Rwanda - 1974 Print

Repubulika y'u Rwanda
Republic of Rwanda

Personally I find this is a very interesting note of 500 francs issued with the date of 19.04.1974. This is the one and only note that featured the then President of the Republic of Rwanda, Juvenal Habyarimana (1937-1994), the second President of Rwanda for 21 years, from 1973 to until his death in 1994.

Not many people outside Rwanda or Africa would have heard of Major General Habyarimana's name until in 1994. Major General Habyarimana was the Defense Minister and became President of Rwanda following a coup d'etat against the incumbent President Gregoire Kayibanda (1924-1976) in 1973. He went on and served as President until he was assassinated when his private plane (French made Falcon 50) was shot down near Kigali International Airport. Unfortunately, his death immediately started the Rwandan genocide, from 07.04.1994 to 15.07.1994. During these 100 days of turmoil, many innocent people were killed. It was reported that between 500,000 to 800,000 people were killed and most of these people are from the Tutsi tribe, Twa and moderate Hutu people. The saddest part to this story was that the western powers did nothing to stop these killings when started. All they did best was talked only at the UN Security Council and on average between 5,000 to 8,000 innocent people were killed daily in the country. Many lives would have saved if physical interventions were taken earlier. More importantly, what was the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) doing then? Rwanda has been a member of the OAU since 1963. Are the OAU not supposed to ensure all Africans enjoyed human rights?

The Rwanda genocide ended when the Rwanda Patriotic Front (RPF) led by Paul Kagame (Tutsi rebel leader) overthrown the Rwanda government. Like the Hutu led government, the RPF soldiers were also involved in the systematic revenge killings of the Hutu tribe people too. Two wrongs do not make it right!! 

Habyarimana belonged to the Hutu tribe and came from a very wealthy family. He was a dictator during his presidency and won several general elections with only his name on the ballot papers.

This note is printed with French on the front and Kinyarwanda language on the back. The Kinyarwanda is an official language in Rwanda. Other main languages spoken in Rwanda are the English and Kiswahili. It appears that only the Z prefix was printed for this series.

Five Hundred Francs

Dated 1974, P11a

Reverse