The Dance of the Golden Cranes: A Short Play

The Dance of the Golden Cranes: A Short Play

New E-book::: The Dance of the Golden Cranes

I'm getting ready to release my second short play as an e-book. Here's a synopsis:

A country is ready to celebrate its Liberation day, but there are forces vying for power and control that might turn this opportunity for celebration into chaos. The General has spent his life ensuring that life in his liberated country is safe and free for all its citizens, but the President he is tasked with protecting has other plans that might jeopardize the former’s ability to continue to enjoy the fruits of the many years spent fighting in the forest. It’s deception and greed at their foulest.

This play was originally written in February for radio and I look forward to recording it in the coming months. In the meantime, I hope you will get a chance to read and enjoy it. 

Gacaca: Hijacked Justice

April 1994 found Rwanda embroiled in nearly four years of civil war that had destroyed much of its infrastructure and economy. The country was tethering on the brink of ethnic violence and it was finally shoved over the edge by the assassination of President Juvenal Habyarimana. In a matter of 100 days, hundreds of thousands of Tutsis were annihilated in revenge for the assassination. In retaliation, the Tutsi-dominated Rwandan Patriotic Front pursued Hutu refugees, some of whom had actively participated in the genocide, even into neighboring Democratic Republic of Congo (then known as Zaire) and killed thousands of their numbers. Although the exact number is unknown, what is indisputable is that many perished at the hands of the RPF. Sixteen years down the road, the RPF-dominated government in Kigali is still on the prowl for genocidaires, although the fight is now being waged on a different battlefield. 

Gacaca is a Kinyarwanda name for well-manicured grass and, traditionally, people would sit on grass and listen to disputes between their neighbors and the elders would then pass binding judgement to the two parties involved in the conflict. After the genocide, the Rwandan government opted for this type of system to process the large amount of cases due to the number of those accused of crimes during the genocide.

This is all and well, but the system has been hijacked by those who seek to slander and eliminate the intellectual element of the Hutus in exile and other Rwandan opponents of the government. Why do I say the Hutu intelligentsia? Because I have recently had to deal with people who have been falsely accused and convicted by gacaca for having participated in the genocide.  

I had heard about such allegations before but I had never personally known those accused, so I couldn't speak with certainty whether they were guilty or innocent, but now I know without a doubt that this is a continuation of the RPF strategy of following the Hutu masses to discourage any opposition. These people, who are well-learned and held positions in the education system before the genocide, are being forced to cower and limit their participation, if any, in any form of opposition. The interesting thing is that the ones I know who have been falsely accused and convicted have absolutely no interest in politics. 

I first heard about the allegations in 2007 but I didn't take them seriously. One of their former colleague, a Tutsi, had spearheaded a campaign to convict them and he set about to find a student at their former school who could help him by saying he saw them participate in the genocide. Among those being accused at the time was my aunt, who had passed away. I heard one man had been taken and tortured but he had refused to implicate them. I figured that was the end of that, but I was clearly wrong.

This year, I heard the people, all former teachers or administrators, had been convicted to between 19 and 27 years in prison. Knowing the people accused, I can attest to their innocence 100% without a smidgen of doubt in my mind. It didn't make sense for a system to pursue innocent people- some of whom had actually been imprisoned by the then regime during the genocide- without an agenda. One of the first things that came to mind was Stalin's purges. 

Rwanda has always pursued its opponents through false accusations, the most infamous of which is Genocide Ideology, and this is another form of pursuit. The bad thing about it is that it will make the system of gacaca, in general, lose legitimacy in the eyes of many. It is without a doubt that the system is the best to deal with such large amount of cases, but hijacking it to achieve political aims is a sure way to discredit it and whatever benefits it might possess. As I wrote in my previous post about speaking out against injustice, this is a moment for us to speak out against those who are wrongly accused. Gacaca is our tradition and it works, but we have to put an end to its hijacking...we, at least, owe that much to our ancestors who worked hard to give us a just way to deal with our disputes. 

The Road Least-Trod

Life, in its complex simplicity, offers each of us a chance to discover its true purpose. In the Christian Bible, a parable is told about two paths, one wide and the other narrow, which we all must choose between in order to arrive at our destiny.

The first is said to be easier to follow with its large width and plenty of companions. You never have to battle the wayside thorns nor the fear of loneliness in the darkest of nights. The pounding of a myriad of feet mean that the weeds never have time to grow and store dew that might wet your trousers on spring mornings. When danger pounces, statistics are in your favor in terms of surviving. Most, so the holy book asserts, choose this path and it leads them to an ending rich in pain and horror.

The second path is narrower, its dangers more severe, and the shoulders to lean on are as abundant as the grey of an infant's mop. It takes courage, hope, and faith to tread the dust of this path. Along its length, the pilgrims succumb to hunger, thirst, and other dangers rather than turning back and taking the wider, comfortable path. At its end is a rumored paradise meant for those who are faithful and selfless in the present life.

In living, we exhibit qualities that make us either selfish or selfless. Based on our hopes and values, we choose between the physical or mental comfort, then we spend the rest of our lives seeking and asserting justifications for our stances until we either die or come to the realization that we had been wobbling on the wrong path and seek out its nemesis to rectify our actions. Throughout all of this, we ask ourselves- and perhaps others- about what the right path is, how to identify it, and what it requires of us.

There can be but little doubt as to what life gives and requires of us. Individual satisfaction is wired in each individual to the point where many would seek to put out their own lights rather than letting others subject them to a state of perpetual dimness. Centuries of oppression and fear have left many in our midst feeling like candles in the midst of a storm, whose light depends on the gale's fickle mercy. We cower behind our fears and wait for the moment when it's our turn to be extinguished, hoping against all odds to live out our lives in dimness. In the meantime, we fail to give our light to other candles who may also spread it until it becomes too powerful for the storm to extinguish. If only we could see our own potential, then we can become an eternal light for all creation to witness and judge.

Fear is the one thing keeping us from accomplishing that. We fear for our lives, the termination of our privileges, rejection from our peers, and many others, but what we don't realize is that we end up living as shadows of our true potential. Someone once said that sometimes a person meets his destiny on the path he takes to avoid it. In trying to avoid pain, we end up taking a path that directs us to the ultimate pain source. What if we decided to put our fear aside and followed what our hearts and minds tell us is the right path? What if we chose to be vocal about the injustice being committed against others rather than hiding in stoic silence that ultimately leads to our own demise? What if you and I's fears are really a result of generations of fear geared into our genes by those who feast on them to enrich themselves at our expense? What if fear is the main ingredient in dividing us so that they can easily conquer us? If all this was the true, what should our next step be?

The first step is to realize that our silence helps neither us nor our situation. In Maurice Ogden's poem "Hangman," the hangman poses the riddle: ""He who serves me best shall earn the rope of the gallows-tree." One by one, the citizens of the town are led to the gallows until only the narrator is left. When the dreaded call of the hangman seeks him out, he realizes that all along the gallows had been meant for him and that the hangman had been killing those who might have stood up to save him. Here's an excerpt from the poem.

"You tricked me. Hangman!," I shouted then,
"That your scaffold was built for other men...
And I no henchman of yours," I cried,
"You lied to me, Hangman. Foully lied!"


Then a twinkle grew in the buckshot eye,
"Lied to you? Tricked you?" he said. "Not I.
For I answered straight and I told you true --
The scaffold was raised for none but you.


For who has served me more faithfully
Then you with your coward's hope?" said he,
"And where are the others who might have stood
Side by your side in the common good?"


"Dead," I whispered. And amiably
"Murdered," the Hangman corrected me:
"First the foreigner, then the Jew...
I did no more than you let me do."


Beneath the beam that blocked the sky
None had stood so alone as I.
The Hangman noosed me, and no voice there
Cried "Stop!" for me in the empty square. - Maurice Ogden,
 http://homepage.mac.com/steveklein/hangman.html

When we speak out and face the dangers from those who profit from our silence, we tread the path least trod and, though we might not live to reap the benefits, tomorrow will owe its prosperity to our selfless actions. The fight for peace and justice never ends, but we are not to fool ourselves into thinking we don't owe the sliver of freedom we enjoy today to those who sacrificed their past. Some, like Mandela, lived to see a better day while many of his comrades like Steve Biko like Robert Sobukwe died before the realization of their dreams, but I have no doubt that those who died had seen the promised land and were satisfied by their sacrifices. Rather than stand around cowering while the hangman terrorized their people, they sounded the alarm and, in time, their efforts helped to chase him away. 


It is up to us now to guard against his kind from establishing their footing in our midst again. Wherever we perceive injustice, we are to stand against it and make sure our cry for freedom is heard across the land. Treading the straight and narrow is the only way to guarantee our safety and that of the generations to follow. However, if you decide to waddle in fear of your own shadow, do not be surprised if no one comes to your aide when your number comes up...those who kill by silence shall be killed by silence.