated and helped many people from different tribes. Unknown to her then, that tribal roll call could in future determine what school if any, she could attend as she would have to out- perform children from the ruling ethnic group in class to be eligible for certain schools. (Sounds familiar). More importantly as it turned out, it could also determine if she was destined to live or die.

There are three main tribes in the tiny country; Hutu, Tutsi and Twa. Hutus are about 85% of the population and at the time of the genocide, were in government. But it was not always so. Tutsis, although a minority, ruled Rwanda through a monarchical system before the advent of Germans and later Belgians.They were also originally favoured by the Belgian colonial masters until the revolt of the sixties by the Hutus which eventually led to independence.That revolt and subsequent discriminatory treatment of Tutsis by Hutus caused many Tutsis to flee into exile.

Those that remained had glass ceilings placed over their heads, making it difficult for them to get to positions of power and influence again. Meanwhile, Twa, the original inhabitants of the region, had been completely side lined and made ineffectual in the scheme of things. In spite of these tensions however, ordinary folks lived peaceably with each other. They inter-married. They helped each other out financially and emotionally. They were in many respects, indistinguishable from each other.(Sounds familiar again).

This was largely the state of affairs in Rwanda until the Easter of 1994 when the President’s plane was brought down. The Hutu extremists took over, and called for an extermination of their Tutsi brethren. The word cockroach was frequently used on State Radio and other media to describe the Tutsis. Every ‘patriotic’ Hutu was urged to go into the streets and houses to fish out the cockroaches and crush them by the head. The word cockroach was symbolic. A cockroach is a dirty pest. And a stubborn one. It doesn’t die easily and can survive many blows and situations. Only a decisive blow to the head can ensure its demise.

That was what the Hutu leadership wanted and got. The most brutal, the most bestial, the most dehumanising, the most humiliating murders were committed on the streets of Rwanda during those three months of bloodletting and ethnic cleansing. What was even more confounding was that it was not always easy to differentiate between the tribes by merely looking at them given years of intermarriage. Twa was supposed to be the pygmy, the shortest of the three tribes. Hutu was taller and stockier than Two With fatter noses.

A Tutsi was supposed to be slim, tall and maybe more graceful with pointed noses. So outside the National ID which they were all compelled to carry, and face recognition by erstwhile friends turned enemies, a lot of Hutus could have been killed compulsively just by being slim and tall and some Tutsis spared just by being short and stocky.It shows how hatred can make a people blind when your looks determine your fate.It was shameful, sad and inexplicable that long time neighbours and friends turned against each other for no other reason except that some leaders in Kigali said so. Worse, first cousins on the ‘wrong’ side of mixed marriages, meaning those with Tutsi fathers and Hutu mothers, were betrayed and killed.

That was the story Immaculee Ilibagiza had to tell. A story of how, at the beginning of the crisis, a childhood Hutu friend she tried to hug hissed and pushed her away; how a neighbour shouted her name where she was hiding saying he wanted to make up the number 400 of people he had killed with her head; how she watched helplessly as her kid brothers were pushed into the night to an inevitable death; how her senior brother’s skull was cracked open because the killers wanted to see the brain of a Masters’ degree holder; or women being tortured and raped in the open by known adversaries; how she and seven women stayed in a tiny toilet for 91 days.

It was also a story of how some Hutu families shielded some Tutsis at the risk of being branded traitors and killed. Or how some Hutus hid their Tutsi friends while going out in the day to kill other Tutsis. It was also the story of how she found God and the strength to forgive when she eventually met the man who killed her parent and burnt their house.

This story of how age long friends and even benefactors can turn so violently against each other is not exactly new to us. We have been down that road before. I was young then but I heard about people being pulled down from buses or trains and slaughtered because of their look or accent. People who have experienced this tribal hatred and barely escaped with their lives are still alive today. Yet, we seem not to have learnt any lesson. We are on that road again. Tribal intolerance with blames and counter blames is welling up among the major tribes.

Unfortunately, it seems to be the tribe that was at the centre of it all some fifty odd years ago that is again at the centre. Granted, there is a lot wrong with Nigeria. But other tribes try to fight the system and not each other. At least not overtly. But this tribe seems to be at odds with every other major tribe. It is puzzling to make a life and a living in a place and still harbour an ill -disguised contempt or hatred towards the host tribe. Something must be wrong somewhere.

Our people need to deemphasize clannishness. It is a dangerous weapon to use.