Author: Shyaka Kanuma

Yawn…Human Rights Watch Releases Yet Another Hit Job on Rwanda

In this photo from 2017: Seated on the extreme left is widow of DUSINGIZIMANA Patrick who died of illness but HRW said he was a fisherman shot for illegal fishing, while the woman seated on the extreme right is wife to HABYALIMANA Elias who at the time was studying in Belgium and was reported by the HRW to be dead. File photo.

The New York-based Human Rights Watch, very recently has put out another report – which turns out to be just another of their hit jobs on Rwanda – with the sinister title “Join us or die”.

Reading through the thing, a stranger that has never stepped in Rwanda would be forgiven for thinking the country’s ruling party, the RPF, is the very devil itself.

You have to shake your head at what groups like HRW that enjoy total impunity, and whose top bosses are perpetually on some weird power trip, can do.

It has long been obvious one of HRW’s missions is to paint Rwanda, under the RPF administration, as an Orwellian society where “Big Brother” monitors each of our movements, and eavesdrops on our conversations everywhere – with very bad things supposedly happening to anyone the government deems “out of line”. (By the way, do not forget that this very HRW in 2017 claimed government was “summarily executing petty crimes suspects”, only for seven people that supposedly had been executed to turn up at a press conference, breathing and talking!)

According to HRW’s current report, now Rwandans abroad too allegedly are getting the Big Brother treatment. Human Rights Watch wants the world to know that Kigali keeps track of, or surveils literary thousands of Rwandans in the Diaspora. Including in Western countries like the United Kingdom and various other European states, in the US and Canada, in Australia, and several African countries. I don’t think even Vladimir Putin has ever been accused of having such capabilities!

Also, those are easily debunkable lies. Consider the claim that “the (Rwandan) authorities have created an environment where many Rwandans abroad, even those living thousands of miles away from Rwanda, practice self-censorship, refrain from engaging in legitimate political activism, and live in fear of traveling, being attacked, or seeing their relatives in Rwanda being attacked.

How do they for instance square this with the constant diatribes of old man Faustin Twagiramungu, against the government of Rwanda; against the RPF, against the president of Rwanda? How is this someone that is “under surveillance”, or that “censors himself”, or that is scared his (very many) relatives living in Rwanda could be attacked in retaliation for his words?

Another case in point is the Mbonyumutwa family. These are the offspring of none other than Dominic Mbonyumutwa, one of the founders of “Hutu power” genocidal politics in Rwanda.

Two of his children, Gustave and Ruhumuza Mbonyumutwa, live in Belgian where they are very active in Diaspora politics of smears (of course) against Kagame and his government – the people that deposed the extremist “Hutu Power” politics. The Mbonyumutwa brothers and others like them are very vocal on social media, saying whatever they want about the Rwandan government, its leadership, or its institutions.

But even as they do all that, their sister Maryse Mbonyumutwa is happily living in Rwanda; a high-profile individual running a top end apparel business, in between jet-setting to London, Paris, and everywhere all over Africa.

Strangely, no one in Kigali is threatening her, seizing her bank accounts, keeping her under house arrest, or any other of the things HRW claims.

I guess one of the great privileges for rich country organizations like HRW is that they will publish absolutely any fabrications they want about countries like Rwanda, because where they come from no one will subject them to scrutiny.

Anyone that wants to be an objective critic of Rwanda will agree the RPF indeed has its flaws, and shortcomings. No government in history has ever been perfect. Yet the RPF has, with the most meagre resources at its disposal, brought about a transformation of Rwandan society that’s scarcely believable. This is no hyperbole, as anyone that saw Rwanda in 94 knows.

One would be a great liar if they said they expected nothing but civil strife, upheaval, and permanent state failure in Rwanda. The most logical projection was that as a state we should still be subsisting on the alms of foreign NGOs.

But then, things took a completely different direction, with the country becoming an astounding development success story; one with some of the best indicators of social well-being in Africa. Perhaps this is one reason why there is so much tooth gnashing, rage, and hate by groups like HRW against Rwanda.

How dare these African blacks show such competence at running their own affairs! How dare they actually find solutions – that turn out to be successful too! – for their problems, without the involvement of the big, white bwanas in the West! How dare this Kagame have a mind of his own, he and his administration, and devise their own plans and actually succeed, leaving in the dust all the old tropes about how Africans can never be good at anything?

The other, most likely reason, is political. HRW has its own agenda about who should be running Rwanda.

As a very wise, very credible man wrote some years back: Human Rights Watch’s discourse on Rwanda has been viscerally hostile to the (RPF), which defeated the genocidal regime in 94. It is systematically biased in favor of letting unrepentant Hutu Power political forces back into Rwandan political life.

That is the truth.

October 13, 2023
Regarding Social Media Wars, Why Can’t We Be More Like Nigerians, Kenyans?

Felix Tshisekedi’s regime staging social media war against Rwanda

I have a beef with my fellow Rwandans; a pretty serious one moreover!

It has to do with social media wars, the question being, why do we so often allow ourselves to be “overpowered” by bad-faith actors that choose to malign us, our society, our interests, even who we are? I am talking about the kind of exchanges that happens on the world’s big social media platforms – predominantly Twitter, now renamed X, Facebook, and others like YouTube.

Very many Rwandans, like people elsewhere on earth now have accounts on these platforms, where you will find several fronts in the world’s wars of information, misinformation, propaganda, disinformation, you name it.

But us Rwandans, at least very many that I personally know, have chosen to be largely passive; to largely not be involved, even in the face of the most insidious, and vicious attacks on us: from Tshisekedi and his group in Kinshasa; or from apologists of genocide, terrorists of FDLR and their propagandists; or from revisionists of the saddest, most difficult events in our history, and a lot more.

Here is the thing about war in our world today. Some may still think of war in terms of militaries or armed groups fighting with guns, grenades, artillery pieces, fighter aircraft, and the like. Today that is partly true. No less important are the social media wars that supplement the “hot wars” and, in case you haven’t been paying attention, whose participants compose of armies of social media warriors pushing the narrative of this or that side; trying to shoot down the narrative of the adversary, who in turn do everything they can to discredit the other side. And so on.

Social media wars – conducted on computers and smart phones, with the battlefields situated on the aforementioned social media platforms – have taken on vital importance in today’s world. It has gotten to the extent (as one will read in so many reports in the world’s media) of states investing hundreds of millions of dollars, to gain strategic advantage in the battles to win over international opinion to one’s side. States wage hot wars with prior preparation to win as much of the moral support internationally as they can, with social media campaigns as the tool to achieve this goal. Those on the receiving end too will be working around the clock, to counter whatever the adversary is peddling, while presenting their own case.

One very important component of the “information struggles” are ordinary, everyday people that quickly become participants, lending their support to this or that side, depending on their interests, or their views of what is right or wrong. Just take a peek at the “conversation” between Russian and Ukrainian (and the multitudes internationally that chime in to lend their voice to one or the other side) social media. To say it is “fire” is a mild understatement.

Obviously for social media wars to break out, it doesn’t always require the outbreak of hot conflict. All it takes are some provocative, or misplaced words, to whip up a storm of recriminations, sharp words, and incendiary rhetoric. I am thinking of some serious, yet amusing incidents, like the social media wars Uganda’s first son Gen. Muhoozi Kainerugaba has ignited with Kenyan Twitter. These usually begin around 3 am, with the general tweeting intentions, say, of capturing Nairobi, for some reason or other. And before you know it, fire!

Kenya’s social media warriors enter the fray, by the thousands, unleashing wicked memes, sharp one-liners, hysterically funny take-downs alluding to the general’s personality and, before long, Kenyan Twitter has “won the war.” Luckily for everyone, these matters usually end in a good-natured way, often with Muhoozi himself calling for “a ceasefire.”

Even more breathtaking is Nigerian social media. One of the least advisable things on this earth is to get into a fight with the West African nation’s legions of Twitter warriors.

The latest to find out was Italian football club Napoli, which for some puzzling reason thought it advisable to make racist memes mocking their own player, Nigerian Victor Osimhen, for missing a penalty. Nigerian Twitter struck, with a flood of outrage at the racist abuse of their compatriot. The Nigerians turned up the heat after the first day. And then Napoli’s social media people emerged, to apologize for the harm they had caused Osimhen.

Which brings me back to my Rwandan compatriots. Why can’t we borrow a leaf from the Kenyans or Nigerians?

Tshisekedi regime officials in Kinshasa daily issue outrageous, harmful lies about Rwanda; in fact about all of us. They abuse us, and insult us with old smears about how “we steal their resources” (as if there is anyone better at stealing Congolese resources than Congolese themselves and their thieving rulers – ok, maybe with the exception of Belgian monarch Leopold a hundred and twenty years ago!) Also, Tshisekedi constantly issues loud threats of war against us, while hordes of Congolese armchair warriors insult us in the most juvenile propagandist terms.

Yet, we (Rwandans) keep quiet, albeit with the exception of a few outraged voices here and there.

I would prefer we fold our shirtsleeves to defend ourselves and our society against all this bs.

But we just let it slide.

Sadly, I think I know why. Many Rwandans feel they are bound by some code of decorum; the so-called “ikinyabupfura”, and think they are above engaging those that abuse, or insult us (and I am not talking only of Congolese), to retaliate in similar terms.

As a result, the lies, the misinformation, the propaganda such as that emanating from Kinshasa carry the day.

I think we will pay a steep price for surrendering the information battlefield, or we can go about turning into social media warriors ourselves, fighting for our collective interest.

October 10, 2023
Where Is the World’s Moral Outrage At Tutsi Genocide In DRC?

DRC’s president Felix Tshisekedi

The actions of the government of Congolese President Felix Tshisekedi against his country’s Kinyarwanda-speaking Tutsi communities can only become more genocidal, going by events in eastern DRC. At the same time, Tshisekedi is hell-bent on destabilizing Rwanda – something evident in his frequent bellicose words, but also in the activities of his military, which on more than one occasion has fired artillery pieces into Rwanda, or sent its fighter jets to violate Rwandan airspace.

The two ongoing events, i.e. the genocide targeting DRC’s Tutsi communities, and Kinshasa’s frantic attempts to destabilize Rwanda, are intertwined, and part of a single dynamic: Tshisekedi’s determination to cling onto power against the wishes of a population that looks set to reject him in the coming elections over two months’ time from now.

So, the Congolese ruler has latched onto a strategy to turn Rwanda into a scapegoat, pretending Kigali is the source of all the DRC’s problems.

The rhetoric from Kinshasa paints Rwanda as a boogeyman, guilty of everything from trying to balkanize the Congo; to “stealing DR Congo mountain gorillas to take them to Rwanda; to the frequent, yet-to-be-proven claims that Rwanda backs the M23 rebels. They make the latter accusations while studiously avoiding mention of the fact the FDLR, a Rwandan genocidal outfit – blacklisted by none other than the UN for committing atrocities in eastern DRC – and that is a remnant of the criminals who massacred over a million Tutsis in Rwanda in 1994, has safe haven in the eastern DRC jungles. There they train, and arm themselves with Kinshasa’s help, all the time making a lot of money through illicit trade in metals, charcoal, and other means, while biding their time to re-launch attacks into Rwanda.

Rwanda, according to Kinshasa propaganda, is “the enemy that all Congolese must hate”. But for that lie to be more easily inculcated into millions of low-information Congolese (whose votes Tshisekedi needs), the Kinshasa regime has an easy, ready-made domestic victim: eastern Congo’s predominantly Kinyarwanda-speaking pastoralist and herder populations.

Tshisekedi and high-ranking members of his regime whip up populist, anti-Rwanda rhetoric every chance they get, in every forum. And because the Congolese pastoral or herder communities share linguistic and cultural similarities to the Tutsi ethnicity in Rwanda, they have to face the terror of the hate whipped up by the violent rhetoric of their country’s rulers.

Moreover the government of Tshisekedi has gone beyond that and is actively disenfranchising the Tutsis, its own citizens, with the absurd claim that they are not Congolese, but Rwandans.

We have seen this movie umpteen times before.

Kinshasa is “othering” people that, time immemorial, lived in the Kivus, Masisis, and other places, until the colonialists came and chopped up Africa anyhow they wanted, with those Tutsi homelands ending part of the many that became Leopold’s so-called “Congo Free State”, whose boundaries no one changed after the Belgians left in 1960.

Now the Tshisekedi regime is spitting on the Congolese as “foreigners”; dehumanizing them in the well-worn playbook of those plotting to exterminate an entire group.

When an entity like the M23 arose, not only to try to fight for the rights of the Tutsi communities, but in a bid to defend their people against the genocide, of which the FDLR are the most bloodthirsty perpetrators, of course Tshisekedi and his people began to shout that this was Rwanda attacking Congo. They haven’t stopped.

Now we see Congolese mobs, who behave uncannily like the Interahamwe in Rwanda in 94, set upon Tutsis in Goma, Rutshuru, Bukavu, Masisi, and other places. Government-backed militias, who are composed of a myriad assortment of bloodthirsty groups, including Wazalendo, Mai Mai Nyatura, FDLR, and others who get their weapons from the Congolese military FARDC, are on the rampage. They not only kill and rape, they also burn Tutsi houses and loot their property, sending whole communities fleeing to refuge in bushes, or walking backbreaking distances to cross borders into neighboring countries.

Yet these terrible crimes against humanity are treated with barely disguised indifference by the world community.

One wonders: where is the moral outrage, internationally, against this genocide?

Where is the African Union in all this, and why can’t we hear a peep of condemnation from them against all these atrocities against African people? We hear that the East African Community supposedly has been working toward a peaceful resolution to the conflict in DRC. It has even sent a force into DRC – the East African Community Regional Force – supposedly to oversee a ceasefire between government troops and M23, as per regional peace frameworks born of the Nairobi and Angola processes.

But the Congolese military, FARDC, together with its allied militias violate the ceasefire willy-nilly. The EACRF is toothless. Worse still, according to reports are surfacing, the Burundian military contingent of the East African force is in cahoots with the Congolese military to retake territory from the M23, exposing Tutsi civilians to crimes against humanity.

Why is there no fierce condemnation of these activities by other regional governments?

Further away, the West will rush with billions of dollars in aid to Ukraine, but when it comes to the beleaguered, targeted civilians in DRC, the West tends to parrot Kinshasa propaganda talking points, such as that “Rwanda backs M23!”

They shameful truth is, they care not a whit about the imperiled Africans.

All it would take to make Tshisekedi pause in his tracks would be strong, serious words of condemnation by the US or Western Europe against the crimes his forces, and the militias he backs, are perpetrating.

But no.

Apparently Congolese minerals carry more worth to them than Congolese Tutsi civilians.

October 6, 2023
American Academic Spitting Mad Due to British Journalist’s Book on Genocide Denialism

A US academic, Susan Thomson has weighed in on the arrest of Paul Rusesabagina with a lengthy piece of writing that is titled “how not to write about the Rwandan genocide.” Thomson – whose bio says she is an Associate Professor of peace and conflict studies at Colgate University – first slams Kigali for arresting Rusesabagina (she says he has been “abducted”, in contrast to what the man himself said: that he voluntarily boarded a plane expecting to go to Bujumbura, only to find himself in Kigali). She then indicts the Rwandan leadership “for turning the country into one where the only accepted version of history is ‘the RPF version.”According to Thomson, Rwandan history, post-Genocide, has been “interpreted and re-written to suit the political agenda of the RPF and its head Paul Kagame.” It is on the basis of this that she asserts, “there are ways not to write about the Rwandan genocide”, and ways to, presumably those “permitted by the RPF.”

This informs her premise that people like Rusesabagina get arrested because they have not “toed the RPF line”, or “hewed to the version of history that Thomson says the party has imposed.” She then asserts that Rusesabagina was arrested because “the RPF leadership labeled him an ethnic ideologue and genocide denier after he deviated from its version of events.”

Anyone that’s been reading about Rusesabagina’s case will be bewildered by these claims, because nowhere does Thomson mention the reasons the Rwandan authorities gave for arresting the man. Charges against him include forming, and running terrorist groups. Others are that he formed these groups as an instrument to violently overthrow the administration.

If one has been following court proceedings, Rusesabagina himself has confessed to founding the MRCD and its armed wing FLN. But even if one were to accept the explanations of his supporters, that “he confessed to these crimes under duress”, users of the Internet at least have seen him in videos declaring armed conflict against the Government. People have seen videos of top lieutenants of Rusesabagina’s, like Callixte Nsabimana aka “Sankara”, claiming responsibility for violent attacks from within Nyungwe Forest.

At the very least Thomson would say: “I acknowledge the man was arrested on suspicion of high crimes, and I hope there will be a fair court process.” But she prefers to totally clam up about these matters. So, if she is sure she is writing the truth, what explains such important omissions in the story?

It must be because her tale falls apart if it turns out the reasons for which Kigali says it has arrested Rusesabagina, some of which he already has confessed to, turn out to be true. Therefore she must establish her version of the truth – which she attempts to do, with impeccable academic prose.

But such omissions only undermine her position. They raise the suspicion of the discerning reader. Yet omission of any truths that do not fit in her narrative is a recurring theme throughout her article. Deception by omission is Susan Thomson’s modus operandi.

Soon however the reader realizes that her real problem is not Rusesabagina, but a book recently published by British author and journalist Linda Melvern: Intent to deceive: Denying the Genocide of the Tutsi. Thomson makes use of the tale of Rusesabagina as “victim of an abduction” as a hook to draw the reader into her real purpose: the hatchet job she’s done on Melvern’s work.

Thomson is mad that Melvern exposes those like her (Thomson) that have made careers either as deniers of the Genocide. In the same cohort are individuals like Judi Rever, a Canadian whose book In Praise of Blood claims that Kagame and the RPF started the genocide, basically blaming the victims for being the author of their own tragedy. (This regardless the fact that the claim that “Kagame ordered the downing of Habyarimana’s plane, the basis for such claims has long been put to rest by among others French investigative magistrates Marc Trévidic and Nathalie Poux).

Thomson herself is of the (revisionist) school that accuses the RPF of being “equally as guilty of massacres and crimes against humanity as the ex-FAR or Interahamwe militias of MRND.” She strenuously denies the she is a genocide revisionist but everything she says confirms it.

To claim that “violence and crimes against humanity befell all Rwandans, and that all protagonists participated in those crimes”, as the American repeatedly does, is to falsify history. It is to espouse the “double genocide” theory, which denies that one particular group was targetted, and fell prey to a deliberate government policy to exterminate it. And she repeatedly rubs salt in with claims such as that “the RPF and Kagame therefore cannot say they fought and defeated genocide since ‘all groups were victims of mass slaughter.’”

But to support such patently false claims Thomson must resort to ever more blatant omissions of facts.

Once she’s set herself on this path she finds that she must blank out whole chapters of history. To maintain her position, she cannot mention there was a government, MRND, based on an ideology of exclusion: that the country belonged to only one section of its population.

Thomson, who claims she has exhaustively researched Rwandan history nevertheless cannot mention what MRND’s ideology preached, designating a whole section of Rwandans as “foreigners”, whom it then dehumanized as “cockroaches”, and that with words like that it prepared Rwanda for genocide. Thomson mentions nothing about how when that section of persecuted Rwandans – led by exiles who were exiles because of the violence of Parmehutu, the forebears of MRND’s ideology of exclusion – demanded it’s rights as Rwandans, MRND then embarked on genocide as a “final solution”. As a means to maintain the status of one ethnicity as sole owner of the country.

Reading Thomson’s article one might get the impression that the “Rwanda genocide” (as she calls it), which in her telling somehow is not a genocide, occurred in a vacuum: with no planner, no implementer, no inciter, none at all. In fact you can’t find mention of terms like MRND, or names like Theoneste Bagosora, Agathe Habyarimana, Protais Zigiranyirazo and others in the entire article. One can read the whole thing here. Not even once are the names Habyarimana, Kambanda, or Sindikubwabo mentioned.

But Thomson is very able at implying that Kagame and RPF are responsible for crimes.

Such genocide denialist or revisionist tactics and many more, and their authors are that Melvern has written about, for which Thomson unloads on her.

“Intent to Deceive is a regurgitation of the Rwanda Government line,” Thomson charges about Melvern’s book, but failing to make clear why a British journalist would “regurgitate the Rwandan line”.

“Melvern is misleading her readers!”

“Melvern is an apologist of Kagame!”

Reading these and other attacks, one is struck by one thing: as a group, genocide apologists tend to be easily riled up.

It must be because, somewhere in them, even they lack the courage of their convictions.

September 30, 2020
Why The New York Times Got It Wrong On the Rusesabagina Story

Paul Rusesabagina in court, September 17

When I read The New York Times’ big article on the arrest of Paul Rusesabagina last Friday, I did so through the lenses of a student and practitioner of journalism. The piece breaches so many of what’s taught about professional ethics I truly was astonished.

I was astonished but I am not naïve. The New York Times may be the best newspaper in the world (by wide consensus, though a lot of other people will beg to defer), but apparently even it will not always rigorously observe the ethics that supposedly guide the profession. However I have not set out to judge the paper’s journalistic standards, and neither am I writing about whether Rwanda was right or wrong to arrest Rusesabagina.

I am only putting this particular article, “How the Hero of ‘Hotel Rwanda’ Fell Into a Vengeful Strongman’s Trap”, under the microscope. Because going through the piece I thought it so egregiously bad I had to take it upon myself to do a public service and break down the numerous, deliberate violations of professional ethics that it’s littered with.

Begin with the headline. It tells the reader that Rusesabagina is “a hero” and that President Kagame is “a vengeful strongman”. Therefore we have “a good guy” on the one hand, upon whom a “villain” inflicts a trap.” Right off the bat, the editors of the piece have breached two of the cardinal principles of journalism: impartiality and fairness. Blatantly moreover.

Unless it is clear an article is to be published in the opinion or editorial pages it is not the paper’s job to tell the reader who for instance is “a strongman”, or not, or who is “a hero”. It is not a publication’s job to tell its readers what to think, period. The journalist is supposed to report the facts and let the audience make up their own mind.

Sure, there are many news organizations that care less about such matters. But we are talking about a paper that’s been acclaimed as the gold standard of the profession.

The headline writers at the foreign desk of The New York Times could have penned something like: Paul Rusesabagina of Hotel Rwanda Fame arrested in Rwanda on Charges of Terrorism. That would be accurate, informative, none-judgmental (either to Rusesabagina or Kagame), and still be a good headline. For their reasons, the editors chose differently.

Even The New York Times apparently is guilty of double standards when it comes to subject matter, or individuals from elsewhere than their societies.

One can be certain not even their most criticized leaders would be subjected to headlines like that. With Rwanda obviously a different standards applies.

Journalism much of the time is an exercise in choices. What facts do you put in a story, and what do you omit? Who are your sources, the people or groups you get your information from? Whose quotes make it into your article? What words – adjectives, verbs, and so on – do you use to describe the subject of your story?

These choices may be used in an array of ways, one of them being what’s known as confirmation bias – defined as “the tendency to search for, interpret, favor, and recall information in a way that confirms, or supports one’s prior beliefs or values.” I point this out keeping in mind that generally professional journalists will not be completely craven, pandering, or biased. They do their best, striving to always be professional and respect their audiences.

Yet every once in a while there will be something like The New York Times’ piece.

The Rusesabagina article is startling in how it so completely goes overboard in its abandonment of journalistic good practices. So much so that it actually becomes what in the profession is known as a hit piece: an article so biased and hostile against the subject matter one is left with the feeling there is an agenda other than to inform or enlighten.

The article devotes a lot of space to telling its readers that “Kagame is a vengeful strongman who runs ‘an authoritarian state’ where he exerts ‘total control’; and where “political rivals are imprisoned, subjected to sham trials or ‘die in mysterious circumstances’.” It mentions the deaths of individuals like Patrick Karegeya in South Africa, or singer Kizito Mihigo earlier this year. It claims, “people disappear” in Rwanda. The article goes on to state that “Kagame’s troops are accused of plunder and massacres in neighboring Congo,” among a litany of other accusations.

But who are the article’s sources?

One of them is Human Rights Watch. This for instance is an organization that in 2017 reported that Rwandan security forces had killed “dozens of people”. Many of the supposedly dead Rwandans however began stepping forward, to indignantly proclaim they were very much alive.

That’s only a small sample of HRW’s methods when reporting on Rwanda.

If the The New York Times’ article were interested in looking at both sides of the story, they could begin with the words of Ambassador Richard Johnson, a former US State Department Officer that’s an expert on post-genocide societies whether in Rwanda (where he lived from 2008 to 12), Bosnia, and elsewhere. Writing in a 2013 paper titled “The Travesty of Human Rights Watch on Rwanda”, Johnson famously said: “What it (HRW) does on Rwanda is not human right advocacy. It is political advocacy which has become profoundly unscrupulous in both its means and its ends.”

It is a rigorously researched paper that shows how HRW has for years been fighting to undermine the Rwandan Government, one method being to tireless champion groups like RDR (which became FDU), FDLR, and others that are direct political heirs of the “Hutu Power” regime that perpetrated the 94 Genocide Against the Tutsi.

HRW has been strenuously advocating that these entities – that also are committed to violent overthrow of the Government – and their leaders be “let back into Rwanda’s political space”.

Nevertheless the authors of The New York Times’ piece do not bother to qualify what HRW has to say about Rwanda; to at least show the organization’s sympathies for groups that also are the same ones devoted either to negating and trivializing the Genocide, or actually accusing Kagame of starting it.

The paper moreover fails to mention that Rusesabagina’s MRCD and its armed wing are part of the coalition of political heirs of the genocidal regime that fell in 94.

The article’s source for the claim that “Rwandan troops have committed atrocities in DRC’ is the “UN-mapping report” of October 2010. This document purported to detail human rights abuses in the Congo between 1993 to 2003. But the draft, which accused Rwanda of “genocide against the Hutu”, was found to be so flawed in its methodology and sourcing it was rejected and discredited. Individuals like former EU Special Envoy to the Congo Aldo Ajello called it “illegitimate”.

Michael Scharf, a US law professor was horrified that “a none-judicial organ could allege that “genocide” had been committed. Everyone that read it denounced it. It turned out some of the report’s authors were in cahoots with the very groups, the genocidaires that the RPF defeated, who then declared war on Rwanda from the jungles of DRC and elsewhere.

That the authors of The New York Times’ piece use the claims of HRW or the “Mapping Report” but nothing on what Rwandan authorities have to say about them shows their confirmation bias is pretty strong.

Bias also is seen in the fact they omit to mention that Kizito Mihigo was serving a 10-year prison sentence, before Kagame offered him presidential clemency in 2018. Mihigo had done four years and was spared six. This would at the very least raise doubts on accusations that “Kagame killed him.” Or what the autopsy report said: that his death was through self-strangulation.

The article omits all that, which it does with its many other accusations.

But when it comes to the things Rusesabagina is accused of, they lavish him with acres of space to absolve himself. “We are not a terrorist organization,” Rusesabagina is quoted about his groups MRCD and its FLN militia, though there is video evidence of the man announcing violent conflict against the government.

When the article acknowledges that indeed Rusesabagina’s group has been accused of terrorist attacks, one gets the feeling this only is for appearances of “balance” – not to be mistaken for real, objective impartiality. The authors helpfully provide an “on-the-one-hand-this-but-on-the-other-hand-that” justification for Rusesabagina. The article basically is saying: “on the one hand Rusesabagina’s group killed people, but on the other he had no choice except armed struggle.”

It is easy to imagine that the lives of the Rwandans killed by Rusesabagina’s groups come a distant second to the fact Rwanda has dared arrest the hero of Hotel Rwanda. The impression grows stronger when one realizes that in the entire piece (of 3500 words) the victims of FLN attacks in southwestern Rwanda in 2018 get exactly one sentence.

One Josephine, the widow of Fidel Munyaneza a schoolteacher of Nyabimata is indirectly quoted saying that her husband was shot in the back. To The New York Times, it seems far more important to safeguard the myth of “the Schindler of Rwanda that saved over 1200 refugees at risk of his own life”, “the humanitarian”, “the opposition activist” and so on, than anything else.

Even though people that knew, or saw first hand what the situation at the hotel was have long declared the man’s heroic status fraudulent. Among these are individuals like Rwandan author Edouard Kayihura, UNAMIR peacekeeping force Commander Romeo Dallaire, Senegalese army officer Amadou Deme who served in the intelligence team of UNAMIR, among many others.

But apparently what these individuals have to say, too, must be withheld from The New York Times’ readers.

September 23, 2020
Stand Up, and clap! Rwanda’s Achievements Are Becoming Africa’s

It was a decade when Rwanda did great things. Of course when we say such and such an entity “did great things”, it is relative. Did great as compared to what? Did Rwanda send someone into outer space? No. Did we beat the world to a cure for cancer? Not at all.

But the achievements this country has realized in fact are greater in tangible, measurable terms. They also are greater in other none-quantifiable but equally important metrics. Rwanda for instance gives a psychological lift to most Africans, say whenever the country’s leadership in so many fields – conservation; business reforms and so on – is mentioned.

And all this, to mention the obvious, is despite the country’s recent history of carnage and destruction.

If Rwanda were an utterly failed state today, it would surprise no one. Looked at objectively, the astonishing thing is that the country is the exact opposite of a failed state.

This pint-sized country that possesses no great wealth instead has become the unlikely trailblazer for the rest of the continent.

When for instance President Cyril Ramaphosa of South Africa discusses business reforms he points to Rwanda as a country that’s getting it right; and that’s to be emulated. When one wants to point at a country challenging age-old patriarchal norms, to include women in institutions of power and decision-making, Rwanda is what they look at. And in one of the finest examples of thinking out of the box, Rwanda has shown fellow African states that visa-free travel is possible for the continent’s citizens.

It has always baffled people why so many African countries made entry by citizens of other African countries such a hustle, such an ordeal. A Ghanaian needing to travel to Dubai would find it far much easier than going to Senegal – a fellow West African state. That Ghanaian would need to go to the French Embassy in Accra to apply for a visa, to Senegal! Yet all kinds of Europeans could just fly, with no visa, into any African capital.

Why did Africans have to put themselves through this kind of unbelievable nonsense?, I’ve long asked myself. Some things simply have no answer. It is just unconscionable, the kind of shackles people decided to keep decades after the end of colonialism.

When Rwanda threw her borders open to all Africans, it was such a sensible, easy decision everyone began doing it. Countries like Nigeria, Ghana, Ethiopia and several others have since adopted a visa-free policy for all Africans.

The positive impact on African travellers or tourists is incalculable – in saved time; and in the avoidance of the sheer stress of chasing for that bit of paper. For the pan-African idealists such an action is worth a thousand words; it infuses them with self-belief, and with the confidence the dream can be achieved.

There are very many other ways Rwanda has showed Africa what’s possible; what’s within its means and the awesome potential the continent has if it can get its act together. If Nigeria fought corruption with the same single-minded determination as Rwanda one can imagine how much more of a giant “Africa’s giant” would be.

If that effort were replicated elsewhere all over sub-Sahara, the region would soon wean itself off foreign aid. That is, before we mention the advantages that will cascade: more funds deployed to maintain public infrastructure; deliver public services of all kinds and so on. Rwanda has shown it can be done. It is not saying, but doing it.

As we speak now, one government, Angola is engaged in a huge, anti-graft fight. The leadership of the oil rich country is making embezzlement, mismanagement of public resources, and rent-seeking by the powerful and the well connected much more harder. It is making it punishable by heavy fines and by jail. That was unthinkable before. Now Luanda is retrieving billions of dollars past leaderships stashed away in the banks and sovereign funds of former colonial master Portugal.

Angola hasn’t claimed it’s gotten its cues from Rwanda. But the leadership there makes no secrets of its admiration for Kigali, and for the ways the latter has tackled graft and wastefulness in public offices.

All this is not to say that Rwanda lacks detractors, or naysayers. Kigali has more than her share of fierce critics that will direct verbal brickbats, and opprobrium its way. Judging by some of their words, one would think we were living in Nazi Germany.

That however has not prevented more and more sub-Saharans choosing to emulate what Kigali does.

And people tend to choose or emulate that which they have carefully examined, and found good.

Shyaka Kanuma is a Kigali-based journalist

January 2, 2020
Some Mindsets We Must Overcome as Our New Year’s Resolutions…

Made in Rwanda products exhibition in Kigali

Suddenly a lot of Rwandan manufacturers are smiling all the way to the bank! They have a lot of local customers streaming to their products who used to go for Ugandan brands. Now that the Ugandan competition currently is out of the picture, local brands are filling the gap, big time!

The Speranza Waragis in addition to their established market segments now are enjoying the gap that was Ugandan Waragi’s. The Bralirwa and Skol beers are quenching thirsts that Nile Special, Bell and others used to. Inyange and Sulfo products are filling shop shelves where they used to compete with Ugandan-packed milk or Ugandan manufactured juices. It is the same with a whole range of goods from across the border.

Rwandan manufacturers are happily taking advantage of a gap that’s opened up since March this year when entry into Rwanda of heavy commercial trucks from Uganda was restricted. The reasons for that restriction are a topic for another day. Right now, am just happy for local firms.

In Rwanda, we tend to give little thought to such things as what impact does it have on fellow Rwandans if I choose to buy foreign instead of local? In other countries, it is a huge deal whose products one puts in the shopping basket. In economically advanced countries, even when one buys a foreign brand, say a beer, that brand will have a factory where people consume it. It will employ locals. It will use locally produced raw materials, and the like.

In Rwanda, we’ve never developed this mindset. Here you will consume something and never wonder in what way it benefits the local economy. Take a Mukwano manufactured cooking oil. It will be imported straight from Kampala, go to the supermarket shelves, and not a single Rwandan ingredient will be in it. There won’t be a single plant in the whole of the country to make a licensed Mukwano product.

They do everything in their Kampala factory and truck the goods to Rwanda.

Naturally, we’ve been at a disadvantage in relation to neighbours that enjoy bigger markets that translate into more efficient economies of scale. Uganda for one has long enjoyed a big favourable balance of trade with us. Ugandan economists earlier this year calculated that their country exported close to $182 million – in the half of a fiscal year, they estimated – to Rwanda.

The quantity of imports from us in the corresponding period added up to a positively puny $21 million.

Now smart Rwandan manufacturers are working fast to make use of the sudden windfall that’s come their way.

On the other hand as a consumer, I have learnt to ask myself: why didn’t I buy more of the local brands before? Yes, I did buy local, but still, I persisted with buying more foreign stuff even when equally good local products were right there on the shelves.

I question myself: am I, and so many other Rwandans hopelessly entrenched in mindsets that goods from elsewhere are better, merely because of that? How did we become like this? Is it that those of us that grew in other countries became attached to products from those countries? This possibly is the answer.

It comes from a mindset that we need to discard. Everything our neighbours can do, we can do equally well. We need to change and help put more money in the pockets of fellow Rwandans. This is not a jingoistic call to completely boycott imports. It is a simple observation, to emulate how elsewhere people favour that made by their countrymen and women before all else. That’s the only way national industries grow.

But mentalities are the hardest things to shake off!

I know people for instance that still are trapped in the mindset that there is “no excitement” in Kigali; that the better nightlife is to be found in Kampala! I laugh.

This topic is particularly relevant as we enter the festive season. None other a newspaper than The New York Times late last year was proclaiming the Rwandan capital’s night entertainment scene as “red hot” and, “buzzing with trendy bars and clubs” as it describes the trendiest spots in the city.

Why should it take foreigners from thousands of kilometres away to see that which is right under our noses? Surely what song would you better dance to than a hit by Bruce Melody, Meddy, Sintex, Oda Paccy or the others? I can’t think of better by East African counterparts.

There is a lot that’s great that fellow Rwandans make, right here home.

Let’s put it into our New Year’s resolutions to consume more from ours.

Shyaka Kanuma is a Kigali-based journalist

December 12, 2019
Rwanda: Good PR? Yes, But We Don’t Sell Fire Extinguishers!

Kigali, the Cleanest city of Afirca

I am intrigued every time I read somewhere that “Rwanda has a good image because of good PR.” A lot of that has been coming up lately, on social media like Twitter or Facebook.

Obviously these good people are unhappy at all the adulation that’s been coming Rwanda’s way: “cleanest cities”, “least corrupt officials”, “best public health program in sub-Sahara”, “best ‘doing business’ reforms”, “best roads”, best almost everything…!

Surely all that can’t be true, some of the Twitter commentariats in our region have been protesting. “How is it even possible; it must be just good marketing!”

The contrarians are just firm in the belief that Rwanda has merely succeeded in creating a great delusion and hoodwinked even eyewitnesses! Those singing Kigali’s praises must be brainwashed people! One assumes the only believable reports to individuals like this would be those of hunger, poverty, damaged roads, or bad slums.

This is sad. Why should good news from a fellow African country depress some instead of causing joy that if Rwanda is one of those African states that can uplift the lives of its people through efficiently run public services; making efficient use of public funds (which are rigorously accounted for); and so on, then everyone else can do it? Are they so much in the grip of PhD (pull him down) syndrome they just can’t help themselves?

But here is an uplifting message: every country can do what Rwanda is praised for.

This country too has its problems. There is poverty in Rwanda. Poor living conditions afflict many. Youth joblessness is a pressing social issue. But which country is a utopia? The most impressive thing about Rwanda is how quickly and holistically it’s tackled its problems, lifting millions out of absolute poverty in a matter of decades while overhauling almost its entire social-infrastructure system.

The things that have earned this country such a good international image are real.

However, I think to have the smarts and savvy to turn the image of a country known only for genocide a decade and a half ago into one synonymous with IT, a growing reputation for its capital’s art scene, and good services should be impressive in itself. But if “having a good image is what will earn a country plaudits and millions in tourist revenues, why don’t most African brothers follow suit and do it too!

A Ugandan friend once asked me: mukikola mutya mu Rwanda?! “How are you able to do such in Rwanda?, i.e. whole cities and towns with no electricity blackouts; whole streets with no discarded bottles or paper bags; an immigration department that gives one a passport three days after application; and so on ad infinitum. I advised my friend to visit different government departments; they would give him better answers than I possibly could!

I have some pretty good ideas though

For one there is this sense of ownership in Rwandans; of propriety; of understanding that what is public also is mine! It is very rare in Rwanda to find, say, vandalized streetlights, public buildings showing damage and the like. On the other hand, the citizenry of a good number countries long ago lost whatever sense they ever had of communal ownership. The attitude that anything they didn’t own directly was something worth cherishing.

Someone ought to study this social phenomenon (so evident in most African countries I’ve been to), to try to trace its reasons. Is it because public authorities long ago embezzled and cheated the public, so people reacted by hating public things? Is it that there never was any sort of sustained civic education, to impart people the requisite sense of communal responsibility? Is it just a collective loss of sense of self-worth? Is it all these things combined?

The things I’ve seen in some places are beyond astonishing. One will find many manhole covers missing from (badly potholed) roads, and wonder: why would a person steal a manhole cover? To sell it to who? Just like people that steal fire extinguishers do they sell those too? Or do dealers turn them into scrap metal? As for street, or traffic lights, those disappeared long ago from countless African cities.

It is not the same everywhere of course, and Kigali isn’t the only clean capital with good public facilities on the continent.

Still, I will praise the way we relate to what’s communal around here.

Shyaka Kanuma is a Kigali-based journalist

December 3, 2019
Rwanda: The Way We Were Then and The Way We Are Now

I’ve watched, fascinated, as Rwanda has forged itself a new identity over the past two and a half decades. I like to simplify the timeline; break it down into mini eras – moments in time one may term landmarks along the journey that’s led to this new identity of ours.

It wasn’t that long ago that we were abasopecya, abasajja (Uganda Waragi sub group!), abajepe and abadubai. Those were the humorous ways we chose to identify ourselves, by alluding to our countries of former exile.

It was funny but it also was reflective of an inescapable reality – we essentially were one, but we also were different in so many ways.

The fellow Rwandan that was born and bred here, namely the musopecya spoke Kinyarwanda far differently from “the returnee” aka the musajja from Uganda, mujepe from Burundi or mudubai from the former Zaire. My musopecya friend used a lot of interjections in his sentences like: vurema, donko, kamemu, sevure!

I in turn gave him a lot of soo, enewe, riyale! and others like that, and we were even!

When a mujepe joined in the conversation her “Kirundified” French (“ca va, iliya lonta!”); or the returnee from Kenya (an honorary musajja!) whose verbal tics included prefixing words with “si” (si I will come!); or the mudubai cousin with her tortured Kinyarwanda; or the workmate that had been in Tanzania their entire life and didn’t care for any foreign language other than Kiswahili…we had a veritable United Nations here!

We also called ourselves “Anglophones” and “Francophones!” I suspect there were a few “Lusophones” hiding themselves somewhere.

As any people that find themselves in one space, Rwandans began to be suspicious of each other. Molehills became mountains. At work a “Francophone” felt threatened when English was introduced as a language of official business. Some people said “the basajja are going to take all the jobs!”

Obviously the “Anglophones” didn’t see things like that. They felt picked upon, and they said: “What about us that went to school in English systems, are we to have no job in our country!”)

In such ways colonial realities further complicated the rebuilding process. But trust Rwandans; many took the effort to learn French, for those from the other “phone” and vice versa. Fortunately social interactions – like dating and marriage, and the fact we all spoke Kinyarwanda away from work – eroded the risk of further confrontation over the languages of Europeans.

A musopecya woman that married a musajja colonel did more for social détente than two years of sensitization on good citizenship would! People danced and drank beers together and disregarded the fact they had different backgrounds. In such micro moments a new Rwanda began to take shape.

Many, many similar ones happened every Saturday. The country could be saved after all!

And when the newly wed had kids? Those had no idea what a musajja, musopecya, or the other (artificial) groupings were.

But there still was a long way to go. More catalysts for potential conflict, such as socio-economic competition, were ever lurking.

Rwandans for instance accused others of “enjoying” all the high-ranking government cabinet posts and other positions than others. Bitter accusations flew that some had the lions share in security leadership positions while others had “completely nothing”. Sha, nimwe mwarutashye abandi twaraherekeje gusa, some would be murmuring in their drink.

Interestingly, the fellow complaining that “his people” had “returned to nothing” in fact had a four-bedroom house in Kacyiru, with all the modern amenities, drove a Toyota Prado with government plates, and was often out on government missions. One would wonder what it would take to make a man like that realize he had far more than the average Rwandan whatever their background.

In any case, as the years came and went people amenable to reason came to see there wasn’t anyone that was discriminated against: “Francophones”, “Anglophones”, women, ethnic background…all had their fair share of “the available national cake”. That quarrel too seems to have died down.

Now, today I wake up and I am not a “musajja” any longer. Neither is my neighbor a musopecya, mujepe or any other thing like that. Those ways of grouping ourselves became overtaken by time and ever-closer intertwinements.

Personally I can’t remember when my Rwandan-born friend last said “donko”, “kamemu” or the like to me. Neither can I recall when I last said, “enewe” or “riyale”. Also, I haven’t for a while heard any whining about how this or that particular group of Banyarwanda are better off than others.

It feels a different, more positive Rwanda.

November 19, 2019
The Myth Of Unromantic, Unfriendly, Obedient, Secretive, Reserved Rwandan

Stereotypes and clichés. They are quite interesting things. And we Rwandans have been saddled with more than our fair share of them, I tend to think.

“Rwandans are secretive!” it is claimed. A Rwandan will be plotting to do something, for quite a period time and nobody will ever have an idea what the guy is up to, until he’s done it!, one stereotype goes.

“Banyarwanda are reserved and won’t tell you what they feel!” So you won’t know for example if one is mad at you or not; he will just smile at you as you think everything is hunky-dory, yet it may not be!, claims another old one.

One that makes me laugh is of the supposed unromantic Rwandan guy. Our allergic-to-romance Munyarwanda man supposedly will just look at his lady and never do something “amazing”, like break the bank to make her feel like a queen – say the way his Nigerian, Ugandan or Kenyan counterpart can!

“Rwandans aren’t friendly!” I’ve heard many a Burundian claim. This is the one that makes me laugh the most. “You arrive at Nyabugogo and everyone has this hard, unsmiling expression on their face. They are too serious for life!”

Eh! Ni danje!, as the commonly uttered phrase goes.

Stereotypes! They indeed are generalizations, it goes without saying. They only are the product of subjective perceptions voiced over a period of time until they become received wisdom.

Recently I’ve been hearing and reading (for the hundredth time!) of how Rwandans are “so obedient” which, according to this reasoning, is why Rwanda has developed fast, putting up impressive infrastructure projects and recording equally impressive progress in the indicators of social wellbeing, and the like.

That’s the argument I saw a social media account give recently. The commentator meant to cast Rwandans’ supposed affinity to orders as a negative trait, though in his opinion it’s what has led to the many good things happening in the country – an oxymoron if I ever saw one.

The trope of the Rwandan as a mere obedient taker of orders is as old as its unfair. I don’t think we are automatons programmed to unthinkingly take and work on orders or directives! Rwandans are human beings that make their opinions known on issues. They give feedback. They broadcast their wishes on radio stations.

But, what I’ve long discovered is that once most Rwandans are convinced of the goodness of an order they will follow it. They will not deviate from it. They will take it to its conclusion. I guess that’s how the cliché took root. In that case I will take obedience to be a quite positive trait.

A lot has been written about the supposed readiness to take orders as what has led Rwandans to commit great crimes in the past.

Well, the ideology that fueled Rwanda’s darkest chapters is no more, never to return.

On the other hand if an outsider were to look at the flip side of “obedience” as the defining character trait of Rwandans, they may realize they’ve not been seeing the entire picture. They may think “obedience” but in fact the Rwandan is intent on doing something that will primarily benefit him or herself.

Take motorcycle taxis: the motos; or boda bodas to Ugandans; also motos to Burundians and Congolese. They are one of the most common means of public transportation in the region. They also injure a lot of people. So when Rwanda made the wearing of helmets – both for the driver and passenger mandatory – the people complied.

Everyone did because they were persuaded, “you never know when a helmet might save your life!”

Now, in Kampala the opposite happened. The authorities issued the same order as in Kigali, but the people of the Ugandan capital refused to comply – see, “over there they do not have a culture of obedience!” In fact the boda boda passenger that tried to put on a helmet was discouraged by the rider. “Do you want to get me into trouble with the police!”

Exactly why following the law would get one into problems, I didn’t find out.

I can only compare and contrast, and see that clichés also are reflective of mentalities. One may choose what will save his or her life while another will insist on that which will jeopardize it.

The Nigerian, Kenyan, or Ugandan guy – whom the cliché says will break the bank to please his lady – most likely will quickly achieve success in their romantic life. The (Rwandan) guy that’s allegedly reluctant to do that, well, he might miss out on a good thing.

The other difference may be that the gentleman that spends big most probably will have very little left to sustain the life of lavish gifts and outings and so on. He might even go into hiding!

Of course the situation can apply the other way round. It can easily be the Munyarwanda that’s the big spender. Stereotypes do not apply across the board.

A Ugandan may be maligned as someone that does not like to follow rules or regulations, but that maybe because he’s denied the environment in which to do so.

A Burundian may say she likes happiness, yet may be denied the chance to be happy back home.

On the other hand, a Rwandan’s supposed look of “seriousness” perhaps is a mask of the face of a person that’s ready to party any moment?

Maybe an answer can be found in all the great bars and nightspots coming up everywhere!

Shyaka Kanuma is a Kigali-based journalist

November 12, 2019
How Messrs. Trump and Johnson are Demystifying the West

What is this thing happening in the United States? Or this other (similar) thing that’s taking place in the United Kingdom!?

For a long time we were told that the best ways, in each and every sphere of life originate in the West – the US and Europe. The West has the best institutions, we have been told, time immemorial. It has the best governance; the best methods for selecting their governments; the best everything!

That’s what every child south of the Sahara that ever attended school grew up learning. That’s what he or she became an adult believing.

On the other hand, when it came to Africa or Arabia, all their leaders were dictators!

That is what everyone – at least in my age group – learnt, and internalized by the seventh year of primary school. One fully absorbed it. It could never happen for instance, for someone that behaved like Idi Amin to ever become president in the US. Or a leader in any of the great democracies of the West!

Then in 2016, presto! Here came Donald Trump.

One of the things he first vowed was to build a wall along the border of the US and Mexico and furthermore, he vowed, the Mexicans would pay for that wall, or else…!

That sounded very much like a belligerent Idi Amin ordering Kenya to do something failure of which there would be hideous retribution.

Trump campaigned “to make America Great”. To Trump’s most ardent followers, the promise behind that slogan was that he would kick Muslims out of the US. It meant he would shut the borders to every brown or black person (and mass deport every brown or black foreigner already within the US).

That kind of thing was what candidate Trump unmistakably said he stood for. It apparently was sufficiently appealing for a number of his countrymen and women to vote “The Donald” into office.

What on earth was this? Us astonished none-Americans (or none-Europeans) asked.

Was it possible that a man that campaigned on an openly racist platform could win an election?

But we were told only Africans did foolish things like voting along tribal lines! Western, liberal democracy had inbuilt, protective measures against racist, tribalist or sectarian appeals. It only allowed for voters to make pragmatic choices dictated by logical calculations for what’s best for everyone. Or so, people were made to understand.

Yet here was a man that daily said racist, sectarian things, and precisely for that, he took the highest office in the United States – a country long described as the biggest, best example of Western liberal democracy. Just like across the Atlantic his close friend Boris Johnson – a kindred spirit – would become Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.

One will have read how Mr. Johnson said Muslim women (that wore attire conforming to their cultural and religious beliefs) looked like phone booths! It was also reported in the media that the prime minister called black children pickaninnies – a racially abusive term.

The two gentlemen have never made a secret of their convictions that none-white people of the earth are not, and can never be equal to their beloved Caucasian race!

Shitholes!, Trump called African countries.

Now every day we wake up to news such as recently when the American president told the President of Turkey: “don’t be a fool!” That was before threatening to destroy the economy of Turkey if it doesn’t do what he (President Trump) wanted.

Ariko bagenzi! I exclaimed to myself. Trump reminds me so much of Idi Amin.

Sometimes I actually wonder whether the US president isn’t some long lost brother of the departed Ugandan ruler from a different mother!

Amin liked to send messages to leaders of neighbouring countries exactly like Trump’s to the Turkish leadership. “Nyerere, the only problem I have with you is your white hairs!” Amin wrote to the Tanzanian head of state one time. “If you were a woman I would marry you, but you are too old!”

The Ugandan tyrant then warned Tanzania with fire if it did not respect him!

But come to think of it, Amin would never utter some of the things President Trump has been quoted saying. I can’t think of any African ruler that would boast of grabbing a woman by her private parts! (To be fair to the US president though, the world only learnt of that through a leaked recording).

About the UK, what even us humble Africans will find remarkable is how Prime Minister Johnson is ready to say just about any unverified thing to voters.

The prime minister vowed he would get Britain out of the European Union by the end of October 2019, “come what may”, “do or die!”

He said he would free his country from the “dictatorship of Brussels” (Whoa! I thought, so there is a dictatorship in the small Belgian state, and one powerful enough to hold Britain in bondage?). The Prime Minister told the people he would yank Britain out of the EU but that the country would lose none of the wonderful benefits of membership of the union: free trade; free movement of people and goods; hustle-free residence by citizens of the UK in any EU country, and so much more.

Johnson and his pals were telling their people they would have their cake and eat it too! Except that none of the things the “Brexiteers” said could stand a moment’s scrutiny.

October has come and gone and Johnson hasn’t done what he said.

Liberal democracy obviously isn’t foolproof.

People that stand for the worst things apparently will ascend to the highest office. They will tell palpable falsehoods and that won’t impede them.

Such and more isn’t exactly what we were told to believe.

Shyaka Kanuma is a journalist based in Kigali

November 5, 2019
Stepp’d in Blood, A Book Review: If an Akazu Member Killed You, or Took Your Wife by Force…

What would a woman do if a big government official braked his vehicle beside her as she walked, and he told her to get into the car, drove off, then forced her to sleep with him? And what would the cuckolded husband think?

That kind of thing was common in the days of the Habyarimana regime, as indicated in the following snippet about the conduct of one of the regime fat cats, Protais Zigiranyirazo as described by British journalist Andrew Wallis in his book, Stepp’d in Blood. “An imposing figure, always stylishly dressed in a hand-made suit and tie, even in informal situations, Zigiranyirazo (Mr. Z) was not a man to be treated lightly.

“Like (Theoneste) Lizinde, and indeed Habyarimana himself, taking another man’s wife who caught his fancy was a statement of his power and status. Husbands were given work assignments away from the area, and tended to co-operate rather than face the consequences of trying to face down authority. Zigiranyirazo would sometimes stop his car when he saw a pretty lady, married or single, to talk to her or to invite her on board!”

It actually was much worse than Wallis describes. People who lived through those times talk of incidents such as when a military heavy; someone like Laurent Serubuga the regime’s deputy army chief of staff, would enter a man’s home. The feared man would be welcomed, then after a few minutes of small talk he would get up, with the man’s wife, to go with her into their bedroom, leaving the poor fellow in the sitting room.

This mix of arrogance, contempt for people, and power-drunkenness in the powerful is unimaginable in the Rwanda of today; really more of an impossibility that one can only think of in hypothetical terms.

But in the 21 years of the Habyarimana regime – the subject of Stepp’d in Blood (subtitled Akazu and the Architects of the Rwandan Genocide Against the Tutsi) – those were the daily realities of life for every Munyarwanda. Everyone, that is, save for the perpetrators of such daily humiliations – and other offences far bigger and worse – against the populace. That was the rule of the tiny cabal that hailed from Ruhengeri and Gisenyi who ran the country like a Mafia fiefdom.

It was the “Akazu”, whose criminality Andrew Wallis has documented and brought to light far more than any other author or historian before him.

The British journalist has dug into the highly corrupt, power-abusing ways of the family of Habyarimana and of his wife Agathe Kanziga who was the real power in the land. As everyone with some knowledge of Rwandan knows Kanziga – with her coterie of all-powerful close confidantes a group portrait of whom would be a who-is-who of the perpetrators of the Genocide Against the Tutsi – called the shots. There was Theoneste Bagosora, a close neighbor from her home village in the former Giciye Commune of the Bushiru region. There were her brothers Elie Sagatwa and Protais Zigiranyirazo, and her cousin Pierre-Celestin Rwagafilita, another sinister power broker.

This was the core along which a host of close retainers, Serubuga, Theoneste Lizinde, Aloys Nsekarije, businessmen Kabuga Felicien and Joseph Nzirorera to name only the most notorious of them, rotated.

The strength of Stepp’d in Blood is that it serves no agenda other than presenting all the events, facts and actions leading to the 94 Genocide against the Tutsi, and a while afterwards. Wallis clearly did not set out to write a pro-RPF book. Neither was he trying to impose a contrarian version of events – such as those that strain to implicate the current Rwandan leadership into some crime with revisionist accounts of historical facts; and that seek to deny or trivialize that horrific crime.

Wallis just sets out the facts, and let’s the reader draw their own (in this case horrified) conclusions. And the facts he narrates aren’t things he learnt second hand, or while sitting down. The man has done his research, reflected in a list of endnotes thick as a book themselves. He’s interviewed multitudes of victims, and eyewitnesses to the regime – going back to elderly former officials of Rwanda when it still was a Belgian colony. Wallis has extensively combed through the records of court cases of the International Criminal Tribunals. He’s been to France poring through Mitterrand-era records, and researching that government and its officials dealings with the genocidal regime.

The result is this breathtaking work whose central conclusion is that the Akazu itself, at the direction of Agathe Habyarimana, was responsible for conceiving, planning and instigating the genocide. That is nothing new to anyone familiar with Rwanda’s past. Well, unless one is a determined genocide denier. What’s new is the level of detail the author brings to the narrative, something that will leave no reader with a doubt about the culpability of the Akazu mafia in one of the Twentieth Century’s signature atrocities.

Habyarimana obviously was as culpable as anyone. He was the individual around whom all the plotting centered. But “le clan Madam”, the clan of Madam, had long usurped his powers. And ultimately when the clan – Kanziga herself, Bagosora, Zigiranyirazo, Elie Sagatwa, Rwagafilita and other members of this core – decided it, Habyarimana ultimately was expendable. Which is what happened when they needed a pretext to implement the bloodbath they had prepared.

They were ready to go that route rather than countenance sharing a country with its Tutsi citizens, or anyone that wasn’t from Bushiru.

To these people it was inconceivable that the Rwandese Patriotic Army seemed to be winning the war. By then Habyarimana’s was long estranged to his wife, with some of their violent quarrels memorably detailed in Stepp’d in Blood. For those aware of the ambition of Kanziga, there only was going to be one outcome to a contest between her and ikinani.

To this woman, the thought that even a smidgen of hers, and her clan’s power could be lost – worst of all to the “Tutsi cockroaches!” – was unthinkable. They had controlled a state for decades. They had power of life and death over people, a powerful addiction in itself. They were very wealthy after decades of siphoning millions of dollars and other forms of foreign aid, to personal use. They were quite ready to massacre an entire ethnicity if that was what it took to maintain the status quo.

The scenes in Habyarimana’s living room the morning following the downing of Habyarimana’s aircraft are beyond chilling, and speak far more clearly of who killed the man than anything else. The journalist describes the personalities that immediately converged on Habyarimana’s house, to sit in the lounge area “that had become a temporary morgue where the bodies from the plane were slowly recovered and brought”.

Present were Habyarimana’s two sisters, Godelieve and Telesphore; his brother Doctor Seraphin; as was Archbishop Vincent Nsengiyunva. There were the families of Tharcise Renzaho, and army chief Deogratias Nsabimana. There were two of Habyarimana’s children, Jean-Luc and Jeanne. Also present was Mr. Z, Bagosora’s brother Pasteur Musabe, and a few other powerful individuals.

Agathe Habyarimana, hard eyed, told relatives who stood over the bodies not to cry, “because that would assist the enemy”! Along with Zigiranyirazo, she was busy working the phones, making repeated calls to Mitterrand, Mobutu, and the French ambassador, at times asking to speak to them in private. Suzanne Seminega, a life-long friend of Mrs. Habyarimana’s is described in the book as being shocked that instead of finding a woman in mourning, she saw Agathe dictating a list of names on the telephone. “Agathe named political opponents, among whom Prime Minister Agathe Uwiringiyimana, who would be killed a few hours later.”

The killing spree went as planned. However the end was anything but. The RPA prevailed, inflicting military defeat after defeat upon the Mitterrand-backed regime, until the liberating force put a stop to the crimes against humanity.

Aided and abetted by a handful of Western governments, most notable Francois Mitterrand’s administration, this is one moral horror the French establishment from that time has fought tooth and nail, either to sweep under the carpet; to deny or trivialize; or to turn on its head by turning the victims into perpetrators.

Stepp’d in Blood is a well-researched indictment of their role as enablers of the Akazu, and a capable repudiation of their efforts to obfuscate.

Most importantly however, Stepp’d in Blood is an essential read for any Rwandan, either to educate, or remind themselves just what life was like in this country up to 1994.

Shyaka Kanuma is a Kigali-based journalist

October 29, 2019

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