Murangwa: Football was my saviour

The darkest moment in the history of Rwanda was the genocide in 1994, which rocked the East African country, claiming hundreds of thousands of lives.

Almost every household in the East African country suffered some form of casualty. This year marks exactly 22-years of Rwanda’s saddest moment and one-time national team goalkeeper Eric Eugene Murangwa recounts how he survived the bloodshed thanks to football.

On Thursday, 14 April 2016 in London, his Football for Hope, Peace and Unity (FHPU) organisation and the Aegis Trust organised a charity screening of the documentary “my saviour at the frontline”, climaxed with discussions of the role of sport in peace and education.

The documentary was inspired by the story of Murangwa, one-time the safest pair of hands for the Amavubi, using his role in soccer to promote peace to future generations affected by conflict.

“For many years afterwards, I kept asking ‘why me?’ And, recently I came to realize that those who survived had all survived for a purpose, which is to make sure our loved ones weren’t lost in vain. The only way we can do that is to make sure that what happened to them, and to us, never happens to our children.” Murangwa said.

Few weeks before the tragic incident, Murangwa, then on the books of Rayon Sports, one of Rwanda’s most successful clubs, was playing in the defunct CAF Cup Winners’ Cup, and had eliminated Sudanese giants, El Hilal at the First Round 4-2 on aggregate. The team will later withdraw due to the instability at home as opponents at the next round, Kenya Breweries had a walkover into the last …

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