COMING HOME

By Kevin Fedarko

As the torrent of refugees flowed past the little Rwandan village of Nkuli last week, Jonasi Ruziga stood in silence and stared. The numbers were overwhelming--more than half a million Hutu, alternately trudging through the pouring rain and panting under the tropical sun. Ruziga, a Tutsi trader, had an equally overwhelming reason for monitoring their passage. He was looking for the murderers of his children. "Yesterday evening I saw two of them," he said. "They passed here along this road. Then this morning I saw one more walking by. Just like that."

The epic influx of refugees was made up mostly of Hutu civilians who fled Rwanda in 1994, fearing reprisal for the genocide deaths of 800,000 Tutsi at the hands of the Hutu-led government. For two years the Hutu had huddled in Zairean camps, prevented from returning by Hutu militia who controlled them through savage intimidation. When Tutsi-led Zairean rebels routed the Hutu tormentors two weeks ago, the refugees fled home. In their midst, however, were thousands--perhaps even tens of thousands--of the extremists who had organized and taken part in the butchery of 1994. Some of those killers were now returning to the scene of their crimes and parading under the gaze of their victims' parents, like Ruziga.

In the view of many Tutsi, had Ruziga seized a machete and hacked his children's killers to pieces, he would have been acting within his rights. Yet he did not, and his reasons for refraining may say something about why the genocide occurred in the first place, and much about whether Rwanda can overcome it. "I will wait until everybody has returned; then I will go to the authorities and make my report," he said. "Whatever happens will be up to the government. If they find out that, say, they killed because they were told to by the authorities, then I will agree to live with them the way we lived before."

That response may seem extraordinary for a man whose two daughters were slaughtered, and it is far from certain that his attitude is shared by all Tutsi. Many made no effort to conceal their contempt for the returning Hutu. Many more, however, seemed to greet the returnees with Ruziga's air of orderly acceptance and restraint--an outlook that may stem from Rwanda's unique social structure. Unlike most African nations, which were cobbled together by colonial mapmakers, Rwanda was a tightly organized kingdom long before the Europeans arrived. A Tutsi god-king headed an elaborate system of civil administration, taxation and military conscription that the Germans and Belgians left largely intact, even as they tightened the screws. When independence came, with a 1959 Hutu revolution, the new rulers inherited a near totalitarian state.

In 1994 this infrastructure lent itself to genocide, which was systematically planned by the extremist Hutu government and was unwaveringly implemented by obedient local authorities. Now, paradoxically, the same community controls--and the mind-sets they evoke--may offer the possibility of peaceful reintegration. Last Wednesday, Odetta Mukandari returned to her village and found her house occupied by Mbangukira Kabagare, a 70-year-old Tutsi. Mukandari didn't confront Kabagare; she didn't even knock on the door. Instead she went to live with relatives. Later, when she met him in the street, she simply smiled politely. As for Kabagare, he explained that the authorities had originally told him he could stay in the house, and that if they told him to leave, he would obey: "I will do what I am told."

Even with such compliance, however, 500,000 Hutu refugees will put a strain on the largely Tutsi Rwandan government. Its housing policy is quite clear: anyone occupying someone else's home is required to leave within 15 days of the owner's arrival. But most of those occupying others' houses are Tutsi who, like Kabagare, have nowhere else to go. The only solution is to build new homes, and the government is appealing to the international community, including the U.S., to send humanitarian aid instead of the 12,000 troops originally committed to rescue the Hutu in Zaire. Several hundred thousand refugees may still be scattered in eastern Zaire; a scaled-down multinational force will probably be organized this week to funnel aid to them.

Difficult as resettling the returnees may prove, the thorniest problem Rwanda faces will be how to address the demands for justice. Some 83,000 genocide suspects already pack standing-room-only prisons--and to date not a single one has been tried. As refugees arrive home, thousands more will be denounced as suspected murderers. For the moment, say government officials, only the most notorious will be arrested. As for the rest, investigators will be under orders to move as slowly as possible so as not to cause panic; in this tightly knit society the slaughter was so intimate--neighbors killing neighbors--that it will be impossible to hide. So far, men like Jonasi Ruziga seem content to let loved ones go unavenged a while longer, hoping their restless ghosts are willing to wait as Rwanda struggles to rebuild from the ashes of genocide.

--Reported by Peter Graff/Nkuli

With reporting by PETER GRAFF/NKULI