By David Himbara
On surface, General Paul Kagame has imposed a total lockdown to stop the spreading of the coronavirus. According to reports, his security forces even went as far as killing two people for for disobeying the lockdown decrees. As it turns out, however, Kagame’s lockdown is not total after all. The General is enforcing the lockdown selectively by exempting his business interests. Not even the coronavirus can stop Kagame’s corruption. This was inadvertently revealed by his own newspaper, The New Times.
On March 26, 2020, The New Times interviewed a man by the name of Jean Damascène Gasarabwe, who happens to be the Director-General of Kitabi Tea Company. Kitabi Tea Company is a subsidiary of Rwanda Mountain Tea Company. Gasarabwe stated that tea harvesting and processing in Rwanda is continuing despite the lockdown. He explained that this is because tea is a delicate crop, and that if the crop “is not harvested or processed on time in a factory, its quality is impaired.” In other words, it is business as usual for Kitabi Tea Company and its parent company, Rwanda Mountain Tea Company.
So, how come ordinary people are shot dead for leaving their homes to look for food while companies are doing business as usual during the total lockdown? The answer lies in the noted companies’ ownership. Kitabi Tea Company and its parent company, Rwanda Mountain Tea Company belong to Egide Gatera, who is in a corrupt relationship with Kagame as I demonstrated in greater details in my book Kagame’s Economic Mirage. Egide Gatera is a Kagame front through and through. Gatera has accumulated enormous wealth in four ways.
The first Gatera’s path to wealth begins with Kagame invoking a business license of a foreign business entity. The entity’s Rwandan operations are then grabbed by Gatera. That is how the US multinational corporation, Chevron and the Saudi company Bakri International Energy, were thrown out of the country, and Gatera became the petroleum king in Kagame’s Rwanda.
The second route for wealth accumulation by the Kagame-Gatera dual is the privatization of government properties. That is how Gatera acquired Rwanda Mountain Tea Company.
The third method is via the auctioning of businesses whose owners are considered to be enemies of the state. Kagame destroys such businesses by claiming they owe taxes. When such Rwandan businesses are then auctioned, Gatera moves in and grabs the remains. That is how Gatera acquired Assinapol Rwigara’s Premier Tobacco Company which was auctioned by the Kagame government.
The fourth path is inserting Gatera in new mysterious foreign investments in Rwanda. A good example is Gasmeth Energy Ltd which signed a US$400 million investment contract with the Kagame government in February 2019 to extract methane from Lake Kivu. Its investors were said to include an American, Nigerian and a Rwandan. Guess who is the Rwandan investor in Gasmeth Energy – no other than Gatera who supposedly owns 30% of the US$400 million energy company.
In Kagame’s Rwanda, there is always a sharp contrast between surface appearance and the reality. In this case, it appears on the surface that Kagame is determined to stop the spreading of the Coronavirus by imposing a total lockdown. But in reality, Kagame is double-dealing. His companies are conducting business undeterred by the total lockdown. Thanks, The New Times, for exposing your master’s grand corruption.
