“It turns out not only genocide deniers are blind” - Florence Karamera
Last week, Kate learned the astonishing truth about her back story: that what she thought was the most fundamentally true thing about her was a lie, to expedite her passage to safety in the UK. We also learned why Eunice, Eve, Michel and Alice had kept the truth from her, and that Tutsis as well as Hutus were capable of atrocities.
As is sometimes the case, the penultimate episode of a drama dropped its biggest bombs. This final episode had nothing to match last week’s great twist. There was, however, some reckoning and Shakespearean bloodletting in the final act. The surviving players, meanwhile, found a measure of truth, in some cases reconciliation, and the prospect of a dusty road ahead to better possibilities.
First, at last, a meeting with the sisters – a calm and frank exchange, though Alice is handcuffed. President Bibi Mundanzi demands that Alice withdraw her insurrectionary claims for the sake of peace in Rwanda. Alice insists that “we have a duty to memory”. But Bibi reminds Alice of a story from their childhood, when cattle died from having been led to poisoned waters. Alice had persuaded Bibi to carry the can for that (“Let them believe it was the strange little white-eyed girl”). It was the last time she would take her advice.
Kate is in Africa. She is shown the gravestone of Eve’s partner Ed, her saviour, who died in 1997. It would not have been uncovered if the farmers had not been burning the land for crops. She walks away from the landscape, fires blazing symbolically all around.
Back in London, Michael is surprised to be approached by a probate officer and informed that Blake Gaines had made him a beneficiary of his will. It isn’t his car collection, sadly, but a copy of the unpaid invoice from the Universal Church of Christ the Peacemaker and a photograph of industrialist Richard Ratzenburger.
As Harper reads a novel to Michael’s daughter Hana, Michael receives a call on behalf of Frank Munzero. It is regarding a lead his daughter was following up in her professional work before she suffered the crash that has left her in her present condition. Michael and the representative meet. It turns out that Kromin, the mining company working in Rwanda, have been paying off Ganimana and his people $23m a year not to interfere with their work, the payments being made to the Universal Church of Christ the Peacemaker, who only have two branches of their church, one in London, the other in the DRC, in the Sankele, the Kromin village. It’s a front.
Sadly, we also learn that it was Florence who stole the tape from the fault. Oh, Florence. Worse, here he is en route to Sankele to meet “Samson”, aka Nkanga, who is now a member of the police there. This looks bad. Driving out there, he unexpectedly comes across Kate. She is in search of the graves from the Hutu refugee site. Kate asks Florence to help her find him. Kate will not be put off.
Nkanga tells Florence that since Kate will not leave, he must take her to the graves she seeks and leave her there. He hands him a blade. “Runihura told us you would do anything to bury your past,” he tells the young Hutu. Florence does indeed take Kate to the grave. As she slithers into it, with Florence staring down, it occurs to her that she is in grave danger from her guardian angel. But no. He explains that he was paid to kill her, with a Rwandan passport; but he must find his own way home. As he departs, however, villagers, aware of Kate’s death sentence gather with axes; whereupon they attack the land, vigorously, digging for more graves.
In a stadium in Rwanda, Runihura breaks the news to Bibi that the British want a deal, which will involve Alice returning to government and Bibi, if not stepping down, at least sharing power. They argue bitterly over economics but the sub-text is that Bibi feels betrayed by her one-time lover and, it turns out, father to daughter Mary. But the deal must happen: Alice is released to a crowd carrying “truth and reconciliation” banners – the truth on the tape will out. Back at his home, Runihura is startled by a cobra left there. It rears up. He could run but resignedly, he steps forward instead.
Back in London, the news is broken to Ganimana that there is no more that can be done for his illness. Aware that this is the end of the road, he steps out into it and is run over by an ambulance. After decades of wrongdoing and evasion of justice, an abrupt end rather than the protracted one he would have faced in the courts. And now, a third man falls. Cries of unspeakable agony from a gurney. It’s Nkanga. Both his eyes have been put out, clearly the work of Florence, meting out to him double the treatment he applied to Picot.
Alice meets with Mary in Switzerland, sitting over the waters; it is a much friendlier encounter than their previous one. There are advantages in ceding power. Mother and daughter have each other back. As for Alice, she is in the front line again. Advised that Kromin’s mining operations are coming under attack from Ugandan jihadis, she instructs her assistant to call Sophie Barré, who has inherited her late father’s business interests. They can do business with her. The Great Game continues.
Finally, a call between Michael and Kate, who despite her tone of arch distance has a profound emotional bond with the lawyer, something beyond mere daughter substitute or sexual attraction. She tells him he has kicked the pills; he apologises for not having told the truth sooner but not too think unkindly of her mother. Before anything more intimate can be said, she puts down the phone.
Notes and observations
Touching to get a full, close-up shot of Hana, who, as suspected, did have a significant role to play in this drama, one which clearly cost her dearly.
The Forgiven, the book by Lawrence Osborne that Harper is reading to Hana is indeed a cracking read, a tale of debauched white folk, who, through carelessness, find themselves in too deep in the deserts of Morocco.
This has been another fine series from Hugo Blick, who has managed to fashion a highly watchable drama out of the single most brutal, shocking and insane mass act of violence in postwar times in a way that does not “other”, or condescend to the Africans involve.
Meanwhile, Michaela Coel, offset by John Goodman as Ennis, a man who carries his heavy burdens lightly, turns in a magnificent performance as the steely yet deeply hurt and vulnerable Kate. It has been a grim pleasure.
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