Forgiveness & Reconciliation in Post-Genocide Rwanda with Freddy Mutanguha
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Welcome to Stories of Impact. I'm your host, writer Tavia Gilbert, and along with journalist Richard Sergei, every first and third Tuesday of the month, we share conversations about the art and science of human flourishing. I can think of no more timely story to share than that of today's episode, which offers one of the most powerful examples I've ever heard of courage, peace, and forgiveness.

Our story looks back 30 years, to one of the most violent periods in modern history, the genocide against the Tutsi, and to the resilience and wisdom of the Rwandan spirit and heart. For centuries, Rwanda enjoyed peaceful coexistence between its various ethnic groups,

But when the country was colonized, first by Germany in 1899 and then by Belgium in 1919, for almost a century, the African nation's European appropriators intentionally stoked and exploited tribal divisions—

Divisions that boiled over into a national civil war between Rwanda's ethnic Hutus and Tutsis in 1990. After three years of armed conflict, opposing political leaders brokered and signed the Arusha Peace Agreement, bringing with it the hope for an end to the violence,

But on April 6th, 1994, Rwanda's Hutu president, Juvenal Habyarimana, was assassinated when his plane was shot down. And for the next 100 days, beautiful Rwanda, known as the land of a thousand hills, was hell on earth. 30 years ago this week, the genocide against the Tutsi came to an end almost as quickly as it had begun.

But between April and July 1994, hundreds of thousands of Rwandans were slaughtered in a horrifying frenzy of state-sponsored terror, when the majority ethnic Hutus tortured and murdered not only members of the minority ethnic Tutsis and the indigenous Twas, but any Hutu citizen who resisted participating in the brutal extermination campaign.

Freddie Matongwa, an ethnic Tutsi, was just 18 years old when the genocide began on April 7th, 1994. Today, Freddie shares the story of his unimaginable losses, the miracle of his survival, and his life's work nurturing peace, forgiveness, and reconciliation in his country and across the world. Since 7th of April to July, in only 100 days,

More than one million people lost lives. The women were raped. Children were actually smashed on the walls. The elderly and the people who couldn't fight back, they were all killed. So in only 100 days, one million people were actually killed. I lost my parents. I lost my four sisters and my extended family. I count 80 members of my family who've been killed.

in only three weeks time. These are my uncles, my cousins, my aunties. I was 18 years old. Only my sister and I survived the genocide. When the genocide happened on the 7th of April, my mother gave me an advice that I should go and hide with my friend in the primary school. His name is Peter.

So I lived in his house for a week and two days. Peter's family was very poor. They could eat one time a day. And this was really very hard for me. I was used to having three meals. And each and every night, my mother had to sneak in and bring some food for me and Peter so that we can eat. And my mother used to come and tell me what had been happening during the daytime.

And on the 13th of April, this was the last time I shared meal with my mother. When she came, she was completely different. You can see she was very sad, looked at my eyes and she said, "If you survive, be a man." And I said, "Why are you saying this one?" And she said that the next attack, they will kill us. And I completely understood what she said. They were very hopeless, no protection.

Nothing at home to protect them. No money, no food to give to villages. I completely understood. I didn't have any other thing to say until she said goodbye. The next day, on the 14th of April, she was killed. The whole family, they were killed. When they attacked my house,

On 14th of April, I was at Peter's house. The house very, very close to, we are very close neighbors. So I could hear what is going on at my house. I heard that my parents, they were taken away and they killed them with the clubs and the machetes. My sisters were killed next day, next morning.

They brought them and killed them. And they threw them in the very long septic tank. They threw them alive. They died with the stones they've been throwing on top of their heads. I could hear them screaming, calling for help, even calling my name. I heard them screaming until they finished them. I didn't have hope to live again. I didn't have hope that I will be alive.

Even I didn't want to because I was thinking, why should I live without my family, staying alone in this world? What will it mean for me to be alive? But always I could hear the voice of my mother say, you be a man. And this is actually what made me to strive for life and keep going on.

Except for his four-year-old sister, Rosette, Freddie was the only other person in his immediate family to escape the killings. But in the days ahead, he felt only desperation to survive and to keep his sister alive. She couldn't even hide. She didn't understand what was going on. And she's even the one who's been crying and saying, I will not...

I will never be a Tutsi again if you don't kill me. I was not able to be happy. I knew that other people were killed. Yeah, it was a little bit of relief, but the screaming of my sisters, the fact I knew that my parents no longer had, it was so big in my mind. I was not able to, I was not able to be happy. But of course, having those comforts,

a little bit of comfort that at least she is on my side. And I felt also responsibility to be, to comfort her. There's a time I even I thought that now I need to forget myself and think about her because she was crying a lot. I thought it would be my time to be her mother and her father, to be everything for her. Even I'm confronting her, if I lose her soon,

Later we go together. Within the whole three months, I was with my sister. We struggled together, and it was a long journey indeed. Freddie and Rosette sought shelter with his aunt, who was married to a Hutu. When we left our village, I took a direction to my auntie. My auntie, who married a Hutu, had to die thinking that they would protect us.

We reached there, we spent a week there together. My auntie's husband, he did what he could to protect us. But people from my village, they knew we were there and they came to follow us there. My husband's auntie gave them money and they went back because they're so corrupt as well. But we couldn't stay there because they knew that we were there.

Freddie and Rosette fled on foot through the hills and valleys, heading for another village and the home of the powerful district leader, Kabasha. But his wife would say that, I'm not sure that my husband will help me because he's a completely different person. He goes everywhere to actually to lead the killings of other Tutsis in the villages and different, and he's an authority. And he has soldiers. He has people.

So he came home and when they asked him if he can give me some papers, he said, "No, no, no time for Tutsis this time." So it was a complete change. He said that, "I'm waiting for my sons to take you out." These sons are my age. The people in the vacations have been together, playing football together. I couldn't really believe that they would come and kill us. But that was the reality in Rwanda because people changed in just a few days and a few hours.

Freddie and Rosette escaped the house, searching desperately for a safe place. My auntie's husband, he gave me his identity card. He said, "Use it if you can." In the identity card, it mentioned that we were 202-002. And they had two children.

So that time I changed my name saying that he's my father who lost his identity card and these are our names. And then we took direction where my sister used to go for at school. Getting there, it took around 16 hours together. We got there and we find the headmaster who is the principal is a Hutu but he had a Tutsi wife.

The tootsie wife said that at least I can have someone to talk to, and he took Rosette, but he couldn't hide me. Alone, Freddie made his way to a refugee camp constructed by the World Food Program and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. They started actually building some tent for the refugees. I went there among them, and many of them, they were militias. They were killers, but they didn't know who I am.

But that time they started believing my purpose. How did I leave this area? Is the fact that someone from my village, where I came from, who was a student, he find me in the refugee camps. And he say, "Freddy, you're here." And I heard him. I didn't even turn to see who he is because I said, "This is a person who know me, but I have to pretend that my name is Albert."

So I even didn't turn to see who was calling me. Then he started screaming, "You come to hide here? How did you get here?" Then he attracted attention to people to see me. And then I turned to him and said, "I'm not Freddy, I'm Albert. I don't know who you're talking about." From that time, I felt that this is really not a safe place because I didn't know what would happen next day.

More terrifying days lay ahead in Freddie Mutongwa's fight for survival. But finally, on July 19th, 1994, when the Tutsi RPF Party seized control of the Rwandan government, abruptly, the genocide against the Tutsi was over.

Thirty years after surviving the killings, how does Freddie explain how his community, his friends and loved ones so quickly embraced such inhumanity, hatred and violence? It's still a question I ask also myself. How in a few minutes, a few hours, someone can turn against you? Maybe it's the obedience of the people.

who do not have any critical thinking to understand why I'm doing this. But because someone, a local leader, high-level soldier, have said this is enemy and then you believe it and you start doing it. But still, it's very difficult to comprehend, even today.

In the years ahead, Freddie would continue his education, studying in Kigali to become a teacher, like his mother was, and later earning a master's degree in the Netherlands. In 2004, he joined the Aegis Trust, which works to prevent genocide and mass atrocities worldwide.

He developed a peace education program and today leads the work of the Aegis Trust to expand to areas in other countries that are at risk and serves as the CEO of the Kigali Genocide Memorial.

He's still trying to make sense of the past, to try to understand those who were family and friends one day, and genocidal exterminators the next. Every day, he and his colleagues at the memorial ask the hard questions. How did this happen? And how can we stop it from happening again and again across the world? Even today, because if you ask the perpetrators themselves, I run the museum, I run the memorial.

The perpetrators themselves, they don't have really the right answer to that question. Maybe we need high-level professors to tell us or to understand actually how the human brain functions. But at the same time, what we know, this is a fact. It happened. We were killed by our neighbors who used to be our friends. That's the fact. So we, the museum and the memorial that I'm running today,

The mission is to promote memory of genocide, giving dignity to those who are victimized by genocide, giving them respect. But also, it's a place where we want to learn about our past, where we want new generations to come and ask questions and understand actually the past of their own country.

And it's a place where even Rwandans will come and question about what happened in Rwanda. So it's a learning place, but it's also a place of remembrance. And it's a place where everyone comes to pay respect to the victims of genocide. But we know that without this memory, without learning from the past, we cannot build our future.

So it's a place that really helps us to shape the present and shape our future as a nation, but also as a humanity as well. What role does the genocide memorial play in keeping alive the memories of not only what happened, but who was lost? It's a place where I've seen the people on both sides, the perpetrators and the survivors. That place creates empathy.

and create a consciousness about the past. It's a place where I've seen the perpetrators and children of perpetrators or the family members of perpetrators coming together with survivors to pay respect of the victims of genocide. We created a program to try to examine and to dialogue about our past.

so that perpetrators can tell their own pains and survivors can tell their own pains. The perpetrators normally, what they're going through in terms of what they did, the collective blame, the collective guilty, it's also painful. It's not something good to hold in your heart, in your mind. But at the same time, survivors, all the suffering they went through, it's also something very heavy for their minds.

So it's a place where we were able to share everyone's views, everyone's feelings, so that people can start to understand how we can actually come together and think about something that really puts our families, our society together. It's very important to remember. Why remember? As survivors, we're learning from our families' values.

We remember what made them who they are, what positive values they had. We remember those to help us to lead our lives. But also we remember to learn from what happened to us, how the country itself descended in very dark time so that we cannot

go back to that, we can take the completely different path to peace instead of going back where we are. Because we know exactly how this time destroyed our country, destroyed our people, destroyed our families, destroyed our social fabric. By understanding the whole and details of it will help us and us, this generation and the younger generation,

to not take this path, but taking the path of peace and forgiveness and reconciliation. Having his own family has helped Freddie heal. I have five children. They really learn about what happened. They learn from me, from the stories of my family, and they learn from my own parents in terms of all the values that I learned from them, how I lived with them, and how we

shared life and also, I may say, good life before they get killed. To honor them, to make sure that I honor their memories. I'm so committed to raise the children, their grandchildren, in the way they will be there to be happy for, in the way that these children can be a generation for change, a generation for that really understand how the

the world actually becoming much more a place where people are filled with fear, live with fear, but at the same time a place where they can change and be the agent of change and make peace, but also contribute to the peace and the peace process in the world. My two daughters, they all look like their aunties. When I look at them and how they act, how they

relate to me and I feel like I see them in their eyes and I feel that I see my siblings as well. So I remember them but I didn't lose hope to live again, to have family and to rebuild my nation and to honor them all the time. Every time on the 14th of April, the time their parents were killed, we go to their mass graves and pay respect and

and cry for them, but at the same time giving them the message that we live again. For Freddie, the family practice to honor their ancestors helps him continue the important work of making meaning from the genocide. I would never lose hope that living in this world, how difficult it is and whatever happening, there's a hope all the time. We need to keep the light burning and it burning forever as we remember them

as we respect them, as we pay dignity of our losses. But this is something that we need to continue and make life and make this world a better place to live. After the genocide, the country's citizens, victims and violators alike, had to find a way to live together in peace. Freddie and his colleagues at the memorial continue to explore what they can learn from the stories of survivors.

The perpetrators and survivors, that's very unique in my country. The perpetrators and survivors right after genocide, they're still living in the same villages. They're still living as neighbors in the same neighborhood. So our program has been finding these perpetrators and survivors to their own families and their own homes.

talking about how to forgive and how to accept forgiveness. The program starts at home and then comes to the memorial to be consolidated in the message of remembrance to support these people, to say these are the victims and you're the one who did it.

and these are our families, but you have our country, we have our society, we have our children. Five children I have, I want them to live in peace. I don't want them to inherit what they've been living in. So having my children and the desire to have a nation of peace, a place where my children will live, it gives me strength to say the only way is to make peace with my perpetrators.

And we, as survivors, we do it with authority because we live in it. My fellow survivors can listen to me because it's something that is part of my life. It's not an education that is imported or brought by someone else who do not understand what actually I'm talking about. We are in the same journey, but the only way to get this country

standing up again and standing on its own feet and a country of peace and prosperity. It depends on us on how we deal with our own experience. You cannot teach forgiveness. You only experience it. The only way to get people to embrace the path to forgiveness is to put them into that experience. But how do we do that? First of all,

We have conversations with survivors to understand exactly what forgiveness means for all of us. My understanding and how even I explain to other survivors, the forgiveness is not only for the perpetrators. Forgiveness is for us because carrying this anger, carrying this hopelessness, carrying this fear,

really feelings that are really heavy in our mind, it's killing us. It's killing, it's actually, it's filling this, like filling ourselves with all the poisons that's really killing our mind and our future and the future of our children. It goes into our body, it goes into our DNAs and everything. The best thing is to start emptying ourselves with this anger.

So the forgiveness starts from benefiting ourselves, not the perpetrators. If I think about forgiving them, I'll give you my experience of forgiveness. It starts by loving myself so that I can forgive the perpetrators. We engage this conversation with perpetrators after we ourselves understood what the steps we need to take

why we need to do it, and what the benefit as survivors we have. Forgiveness didn't come quickly or easily for Freddie. He knows that the work of forgiveness is difficult. Seventeen years. Even to start thinking about, even talking about forgiveness, it took me 17 years. That shows how forgiveness is a journey. It's not something you do one day or two days or three days.

You need to feel yourself. You need to get your body having that feeling of it and make sure that when you start it, it doesn't go back. It's not about emotions. It's not about emotions. It's not about feeling I can do it because others have done it. You need to feel it. You need to understand it. But at the same time, you need to make sure that you really, you have understood what you're doing because you

The less understanding of the past and the practice of forgiveness, it's more harming when you realize later that you made the wrong decision than understanding and take time to understand it than actually try to understand it later. His journey to forgiveness is not over. Three years ago, I learned that the perpetrator who led the attack to my house

who was the leader of the militias in my village. He's in a prison, in one of the prisons in the south of Rwanda. I made contact with the prison, but for two years time I was not able to face him. Last year, only last year, I went to, I had the courage and I had to talk to my sister as well because I have to make sure that she's with me and we can go and see if he tells me the truth.

I would forgive him. If he doesn't tell me the truth, I'll wait for him to tell me the whole truth. Then I can extend my forgiveness. In my heart, I'm able to forgive him on my side when he tells me the truth. And then in my heart, I don't feel hatred against him. In my heart, I feel I cannot revenge.

I cannot hate him. I cannot actually wish the bad to him. So I went to him and the prison opened the gate. I went to see him. But before I met him, something came to my mind. And I went back to the time of genocide where I was hiding, screaming and everything. And I was imagining he has a machete in his hand. He was

He had a big club in his hand. He smacked my sisters who started killing my mother, who, what the last word he said, she said. And I was, I said, okay, that made me cry. I was not able to get into the gate, but I calmed down and I went to see him. And then he say yes. And then he was still trying to innocent himself. So that time I didn't tell him I forgive you, but I give him a chance when I come back.

you need to tell me the truth because I want to understand exactly what happened to my family. I want to have the details because you were there, you were leading the group that attacked my house. I want the truth of what happened. But when he tells me the truth, I will forgive him. It doesn't happen yet, but in my heart, I have the benefits as much as I can from forgiveness because I don't hate him.

I don't wish him any bad to him. The only words to say forgive you is that actually what's remaining. And he cannot get it without telling me the truth. To further the work of truth and reconciliation, the Aegis Trust is launching the Isoko Peace Institute, which will work not only in Rwanda, but expand its efforts globally. Isoko means source.

It can be a fountain of wellspring of wellspring. We want the center to be a marketplace where people can exchange ideas. And we want actually this peace center and peace institute to be a source of humanity, to be a source of life and positive values that can bring back peace and bring people together.

The vision for this Isoko Peace Institute is to establish the culture of peace and teach and establish all the values and skills that may help to resist and to be resilient to communal violence. And that solution, as a peace institute, we want to be a vehicle for their own solutions. We need to leave the room to say, do we go to UN?

Do we go to the politicians? Do we go to journalists? Wherever, however we need to do it, those are solutions of the two people in the conflict who want to make a peace. That actually, this will be very important. Where we want to exhibit the positive stories of today and how to build the resilience to the ideology of hate and then how to go about it.

This exhibition will become a complementarity to the Kigali Genocide Memorial, which talks about the steps to genocide. This one will talk more about the steps to peace. How do we build our humanity again? And those are the assets of the world. We need to have a space for them to take care of them and take care of the carers so that they can carry on their good job. So it will be a busy institution.

which will really support people, carrying them to show them the path to peace, but at the same time trying to help people who are actually being very tired to get actually on track. This is designed to be a global peace institute to take the history, to take the experience because from Rwanda and from seven other nations in Africa to the world.

to be a global space for people around the globe to come and really learn from each other and exchange ideas and make decisions for peace together. Freddie's resilience and determination to embrace forgiveness and peacemaking, even in the midst of his grief, honors his mother and shines a light for others who have the courage to follow his example. It's important to build up hope

Because losing your parents, losing your family members doesn't mean the end of the world. There is a way you can stand up, you can decide to lead your life, and you can actually succeed in your life without all those supports. Because the support you need is within you. And I think this is actually what led my life.

You don't need to have your mom to tell you that you need to be a man. And even if this helped me in my whole life since 18 years old to 48 years old, once you embrace positive values and human values, that helps you to lead your life in a very positive way.

In our next episode, we'll hear more from Freddie Matongwa about the work of forgiveness, and we'll meet researcher Elizabeth Dowling, who studies forgiveness and peacebuilding.

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This has been the Stories of Impact podcast with interviews by Richard Sergei. Written and produced by Tavia Gilbert for TalkBox Productions. Senior producer Katie Flood. Assistant producer Oscar Falk. Production support by Mandy Morish. Music by Alexander Filipiak. Mix and master by Kayla Elrod. Executive producer Michelle Cobb.

The Stories of Impact podcast is generously supported by Templeton World Charity Foundation.