The Rwandan Genocide: The Long Way Home (Part 7)

Rwanda stands as perhaps the most profound case study in how societies rebuild after unimaginable trauma. When the genocide ended in July 1994, the new government faced a challenge that seemed impossible: create justice when 800,000 were dead, rebuild social trust when neighbors had murdered neighbors, and forge a shared future when the past was still bleeding.

Through intimate stories of Rwandans navigating impossible moral terrain, this episode explores what happens after the unimaginable – when justice, truth, survival and coexistence must somehow be balanced. Listen and witness one of history's most challenging and instructive examples of a nation finding its long way home.

Chapters

• 0:00 Claudine's Story: Rebuilding Among Killers
• 5:00 Blueprint of Nations Introduction
• 7:10 Justice Reimagined: The Gacaca Courts
• 12:36 Building From Bodies, Not Scratch
• 18:17 No More Hutus or Tutsis
• 22:01 Reconciliation Villages: Living Alongside Killers

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:02

The air carries the mingled scents of dust, cement and the sweet-sour aroma of fermentation from banana beer being brewed nearby. We are in Kigali in February 1995. The hills that earn Rwanda its nickname, land of a Thousand Hills, roll away into the distance, impossibly green, despite the devastation that has touched nearly every structure on them. A woman named Claudine is rebuilding the walls of what was once her home. She works methodically, with the practiced movements of someone who has always built things with her hands. The breaks are salvaged from ruins scattered across Kigali, some from her own collapsed walls, others from buildings whose owners will never return to claim them. Some still bear the faint brown stains that the rain hasn't washed away. Her ten-year-old daughter, marie, works beside her small hands, struggling with the weight of each brick but refusing to stop. Marie hasn't spoken more than a few words since April of last year. The psychologist at the aid station says this is normal, that many children have fallen silent. The words will come back when the world makes sense again, the psychologist explained. Claudine wonders if such a time will ever arrive.

Speaker 1: 1:36

As they work, a man approaches from down the dirt path. His gait is hesitant, almost reluctant, yet purposeful. Claudine sees him from the corner of her eye but continues working until he's about 20 meters away. Then she freezes the brick still in her hands. Marie presses against her mother's side. Seeing the sudden tension. The man stops keeping his distance. He is thin, like almost everyone these days, but his clothes are clean, his manner deferential. They regard each other in silence that seems to absorb all other sounds, the construction, the distant voices, even the birds. The distant voices, even the birds. I was there. He finally says his voice, barely carrying the distance between them. And they killed your family. I didn't stop them, I watched. I stood at the back of the crowd.

Speaker 1: 2:43

The break trembles slightly in Claudine's hands. For a moment it seems like she might throw it, might crush this confession where it stands. Her daughter's fingers dig into her skirt. Instead, claudine takes the brick carefully on the growing wall, each movement, deliberate, controlled. I know she says her voice flat. I saw you there Standing behind the men with machetes. You were wearing a blue shirt. You didn't cheer like the others, but you didn't help us either.

Speaker 1: 3:18

The men's eyes drop to the ground. No, he says I didn't. My husband, claudine, continues each word precise as the brick she lays called your name before they cut him. He called to you because you had shared a walkway together the week before. He thought you might help. The man's shoulders curved inward, as though their words carried physical weight. I remember he says. Another silence stretches between them filled with unspoken details. Both remember with perfect clarity Not forgiveness, not yet, perhaps not ever, but something else the first fragile foundation of a terrible, necessary conversation in a country where such conversations are happening in thousands of locations, each one its own delicate negotiation between justice, survival and the cold reality that the living must find some way to continue living alongside one another. Tomorrow, the man says finally, when you continue building, I will come to help. He'll be back. Tomorrow, claudine tells her daughter, not knowing if she wants it to be true. In Rwanda now, this is how we live. Those who destroy it must help rebuild. The next day, when the man returns carrying his own trowel and small bag of cement, claudine says nothing, but after a moment she hands him a brick. He takes it, their fingers not touching, and begin to work on the far side of the unfinished wall.

Speaker 1: 5:00

This is part seven of our series on the Rwandan genocide the Long Way Home. You know how they say you can't understand someone until you walk a mile in their shoes. Well, I'd argue you can't understand a nation until you've walked through its history, not just the highlight reel or the sanitized version you find in textbooks. I mean really getting into its DNA, those defining moments that shaped everything that came after, those moments where paths were chosen, where decisions were made in palaces and backrooms and city streets that changed the course of millions of lives. I'm your host, paul, and this is Double Helix Blueprint of Nations, where we unravel the genetic code of countries through their most transformative moments. Think of it like ancestry testing, but for entire nations. We dig deep into the historical DNA, finding those crucial moments that made countries who they are today. In our journey through Rwanda's DNA, we witnessed the construction of ethnic identity under colonialism, the machinery of division built through decades of political manipulation, the execution of genocide with terrifying efficiency and the calculated indifference of a world that chose to look away. Today we enter a new phase, perhaps the most profound and challenging of it all. How do you rebuild a nation when your neighbors killed your family? How do you rebuild a nation when your neighbors killed your family? How do you create justice when your judges lie in mass graves? How do you forge a shared future when the past is still bleeding? These aren't abstract questions. They're the daily reality faced by Rwandans in the aftermath of the hundred days that shattered everything.

Speaker 1: 7:09

Let me take you to a moment. We're in a classroom that's been converted into a courtroom in the hills outside of Butare. Wooden benches face a table where nine people, elected from the community for their integrity, sit in judgment. This is a gachacha court, an adaptation of traditional Rwandan justice for an unprecedented situation. Today, a man faces his neighbors and confesses to killing 17 people during the genocide. Among his judges is the sister of two of his victims. In any conventional understanding of justice, this scene shouldn't work. It should collapse under the weight of its own contradictions Perpetrators judging perpetrators, survivors seeking truth from their family's killers, a traumatized community trying to heal itself without destroying what remains. Yet somehow, imperfectly, painfully, it functions. In this classroom, rwanda is attempting something extraordinary reinventing justice itself. This is the story of what happens after genocide Not just the tribunals and the reconciliation programs, but the intimate daily negotiations between people who must somehow learn to live together again. It's the story of how Rwanda had to build not just new institutions but a new understanding of what justice, truth and coexistence could mean.

Speaker 1: 8:37

In the aftermath of the unimaginable, our journey begins on July 1994, as the RPF takes control of the devastated country. The genocide has left Rwanda not just with mass graves, but with the challenges that would seem insurmountable Over 95,000 children orphaned, infrastructure destroyed, government institutions collapsed and a population deeply traumatized by what they had experienced, whether as survivors, perpetrators or witnesses. Let me take you to another moment that captures this devastation. We're in a government office in Kigali, august 1994. Paul Kagame, the leader of the RPF, is now the de facto ruler of Rwanda. He's reviewing the situation with his advisors. The numbers are staggering Approximately 800,000 dead. Two million refugees fled to neighboring countries, nearly every Tutsi family decimated, thousands of women systematically raped, many now HIV positive. The treasury looted, courts destroyed, police forces implicated in genocide Police forces implicated in genocide.

Speaker 1: 10:06

One advisor, a legal expert who had spent the genocide years in exile, puts it bluntly we're not rebuilding a nation, we're building one from scratch. Kagami looks at the map of Rwanda spread before him and replies no, not from scratch. From bodies, from trauma, from hatred. That is much harder than scratch. This was the challenge facing Rwanda Not just physical reconstruction, but psychological, social and moral rebuilding. How would they approach it? What choices would they make and how would those choices shape the Rwanda that we see today? The story of post-genocide Rwanda is in many ways the story of an impossible dilemma.

Speaker 1: 10:52

Justice demanded accountability, but with more than 100,000 people implicated in genocide, conventional courts would take more than a century to try all cases. Healing requires truth, but truth without consequences seems unconscionable. Rebuilding demanded unity. But how do you unite what has been so brutally torn apart? You unite what has been so brutally torn apart. There is a planning meeting in late 1994 where these questions are being debated. Rwanda's new Minister of Justice, faustin Ntansilyayo, is explaining the scale of the challenge. Our conventional courts could process maybe 200 cases per year. At that rate it would take 500 years to try everyone. By then both victims and perpetrators would be long dead. That is injustice, it's postponement.

Speaker 1: 11:52

The solution they began developing would merge traditional Rwandan dispute resolution practices with modern legal concepts the Gacaca court system, traditional Rwandan dispute resolution practices with modern legal concepts the gachacha court system. But this wasn't merely a practical choice. It represented a profound philosophical shift in how justice could work after mass atrocity In Kinyarwanda. Gachacha means grass, a reference to the setting where communities traditionally gathered to resolve conflicts. Now this concept would be transformed into a national system of justice involving the entire population. Not justice imposed from above, but justice emerging from within broken communities themselves. But Cachacha was just one part of the complex machinery of post-genocide recovery.

Speaker 1: 12:42

Let me take you to another moment that captures a different dimension of this process Rene Women's Cooperative in Eastern Rwanda, 1996. 27 women, all genocide survivors, many widows, many rape victims, are creating a business together. They're weaving baskets in traditional Rwandan patterns, their fingers working with practice, precision. What's remarkable isn't just their economic activity, it's that amongst these women are both Hutus and Tutsis. Some lost families to the genocide. Others had husbands who participated in the killing. Yet here they sit side by side, their conversation sparse but functional, their shared work creating something neither could manage alone. One woman explains it with stark simplicity my husband is dead, her husband killed him before fleeing to Congo. Neither of us can feed our children alone. So we work together. Is it friendship? No, but it's surviving. This is the complex reality of post-genocide Rwanda.

Speaker 1: 13:58

Pragmatic coexistence preceding true reconciliation, necessity driving proximity that emotion could never achieve it's messy, uncomfortable, incomplete and yet in its way remarkable. Remember Claudine rebuilding her home at the beginning of our episode. Let's return to her story because it captures something essential about Rwanda's path forward. When the men who watched her family die returned to help rebuild her home, it wasn't a Hollywood moment of forgiveness and redemption. It was the beginning of a process messy, painful, filled with silences and unspoken recriminations. For the first week, claudine later testified in her local Gachacha court. We didn't speak while we worked. By the second week, he began telling me details about how my family died terrible things I didn't want to hear but needed to know. By the third week, I was asking questions, not because I had forgiven him, but because the truth, even when it's unbearable, is something solid to build upon. This, perhaps, is the essence of Rwanda's approach to post-genocide recovery Truth before reconciliation, acknowledgement before forgiveness, justice not as punishment alone, but as the foundation for a future that, while forever marked by the past, is not eternally imprisoned by it. But there's another dimension to Rwanda's recovery that we must examine the political one.

Speaker 1: 15:44

The RPF government, led by Paul Kagame, faced an extraordinary challenge how to build a functioning state within the ashes of genocide while preventing its recurrence. The choices made in those early days would shape Rwanda's trajectory in profound ways, creating both remarkable successes and troubling contradictions. Let me take you to a cabinet meeting in early 1995. Kagame is addressing his ministers about the government's approach to ethnicity. From now on, he says there are no Hutus or Tutsis in Rwanda. There are only Rwandans. Classifications that were used to divide us are now forbidden. We will not record ethnicity on ID cards. We will not teach it in schools. We will build a national identity that transcends the categories that were used to destroy us.

Speaker 1: 16:41

This policy, the official eraser of ethnic identification, represents one of the most radical approaches to post-conflict identity manage in modern history. On the one hand, it directly addresses the colonial classifications that enabled genocide. On the other, critics would argue it creates a different kind of silence, one that makes discussing ongoing ethnic tensions nearly impossible. A human rights activist reflected we went from a country where ethnicity was everything to one where ethnicity is nothing, at least officially. But people don't forget who is who. The silence doesn't erase memory, it just pushes it underground.

Speaker 1: 17:28

This tension between remarkable progress and troubling constraint runs through everything in post-genocide Rwanda. The country has achieved extraordinary economic growth, with GDP increasing threefold since 1994. Infrastructure has been rebuilt. Health outcomes have improved dramatically. Women hold more than 60% of the parliamentary seats, the highest percentage in the world. Yet political opposition is tightly controlled, media freedoms are limited and critics of the government often find themselves marginalized or even worse. As one Rwandan intellectual put it, we have safety, stability, economic growth After what we experience. These are not small things, but what about the space to disagree, to criticize, to remember differently? These questions remained unanswered.

Speaker 1: 18:33

Every April, rwanda enters a period of national mourning, called Kwebuka, to remember in Kinyarwanda, for 100 days, the same length as the genocide, the nation engages in organized commemoration. Let me take you to one such ceremony at the Niyamata Memorial Church, where more than 10,000 people were killed. Survivors and perpetrators sit side by side. Some perpetrators have served their sentences and returned to communities. Others receive amnesty for confessions through the Gachacha courts. The ceremony involves testimonies, songs, prayers from different faiths. There are no ethnic labels used anymore, only those who were targeted and those who participated.

Speaker 1: 19:24

The official narrative is one of unity, of looking forward while honoring the dead, but afterwards, in private conversations, the complexity emerges. A survivor confides. I sit next to men who killed my family. I listen to official speeches about reconciliation. I participate because what choice do I have? Rwanda is too small for us to live separately, but inside, inside, I still carry all of it. This is the reality of Rwanda's long path home. A journey that involves both remarkable achievement and painful compromise, both genuine healing and strategic silence. A path that raises profound questions about what societies need after atrocity. Justice or stability, truth or unity, reconciliation or transformation. Let me take you to one more moment that captures both the promise and the limitations of Rwanda's approach.

Speaker 1: 20:32

We're in a reconciliation village in Niyamata 2002. These planned communities, created by the non-profit organization Prison Fellowship Rwanda, house genocide survivors alongside perpetrators who have confessed, served sentences and asked forgiveness from victims' families. In the center of the village, a perpetrator named Emmanuel is building a house for Josephine, a woman whose husband he killed. It's raining, but Emmanuel continues working meticulously laying bricks. Josephine brings some tea, her hands briefly touching as she passes the cup.

Speaker 1: 21:14

A visitor asks how this is possible, this proximity, this cooperation. Josephine responds with words that stop the visitor cold. You ask if I have forgiven, perhaps, perhaps not, but I have agreed to live. And here to live means to live alongside those who killed our families. We share meals, we build each other's houses, we attend each other's family weddings and funerals. Is this reconciliation? I don't know, but it is the only way Rwanda can move forward. Emmanuel adds, more softly what I did cannot be undone. I cannot expect forgiveness, but I can build this house. I carry water when the well is far. I can ensure her children have someone to help with harvest. Justice asks for my confession and my prison years, but my conscience asks for a lifetime of repair. This exchange tells us something profound about Rwanda's unique path. It didn't wait for emotional reconciliation before beginning practical coexistence. It didn't demand that survivors feel forgiveness before creating structures that require cooperation. In doing so, it inverted what many would consider the natural order of healing.

Speaker 1: 22:44

In Kinyarwanda, there is a concept called Ndi Umunyarwanda I am Rwandan. It represents the government's vision of a unified national identity that transcends the ethnic divisions of the past. Is this a form of healing or a form of erasure? The answer, perhaps, is that it is both A necessary myth and a genuine aspiration, a political strategy and a personal journey, a way of moving forward while still carrying the weight of history. Next time, on Double Helix, we'll explore how Rwanda's tragedy rippled outward, triggering further conflict in neighboring Congo and destabilizing the entire Great Lakes region. We'll examine how the international community, having failed to prevent genocide, struggled to manage its aftermath. We'll witness how the seeds planted in those early post-genocide years would grow into both remarkable recovery and troubling constraint. Join us next time for our final episode on the Rwandan genocide. Until then, thank you for listening. We'll see you soon. ©. Transcript Emily Beynon.