The Independent Uganda: You get the Truth we Pay the Price
COMMENT | ANDREW PI BESI | Thursday, April 7th, 1994, remains one of the most vivid days of my time at Ntare School. Not because we fully understood what was unfolding, but because we sensed, almost instinctively, that something had shifted. The mood among some of our Banyarwanda classmates and friends (Mpagazehe, Karyeija, Mugabo, and others) had turned sombre, heavy with unspoken worry.
Later that evening, convinced that our headmaster, Stephen Kamuhanda, and his staff were asleep, we gathered quietly around Mugarura Spencer’s old Panasonic radio. We tuned into the Kenya Broadcasting Service. What came through the crackling airwaves was chilling: President Juvénal Habyarimana’s plane had been shot down as it attempted to land in Kigali. It crashed and burned. He was dead. So too was Burundi’s president, Cyprien Ntaryamira.
That single moment marked the beginning of the execution of one of the darkest chapters in modern history.
What followed was not a spontaneous breakdown of order but a calculated and systematic genocide. Over the next 100 days, nearly one million Tutsi and moderate Hutu were slaughtered—many dumped into rivers, lakes, or hastily dug graves. It was a tragedy engineered through years of ideological conditioning, bureaucratic precision, and the deliberate manipulation of identity.
Today, Kigali stands transformed. Its greenery, order, and architectural ambition reflect a country that has chosen discipline and renewal over despair. Rwanda has become, for many Africans, a symbol of what is possible when a nation confronts its past with clarity and rebuilds with purpose. For others, particularly those invested in disorder disguised as liberty, it is an uncomfortable example.
As Rwanda and its diaspora observe Kwibuka, the act of remembrance is not merely ceremonial. It is a conscious refusal to forget, and a warning against repetition. Etched on a stone wall at the Genocide Memorial in Kigali is a haunting reminder: “If you knew me, and you really knew yourself, you would not have killed me.” It is a simple sentence, yet it captures the entire tragedy: the collapse of empathy, the corruption of identity, and the terrifying ease with which the human being can be turned against the human.
Yet even as candles are lit and names are recalled, the region remains unsettled.
East Africa today faces a quiet but dangerous instability, one too often spoken of in hushed tones or ignored altogether. The continued dalliance of the Democratic Republic of Congo with the remnants of the genocidal forces, the FDLR, surely must be a matter of grave concern. That these elements, rooted in the same ideology that fuelled the 1994 genocide, continue to find space within the region is troubling enough. More troubling still is the reluctance of the East African Community to speak with clarity and conviction on the matter. Silence, in such circumstances, is not neutrality; it is complicity. A regional bloc that aspires to integration and stability cannot afford ambiguity when confronted with forces that represent the very antithesis of both.
The deeper historical roots of the genocide also demand reflection. As historian Martin Meredith notes, Belgian colonial policy played a decisive role in distorting relations between Hutu and Tutsi. What had once been fluid social distinctions were hardened into rigid ethnic identities, codified through administrative systems such as identity cards. Even when colonial officials later recognized the danger and proposed abolishing these labels, the political logic of division had already taken hold. The idea that majority rule must necessarily mean Hutu rule entrenched a dangerous arithmetic—one in which identity became a tool of exclusion, and eventually, extermination.
There is a lesson here that extends far beyond Rwanda.
Africa’s post-colonial challenge has never been simply about political independence; it has been about moral and institutional clarity. And it is here that we, the contemporary elite, must confront an uncomfortable truth: corruption is not merely an economic crime; it is a civilizational threat. When corruption becomes normalised, it erodes the ethical foundations upon which societies are built. It fosters moral decadence where public office is reduced to private gain and national purpose is subordinated to personal accumulation.
In such an environment, our greatest assets, that is to say, our diversity of tribe, language, and culture, are no longer harnessed as sources of strength and economic opportunity. Instead, they are manipulated, trivialised, or allowed to decay. Corruption strips these identities of their productive potential and recasts them as tools of division, echoing, in quieter ways, the same distortions that once proved so catastrophic.
Kwibuka, therefore, is not only about remembering the victims of 1994. It is about interrogating the present. It is about recognizing that the seeds of instability (whether in the form of unresolved militant networks, regional indecision, or internal decay through corruption) are, unfortunately, still with us.
Memory, if it is to have meaning, must sharpen our vigilance.
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By Andrew “Pi” Besi | On X: @BesiAndrew
