Paul Kagame-Citizen Rwanda

CNN: But is the fact they've emerged from the genocide with some political stability enough to call the country a success?
Zakaria: It might be fragile. Beneath the veneer of reconciliation, there might well be much hatred. And it might be that Kagame is holding it all together because of his personality and toughness -- perhaps like Tito in Yugoslavia. But he says his goal is to build institutions and have this process outlive him.

The above is an excerpt from an interview CNN had  with  Fareed Zakaria  over President Paul Kagame of  Rwanda, where he had praised Rwanda as Africa's success story. The full transcript of the interview  can be  seen here.   Zakaria  had  earlier  praised  Paul Kagame in another Newsweek article, in fact  suggesting  his model  as the way ahead for Africa.   It is interesting to note the case of  another  African leader, Yoweri Museveni  in Uganda,  praised as a role model by most of the Western media.  Apart from being neighbors, both Uganda  and Rwanda  had other painful similarities, beautiful  nations, famed for their mountains and wildlife,  hit by civil  war and genocide.  If  Uganda  had to suffer under the dictatorships of  Idi Amin and Milton  Obote,  Rwanda had to  face the horrors of the 1994  genocide of the Tutsis  by the Hutu population.   The Tutsi-Hutu problem in Rwanda  though existed  right since the formation of the nation,  one of the earliest being the 1959  civil war  that  followed the overthrow of  King  Kigeli V Ndahindurwa,  and the Hutus  indulged in reprisal  attacks against the Tutsis.

Most of  the  Tutsi population in Rwanda, fled  to the neighboring nations, one of them was Paul Kagame's, where  he  grew up in a refugee  camp  in Uganda. The link with Museveni  goes much more though, Kagame was  a part of  Museveni's  National Resistance Army,  that  fought  against  the dictatorial, corrupt  Milton Obote  government in Uganda in  what is commonly known as the bush war. Kagame  was also the intelligence  chief in Museveni's  Govt, and also founded the RPF( Rwandan Patriotic Front), basically a coalition of  Tutsi exiles.  Both  Museveni  and  Kagame, were regarded as saviors  to countries that  earlier had to bear the painful  effects of  Idi Amin  and Rwanda'94. Both the leaders  were  feted universally  in the Western media,  with many  claiming  Museveni  to be the next best thing to happen to the African continent, after  Nelson Mandela.  Unfortunately, both have fallen prey to their own megalomania, seeing themselves as the Lord protector of the nation, whom none shall disobey.

Look, you have to understand that there are two wars going on here. There’s a shooting war and a genocide war. The two are connected, but also distinct. In the shooting war, there are two conventional armies at each other, and in the genocide war, one of those armies, the government side with help from civilians, is involved in mass killings .-Mark Doyle, BBC News, Kigali in 1994.

President Juvenile Habyarimana just before the shooting down.

April  6,1994, one of the darkest days in the history of the African continent,  when the presidents of Rwanda and Burundi, Juvenal Habyarimana and  Cyprien Ntaryamira,  were both  killed, when the plane  in which they were travelling  was shot down, by an unidentified missile. It  provided an excuse for the Hutu dominated  Interwame, to indulge  in large scale genocide of  Tutsis. In one of the worst ever genocides since the Holocaust, an estimated 1,000,000  people were killed in Rwanda, as it took it's place among  Bosnia, Sri Lanka, Cambodia.  It  was not just those  killed in the genocide,  more people perished of  disease and sickness in the refugee camps  of neighboring Burundi, Tanzania  and Uganda.  The Interwhame's  target  was not just the Tutsis, it  was also the more moderate Hutus, who did not accept their extremist ideology. The fighting  began in April 1994, between the Interwhame and the RPF, led by Paul Kagame.  After 2 months of  intense fighting, marked by the equally horrendous genocide, the Rwandan capital of  Kigali  finally fell to the RPF. By  21 Aug,1994, Rwanda  finally came under the control of the RPF.

The Rwandan genocide  ended, but at the cost of more than a million lives, and now it was the turn of the Hutus, to flee Rwanda, fearing  reprisal from the Tutsis. Pasteur  Bizimungu, a Hutu  himself, became the President of  Rwanda, with  Kagame, being the Vice President.  Bizimungu, was one of the more moderate Hutus, who  was against the extremist Interwhame,  but the control  clearly  lay  with Kagame, who  was the main force. It  was Kagame, who held the main reins of power, running the show from behind.  What  was interesting though  was for all of  Kagame's  role in ending the Rwandan Genocide, speculation persists of him being part of  the conspiracy to actually start it. One  was the testimony by French judge  Jean-Louis Bruguière  who accused Kagame  of ordering the shooting down of  the plane carrying the Presidents of Rwanda and Burundi in 1994. Paul  Rusesbagina,  the hotel owner  who saved  more than a 1000 civilians, and whose story  was the motivation for  Hotel Rwanda,  has been one of the main accusers against  Kagame and his RPF.  In his words  "It defies logic why the UN Security Council has never mandated an investigation of this airplane missile attack to establish who was responsible". 

Post Before “read more” And here is the rest of it 

A furious Kagame  broke off ties with France, and in turn  accused the French of abetting the genocide,  demanding  why they had taken no action during the crisis. Another  major  blow  has been a Spanish court's  verdict, indicting  3 officers  close to Kagame,  of  genocide of  Hutus, as well as civilians during the Second Congo  War.

People must bring a machete, a spear, an arrow, a hoe, spades, rakes, nails, truncheons, electric irons, barbed wire, stones, and the like, in order, dear listeners, to kill the Rwandan Tutsis. - From a Radio station in Congo.

The other flash point  was the presence of  the  Banyamungele, a  tribe of  Tutsi Rwandans  living near the Congo-Rwanda border.  When Laurent  Kabila the Congolese dictator,  ordered all the  Rwandan and Ugandan  forces to leave Congo,  it  alarmed  this tribe, who  had played a major role during the first Congo War. In 1998,  Kagame  backed the Banyamungele in a major uprising against the Congolese Govt,  through a newly formed  outfit the  Rally for Congolese Democracy,and within time,  they took over the entire resource rich South Kivu plateau in Congo. Kabila  enlisted the aid of the Hutus in eastern Congo, and  lynchings of  the Tutsis  again began, it  was Rwanda 1994 all over. Initially beaten back, Kabila  however embarked  on a diplomatic offensive,  that  saw  Namibia, Zimbabwe, Angola, Chad, Libya, Sudan, all come to the aid  of  Kabila.  It  was another  major  war,  that once again left the Congo  devastated, from which it has yet to recover still.  Kagame  used the war as a proxy for  his Tutsi based militias, to  attack the Hutu refugee camps in a reprisal of the 1994 genocide.

The fact that a Tutsi was elected president for the first time by Hutus, Tutsis and Twas is proof that these communities have reconciled themselves after the genocide.His  election is a good thing for Rwanda.- A resident of  Rwanda  in 2003, after Kagame won the elections.

Bizimungu  was forced to resign in 2000 by Kagame, who then became the President.  Bizimungu's  attempt to  start his own party,  was in vain, when Kagame  placed him under house arrest,  banned his party on the grounds of  being an extremist  Hutu party, and later sent him to prison on grounds of embezzlement and fraud. The 2003 elections,  saw  Kagame  storming to power, the  first ever since the 1994 genocide.  Kagame called  it  as a vote for change, a chance to put aside the country's  painful  past. Kagame's  biggest challenge however  was dealing with the aftermath of the 1994 genocide. Kagame to his credit, took a major role  in prosecuting the perpetrators of the 1994 genocide.  He  was however faced with a major problem,  Rwanda  itself  was a small nation,  and  putting  all the perpetrators in prison meant, that  more than 80% of the population would be inside.  The genocide  in Rwanda  was somewhat different  from those in Bosnia or Germany,  the perpetrators  and victims, were still in the same place. In effect it  meant that,  the neighbour  right  next door, was one of the  perpetrators, and  unlike Germany or Bosnia, where the Jews and Bosnians fled to other lands,  it  was different here.

But soon we had 130,000 in jail—and many more outside,The genocide in our country involved a huge percentage of our population, both in terms of those who were killed and those who killed.

 What  Kagame did  was to establish a system of  local village councils, essentially the gacaca courts, as they were called, where  those  who perpetrated the genocide, confessed, forgiven  and later integrated into the local  communities.  It  was a traditional  Rwandan approach, and one that  worked.  In Kagame's  approach, he  felt  that  reconciliation was needed between the Hutsis and Tutsis, instead  of  more bitterness, both of them were needed for the nation's  future.   Kagame  has some valid  points to make  about the Western approach  to Africa, especially their over reliance on aid.  In an interview, he had praised China  for  bringing  what  the  Africans  really needed, infrastructure and jobs, unlike the West, which only focused on an aid centric approach. Kagame  like his Ugandan counterpart  Museveni  has been a votary of free trade and private enterprise, which he sees the only way out in Africa.

His commitment  to free trade and private enterprise,  was what made Kagame, the darling of the Western leaders, with  high  praise from Bill Clinton, Tony Blair,  as  well as media  figures like Fareed  Zakaria. All the effusive praise, cannot however  unmask an appalling  human rights  record  which  is one of the worst in Africa. Paul  Kagame  actually makes Robert Mugabe of  Zimbabwe, seem a paragon of free speech, democracy and human rights,  and  that says a lot.  Rwanda  is ranked by Reporters Without Borders  as the worst place for journalists  along with N.Korea, Syria, Myanmar and Yemen, certainly not  company of which one would be proud . This  article by  African Dictator  says it a  lot of  the lack of  press freedom in Rwanda. Most of the independent  press has been suspended, and  Kagame  has followed the Chinese, in allowing the Net, but  censoring it for his own advantage. In June 2010  Jean-Léonard Rugambage  a Rwandan  editor  of  Umuvugizi, one of their leading  newspapers  was shot dead in front his residence.  Rugambage  had been one of  Kagame's  harshest critics,  and  was about to expose him in an attempted murder of  Faustin Kayumba Nyamwasa,  a former Army  General, who had fallen out with Kagame. Add to it Kagame's  use of child soldiers in the conflict in Congo, and worse of all the excesses during the 2010 election.   André Kagwa Rwisereka  his political opponent in  the elections  belonging to the Democratic Green Party  was found murdered and beheaded. These were just  some of the more high profile cases,   there  have been  thousands of  ordinary Rwandans, political dissidents, journalists, reporters,  who have simply  disappeared.

Acknowledgement

1)  African Dictator - Rwanda’s media in a state of hesitation.1

2) Africa's Biggest success story- Fared Zakaria. 2

3) Africa's  new Path by Fared Zakaria in Newsweek 3