Squatters watch and wait as refugees head for home

ANY day now, Eugene is expecting a knock on the door. The comfortable villa which has been home to his family for the past two years will be taken away and he, his wife and four children, will be homeless.

It's a situation happening throughout Rwanda these days, as a new law allowing returned refugees to repossess their former homes takes effect. Those living in the house have a fortnight to collect their belongings and get out.

As the refugees returning to Rwanda head towards their home towns, the possibility of conflict arises. Local officials admit there is rising tension but say there is no fairer way of resolving the question of house ownership.

Eugene has had to pay nothing for his house in Kigali over the past two years and says he cannot afford to start renting now.

A Tutsi who returned from Burundi after the genocide in 1994, he simply broke into the house and stuck up a maison occupee sign to deter others with the same idea.

Virtually everyone in Kigali seems to be a "squatter". They joke about becoming "displaced persons" in the coming weeks but rarely plan for their possible ejection.

Those among the 600,000 refugees who have returned may find their houses intact but still face an uncertain reception from former neighbours.

The suspicion remains that old scores may yet be settled, that their role, if any, in the genocide will be scrutinised.

Others will find that their houses have been destroyed.

Housing and land ownership are issues affecting all Rwandans, not just refugees. Any solution to the country's complex problems must start by addressing the land question.

Imagine Ireland with more than 1 million people living in each county this gives some idea of the population density of Rwanda.

And since more than 90 per cent of Rwandans live off the land, each needs a plot in which to grow crops.

Decades of violence, however, have created successive waves of refugees moving in and out of the country.

Those returning from eastern Zaire are only the latest wave in a pattern which began when thousands of Tutsis fled the pogroms in 1959.

Thus, in some cases, the people who left in 1959 will re occupy houses taken over by Hutus more than 30 years ago.

These exchanges are unlikely to be easy. In one case, a Tutsi woman, the lone survivor in her family of the genocide, has been visited by the returning Hutu family implicated in their murder. The woman will have to leave her house, although it may be returned if the accusations against the family are sustained.

Ail, the evidence points to the need for a massive house building programme. This may not solve the problem, but could go a long way towards alleviating it. According to Francois Rugerinyange, head of the government's department of rehabilitation in Butare no houses are left in many villages since the genocide.

Mr Rugerinyange says people are being offered the choice of building on their own land or, if they have fears about returning home, seeking accommodation on estates to be built on land owned by the commune.

Butare, Rwanda's second city, lost 100,000 inhabitants in the killings. Initial plans are to build 8,000 houses, of which 1,000 are being provided by Concern. In nearby Mbazi, nine of these houses are almost built.

Concern provides a basic housing kit - wooden poles, galvanised sheeting and wooden window shutters. The local women bake the bricks using clay dug from a pit at the back of the house. This pit is later filled in and planted with banana trees.

The houses are rectangular and most have four rooms. A local tradesman is paid $20 a house for bricklaying and roofing. The women finish off their own houses by plastering the walls with a coating of the red clay, mixed with a bag of cement - if money allows.

Some of the families who have already moved in, have built kitchen extensions and shelters for the latrine at the back.

During our visit to the building site, a woman begs the Concern volunteer, Paul Comiskey, to build a house for her and the baby she carries on her back. She pulls off her scarf to show the scar left by a machete blow: "I have suffered. I deserve a house."

Paul tells her the mayor decides on allocating houses. The woman is surrounded by neighbours who tell her that their suffering is as great as hers.

The incident provides some evidence of the huge demand for housing. "This land is fertile, it can feed our people. You can help now with the emergency. But for next year and the next year, people most need a place to live in," says Mr Rugerinyange.