‘God raised her,’ mom says of ‘rape’ baby

Ngoma – Every April, as Rwanda commemorated the 1994 genocide, Agatha would turn off the radio, take to her bed and retreat into a silence so impenetrable that her daughter Agnes once asked if she had been a victim.

The answer, given by her grandmother, left 10-year-old Agnes reeling.

“I cried and immediately started feeling afraid of my mother because I felt like I was a wound on her soul,” recalled Agnes, now 28.

She was told her mother and grandmother were among at least 250 000 women and girls who, according to UN figures, were raped by Hutu extremists during the genocide targeting the Tutsi minority.

Due to the lingering stigma surrounding genocidal rape, both women’s real names have been concealed at their request.

Raped and abducted by a former schoolmate during the 100 days of bloodshed that left 800 000 people dead, mostly Tutsi, Agatha was just 17 when she gave birth.

Fearing reprisals by the Tutsi-led militia which took Kigali in July 1994, her Hutu assailant had forced her to flee with him to Tanzania, where Agnes was born in a refugee camp. He died shortly after.

Agatha’s relatives urged her to kill the infant, but she refused.

Yet every time she looked at Agnes, she struggled to choke down grief over her own lost future.

“God raised her, not me. I had no capacity,” Agatha, 45, said.

Agnes was shunned by relatives on both sides. her Hutu relatives called her “a snake”, echoing propaganda that fuelled the massacres. Her mother’s family said she carried the bloodline of genocide perpetrators. –