A Year After Return to Rwanda, a Hutu Surveys Bleak Future

Far from his home and hungry family, Jean-Claude Dusabe and a high school buddy sweat trying to sink shots on a potholed basketball court.

“This is the best way to forget reality,” says Dusabe, 25, raising a hand to shield his eyes from the sun setting on the bustling lakeside town of Cyangugu.

The reality is this: A year after Dusabe and 2 million other Hutus returned from three years in exile, they don’t feel at home in their own country.

The minority Tutsis who now run this troubled central African nation have clamped tight controls on the Hutu majority--some of whom were responsible for the slaughter of more than 500,000 Tutsis in the spring of 1994.

“People are suspicious of each other. Very often genocide perpetrators mix with genocide survivors, and there are bound to be problems,” said Maj. Richard Sezibera, a military spokesman. “But we are trying to sort them out. This government is committed to re-integration, but it takes time.”

Dusabe is growing impatient.

His brother was beaten and jailed on charges of stealing a Tutsi’s car. His young wife, Alice, and newborn son, Bertrand-Aristide, are sick with malaria. His aging mother is hungry more often than not.

Responsible for providing for the family, Dusabe left his home in rural western Rwanda recently hoping for a job at his friend’s store.

But all his buddy could spare was a few minutes on the basketball court and bus fare for Dusabe’s trip home.

“They all look at me for money and food. But I can’t find anything,” Dusabe said. “Nobody wants to hire a former refugee, and the government would rather give a job to a Tutsi than a Hutu.”

Perhaps with reason. Three years after Tutsi rebels defeated the Hutu government and its army, an undeclared war has returned to Rwanda along with the nearly 2 million Hutus who came back from Burundi, Tanzania and Congo.

A high-ranking Rwandan military officer, speaking on condition of anonymity, acknowledged that ethnic frictions remain and sometimes result in abuses.

“I would be surprised if we were 100% rational when dealing with the problem” of re-integration, he said. “Rwanda is not a normal country. You cannot expect soldiers to always behave rationally.”

Barely a week passes without a Hutu rebel ambush on a bus or a military convoy in northwestern Rwanda. On two days in early December, rebels attacked two prisons and freed more than 600 jailed Hutus.

Often unable to track down rebels in thick forests, some Tutsi soldiers seek revenge on civilians they suspect of helping the rebels.

“Those rebels, I know them,” Dusabe said. “They are desperate people. They steal food from us and spend the night before going to the bush again. They are stupid but armed.”

Amnesty International, the London-based human rights organization, says about 6,000 people may have died in rebel attacks and army reprisals this year. Simmering conflict has slowed commercial traffic, and even soldiers rarely venture outside their barracks after sunset.

Emotional scars run deep in Rwanda, especially among Tutsis.

New memorials have sprung up, such as the one in Nyamata, an hour from Kigali, the capital, where the remains of 15,000 Tutsis hacked to death by Hutus in 1994 were left intact at a shell-blasted church compound.

Although only 14% of the population, Tutsis now rule this small country of 7.2 million people, thanks to the power of their army that defeated the previous Hutu-dominated regime. Hutus make up 85% of Rwandans, and many, Dusabe included, feel betrayed, rejected or harassed by the new authorities.

“You’ll hardly find a Tutsi who hasn’t lost his family during genocide. But now, you’ll hardly find a Hutu who doesn’t have a family member in jail,” Dusabe said.

His uncle, a local chief, was shot to death by soldiers who accused him of failing to report the presence of Hutu rebels.

His brother, Alfonse, was arrested barely a week after returning from Congo, because a Tutsi neighbor in Kigali accused Alfonse of stealing his car during the 1994 chaos.

“That’s not true,” Dusabe said. “The two of them had been the richest people in our village before the war. It was jealousy.”

Their mother has been taking food to Alfonse at the jail in Kivumu every two days--”which often means we don’t eat,” Dusabe said.

Rwandan jails are packed with about 120,000 people, mostly Hutus awaiting trial on genocide-related charges. Many die in prison of hunger or disease before their cases are heard.

Sezibera, the military spokesman, said most Hutu farmers who returned from exile had resumed cultivating their land in what he said was a relatively successful economic re-integration.

“But for intellectuals--which in Rwanda means a secondary-school degree--students and former soldiers, there are psychological and social problems because many of these people masterminded the genocide,” he said.

A former linguistics student, Dusabe was told he could not continue his education or get a job in Rwanda unless he went to a government-run solidarity camp--a re-education program every student or civil servant who returned from exile is obliged to undergo.

The idea is to “explain the changes in the society which occurred since the refugees left in 1994,” one lecturer said.

But Dusabe calls it the “camp for brainwashing,” where local officials teach a history different from what he learned growing up in a Hutu-run state.

“But nobody listens to lecturers anyway,” Dusabe said. “We just pretend.”

Even with a solidarity camp certificate, finding a job is tough.

Sezibera and diplomats say jobs are scarce because the economy has not recovered from the havoc of the 1994 blood bath. Rwanda is among countries almost exclusively dependent on donor aid, and it is Africa’s most densely populated.

In addition, citing widespread insecurity in the region, the government still refuses to issue compulsory identification cards for residents of Kibuye Prefecture, where Dusabe lives.

That means nobody can travel freely on the roads dotted by military checkpoints, where those without papers often land in jail or are sent back home.

The last time Dusabe traveled to Kigali for a job interview, a guard at the entrance of an office called soldiers to take him in because he did not have an identity card.

“Luckily, the soldiers were from Kibuye; they knew we don’t possess ID cards,” Dusabe said.

Even the weather has been unkind to Dusabe. First drought, then unusually heavy, long rains destroyed most of his crops and bananas.

“All of the refugees are in the same situation. But there are too many of us. They can’t just disregard us,” he said.

After a pause, he mumbled, “Perhaps they can.”