Global pop-rap star Doja Cat is set to headline Move Afrika concert.
A performer, often hailed as the “queen of pop-rap,” who calls herself Doja Cat, is expected to headline the “Global Citizen Move Afrika Concert” in Kigali tomorrow, much to the delight of her fans. In New York, however, inside the offices of the Human Rights Foundation (HRF) in the Empire State Building, there is likely consternation at the thought of what promises to be a joyously raucous occasion in Kigali. Why the sour grapes?
According to HRF, no one should even consider travelling to Rwanda. In addition to sending letters to performers, they inevitably take to Twitter (or X) to urge cancellations. If Doja Cat, real name Amala Ratna Zandile Dlamini, were to pay attention to such tweets, she might wonder whether it is a practical joke from a school playground—or the work of a disgruntled fan.
In what can only be described as puerile and hyperbolic hysteria, HRF “urges @DojaCat to cancel her Move Africa Kigali show sponsored by the regime of Rwanda’s warmongering dictator Paul Kagame.” This is not the first time HRF has sent such messages. They were similarly outraged when American singer-songwriter John Legend performed in Rwanda in February last year, inundating the internet with fatuous insults against the country.
American pop-rap artist Doja Cat performing before a live audience. She is expected to headline the Move Afrika concert in Kigali.
Those running HRF appear to have Rwanda squarely in their sights, in what seems a sustained campaign. There are few more gross distortions of human rights advocacy than HRF’s targeting of Rwanda. Their crude insults are always accompanied by lurid fabrications, portraying Rwanda as a “tyrannical police state that maintains its grip on power through fear, strict information control, mass surveillance, forced disappearances…” and the list goes on.
Anyone with firsthand knowledge of Rwanda would be bemused by HRF’s description. “A police state… mass surveillance” appears lifted from histories of East Germany and pasted onto Rwanda. Judging by the language of HRF’s anti-Rwanda campaigns, those familiar with the propaganda of the planners and perpetrators of the 1994 Genocide Against the Tutsi will recognize the influence. The crude insults and overblown fabrications—virtual caricatures—bear the hallmarks of the same ideologues responsible for a genocide that claimed over a million lives.
Irony does not get more grotesque or obscene than the strategy adopted by these planners, who have reinvented themselves as “human rights activists” and defenders of democracy. Today, many genocide ideologues style themselves as human rights advocates, and it is often their work that forms the basis of HRF’s so-called research.
In their letter to Doja Cat, HRF accuses Rwanda of supporting the Congolese rebel movement, the AFC/M23 (Congo River Alliance), while repeating now-standard accusations of “looting minerals for Rwanda” and committing “atrocities against civilians, including sexual violence.” They make no mention of the fact that AFC/M23 took up arms to defend Kinyarwanda-speaking communities in the DRC from decades of persecution. The rebel group fights to protect its people from atrocities, rather than commit them.
Instead, HRF has effectively become a propaganda tool for the genocide ideologues who seem to influence its obsessive anti-Rwanda focus. The most charitable interpretation is that HRF is a willing dupe of these ideologues—or perhaps they see Rwanda as an easy target to demonstrate their relevance to funders.
Whatever the motivation, HRF is fortunate that nations do not routinely sue for libel or defamation. Otherwise, Rwanda could hold them legally accountable for what has become a relentless campaign of half-truths and outright fabrications, designed to damage the country’s reputation.
