Prologue

Summary

Abafiire bagira enkuru. The dead make news

Sometime around 11 o'clock on the morning of Friday 17 March 2000, Rutembo Didas was standing in his banana plantation (orutookye), pruning his plants, when a strange sound suddenly disturbed the morning calm. As he later described it, the noise, like a sudden uprush of air, seemed to be that of an explosion. Dropping his tools, Rutembo immediately set off in the direction from which the sound had come, and presently, emerging from his plantation, realized that a building in the compound of one of his neighbours, a religious group called the Movement for the Restoration of the Ten Commandments of God (the MRTC), was on fire. From his current vantage point below the MRTC compound, he could see tongues of fire, and a thick plume of smoke, emanating from the roof of the building. Moreover, he could also now hear the terrible screams of people who were apparently still trapped inside the building. Minutes later, Rutembo arrived at the local police station, in the nearby trading centre of Kanungu, where he found Corporal Stephen Mujuni, an officer in the Local Defence Unit (LDU) – a kind of civil guard – on duty. Together, the men dashed back to the scene of the fire, but their initial attempts to break into the building were thwarted by the smoke billowing from within.