A Time for Machetes: The Rwandan Genocide - The Killers Speak

"A Time for Machetes" is a harrowing book. It is six years after the genocide in Rwanda and the journalist Jean Hatzfeld manages to persuade a group of imprisoned killers to speak to him. The interviews cover questions like how it was the first time they killed, how the killings were organized and conducted and if forgiveness is possible.

The accounts of the killers are interspersed by Hatzfeld's observations which give additional insights. Sometimes, however, he seems as perplexed as the reader by what he hears.The ten men speak of their unspeakable crimes so impassively, with so little remorse that I often found it a struggle to turn the page.

Once ordinary farmers these men take up their machetes to go "hunting" for Tutsis in the marshes, they "cut" them down and would have finished "the job" if it had not been for the advance of the rebel army. The words they use to describe their actions are chilling. Reflection on what suffering they inflicted is rare. They report no nightmares, seem not particularly distressed by what they did.

"A Time for Machetes" is an important book on the Rwandan genocide - and in its implications a very frightening one.

Fascinating insights (8/8 people found this helpful)

On April 7th, 1994, the small, Central African Republic of Rwanda was enveloped by the fastest genocide of the twentieth century, claiming the lives of 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus within one hundred days. The world looked on, first in denial, then with incredulity, and finally, with condemnation - far too late to be of any use to the victims.

Comparisons were drawn with the Holocaust and the killing fields of Cambodia. Yet what set Rwanda apart even from these genocides was that so much of the killing was done not by agents of the state, but by ordinary men - farmers, labourers and shopkeepers - with the machete their weapon of choice.

Jean Hatzfeld, a French journalist, gained access to a group of Hutu friends who were willing to speak to him from prison, without danger of self-incrimination. Ostensibly modest in scale, A Time for Machetes records their reflections about the genocide as it unfolded in Nyamata, a district in southern Rwanda. As a result, the book succeeds brilliantly in explaining how the genocide came to pass.

The conversations are relayed directly, in the words of the killers themselves. Chapters are split up to cover different themes: for example, were they coerced to kill, or did they do so willingly? How did the first kill feel? What was the role of women? Did they profit from the killings? Did they maintain their religious observance during the genocide?

The result is one of the most important books I have ever read. For in letting the killers speak with their own words, the author shines a light on their humanity. And if we can learn anything from history, it runs through the reflections of these ordinary men: how the capacity for the deepest inhumanity is so very, very human.

A Time for Machetes: The Rwandan Genocide - The Killers Speak

Jean Hatzfeld

Reader Reviews:

Haunting (3/3 people found this helpful)

Fascinating insights (8/8 people found this helpful)

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