The Contribution of Women to Peace and Reconciliation

INTERVIEW WITH
YOLANDE MUKAGASANA, KIGALI
It was not only in my childhood, it’s a matter of a life where resistance
was necessary to stay alive.
I received lots of love from my family. My father and mother were very
much in love until the end of their days. I was born into a family that
seemed poor to us ourselves, but rich to all the neighbours. We all lived
serenely in the family. We were a very united family, a signal on the hill.
I have never experienced violence in my family. But what sparked my
resistance was what I saw and experienced at the age of five. I saw the
massacre of Tutsis. As a result, I received an education from my parents
to resist. That is what also helped me to bear my exclusion as a Tutsi
child in school. I was the only one in my family who was able to go to
high school. My brothers and sisters were excluded after primary school.
This exclusion also made me realize how injustice hurts, especially for
children. The only values that I had left were the values of my family;
everything else was broken. My father was very attentive to my reactions:
I was shocked to see all these killings go unpunished. My father
always made me hope that one day justice would be done, and I’ve
never lost hope.
I also think that all the Hutu extremist political forces who ran Rwanda
until 1994 strengthened my ability to resist, because they always tor -
tured me, physically and psychologically.
They killed everything that I was, including even my own blood, by killing
my children. They made me fall into indescribable misery that I did not
expect, because I had nothing and nobody when I stopped growing, but
I aged. But I think, after having received much love in my life, I am unable
to hate. After the genocide, I never thought I could get up again.
But since life has chosen me and I survived, I must do something. The
life of a survivor is itself resistance. When you hit bottom, you either
stay there, or you decide to get back up, since you can’t sink any deeper.
Surviving and taking a step towards life is great act of resistance towards
life, since any other choice means death.
256