Reconciliation

The man and the woman sit on either side of the interpreter. There is no tension between them. He is a farmer in his best clothes, brown pants and a long sleeved shirt neatly tucked in. He sits erect, his hands on his lap. She is a thin country woman, her long legs underneath a colourful wrap stretched out in front of her and a translucent green shawl thrown over her t-shirt. This man and this woman describe themselves as friends. He says, my children go to her home and her children come to mine. She says, if I have a problem I go to him and if he has a problem he comes to me.

Yet there is an unimaginable history of the worst sort between them. During Rwanda’s 1994 genocide he was a killer. She belonged to the hunted group. He was imprisoned for genocide crimes and eventually he confessed to killing seven members of her family.

Seventeen years later they sit together in peace. Our circle of internationalists and Rwandans, amongst who are many survivors, watches them carefully as they speak; the man in particular we scrutinize for evidence of dishonesty, manipulation, unauthenticity. But we are not seeing it. For the man and the woman, separately and together, their words and their bodies are in agreement. There is here clarity of heart and mind and purpose.

He is both contained and open. He does not prevaricate, yes, he says, we were ordered to kill but we chose to follow these orders. We had a choice. Yes, we were sensitized to hate but we made our own decisions. I am guilty; I am not a hero like the rescuers who made a decision to protect.

He says, he first time I confessed it was not genuine. It was strategic. But because of the Christians who came to the prison and spoke to us I decided to ask for forgiveness. I wrote her a letter.

Did you ask for forgiveness because the church told you to? Did they tell you that you would go to hell if you did not ask for forgiveness, a survivor challenges. No, he says calmly. I felt it in my heart, that I had done wrong, that I was guilty.

Oya, she said. No. No No. She said no for a long time. She would not consider forgiveness; she did not want to meet him. But her suffering pained her, her refusal to accept his apology pained her and so she changed her mind and now they sit here together. Her voice is strong now and her face is peaceful.

He is an exception, says one of the survivors. These two, they are green sprouts just visible across the desert to those who have been waiting for seventeen years for someone to ask forgiveness, who have given up on waiting, who are bitter about the lack of justice. They respect, they admire, they admit the possibility but it has not been their experience and they doubt that it ever will be.

He is sincere, says another survivor. She herself has had no such opportunity as the woman with patterned skirt and the calm eyes as the imprisoned murderers of her parents have never confessed and deny the crime. She is the toughest of judges but this man has passed her tests.

The repentant murderer says that those who have not confessed are angry that he has ‘broken the secret.’ What is the secret, a Rwandan challenges, what is the secret that you have broken? He says, the secret is that the killing of the Tutsi was planned and organized.

It is not good for the country that so many consider still consider that stating this truth is a betrayal.

There is an incentive in Rwanda to confession. Until recently closed, those who confessed could go to gacaca, the community courts. After gacaca, many were released from prison to TIG, a community work camp. The one we visited the day before this meeting was in the Bugesera, near the Burundi border, a farm of some 600 hectares where the ‘TIGists’ are cultivating cassava and maize to feed the nation. Better than doing nothing in prison, someone says in a voice tinged with hostility.

The incentive was double-edged. If you confessed you might get released, but if you confessed too much you might get upgraded to a higher level of criminality and stay in prison forever.

At the TIG camp there is a bit of a face-off. These people, mostly men but a few women also, are dressed poorly in ragged clothes and flip-flops. They sit on low benches. We are better dressed and some of us are given stools which offer a slight height advantage and many choose to stand. Some of the Rwandans are more interested in their mobile phones that what the TIGists have to say. A couple of people stay in the bus. The rest want something that does not seem to be quite forthcoming. There’s restlessness amongst the visitors and a still passivity amongst the camp members.

The survivors want a show of responsibility, they want honesty. They interrupt when a man talks at length about gratitude to the government of unity and reconciliation that has not taken revenge on them. We know all that, the survivors declare, that’s not what we have come to hear.

What they want is remorse and apology and a sincere acceptance of responsibility. What they get is mostly prevarication, a generic ‘we did wrong’ and more about the good government and about the bad government before, the one that instructed them to do bad things.

We know all that, the survivors say again. We don’t want to hear how you were sensitized to it. We want to know what you did, whether you have apologized, what you tell your children. They say, we tell them it was wrong, that you would get in trouble if you behave like we did, but the survivors are not placated. Don’t say we, they demand, say I. But they find that difficult.

The members of our group have different responses to TIG. It means nothing to me, says one. Another says, it was very good to meet them and it is positive that we come together like this. She left with hope, but another says, there was no sincerity except for perhaps a woman at the end who spoke from her heart.

But back in our circle, with the man and the woman, we are agreed. We are witnessing something astonishing, something that lifts the hearts of all of us, something that shows how relationship can blossom when the clear light of truth and regret shines on the darkness of the past.

This man, this woman, they have become friends and they offer us the possibility of peace. They have struggled to be where they are now. That one could do more than forgive, that one could become friends with the man who murdered your family is inconceivable and a testimony to the possibilities in the human heart. It has been hard, they tell us, it has not been easy, but we have found ease together. And so all of us are eased.