A sacred fire burnedâ€"not in flames, but in voices, in tears, in stories told and retold. In the names read. In the lives reclaimed.
They had gathered to honor what in Kinyarwanda is painfully called 'Imiryango yazimye'â€"families that were wiped out, lineages extinguished during the 1994 Genocide Against the Tutsi.
Let the weight of that word 'kuzima' sink in.
Not just a life lost. Not just a person buried. But an entire family lineâ€"snuffed 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.
They were the dead who left no mourners.
A staggering 15,693 families. Roughly 68,871 people. Extinguished.
This was not death by nature, by time, by misfortune. This was the deliberate act of genocideâ€"the erasure of memory, of ancestry, of roots and fruit, of stories, voices, names.
These weren't just people killed; they were legacies burned, whole family trees cut at the roots and tossed into the abyss.
Kinyarwanda, in its richness, gives us a blessing that encapsulates the essence of human continuity: "Izina ryawe ntirikazime" â€" May your name never die out.
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?
We sat at Cyasemakamba. We read their names. We resurrect their presence through remembrance. Because we must.
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 mindâ€"not, 'What if the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) had not arrived in time?' but something even darker:
What if the genocidaires had succeeded? What if they had finished their work? It is a darkness that nearly won.
Let that sink inâ€"not 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.
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.
Those who dared hide their neighborsâ€"those Hutu men and women of courageâ€"would be buried alongside them.
There would be no one to whisper a name. No one to tend a grave.
In this grotesque alternate Rwanda:
Félicien Kabuga would be a national hero, hailed as the philanthropist who bankrolled patriotism.
RTLM broadcasters like Valérie Bemeriki would be enshrined in media schools, models of 'nationalist communication.'
Gregoire Kayibanda Airport would still be standing, but we'd have new additions: Mount Kigali renamed Mount Froduald Karamira in honor of the man who coordinated extermination with clerical precision and announced Hutu-Power.
April 7th wouldn't mark the beginning of mourning, but rather a grotesque National Patriotism Day celebrating "those who worked"â€"because yes, killing Tutsi was called gukora (to work).
On Labour Day (May 1st), the best "worker" would receive a Silver Machete, perhaps engraved with the year and location of their most 'efficient' contribution.
Let me ask you plainlyâ€"if Hitler had won, would there be a Holocaust Remembrance Day?
Would there be an International Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide?
Would we even know the word "genocide"? Or would "Never Again" have meant, "Once Again"?
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.
In the case of Rwanda, they nearly succeeded.
That's why we don't 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.
Each family that was wiped out was a world lost.
Each name is a collapsed constellation.
Among those remembered that day was the family of Faustin Rucogoza, a man of principle, Minister of Information before the genocideâ€"he dared to warn the RTLM hate broadcasters.
Some names we recall are more than statistics. Take Faustin Rucogozaâ€"once Minister of Information, he dared to warn the architects of RTLM.
He told Kabuga, Nahimana, and Barayagwiza that they were poisoning Rwanda. For that, he was killed. And so did his family.
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.
Children would be taught 'The Kabuga Doctrine' in school. And Rucogoza? Buried twiceâ€"once in body, again in memory.
But history did not go that way. Because people chose not to watch. Because the RPF chose not to negotiate with evil. Because survivorsâ€"wounded, scarred, tremblingâ€"rose to testify.
The 'Theodore Sindikubwabo Institute of Leadership' would run national conferences on 'Rwandan values.'
Musicians would compete for the 'Simon Bikindi Award,' named after the genocidal composer whose lyrics were machetes set to melody.
Do you feel that pit in your stomach yet? Let it grow. That discomfort? That ache? That is the reverberation of genocide.
That is what we escapedâ€"barely. And that is what makes the Rwandan Patriotic Army (RPA) victory not just a military triumph, but the preservation of life itself.
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.
Make no mistake: Victory did not mean vengeance. It meant salvation.
It meant memory. It meant that someoneâ€"anyoneâ€"would live to say:
'My father's name was...'
'My sister used to…'
'Our family used to gather under the old tree…'
Without that victory, who would say these things? No one. Because entire bloodlines would have been vaporized.
If the genocidaires had won, history would have been a lie. The truth would be buried in mass graves, and journalism would be RTLM.
The most bloodthirsty clerics like Anastase 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.
Do you see it now?
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.
Think about and remember that â€"the death of the Family is not just tragedyâ€"it is terror.
Let's return to the word 'kuzima.' To go out. To be extinguished.
When a person dies, we say they passed away. But when a family dies out, when there's no one left to remember, no child to carry the name, we call that kuzima.
It is not simply tragic. It is devastating. It is like watching the last spark go out in a land of darkness.
They were murdered, not forgotten. Not by time, but by men.
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?
You sit in the silence of ghosts. You breathe the air of absence.
And you understand, in that sacred moment, that forgetting is the final victory of genocide.
Hadn't it been RPA under the command of President Paul Kagame, Rwanda could have been a museum of its own death.
If the genocidaires had won, Rwanda today would be a cemetery of lies.
Tourists would come to see the skulls of "terrorists"â€"the same Tutsi victims whose murderers rewrote history.
International conferences would applaud the "peace process" and shake hands with men who drank wine over bodies.
Those who tried to hide or rescue Tutsi would be remembered as traitors.
Somewhere, a boy would grow up being told that his father was a hero for killing 'cockroaches.'
He would carry his father's machete as a family heirloom.
He would tell his son: 'This is the tool of our independence.'
That did not happen. Because some fought back.
We live in a world where that nightmare did not become reality. Not because of luck.
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.
They were not just fighting for territory.
They were resurrecting a future, refusing to let Rwanda be devoured by its own demons.
In 1994, when the world turned its back, they did not. When the United Nations failed, they stepped forward.
When international powers argued about 'acts of genocide,' the RPF fought to stop the act itself.
That is why, today, children know the names of their grandparents.
That is why, at Cyasemakamba, we could weep, not in hopelessness, but in defiance of erasure.
Memory as Resistance and Resurrection
Let the world hear this: We did not gather at Cyasemakamba merely to mourn.
We gathered to say: 'You did not win.'
To the genocidairesâ€"dead or still hidingâ€"this is our message:
You tried to make Rwanda a grave.
We made it a garden.
You tried to kill names.
We resurrected them.
You tried to extinguish a flame.
It burns brighter than ever.
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.
But let us dwell just a moment longer in that nightmarish alternate universeâ€"where the genocidaires completed their 'work,' and the fire of Rwanda was not just dimmed, but extinguished.
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 'saviors of culture,' and their blood-soaked machetes as symbols of 'Rwandan resilience.'
Imagine the children of killers proudly reciting lines from Bikindi Simon's songs in classrooms, being taught that 'Ibinyoma by'Inyenzi' was a patriotic anthem rather than a call to exterminate a people.
Imagine Seromba preaching from a cathedral rebuilt over the rubble of murdered congregants, urging the faithful to forgive their 'own people' for "cleaning the nation.'
And yes, imagine a national 'RTLM Day,' honoring 'the power of free speech.' Imagine 'KANGURA Avenue' or 'Hassan Ngeze Street'.
You think this is absurd? Of course it is. That's the point. Evil, when victorious, rebrands itself as virtue.
We know this because history offers us grim blueprints. If Hitler had won, we wouldn't have had The Diary of Anne Frank, we'd have had 'The Chronicles of the Aryan Triumph.'
The Holocaust would have been a 'necessary purge.' And yes, the world would have never signed the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocideâ€"because there would have been no one left to demand it.
No Nuremberg Trials. No 'Never Again.' Just silence. Just ash.
So when we remember at Cyasemakamba, we are not just mourning. We are declaring a moral victory.
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.
The power of remembering â€" is not just the names, but the absences of those who had the names.
A name, when spoken, resists extinction. But a family, when entirely wiped out, falls into a deeper abyss. That's what makes 'umuryango kuzima' such a haunting word. It isn't just death.
It is disappearance. It's the vanishing of memory. The rupture of lineage. A whole constellation of love, struggle, joy, and hopeâ€"snuffed out. As though it never existed.
At Cyasemakamba, people were not just reading names. We were reconstructing shattered lineages with trembling hands.
Each 'umuryango wazimye' was a void too vast to comprehendâ€"a mother, a father, children, uncles, cousins, grandmothers, neighbors, dreams… all gone. Not buried. Obliterated.
And yet we remember. Because we must not let silence win. We must not allow the killers a second victory through forgetfulness.
The listâ€"15,693 families, 68,871 livesâ€"is 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's grave.
In Rwandan culture, there is a blessing: 'Izina ryawe ntirikazime'â€"may your name not be extinguished. It's not just a wish to the loved one. It's a vow. A sacred responsibility. And so, we speak the names. We refuse the silence.
The Theology of Horror
If the genocidaires had won, Rwanda would have become a church of horror, with bishops who bless killers and sermons praising purity through murder.
Anastase Seromba would have been elevated to Archbishop of Rwanda. He would have been celebrated as the 'Builder of Faith,' never mind that he ordered the destruction of a church with 2,000 Tutsis inside.
Those martyrs would be erasedâ€"casualties of 'just war.'
Leon Mugesera's infamous wordsâ€" 'throw them in Nyabarongo'â€"would be recited as sacred prose, perhaps even included in a national catechism of patriotic speech.
And Nyabarongo, renamed 'Umugezi w'Ibyiringiro' (The River of Hope), would host annual commemorations for the day the river 'carried the enemies away.'
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.
The President's office would have installed a portrait of Théoneste Bagosora above the constitution. Kigali would rename itself 'Bagosora City.'
And on 7th April, instead of mourning, there would be parades. Floats of dancers in redâ€"symbolizing bloodâ€"singing of 'Akazi kageze aho kagomba kugera' (the work reached where it had to).
You shudder? You should. Because this is not just dystopian fictionâ€"it is the future that was within reach. The rope was tied. The matches were lit. And the world was looking away.
Flame bearers Against the Darkness
The Rwandan Patriotic Front, and its armed wing, the Rwandan Patriotic Army (RPA), did more than stop a genocide. They interrupted hell.
They arrived not as perfect angels, but as human beings armed with an impossible mission: to outrun death itself.
They did not ask, 'Can we negotiate?' They did not wonder, 'Will the international community act?'
They did not hesitate when the world's powerful institutionsâ€"the UN, the Western governments, the mediaâ€"chose platitudes over intervention.
They saw fire and walked into it. They met the machete with courage. They answered annihilation with defiance.
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.
Without the RPF, there would be no Rwanda. Only a killing field. Only unmarked graves. Only silence.
This is why it is not only appropriate but necessary to compare the RPF's role to that of the Allied forces in World War II.
Had the Allies failed, the Nazi flag would wave across Europe, and Anne Frank's diary would be ash in a stove.
Had the RPF failed, Gisenyi would be named Barayagwiza City, and the very notion of 'Genocide Against the Tutsi' would be a punishable lie.
The United Nations would never have dared to define genocide. Because who defines what they allowed to happen?
But they failed. The genocidaires failed. Evil was not the last word.
We rose from the ashes. Rwandans reclaimed themselves. Today, we speak in defiance of death. We write in resistance to erasure.
We remember not only the names, but the love stories, the lullabies, the school songs, the dances at weddings, the family jokesâ€"everything that makes a people whole.
We speak because we can. We remember because we must. We live because others died refusing to surrender.
Let no one romanticize the killers again. Just like the old National Anthem praised the PARMEHUTU criminals.
Let this be said clearly for every denier, every revisionist, every clever apologist who tries to 'contextualize' genocide:
There was no justification. There was no war. There was only a planned, systematic annihilation of a people.
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.
And to minimize the RPF's role is to deny the miracle of Rwanda's survival.
Let us not pretend neutrality where there was none. Let us not balance horror with false 'both-sides' discourse. If the RPF had not won, then 'Never Again' would have meant 'Again and Again.'
The Fire That Did Not Die
The word kuzima must haunt us. Because what was extinguished can never be relit.
But let us take solace that some fire did survive. That amidst the ashes, some embers remained. And the RPFâ€"the improbable, determined, defiant RPFâ€"fanned those embers into life again.
Rwanda today walks because it did not perish. It speaks because it was not silenced. It remembers because its memory was not entirely murdered.
The genocidaires tried to kuzimya u Rwanda. But they failed. The light burns still.
We who live now carry a duty more sacred than breath itself:
To remember. To bear witness. To ensure that 'Never Again' is not an empty phrase, but a lived truth.
When we say 'Izina ryawe ntirikazime,' we do not whisper it into silence.
We shout it into history.
We teach it in schools.
We paint it on memorials.
We sing it in poems.
We write it in books.
We weep it at Cyasemakamba or anywhere else.
And when our time comes, we will pass it onâ€"not as burden, but as testimony.
Because if the flame of a family goes out, and we let it, then genocide wins.
But if we rememberâ€"truly, deeply, defiantlyâ€"then the very act of memory becomes resistance.
So let us say it again:
Not for one name.
For 15,693 families.
For the 68,871 souls whose fire they tried to kill.
But above allâ€"let us say it for the ones yet to be born.
So they may know, and say with pride:
'We come from a people they tried to erase. But we are still here.' That is the sacred duty of the living.
Tom Ndahiro
Source : https://en.igihe.com/opinion/article/from-oblivion-to-memory-and-the-meaning-of-rpf-s-victory
