Gilbert Ndahayo director of ’Rwanda - Beyond the Deadly Pit’

Forgiveness -

Kubabarira is the Kinyarwanda verb that means "to forgive". It is a compositional word: kuba-barira. Kuba is "to be" or ’being", barira is "crying". This refers to two people crying for themselves and in the context of the genocide in Rwanda, forgiveness could refer to the survivor/victim crying about the loss and pain that it caused, and the perpetrator revealing the details of the crime he/she committed as well as remembering the heinous atrocities he committed.

The genocide is probably over but the memory lingers on. The tears are a mirror of the after-effects and wounds of genocide invisible to outsiders. The aspect of peace and the recovery process is very delicate but crucial. In the process of making the film, I didn’t want to cry because I had no space for forgiveness. I had to hold myself, although you can detect that my voice is choked with emotions and I appear wiping away any occasional tear. After the entire week of the court process, I was very tired. I felt like I was incapacitated by the perpetrators. My cameraman didn’t speak with me for two days after filming, because he thought he knew me but in reality he was not able to really understand me and to understand how I survived, while everyone else was killed.

Forgetting -

People tend to forget easily. With time memory gets distorted. But in the case of Rwandan genocide, irrespective of the government campaigns of forgiving which aim at attracting donors, people have not forgiven each other. I’ve forgiven but my young brother and my little sister have not. I don’t see myself moving around asking people to forgive, for I know how much it took me to get there. How I came to forgive the person who murdered my parents will be discussed in a book I am writing. I’ve spent 12 good years talking about genocide, confronting murderers, documenting the tragedy and I ended up finding so much bitterness inside of me. Thinking about it, the sadness could kill me.

Forgetting in my case is not even an option. How could I forget those two miles I had to run under heavy artillery, knowing that if I got caught, the Hutu militia would hack me with their machetes - at the same time knowing that anyone I left behind I would never see again alive. I can’t even imagine forgetting all the dead bodies on the roadblocks and all the launch missiles in my small cubicle. My assistant director, who is Kenyan, asked me "how did you survive?”. He could not even think of where to run as every 200 metres there were roadblocks. Rwandans can’t just forget. Period. What about all those memories full of human remains? What of the bodies of 52 members of my family that have yet to be found? That’s enough to remember.

Rwandan tradition -

Unfortunately, forgiveness is not part of Rwandan tradition. People have not forgiven themselves and their past. Forgiveness is very hard. I was in Spain two months ago, and I came to realize that there are things that the Spanish don’t speak about, like the Spanish Civil War. We can also speak of the Algerian War and France, Rwanda and France, etc. In the US where I live, Black people have not forgiven slavery and all other segregation crimes. I went to visit a Rwandan friend in Philadelphia and he took me to a pub. There was a black man who wore a tattoo that reads "god forgives, we don’t", and I learnt that he was a former Black Panther. This reminded me of my young brother who hasn’t found a space (and time) to forgive. What of the boy who infected you with HIV/Aids? What of the wife who betrayed you and divulged all your secrets on TV? Forgiveness, what is it? Forgiveness is, above everything, a luxury.

As I said, in Rwandan tradition forgiveness never existed. No crimes of that grandeur existed. But we can speak of so many other values such as ubupfura (the culture of dignity and honour) and ubumanzi (the culture of creativity and originality). These are values that people in the rest of the world can identify with. When there is an important issue, people sit down to talk and find answers. What could be the answer to a country full of dead remains and perpetrators? Should everyone go to jail? What of the women and the next generation?

As for commemorative events, they serve as a disremembering of genocide. The more people talk about it, the more they can overcome and get tired of the painful memories. But then there is this question: "Now that you have told me your story, what are you going to do? What’s your ‘new’ dream? Are you going to live with bitterness forever?" This is what I ask the people I interview, even perpetrators. Then I have to rephrase the question like: "Now you are here and you were sentenced. But once you serve your sentence and come back to the society you harmed, what are your feelings? Do you want to go back there or do you want to stay in jail?”

Western perspectives -

For Westerners and Europeans, they rather ask: "What happened over there?" Mostly they don’t have much time to go deep into it. Maybe it’s too painful. Maybe the funding doesn’t allow them to go into certain spheres or their editors censor their opinions. In the US, it’s all about making money and filling box offices. They just don’t care about Rwanda or an African story. When they do, it is only for the narrative perspective, about "Who is the audience?" and "How do I make it to the Oscars?"

The only way that anyone who wants to could understand the genocide is to analyze it through its stages. Like any other genocide, the genocide against the Tutsi has 8 stages. Rwanda is in its 8th stage now, which is the last: "denial".

At the stage I am in, I am not interested in whether it is a European, Chinese, Russian or American perspective looking at Rwanda, as long as they justify their theory. Whatever man. Truth lies in the eyes of the beholder. Truth? What is it? Does truth exist? The “truth” is a sum of truths. The veracity is of the perpetrator who committed the crime, because mainly the perpetrator knows everything. The survivor/victim was busy hiding all the time to save himself/herself. People should confront their own realities without interferences. Maybe the western perspective completes (and competes with) the Rwandan perspective. For me, the dead are dead. The only time people were to intervene was before the slaughter. Right now it doesn’t matter. The dead will not be resurrected.