A journey of transformation
Joseph Sebarenzi was a Tutsi who fled his homeland before the 1994 genocide, returned to be elected speaker of the Rwandan parliament, then was forced into exile again
God Sleeps in Rwanda: a journey of transformation by Joseph Sebarenzi with Laura Ann Mullane. Atria Books. ISBN: 978 141657 573 3. £18.99. The European subjection and colonisation of Africa has left a brutal legacy. From the indefensible abuses of enslavement and apartheid to the wanton plundering of Africa’s rich resources, it is no wonder that this is a continent still in recovery. Another terrible legacy is evidenced from the colonisers’ policy of ‘divide and rule’, not least – as Joseph Sebarenzi shows in this book – in Rwanda.
The genocide of 1994, in which almost a million Rwandans were killed in a ferocious 100-day civil war, was an unimaginable horror that was entirely preventable. Instead, both the USA and the United Nations knowingly allowed the horror to unfold, deliberately withholding intervention. And why? Perhaps the most damning statement in this book tells us: ‘The international community chose not to help because Rwanda didn’t matter to them. We had no natural resources to mine; no port to protect; no strategic importance. All we had were people.’ I could not help but think that the subsequent apologies recorded of the US president Bill Clinton and UN secretary-general Kofi Annan rang hollow in the face of this shameful betrayal of human rights.
Despite this, Joseph Sebarenzi (meaning ‘chief shepherd’) makes of this book, not only an account of his personal journey and his experience of the genocide, in which he found himself ‘treading in a deep sea of grief and anger’, but also something much more. Within its pages is an eloquent testimony to the prevailing power of hope and forgiveness, paradoxically in the most unforgiving of circumstances. Joseph lost almost all of his extended family in the genocide.
Returning to Rwanda in the aftermath, the author found himself an elected (if reluctant) politician. Soon afterwards, he was also elected speaker of the Rwandan parliament, attempting from that position to establish democratic accountability and integrity of government. Almost inevitably, in the wake of a government corrupted by power and unable to tolerate political transparency, he became a refugee in flight from an assassination threat at the highest level. ‘Some things you know without ever being told’, he writes, ‘Other things you learn slowly. You learn them despite what you want to believe’.
Uncompromising integrity is a hard taskmaster, and those who possess it often suffer. Mainly because the kind of integrity that weaves through Joseph’s life in this account is in itself a rebuke to those whose own integrity has been traded and sold for corrupted ends. This book is an account of the extraordinary – extraordinary personal integrity on the part of himself and his wife, Liberata; extraordinary courage against the odds; extraordinary survival of faith and hope from the ashes of catastrophe; extraordinary forgiveness and conciliation.
I first met Joseph five years ago in the Pendle Hill Centre for Study and Contemplation in the US, where he was scholar-in-residence. I listened while he gave talks on peace and reconciliation (the theme of his doctoral studies) delivered with the kind of quiet dignity and compassion that is born of – as the poet Wendell Berry says – ‘passing from dark to dark… into the dark and the new light’. I am privileged to call him a dear friend, and a brother-in-faith.
Today, there are many powerful contemporary voices on human rights arising out of Africa – Mandela on apartheid, Tutu on Truth Commissions, Wangari Maathai on environmental and women’s rights, and now Sebarenzi on the Way of Forgiveness. Everyone who thinks they know about peace, forgiveness and reconciliation – and those who don’t – should read this book… and learn.
