Book: A Time for Machetes

Author: Jean Hatzfeld

Publisher: Serpent's Tail (Profile Books, 2008)

Volume: 238 pages

Cost: Shs 29,900

Reviewer: Martyn Drakard

Available at Aristoc

Of the many personal accounts of the 1994 Rwandan genocide, almost all are written by or are about the survivors. But French journalist, Jean Hatzfeld's A Time for Machetes is about the killers, 10 of them. Hatzfeld wins their confidence and interviews them serving prison sentences in the south of Kigali, near where they carried out what they considered a "cleansing" exercise.

In terms of efficiency, the Rwandan genocide outdid the Nazi holocaust and, in the Rwandan countryside, its purpose was simple: to purify the earth, rid it of the "inyezi" cattle-keepers, and anyone who showed them mercy, and wipe away years of accumulated resentment.

Every able-bodied Hutu man had to take part; houses were searched to force out malingerers.

As Pancrace, a perpetuator explains: "When you have been prepared the right way by the radios and official advice, you obey more easily, even if the order is to kill your neighbour. The mission of a good organizer is to stifle your hesitation when he gives you instructions."

Psychological preparation, via radio, was gradual and extremely effective. Radio has proven the most dangerous of the media, penetrating, as it does, to our deepest core, anywhere, any time and immediately, without the critical distance found in reading or images.

The local courthouse and churches were closed down by the authorities and the communal jail emptied, thus detaching the people from all reference points of morality or conscience. Leopord confesses that they no longer considered Tutsis humans or the world as the expression of God's will.

They prayed, a little, not for their victims, but for God's pardon for what they were doing, and returned to the job the next morning. Yet the years in prison had given them time for reflection. The only positive solution most of them could think of was forgiveness, hard to ask for, and still more to grant.

Time had softened even the hardest of them, however, and they wanted nothing more than to start their lives again with whichever of their family members remained. The interviews are recorded accurately and give some interesting insights into the human mind. The thicker the prison walls and the longer their stay, the more freely their confession flowed.

Hatzfeld was puzzled by their apparent lack of nightmares and trauma, but was in turn won by their friendly solidarity, patience and serenity, their willingness to talk and collective inability to notice how outsiders perceive them.

The way they saw the whole tragedy was that they were neighbours on the hills doing their duty. The "other" had been identified and had to be eliminated, absolutely. In this massive "mob justice," where the enemy was unarmed, passive and terrified, the quickest way to achieve their goal was with what they had at hand: machetes, looting to keep the family alive, and working to a daily timetable, until the task was completed, and they could return to cultivating the land for the next harvest. Terrible but true.