The deadliest gap is not in time; it’s between the keepers of truth and those who must inherit it. In our country, history is not a distant shore but rather the soil beneath our feet, the air that shapes our breath and the quiet presence in our daily lives. Even with that, a quiet distance is opening a growing gap between the younger generation and the historical figures who shaped the nation’s rebirth. This is not merely a gap in years, but a gap in touch…. in understanding and even in urgency. It is the space between hearing of a struggle and feeling its weight.
The men and women who carried us from the brink of annihilation into a new dawn are not abstract names in a textbook. They are walking archives and living vaults of courage, pain, compromise, and relentless will. They remember the tremor in the ground when unity cracked, the moment trust collapsed, and the heavy, slow work of repairing it. They carry the cost of peace in their memories, in their scars, in the pauses between their words.
But time is a thief. With every year, more of these voices grow faint, this year my daddy Nkurunziza Peter Claver , went to be with the lord, this summer 2 of his agemates also followed him these are Tharcisse Ntuganyagwe, Joseph Murekeraho, these were senior cadres and strong educationists.
More of our youth grow up knowing about them, but not knowing them. They memorize the 4th of July but miss the dread that shuddered through every second those dates mark. They can recite the victories of the 4th of July, but not the blood, the loss, the silent screams beneath them. They hear the words “Gukunda Igihugu,” but feel no urgency behind it and no pulse to remind them what’s at stake.
Without deliberate effort to connect, to live these memories, “Gukunda Igihugu” risks becoming a hollow chant, a ceremonial echo bouncing in empty halls as the bleeding truth …. the pain, the courage, the relentless will to rebuild fades into abstraction. And when memory fades into abstraction, history becomes negotiable. The values that held us upright like unity, accountability, vigilance all lose their sharp edges. What once was a collective wound becoming just a chapter in a book. A generation untethered from its origin story is a generation vulnerable, open to forgetting, and dangerously close to repeating the tragedies it never truly inherited.
We cannot allow that bridging this gap requires more than an annual reminder or a photograph in a museum. It demands spaces where youth can look into the eyes of those who rebuilt this country, ask uncomfortable questions, and hear answers unfiltered by time. It demands that elders do not just tell their stories but invite the young to carry them not as burdens, but as compasses. And it requires that the younger generation understand: this legacy is not an inheritance you simply receive. It is a living trust you must defend, expand, and eventually pass on.
Your innovation, your ambition and your global perspective are powerful tools that shape the future. Yet, without deep roots grounded in history and identity, tools become directionless weapons, prone to inflict harm rather than build. The strength of Rwanda’s future does not lie solely in forward momentum, but in the deliberate and unyielding connection between generations; the intergenerational handshake that carries the weight of memory, wisdom, and resilience.
This handshake must be firm, intentional, and unbroken. It is the thing that binds past to present, experience to aspiration. When the hand of memory slips, the ground beneath us begins to shake, threatening the fragile stability painstakingly built by those who came before us. History has already laid bare the consequences of fractured memory e.g. chaos, division, and the collapse of what once seemed unshakable.
The work of building our Rwanda is unfinished. It will always be unfinished. There will always be voices to hear, wounds to tend, and vigilance to maintain. But this work endures because it is carried forward through connection… when each generation stands not in isolation but in solidarity with the one before it and the one after. To refuse the luxury of forgetting is to accept the responsibility of remembrance as an active, daily practice and not a mere ceremony or obligation. It means embedding the lessons of the past into the ambitions of the present, so that progress is not built on the sand of amnesia but on the bedrock of collective truth.
Every generation must learn to look both backward and forward with equal devotion. To look back is not to linger in sorrow, but to draw strength from struggle. To look forward is not to escape the past, but to carry its truths into a future that honors sacrifice and demands justice. Only through this continuous, conscious connection can Rwanda’s legacy not just survive but thrive while transforming memory into action, pain into purpose, and hope into lasting peace. The future belongs to those who remember deeply and act boldly.
