Machete Season

A sharp blade, an inkota is like a machete used to slaughter cattle. This was the instrument Alphonse used to kill his first Tutsi, an elderly man. 

In Kinyarwanda, the name means “those who attack together,” and it was the name of the Hutu paramilitary group formed by friends of President Habyarimana in the early 1990s. Although not a state military, the members were trained by Rwandan soldiers and even French soldiers. Three gang members were interahamwe members and leaders in the militia. The militia was critical to the success of the genocide, providing the equipment and vehicles for large-scale killings and training the killers in the early days.

Primus was a Belgian beer that was considerably more expensive than urwegwa. It was associated with the Tutsi aristocracy and with rich Hutu who could afford it. During the genocide, the killers would steal the beer and drink it. Drinking Primus was an example of how good their lives were during the killing season.

The RPF began in the late 1980s as a loose-knit organization of exiled Tutsi troops in Uganda. Its aim was to remove Habyarimana from office, restore Tutsis’ full rights in Rwanda, and end the violence against them. In 1990, they started a military campaign against the Rwandan Army and made regular incursions into Rwanda. Initially they were called the inkotanyi, which means invincible in Kinyarwanda. The killers regularly referred to their pending arrival and the need to speed up the killing. They changed the name to the Rwandan Patriotic Front, headed by Paul Kagame, who became the first president after the genocide. When the RPF gained enough momentum, it entered Rwanda to stop the genocide and trigger the flight of the Hutu to Congo.

The United Nations Assistance Mission in Rwanda (UNAMIR) was sent to Rwanda in November 1993. It was charged with keeping the peace after the RPF and Habyarimana’s government signed the Arusha peace accords. Initially there were 2,500 troops, but within a week of the start of the genocide, only 540 troops remained in the country. UNAMIR’s number one concern was to protect its own forces and to evacuate foreign personnel. According to Hatzfeld, the organization did virtually nothing to slow down the genocide or protect Tutsis from the Hutu.