Mama Theatre stages an emotional piece
Nnasaretha Kgamanyane | Tuesday April 11, 2017 16:20
The play titled Shattered Dreams left those who attended at Maitisong on Saturday, emotional. Shattered Dreams relates Rwanda’s untold stories during the country’s genocide in 1994.
In just 100 days that year, some 800,000 people were killed in Rwanda by ethnic Hutu extremists. They were targeting community members of the Tutsi minority, as well as their political opponents, irrespective of their ethnic origin.
The play centered around two characters being Domitille Juliet Nyamwasa (a mother, wife and a teacher) and the ruthless, Corporal Faustin Ndasingwa. Ndasingwa was a Hutu extremist soldier from the Rwandan Armed Forces (RAF) played by Thomas Mpoeleng.
He abducted Nyamwasa whom he assaulted, tortured, threatened and later killed after extracting information from her while he had promised to spare her life and that of her newborn son.
He wanted Nyamwasa to give up the names of other Tutsis, who amongst them were students, religious leaders and friends.
Nyamwasa, who was made to scrub the bloody floors, after killings, was the wife of the most wanted Tutsi journalist, Laurent Jackson Nyamwasa. RAF soldiers captured her when she tried to seek refuge at a certain church near the riverside.
After being captured, Nyamwasa was taken to RAF base where she was left in Ndasingwa’s care where she was interrogate, assaulted, blackmailed and tortured to reveal where other Tutsi revolutionists were based.
Each time she has to witness the blood of her fellow Tutsi dripping off Ndasingwa’s machete. Ndasingwa’s efforts to get some information about her husband’s whereabouts ran futile.
The most painful scene was when the poor woman had to listen to Ndasingwa’s men butchering her children and her Hutu neighbours, who attempted to harbour them.
Even though they were Hutu they were killed under Ndasingwa’s orders as a way of teaching his fellow Hutu tribesmen a lesson not to associate with ‘cockroaches’ as they regarded the Tutsis.
While cleaning the blood she was continuously beaten up, kicked and given death threats by the corporal, who was interested in knowing about her husband’s whereabouts with no help.
Unfortunately, after trying to save her 10-month-old son by giving away the names of her fellow Tutsis, Ndasingwa pretended to release the mother and son only to shoot them several times in order to make sure that they were dead.
Meanwhile, before killing Nyamwasa the ruthless corporal told her how the Tutsi soldiers killed his family.
He said his siblings and parents were mutilated and left to see each other die when he was still a child. He explained that fortunately he was able to survive and always went to his family’s gravesides to try to remember that fateful day only for his mind to be blurred.
He said assassinating the Tutsi people was his way to avenge his family’s death. bAccording to BBC News, about 85% of Rwandans are Hutus but the Tutsi minority have long dominated the country.
In 1959, the Hutus overthrew the Tutsi monarchy and tens of thousands of Tutsis fled to neighbouring countries, including Uganda. A group of Tutsi exiles formed a rebel group, the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), which invaded Rwanda in 1990 and fighting continued until a 1993 peace deal was agreed.
On the night of April 6, 1994 a plane carrying then President Juvenal Habyarimana and his counterpart Cyprien Ntaryamira of Burundi went down. Both Hutus were shot down, killing everyone on board.
Hutu extremists blamed the RPF and immediately started a well-organised campaign of slaughter. The RPF said the plane had been shot down by Hutus to provide an excuse for the genocide.
“Lists of government opponents were handed out to militias who went and killed them, along with all of their families. Neighbours killed neighbours and some husbands even killed their Tutsi wives saying they would be killed if they refused.
At the time, ID cards had people’s ethnic background on them, so militias set up roadblocks where Tutsis were slaughtered, often with machetes, which most Rwandans kept around the house. Thousands of Tutsi women were taken away and kept as sex slaves,” it stated.