The PANAFRICAN Review
Beyond Bullets – Internalising The Values of Liberation
Lionel Manzi
During the period of Rwanda ’ s 26th anniversary commemoration of its liberation , I spared some time to share a coffee with a few friends . Among other fascinating subjects that came in the discussions about the liberation journey , there were individual and collective stories , most of which are little known to the general public . At times they are told , but from different perspectives and with different sensibilities : sometimes with painful tears and oftentimes with great pride . It is how they consolidate and transmit memory . The consolidation and transmission of memory is oftentimes a function of the education system ; however , even when the education system isn ’ t playing this natural role , society must somehow find how to transmit memory , which is essential in determining which value system is distinguishable and which is despised . It is how to give substance to the liberation because underpinning the armed war is the struggle of which value system should prevail .
I suspect that if the liberation journey provoked so much admiration for Rwandans , it is because the violence that it involved could not tarnish its beauty . A beauty that resides , among other things , as much as in the justness of the cause defended by the Rwandan Patriotic Front ( RPF ) as in the idea of individual sacrifice carried by its known and unknown heroes . A beauty of ideas that not only ensured triumph at the battlefield , but – more importantly – the kind that protected gains beyond the military campaign that propelled the liberation to power . This idea of sacrifice was encapsulated in the words of Honorable Tito Rutaremara : “ Liberation is not about what you get as an individual after liberation ; it is about what the people get after liberation ”.
What they get is the liberation ’ s value system . Thus , these men and women who decided to fight — knowing that death was the most likely outcome — so that others could live in freedom take our minds back to this deeply African conception of society : “ Individuals do not live for hundreds of years ; communities do .” In this sense , our individual choices and actions have an impact on other members of our community and on future generations . Likewise , the immortality that the liberation heroes acquire is not built on the temporary individual benefits they might have derived from the liberation struggle ; immortality is forged in the collective memories of present and future generations , through the transmission of the values for which they fought .
Consequently , the transmission of values is the element without which liberation would be reduced to a simple and meaningless military victory , a footnote in the long history of the nation . Any deficiency in the machinery supposed to
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