Rwanda. Paul Kagame risks to join the Club of African Dictators.
In a controversial interview with France24, Rwandan President Paul Kagame would have expressed his desire to lead the country for another 20 years. This statement made close to the presidential elections of 2024 was interpreted by the Rwandan public opinion as an ironic phrase while the opponents and part of the international community as an expressed desire to become President for life. Where is the truth?
During an interview with France24 on Friday 8 July, President Paul Kagame expressed his intention to govern Rwanda for the next 20 years, fueling doubts about his possible candidacy for the fourth consecutive term in the elections scheduled for 2024.
Paul Kagame (65) at the age of two becomes a refugee in Uganda due to the first ethnic massacres in Rwanda against the Tutsi minority, fomented and led by extremist leaders Hutu Grégoire Kayibanda, Juvénal Habyarimana who also appeared among the signatories of the document «Note on the social aspect of the indigenous racial problem in Rwanda» known as «Manifesto Bahutu».
A sort of African Mein Kampf drawn up in the middle of the Belgian colonial period in 1957 by the missionaries of the White Fathers congregation and by the Catholic clergy of Bukavu, eastern Congo, who hypothesized a redemption of the Hutu majority “subjected” to the Tutsi minority. In the Manifesto the bases of the Nazi ideology “HutuPower” (power to the Hutus) were subtly inserted, which served to justify 30 years of racial domination in Rwanda, four great cleanups and ethnic massacres and, finally, the genocide that took place in 1994 which caused the 1 million deaths, mostly Tutsis.
In the 1980s, Kagame enlisted along with many other Rwandan Tutsi refugees in the guerrilla movement of Yoweri Kaguta Museveni against the dictatorship of Milton Obote. The Rwandan refugees were the elite guerrilla corps that allowed Museveni to seize power in Uganda in 1986. After 4 years of military collaboration with the new Ugandan regime, Paul Kagame together with Fred Rwigyema, convince Museveni, Gaddafi, United States and Great Britain to finance, arm and train a guerrilla movement made up of Tutsi refugees in exile in Uganda to free their country from the racial dictatorship of Habyarimana. The war of liberation will start in 1991 (where Fred is killed in the early stages of hostilities and will be replaced by Paul in command) and will end in August 1994 with the liberation of the country and the end of the Rwandan genocide.
After the genocide Paul Kagame will hold the roles of Vice President and Minister of Defense in the government of Pasteur Bizimungu, a former Hutu administrator under the Habyarimana regime who joined the Tutsi rebellion and elected President.
In 2000 he was elected President for the first time and subsequently reconfirmed in the elections of 2003 and 2010. He obtained the third presidential term in 2017 thanks to the referendum to change the constitution made in 2015 which allows the Head of State to go beyond the limit of two terms consecutive and raises the term of the presidency from 5 to 7 years.
Paul Kagame had the merit of rebuilding Rwanda from the ashes by transforming a country based on ethnic hatred, colonial servility of France and a backward peasant economy into a multi-ethnic, independent and modern country. One of the most economically and socially advanced in East Africa.
The success of Kagame and New Rwanda was achieved at the expense of two pan-African wars in neighboring Congo and the colossal robbery of Congolese raw materials which continues to this day. It must be said that the two wars in Congo and the subsequent support for rebel movements in eastern Congo were dictated by the need to defend themselves from the Hutu genocidal forces saved in 1994 by France and reorganized by them, forming the FDLR (Democratic Liberation Forces) in 2000. of Rwanda) that represented and still represent a serious threat to Rwanda. The FDLR were included in 2004 by the United States on the list of international terrorist organizations.
Kagame’s claim that he wants to stay in power for the next 20 years has been perceived by Rwandan public opinion as a sarcastic response and a veiled expression of frustration at the constant questions being asked by Western journalists at every presidential election about when. intends to step down as President. Outside the country, the response has fueled speculation that Kagame intends to remain in power for life by becoming an “enlightened dictator” like Museveni in Uganda.
Critics of him, including exiled Rwandan politicians (belonging to HutPower and close to the terrorist group FLDR) and human rights groups, immediately condemned Kagame’s comment by portraying him as yet another African dictator. “What is surprising is that some people are really surprised and believe that the revelation of Paul Kagame’s plans was just a harmless ironic phrase. Rwanda is a country where it is very, very dangerous to oppose the government, let alone be a political opponent … And this authoritarian system will be the system for the foreseeable future, “he said in an interview with the BBC, Lewis Mudge, director for Central Africa of the American association in defense of human rights: Human Rights Watch, historically critical and adverse to the Rwandan president.
In response, Paul said that it will be the Rwandan voters and not him who will decide who will be the next president, recalling that Rwanda has never been accused of holding unfair or dubious elections unlike suspicions that weigh on a “well-known advanced Western democracy. »Referring to the elections in the 2000 elections that saw George W. Bush and Albert Arnold Gore Jr. opposing and those of 2020 that saw Donald John Trump opposing Joseph Robinette Biden Jr. Both are burdened with suspicions of fraud, in 2000 in favor of the Republicans and in 2020 in favor of the Democrats.
In an opinion piece published by the pro-government newspaper The New Times on July 12, Joseph Rwagatare, a presidential adviser, accused the Western media of misleading Paul Kagame’s speech, arguing that “the president responded with devastating sarcasm that would consider running for the next 20 years. He could not have made this joke but the president was generous and offered a detailed explanation of the meaning of the elections and the role and right of citizens in the choice ”.
Although President Kagame’s current seven-year term expires in 2024, the 2015 constitutional reform allows him to run for two more five-year terms each until 2034. While the ruling Rwanda Patriotic Front (RPF) party claims that its standard-bearer will be decided in 2024, analysts do not expect a change of the guard, even if they say that the final decision rests with the ruling party and the coalition of political parties in Rwanda.
Frederick Golooba-Mutebi, an independent researcher who has worked extensively in Rwanda for the past decade, noted that there is broad agreement within the country that President Kagame is a good leader who has done very well and has the ability to keep doing that work. “I know for a fact that it is not a point of view (which should continue) held only within the RPF. Even people who would not be RPF supporters agree with this sentiment; that the country has benefited a lot from his leadership and would be happy enough for it to continue. Eventually it becomes the call of him, ”said Dr. Golooba-Mutebi.
But the upcoming challenge for the RPF is to support the earnings of the younger generation. First, they must maintain economic development, but perhaps more importantly, maintain social cohesion and unity. A difficult task as within the Tutsi minority Paul Kagame is accused of favoring the “Clan of Ugandans” that is the Rwandans in exile in Uganda who liberated the country in 1994, putting an end to the genocide. Even among the Hutu majority there is criticism against Kagame, accused of having made few efforts for rural development, favoring the third sector and the New Economy which have guaranteed advanced urban development.
On the foreign policy front, Paul Kagame managed to end the cold war with Uganda which had lasted since 2000 and which had inflicted heavy economic damage on the country but is accused of supporting the Congolese rebel movement M23 in neighboring Congo. He is also involved in the “slave trade” having signed the shameful agreement with Great Britain wanted by former Premier Boris Johson which provides for the forced deportation from England to Rwanda of refugees and asylum seekers in exchange for 120 million pounds, in part already paid into the state coffers of Rwanda.
