Rwandan family marks the 25th anniversary of the passing of their loved ones — deaths caught on camera
by Allan Thompson
KIGALI, Rwanda –We placed a single red rose on the spot where 25 years ago to the day, two people among the hundreds of thousands of victims of the 1994 Rwanda genocide lost their lives.
The Kagaba family returned to the street in Gikondo where the fabric of their world was torn by the brutal murders of a father and sister in the first spasms of the Rwanda genocide.
It was not long after 10 a.m., on April 11, 1994, when a car mechanic named Gabriel Kagaba was murdered in broad daylight alongside his daughter Justine on a dirt road in the Gikondo district of Kigali.
Outside of Rwanda, few if any of us seemed to notice, even though a British cameraman named Nick Hughes had managed to capture the killing on camera, footage that was broadcast that same night by CNN, as well as other networks around the world. I have researched and written extensively about this footage, which I call The Genocide Video.
As far as I know, this is one of the only instances of a killing being caught on camera by a journalist during the genocide. That fact in itself speaks volumes.
There just weren’t enough of us there to capture these events, to make the world understand or care.
The grainy video shows Gabriel and his daughter Justine kneeling on the dirt road among the bodies of others that had already been slain. Gabriel is waving his arms, in prayer. Moments later, men armed with clubs and farm tools step forward and beat Gabriel and Justine to death.
They were murdered in front of the whole world, but no one knew their names, or seemed to care.
Years later, I went back to Rwanda to find witnesses to that killing and to identify the victims in the famous footage, who had up to that point been anonymous. That story, “The father and daughter we let down” can still be found online in the Toronto Star.
A quarter century after those killings, I had the honour of spending the day Thursday with Rosalie Uzamukunda — who lost her husband Gabriel and oldest daughter Justine that day.
For most of the past 25 years, Rosalie and some of her children had been living in the same simple home in Gikondo that her husband built. Their whole lives unfolded just steps from where the father and sister were slain. But last year, Rosalie’s house was so badly damaged by flooding that it was condemned and torn down. She now lives with her son Isaac and some other extended family in a basic home in the outlying community of Kabuga, about 40 minutes from central Kigali.
Most of the family made the annual trek to the Nyanza memorial site on the other side of Kigali, where the remains of Gabriel and Justine were later interred.
Since I documented her family’s story for The Toronto Star in 2009, Rosalie and I have kept in touch. I try to support them the best I can and I see Rosalie and the rest of the family whenever I’m in Rwanda. I’m Facebook friends with her youngest son Isaac (who was born two months after the death of his father and elder sister) as well as sisters Violette and Yvette. There are also two older sisters, Josephine and Debra and a brother, Charles. In 2017, I took our son Laith to visit as well and since then, the family in Rwanda always asks for him. And my wife Roula always sends gifts for them as well.
The death squads had come to the house that morning 25 years ago, dragging away the father and eldest daughter, threatening to come back for the others. Rosalie, then seven months pregnant with Isaac, fled with her other children and was hidden by neighbours for the day. But by the evening, when they came out of hiding, they were told of the deaths and that the bodies had been hauled away.
Years later, a woman who lived in the area in 1994 but had fled after the war, came forward to describe a mass grave. She said she’d watched hundreds of bodies being dumped into a deep ditch that day, then covered over. When excavators opened the ditch, they found several hundred mangled bodies. They also found large rocks, car batteries — even a refrigerator — that had been hurled into the mass grave, presumably to strike down some who were not yet dead.
Rosalie’s family was contacted after an identity card was found in the pocket of one decomposed body, that of Gabriel.
On Thursday we drove to the memorial site in Nyanza, where thousands of genocide victims are buried in large tombs. Rosalie has been suffering pains in one of her legs, so it was a struggle getting down the steps to the memorial site, but she perservered.
The family spent a few moments in silent prayer in front of the tomb, before placing a large wreath with a sash saying Famille Kagaba.
After spending some time at the memorial, Rosalie insisted on once again visiting the street in Gikondo, where the killings took place, and to see the bulldozed lot where their family home once stood. To compound the family’s struggle, the simple but functional home that was Gabriel Kagaba’s legacy to his wife and children had been built on a flood plain and would eventually crumble and be swept away, leaving Rosalie with nothing.
Later we made the long drive to Rosalie’s rented home in Kabuga, a simple red brick structure with a small livingroom, kitchen and two bedrooms. There is a little patch of lawn beside the house, which backs onto a banana grove. Rosalie pays close to $100 US per month in rent, which is a burden compared to the other home, which she owned.
I sent money with someone to buy a few cases of soft drinks, as is tradition. And the family also had a large meal ready, for the kind of reception you might hold after a funeral.
Daughter Violette, the first member of the family I met when I showed up at their door as a reporter all those years ago, was the one who rose to speak on behalf of her relatives. As is the custom in Rwanda, she gave a beautiful speech, recounting the early lives of her father and sister and the family’s grief at their passing. And she paid a special tribute to me, calling me someone she regards as one of her father’s friends, “a friend of Gabriel Kagaba.”
When it came my turn to speak, I had to retreat behind the pages of my book, to avoid breaking down. I thanked the family for allowing me to tell their story, to ensure that even after the fact, the world knew about what had happened that day on the street in Gikondo, 25 years ago, when we weren’t paying attention.
I closed by reading a passage from the acknowledgements in my book from CIGI Press — Media and Mass Atrocity: The Rwanda Genocide and Beyond, which contains a chapter called “The Genocide Video.”
“I must thank Rosalie Uzamukunda, who had the courage to share with me, and the world, the story of how she lost the husband and daughter who perished on a dirt road in Kigali on April 11, 1994, among the first victims of the genocide in Rwanda. I dedicate this collection to them — Gabriel Kagaba and his daughter Justine Mukangango — in the hope that we learn something from their passing.”
