Rwanda's song of reconciliation

By Jon Silverman BBC correspondent, Rwanda

In parts of Rwanda there is still fear and suspicion

Ten years on from the genocide in Rwanda which claimed the lives of some 800,000 people, the government is embarking on an ambitious programme to consign the labels of Tutsi and Hutu to history.

It has set up reintegration camps for the two sides who, only a few years ago, were trying to kill each other.

The sound of many hands clapping in unison reached us like breakers pounding on a shoreline. Rhythmic, insistent.

Then, the amplified chant of a single human voice, distorted by a makeshift PA system and flung back from the surrounding bowl of hills.

On the far side of the banana grove, I could make out figures, hundreds of them, gyrating under a canvas awning.

In this camp, we do not talk about Hutu or Tutsi. We are all Rwandese now Augustin Lyako, former Rwanda Patriotic Army Captain

"What are they singing about?" I asked my guide. "Oh, peace, unity, how to live together. That sort of thing."

That "sort of thing" does not come easy in the best of times. In Rwanda, which only a decade ago, lost one in eight of its people to murder, singing about reconciliation might seem next to futile.

But the programme of transformation, since the bloodletting of 1994, goes much deeper than that. And this solidarity camp, in a part of Kigali called Kinyinya, is one of many which takes ex-combatants, some of whom have been eking out a perilous existence in the jungles of the Congo or Burundi, and attempts to turn them into citizens of the new Rwanda.

A new identity

The vast majority of those killed were Tutsi, the killers Hutu

A man, wearing a red sweater, introduces himself as Augustin Lyako, a former captain in the Rwanda Patriotic Army.

The RPA was the largely Tutsi force which put an end to the genocide. "I assume you are Tutsi," I say, as an opening gambit.

He looks pained. "In this camp, we do not talk about Hutu or Tutsi. We are all Rwandese now."

If ex-Captain Lyako can say that - and mean it - well, perhaps progress is being made.

His grandfather had 10 sons. Three took their families into exile in Tanzania or Uganda to escape the periodic slaughters instigated by their Hutu compatriots.

We are tired of chaos, we must come together FAR veteran

The other seven, all with large families, stayed behind and in 1994, paid the full price for being Tutsi. Not one person survived.

The men in the solidarity camp strike up another song of reconciliation, freshly composed by a former soldier in the FAR, the largely Hutu army which fought the RPA until forced to retreat beyond Rwanda's borders.

A FAR veteran, with only one leg, sways deftly to the rhythm. "Rwandese, we are tired of chaos, we must come together," say the words.

The instrument of this "coming together" is a national commission, which some have characterised as a fairly blunt tool for brainwashing people out of their pasts.

Discrimination outlawed

An anthropologist, who has lived in Rwanda for five years, told me that the government was storing up trouble by refusing to acknowledge that the past needed to be evaluated rather than tucked away summarily in a drawer marked "history".

A long conversation with the man credited with writing Rwanda's post-genocide constitution provides a rebuttal of this criticism.

Outsiders may accuse the government of being authoritarian, but we listened to what the people had to say when we wrote the constitution Tito Rutaremara, Ombudsman

Tito Rutaremara is cast in the mould of an African patriarch. More than six feet tall, straight-backed, with a halo of white hair, he has been appointed the country's first ombudsman.

"Look," he says, "outsiders may accuse the government of being authoritarian, but we listened to what the people had to say when we wrote the constitution.

"And for the first time since independence, discrimination is outlawed."

Walk through the teeming streets of Kigali and it is impossible to be certain who is Hutu and who Tutsi.

But when these same streets were choked with roadblocks manned by the fanatical Hutu militia - the interahamwe - even production of an identity card, stamped with an H for Hutu, was no guarantee of life, so ingrained was the belief that a Tutsi could be smelled out from 100 paces.

Genocide survivors

One of the worst incidents happened at Gikongoro

Despite the government's best efforts, there are parts of Rwanda, far from the capital, where such prejudice - with its consequences - still exists.

In the south-west, less than a day's walk from the border with Burundi, is Gikongoro.

You have to leave the tarmac road to climb to a hilltop called Murambi, a place of breathtaking beauty and solitude, where, in the space of 48 hours, some 40,000 Tutsi were slaughtered.

I am scared they will kill me or poison my daughter Vestine Ndikurayo, genocide survivor

That was 10 years ago. But Tutsi survivors - and they are but a handful in the surrounding population - are still being targeted for intimidation, and in some cases murder.

A woman trailed by a small child appears through the long grass. Vestine Ndikurayo was the only one of six siblings to survive the genocide.

"They know I could testify against them," she says of the Hutus. "That is why I'm scared they will kill me or poison my daughter."

If the daughter grows up unscathed, and if she has children who see themselves as Rwandese and neither Tutsi nor Hutu, then the government's programme of unity and reconciliation will be judged a success. It is a big "if".

From Our Own Correspondent was broadcast on Thursday, 29 January, 2004 at 1100 GMT on BBC Radio 4. Please check the programme schedules for World Service transmission times.