Thanks to the warm invitation by RPF, I had the privilege to walk the Liberation History Trail in the footsteps of Rwanda’s heroes, to tread this sacred soil and to feel, with my own heart, the rhythm of a nation’s epic struggle for life and dignity.
Along the trail I sensed three gifts that changed Rwanda’s destiny.
First, an unshakable sense of mission. In 1990 a handful of patriots launched a war not for power but for survival. Three years later, when the world looked away, they chose to march on Kigali—on foot—through gunfire and grief, to stop the genocide and rescue the republic. History records that the RPF turned the tide; but history also whispers that the tide turned because these men and women carried the future of every Rwandan on their shoulders.
Second, the courage to sacrifice. I stood in the fields and banana groves where a few hundred soldiers refused to be intimidated by an enemy that outnumbered and outgunned them. I heard how they buried Major-General Fred Rwigema on a hilltop and then kept walking. Their bravery was not the absence of fear; it was the refusal to surrender Rwanda to fear.
Third, the miracle of unity. From a spark in the Virungahighlands the RPF became a prairie fire because cadres at every level closed ranks around President Kagame and marched to a single drumbeat. Once again Rwanda has proved: when a people are united, history can be rewritten.
These qualities—mission, courage, unity—are the invisible engines behind Rwanda’s transformation over the past thirty-one years. They are the fuel for Vision 2050 and the guarantors of the Rwanda that our children will inherit. The Liberation History Trail is therefore not a museum piece; it is a living battery that will power every tomorrow this nation chooses to build.
The Chinese people recognize that battery because we possess one too. A couple of days ago we celebrated the 89th anniversary of the completion of our own Long March. In October 1934, encircled and outnumbered, around 86,000 Red Army soldiers broke through and walked 12,500 kilometers across more than 40 mountains with 20 more higher than 4,000 meters, and almost 100 rivers, fighting more than 600 battles and losing more than 166,000 comrades along the way. Those arrived in Yan’an with nothing but their faith and their footprints—yet those footprints became the runway for modern China.
Our two trails are separated by continents, but they rhyme in verse and rhythm. Both testify that liberation is never donated; it is earned by sweat, blood and an unbroken chain of wills.
Both our nations also carry the scars of colonial cruelty. From 1800 to 1940, millions Chinese labors were sold as “piglets,” shackled in ship holds and worked to death. In six weeks in 1937, Japanese invaders tortured and slaughtered 300,000 civilians in Nanjing. The notorious Unit 731 turned living Chinese into bacterial experiments. These memories burn because cruelty is cruelty, whether in Asia or in Africa.
I am reminded of some colonial rulers, where failure to meet rubber quotas cost men, women and children their hands—hands that had once cradled children or played drums in the evening.
Yet our response is not perpetual grievance; it is perpetual progress. The CPC distilled a century of struggle into a constellation of spirits: the Red Boat, the Long March, Yan’an, and many more. Each is a compass for a different stage of development, just as the spirit of liberation now guides Rwanda from recovery to prosperity.
Liberation Trail and Long March do not end at the horizon; it continues in our shoes. In a world addicted to quick answers, I invite you to keep asking the long questions: How do we turn liberation into lasting dignity? How do we work together to build a community with a shared future for humanity? How do we strive for modernization while honoring the memories that make us Rwandan or Chinese?
Let’s explore together the answers through implementing home-grown solutions, through reflecting feedback from the people and refining policies and its implementation, through self-reform every day. Time will tell, people will tell and history will tell.
The writer, Ambassador Gao Wenqi, is the Chinese Ambassador to Rwanda
Source: KT Press
