South Africa apologised to Rwanda on Wednesday for not ”crying out” loud enough when hundreds of thousands of people lost their lives in 100 days of genocide in that country in 1994.
South Africa was, at the time, engrossed in holding its first democratic elections after the fall of apartheid, President Thabo Mbeki told a commemoration ceremony in the Rwandan capital of Kigali.
”Because we were preoccupied with extricating ourselves from our own nightmare, we did not cry out as loudly as we should have against the enormous and heinous crime against the people of Rwanda,” he said in a prepared speech.
”For that we owe the people of Rwanda a sincere apology, which I now extend in all sincerity and humility.”
South Africa had contributed to the genocide through the apartheid government supplying some of the weapons used in the massacre, Mbeki said.
”When we acted on the request of your movement to ask the apartheid regime to stop the supply of the weapons of death, representatives of the oppressor regime in our country boldly asserted the precedence of profit … over the lives of the people of Rwanda.
”To that extent, we too as South Africans contributed to the diabolical slaughter of the innocents.”
He hoped these truths would contribute to Rwanda’s healing process, the president said.
”A time such as this demands that the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth should be told. It should be told because not to tell is to create the conditions for the crime to recur.”
Mbeki said many questions still have to be asked and answered.
These include why the genocide happened in the first place and what Africa did to stop it — and if nothing, why.
”Why did the United Nations … stand by as Africans were exterminated like pernicious vermin?
”Why did those who dispose of enormous global power … decide that the slaughter in Yugoslavia had to be stopped at all costs while the bigger slaughter in Rwanda should be allowed to run its full course?”
One also needs to ask, Mbeki said, what lessons have been learnt from the massacre.
He pledged South Africa’s friendship and support in rebuilding Rwanda and the lives of its inhabitants.
Mbeki was among several leaders from Africa, the United States and Europe attending a ceremony to commemorate the 10th anniversary of the Rwandan genocide.
The massacre began on April 7 1994 and ended 100 days later. Estimates of the dead varied between 500 000 and one million. The UN has put the number at 800 000.
Most of the victims belonged to the country’s Tutsi minority and moderate Hutus who gave them shelter. The Hutu Interahamwe movement has been largely blamed for the violence.
The genocide started within hours after a plane carrying then-president Juvenal Habyarimana, a Hutu, was shot down.
An international criminal tribunal, sitting in Arusha, Tanzania, has tried 21 people since late 1994. The trials of another 20 suspects are in progress and those of a further 22 have yet to begin.
About 15 people suspected of planning the violence are still at large.
Rwandan President Paul Kagame was to light a flame at Wednesday’s service in memory of the victims. He was also to inaugurate a national memorial where the remains of about 250 000 victims would be entombed. — Sapa