After reading the article published in the Adventist Review “Forgiving the Killers of My Wife and 9 Children” (http://www.adventistreview.org/church-news/story3823-forgiving-the-killers-of-my-wife-and-9-children), we were schocked by the story because we knew that Mr. Ndwaniye had given a statement to the ICTR (International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda) and never said what he is saying today. We therefore took steps to investigate the story of Pastor Isaac Ndwaniye. We spent enough time speaking to numerous people in Karongi (Western Province of Rwanda) who want to remain anonymous for security reasons.

Pastor Isaac Ndwaniye is the son of Pastor Simeon Semafaranga.  The late Pastor Elizaphan Ntakirukimana and Pastor Simeon Semafaranga were very good friends from their youth. All the people we spoke to who knew both families were saddened to hear that Pastor Ndwaniye has taken a decision to accuse, betray and lie about the late Pastor Ntakirutimana and his family 22 years after the genocide. It is sad that Pastor Ndwaniye has lost his entire family in the Rwandan genocide; however this should not be an opportunity to sow hatred and lies among Rwandans and especially among Christians of the Adventist Church. Mr Ndwaniye should be ashamed to use his position in the Adventist Church for his own advantage by publishing in the Adventist journal an unfounded story about someone like Pastor Ntakirutimana who played a huge role in his education and development to make him the man he is today.

 

Throughout our investigation we learned much of Pastor Ndwaniye’s upbringing and his rising to his current position. After his primary school, Ndwaniye dramatically failed to secure a place at any secondary school; he became the shepherd of his father’s cows. Concerned that this child would have no future, the late Pastor Ntakirutimana managed to organise a scholarship for Ndwaniye in Cameroon to study the bible, and subsequently directed him to be ordained pastor within the Adventist Church. There were other families with much brighter children that he could have helped but the late Pastor Ntakirutimana chose Ndwaniye as he always wanted him to succeed especially because of the strong ties between the two families.

Pastor Ndwaniye is currently the president of East Central Rwandan Conference of Seventh Day Adventist (SDA) Church. A man who has been entrusted of such high position in the remnant Church and honored to lead his peers to preach and practice the word of God, would be expected to tell the truth; unfortunately he chose the opposite. It is not always easy to get back the reward from those that you helped in times of need.

 

Mr. Ndwaniye was given a chance to give a statement to ICTR in Arusha about the activities of late Pastor Ntakirutimana during the 1994 genocide and he never mentioned any of the accusations that he is raising now. In his statement, Mr. Ndwaniye even mentioned that Pastor Ntakirutimana sheltered Tutsis in 1959. Had Pastor Ntakirutimana and his son played any role in the attack against the refugees at the Mugonero Complex in 1994, Mr. Ndwaniye would not have missed the opportunity to declare it. At that time, Mr. Ndwaniye felt embarrassed to give a false statement against his then still alive mentor (Pastor Ntakirutimana) but chose to bring this unfounded story only after the latter’s death. It is deplorable that a pastor cannot even respect the dead. Mr. Ndwaniye also knew that the international tribunal could not accept any hearsay statement; indeed Mr. Ndwaniye was absent from Mugonero and has no idea about the situation that prevailed in the area after 6 April 1994. He even says that he came back to Mugonero five years later where he asked people not to tell him about people who killed his family (Ndwaniye, 2016). The story published in the Adventist Review is therefore made up since Mr. Ndwaniye was not present when his family was killed and nobody told him about what happened to his family.

The allegation that the Mission President and his son brought attackers to the Mugonero Complex is totally false. Moreover, Pastor Ndwaniye’s claim that during the attack “his wife and children ran to the president’s house for help, but [the president] turned them away” is not true at all. No such thing happened. The truth is that in the morning of the attack, Pastor Ntakirutimana, his wife, Dr. Gerard and many other people were ordered by gendarmes to leave their houses near the Complex. They went to seek refuge at a place called Gishyita, approximately five miles from the Mugonero Complex. They stayed there and did not return to Mugonero until 27 April 1994.

Our investigations also revealed that Dr. Gerard was not the director of Mugonero Hospital as reported in the story. The director was Dr. Oscar Giordano, a US citizen who left the Complex with his wife, herself a physician, and children on 10 April 1994 in a convoy under the escort of United Nations soldiers; Dr. Gerald was never appointed as acting director. This can be verified in the SDA Yearbook 1994 (p.477).

As a man of God (if he really is), Pastor Ndwaniye could have chosen to tell the truth instead of lies; he could have avoided to sow hatred among his followers; he should not use his family’s unspeakable tragedy as an excuse to undermine the legacy of his mentor, fellow pastor and brother in Christ. If he really needs to forgive the killers of his family, he should preach love, justice and truth.

 

References

Ndwaniye, I. (2016). ‘Forgiving the Killers of My Wife and 9 Children’. Adventist Review, 28 March 2016. Available at: http://www.adventistreview.org/church-news/story3823-forgiving-the-killers-of-my-wife-and-9-children (Accessed: 15/05/2016)

Seven day Adventist (1994). ‘Yearbook 1994’. Available at: http://documents.adventistarchives.org/Yearbooks/YB1994.pdf (Accessed: 30/06/2016)

 

Authors

David SIBOMANA

Jean Claude NIYITEGEKA

Kigali-Rwanda.