As a child, Jean-Remy Bitana lived through the horrors of the 1994 genocide which pitted Rwanda’s Hutus against Tutsis and killed more than half a million people.
”I could see it, I could feel it. I saw so many murders, bodies,” he said in a voice barely stronger than a whisper.
Ten years later, the 20-year old is part of a symbol of a nation seeking reconciliation — Rwanda’s national soccer team, which has upset all the odds to reach the finals of the African Cup of Nations. The Wasps will play the biggest game in the country’s history on Saturday when they open the tournament against heavily
favored Tunisia, the host nation.
Bitana has a strong belief Rwanda’s great run will continue during the tournament.
”If our dreams come true and we beat Tunisia, a child born that day with bear the name ‘Rwanda,”’ he predicted, a strong statement in a nation where children used to be named after the royalty of their colonisers and ID cards specifically mentioned if one was Hutu or Tutsi.
Now, fans from all over the lush, central African country back the Amavubi, as they’re known in Kinyarwanda, Rwanda’s national language, irrespective of ethnicity. It is a far cry from a decade back when a 100-day killing spree spurred on by an extremist Hutu government ravaged the nation.
Little surprise it took two years to put a semblance of a national team back together. Early on, it was riven with suspicion and it showed on the pitch.
”It was terrible. Players were thinking of that. You could meet someone who killed your wife, your family. That’s the way it went,” said Bitana, who was fortunate enough not to lose close family.
Assistant coach Jean-Marie Ntagwabira was a lieutenant in the army of Paul Kagame, who swept to power in the wake of the slaughter, and played as an international during those early postwar years.
”Some of the players were really fearful to show up,” he remembered.
Rwandans’ love of soccer is so strong, that it even overcame naked hatred. Even during Kagame’s military campaign to take power, every battalion found time to set up a team and play games. Soccer has been seen as a great way to promote national reconciliation.
”We had to start out from scratch again,” Ntagwabira said. It explains why the average age of the team is still in the low 20s, he said.
It turned Bitana into a typical player, not the young upstart he really is. The defender still remembers how reconciliation was taught in schools as of 1996, and it found a perfect reflection on the pitch.
”Brothers, sisters, fathers and grandfathers are dead. But when we start playing, we forget that and look at what has been achieved already,” Bitana said.
”It is as if we are shown the way ahead. The more obstacles we face, the more we scale,” he said. He may be an ethnic Hutu, he insists on being called ”a Rwandan, neither a Hutu nor a Tutsi.”
Serb coach Ratomir Dujkovic may have had to deal with problems ranging from poor facilities to lack of funds and players with only a rudimentary sense of tactics, but he knows he will always be able to count on a unity of purpose.
”Today, no Rwandan player still mentions this terrible genocide,” he said.
The team has the full support of President Kagame, who even came out in the middle of the night to celebrate one of Rwanda’s successes.
”We are not to be seen as a nation of genocide that is bent on self-destruction,” Kagame has said.
Rwanda’s rise has been seen as a near miracle, from one of the world’s lowest ranked countries to 109th in last year’s Fifa rankings.
Compared to most other teams, which have players in some of Europe’s biggest leagues, Rwanda is mostly fielding amateur players. Its captain, Desire Mbonabucya, plays in the lowly Belgian league for also-ran Sint Truiden. Only eight play abroad, mostly in Belgium, Rwanda’s former coloniser.
In qualifying for the African Cup, it first swept past regional rival Uganda, a huge achievement in itself, before taking on Ghana, which has won the African Cup four times.
The 1-0 victory made sure the world took notice again.
”If it were not for reconciliation, we would be eliminated each time,” Bitana said. ”It is our spirit which brought us to where we are now.”
Apart from host Tunisia, Rwanda also will play Guinea and the Democratic Republic of Congo in Bizerte, where it has set up camp, some 65km north of the capital Tunis. – Sapa-AP