Kayonga with Kagame

There is trend of murdering or removal of former old military officers of the Rwandan Military from high military  command by President Paul Kagame  and installing  into the leadership a new generation of younger or those who are more loyal officers effectively headed by de facto  Army Chief Gen Jack Nziza. The move is seen as aimed to strengthen Kagame’s grip on an army that has recently appeared to be used for anything to keep their boss in power.

This leaves the president as the sole remaining high-ranking member of the group that captured power twenty years ago. Kagame now rules, without any obvious challenger, a very tense country. The lack of mainstream opposition in the country with only some parties affiliated to RPF, this gives Kagame a clear way to do what he wants with the Rwandan Constitution come 2017 at the end of his term of office.

Adding salt to a wound, the Opposition parties that operate outside the country remain divided. They are even incoherent; in terms of both strategy and ideology, and their woeful financial situation make them nearly impossible for them to mount any serious challenge to Kagame. With vast amounts of money at his disposal generated from the business empires scattered inside and outside the country Kagame secured yet another term even before his term ends. The next presidential election is scheduled for 2017, at which point RPF will have been in office for 23 years longer than his predecessor Habyarimana.

While the Kayonga reshuffle and subsequent dispatch as the Rwandan Ambassador to China had long been expected, it was hastened by allegations that Kayonga had started questioning why Kagame could not sit with his former comrades in the Rwanda National Congress as to resolve their differences.

Rwanda as it stands today does not have any independent critical privately owned newspaper or radio. The government also closed all independent news papers and with their editors running away for their dear life or others assassinated inside the country or abroad where they sought protection, Kagame has nothing to fear as regards the media.
This kind of media clampdown, which the government has resorted to a number of times when it has felt exposed, is a clear reminder of how far Kagame is willing to go to constrict not just media freedom, but free expression in general, analysts have concluded. The Kayumba departure from RPF did not only catch Kagame off guard but has also exposed the true colors of the man regarded by many as the sole individual who did not only stop genocide against the Tutsis but who has made his a country the Singapore of East Africa.
Kagame’s installation of the new faces in the military command and of course retaining Gen Jack Nziza as the Inspector of the Military a post that does not exist in any Military establishment has helped keep Kagame’s ambitions  alive. The Rwandan military’s old guard, two members of which—Gen. Kayonga and Gen. Kayumba—headed the army until  both ended as ambassadors signals  the mindset of Kagame that he does not tolerate, anybody who is perceived  with a sense of entitlement over the country’s politico-military affairs because of their participation in the 1990-1994 war that propelled Kagame to power. As a result, Kagame had to mix accommodation and compromise to deal effectively with his guerrilla war comrades, something he might not have to do with the new leaders of the army or political elite like the current Prime Minister and those small political parties affiliated to RPF, who owe their influential positions less to their own accomplishments than to the magnanimity of their commander-in-chief.
Since Kagame is feared by everybody it is unthinkable that anybody within his party or within the country can demand for his peaceful handover power to another person. The nostalgia commanded from having ended genocide of the Tutsi and Rwanda’s economic miracle and setting Rwanda on a path of robust recovery and growth that it has sustained for more than a decade. When some of Kagame’s comrades like Kayumba advised him to be tolerant and accommodative he labeled them traitors and were eventually kicked out of the party. Kagame later commenced legal proceedings to incriminate the Kayumba along with Dr. Theogene Rudasingwa and Gerard Gahima using his legal system that has tended to present itself as a counterweight to the executive’s overriding powers.

Although Kagame has suppressed all would be challengers, his toughest challenge should he seek re-election in 2017, as indeed he seems likely to do, is expected to come from his old admirers. Already, as deceptive as he has been, he confessed to Bill Clinton the man believed to have played a big role in his ascending to power that he will not seek another term come 2017. Should Kagame seek another term which undoubtedly he will win, it would certainly amplify the divided political parties that operate outside the country and those which have been pushed underground to resist his rule.

Political protests that we have witnessed in North Africa commonly as the Arab Spring, and social tensions owing to inequality and the rise in the cost of living for many Rwandans who cannot feed their own families, educate their children, where the University education is now a privilege; could ignite instability the country faced towards the beginning of the end of Habyarimana’s rule. With widespread intimidation, extrajudicial killings, suffocation of free press, freedom of assembly, it is difficult to imagine a peaceful post-Kagame Rwanda.

Jacqueline Umurungi

Brussels.