Mbeki apologizes to Rwanda over 1994 genocide
The Jakarta Post, Jakarta
South African President Thabo Mbeki apologized to Rwanda on Wednesday for not giving enough assistance to the Central African nation 10 years ago when hundreds of thousands of its citizens were butchered in one of the worst genocides in the history of mankind.
South Africa at that time was preoccupied with the consolidation of its embryonic liberation from the apartheid system of white minority domination on one side and holding its first democratic elections on the other, Mbeki said in a speech delivered at a huge gathering in Kigali to mark the 10th anniversary of the Rwandan genocide.
"Because we were preoccupied with extricating ourselves from our own nightmare, we didn't cry out as loudly as we should have against the enormous and heinous crime against the people of Rwanda that was committed in 1994. For that we owe the people of Rwanda a sincere apology, which I now extend in all sincerity and humility," Mbeki said in the speech, which was made available to The Jakarta Post by the South African Embassy in Jakarta.
Rwanda was plunged into a frenzy of ethnic butchery that saw an average of 8,000 people killed each day in the months after a plane carrying Rwanda's and Burundi's leaders was shot down on April 6, 1994.
The killers, mostly civilians armed with small as well as traditional arms, killed almost one million Tutsis and Hutu moderates in just 100 days.
Mbeki, who has spent most of his life fighting injustice and oppression, said South Africa had contributed to the genocide through the apartheid government, which contributed to the "diabolical slaughter" of the innocents by supplying some of the arms used in the genocide.
"When we acted on the request of your movement (Rwandan President Paul Kagame's Rwanda Patriotic Front) to ask the apartheid regime to stop the supply of the weapons of death, representatives of the oppressor regime in our country boldly asserted the precedence of profit from the sale of the instruments of death over the lives of the people of Rwanda," he said.
South Africa under the present leadership hopes the above truths will contribute to Rwanda's healing process, the President said.
"A time such as this demands that the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth should be told. It should be told because not to tell it is to create the conditions for the crime to recur," Mbeki added.
The South African leader criticized the United Nations for abandoning Rwanda "as Africans were exterminated like pernicious vermin."
"Why did the United Nations, set up to ensure that genocide, as occurred when the Holocaust was visited on the Jewish people, did not recur anywhere in the world, stand by as Africans were exterminated like pernicious vermin," Mbeki questioned.
Mbeki expressed his country's thanks and gratitude to the people of Rwanda and their leaders for restoring the dignity of Africans and teaching the world the meaning of forgiveness and national reconciliation.
President Mbeki pledged South Africa's friendship and support in rebuilding Rwanda and helping its people.
Besides Mbeki, Kenyan President Mwai Kibaki, Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni, Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi and Belgian Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt also attended Wednesday's ceremony.