After the recent rejection of Diane Shima Rwigara’s candidacy by the National Electoral Commission as dictated by Paul Kagame on the eve of the presidential campaign, the Rwandan President elect Paul Kagame garrisoned several regiments around the Rwigara family’s home in Kigali since 31 August 2017 and the Police ended up arresting the whole family yesterday. Therefore, any Rwandan citizen who dares to challenge the RPF at election as well as pointing a finger at the regime’s monumental mistakes and cardinal crimes is deemed to be anti-Rwanda as if RPF means Rwanda.
The argument is that if the Paul Kagame Armed Forces oppress political opponents so cruelly with the world’s cameras recording the events in Kigali, then it becomes crystal clear that they have done the worst against Hutu ethnic group’s people in the remote areas of Rwanda where there were no cameras during the so-called liberation war of the early 1990s and during the invasion of refugees’ camps by the RPA (Rwanda Patriotic Army) with Kagame as Commander in chief in the ex-Zaire along the late 1990s. Our state security has an anarchical mind, firmly grounded in the RPF regime’s culture. It is widely known that the ruling party’s political college teaches that dissidents are just biological substances and the only valued human beings are those who agree with the atrocities of the regime. In virtue of this, Kagame has made it possible for the RPF government to win power on an ideology that justifies the use of a great deal of violence on the opposition. Therefore, in the point of view of the RPF, the harassment of the Rwigara family is a due punishment for Diane Rwigara’s audacity to challenge Kagame’s presidency. The intriguing view is that because Kagame the president and his DMI operatives who are kidnapping, torturing and shooting opponents are mostly from the tribe of Abega, it proves that the perpetration of human right violations is a monopoly of one tribe in Rwanda.
There are elements worth of tangible evidence in these arguments appealing to sensational facts one develops around them, trying to uncover why Kagame feels he needs to use more forces to terrorise the Rwigara family than it takes him to send troops on UN peace-keeping missions.
What interests us the most, as Rwandans, is what this sectarian divide unfolds before our sight about the likely play of politics in coming days, and the current mindset among the more politically concerned.
One thing we need to record is that the paradigm shift of some elimination of the “Abanyiginya Tribe” is about something bigger than we can merely imagine. In history, this is reminiscent of what happened at “Rucunshu” south of Rwanda in 1896 A.D when Mother Queen Kanjogera from the Abega Tribe, aided by her brothers Ruhinankiko and Kabare, mounted a coup to overthrow King Mibambwe Rutalindwa from the Abanyiginya dynasty and enthroned Yuhi IV Musinga who was their nephew from their sister Kanjogera. At this time, a cloud of deep sorrow covered Rwanda. The putschists killed the legitimate King and decimated his people throughout the kingdom of Rwanda. In a nutshell, it was a super genocide.
There now seems to be a widespread acceptance among many Rwandans that it is true, as most of Rwandan patriarchs argued, that people from the “Abega Tribe” are cruel, sanguinary and domineering by nature and the rest of Rwandans are not. Nowadays you can’t visit any of popular Rwandan websites without reading someone pointing out that the greatest naivety we showed as a country is overlooking the climbing of the Abega up the throne over the past 23 years. However, it has offered a great opportunity to rewrite accurately about more than a millennium of Rwanda’s history and the broader stereotypical narrative of the “Abega Tribe”.
At the public level, it is good to admit that many political commentators are right when they say that if the rest of Rwandans don’t cope effectively with the Kagame fascism, the Kagame fascism will deal destructively with Rwandans. We should go back and learn some vital lessons from the Rucunshu Coup and the 1990-94 war which condemned our dear motherland to historical problems entrenched in power intrigues. Kagame was not a well cultured leader to govern a country emerging from war and genocide. The only thing he managed to do with powers conferred to him is to reach the dizzy heights of dictatorship and the nation’s divisiveness.
So when people talk of revolution, it should go beyond deposing the monarch Paul Kagame, but even think big about how to seek the sterling reconciliation among the Rwandans and ending chronic masquerades; then go farther and see that Rwanda’s greatness could only be found through the inclusiveness of proportional representation of our three ethnic groups in our politics.
Jean Rukika
