The Indian community in Rwanda has described President Kagame as An inspirational man who has transformed Rwanda into what they call a modern nation since 1994 genocide against the Tutsis. These revelations were made by the head of the Indian Community Muhamed Salim during the Indian Independence cerebrations in the Rwandan Capital Kigali last week. India got its independence in 1947 after a nonviolence struggle by Mahatma Gandhi from Britain.

Some of Gandhi quotes: Power is of two kinds. One is obtained by the fear of punishment and the other by acts of love. Power based on love is a thousand times more effective and permanent then the one derived from fear of punishment

However, the comparison of Gandhi and Kagame is not only parallel but also an insult to the ideals of Gandhi, opportunistic and selfish, because there is no any mathematical equation that can even bring the two closer and the facts don’t add up.   Who is Gandhi? Born and raised in a Hindu merchant caste family in coastal Gujarat, western India, and trained in law at the Inner Temple, London, Gandhi first employed nonviolent civil disobedience as an expatriate lawyer in South Africa, in the resident Indian community’s struggle for civil rights.

Who is Kagame? Born in Rwanda the former Gitarama Prefecture raised in the Ugandan refugee Camp of Toro, with only Six years of Secondary Education from Old Kampala joined the Ugandan rebel movement of President Yoweri Museveni who believed in the philosophy of Frantz Fanon of making change by violence. In fact the Dissertation of President Musveni that graduated him in Political Science and Economics from the University of Dar es Salaam in 1967 was on the Theory of Violence to achieve political desires. President Kagame should not be accorded the title of a gentleman like Ghandi because he has neither value nor any respect for human life.

Paul Kagame

  • People cannot be bribed or forced into changing their history. And no country is powerful enough, even when they think that they are, to change the facts. After all, les faits sont têtus.
  • All genocides begin with an ideology — a system of ideas that says: This group of people here, they are less than human and they deserve to be exterminated.
  • The colonial theory of Rwandan society claimed that hostility between something called “Hutu”, “Tutsi”, and “Twa” was permanent and necessary. This was the beginning of the genocide against the Tutsi, as we saw it twenty years ago.

Frantz Fanon a clinical psychiatrist by training, his social theory is clearly influenced by his study of human behavior.  He supports much of his understanding on the usage of violence by interrogating both the motives of the ruled and the ruler.  His summation of the ruler is,

“You do not disorganize a society, however primitive it may be, with such an agenda if you are not determined from the start to smash every obstacle encountered.  The ruled, who have made up their mind to make such an agenda into a driving force, have been prepared for violence from time immemorial.  As soon as they are born it is obvious to them that their cramped world, riddled with taboos, can only be challenged by out and out violence”

 

Frantz Fanon was shooting his words to the colonizers or imperialism at the time, in the same manner, those foreign imperialists have been succeeded by our own who are worse than the Europeans. Accordingly, the above quote suggests that the Kagame is predisposed to violence based on the material conditions of his environment in the refugee camp, resource barren climate of the camp by referring to it as a “cramped world, riddled with taboos.”  Yet, Fanon does not limit this understanding of violence to the use of weaponry; he also highlights the cultural, political and economic methods used by the Kagame.   Indeed, Kagame’s political philosophy of Aristotlian logic of mutual exclusion that suggests that one species has to die for the other to live drives him to kill whoever is perceived to be a potential political competitor.

These are not the ideals of Mahatima Ghandi who did not only preach peaceful means of changing the society but love and respect for human life. Therefore the Indian community in Rwanda comparing Gandhi to Kagame reminds me of the same delusion the Indian community and the West had in Ugnada in 1970s during the Id Amin regime.  When Gen Amin came to power with the help of the West he initially made the working conditions for business favorable. Many Indians — especially non-citizens that engaged in business, commerce and trade actually many viewed Amin’s assumption of power with some relief. But this hope was short lived, because, Idi Amin was uncompromising beast that would not tolerate anybody who disagrees with him. Since many Asians had duo Citizenship or many decided to remain British, President Idi Amin had no appetite for the British and the Americans. In fact Amini argued that he had a dream telling him to expel all the Asians he accused of milking the Ugandan economy on the expense of the Ugandans. ‘Because God spoke to him (me)in the night  and told him (me) that they had to leave as they were responsible for exploiting the indigenous citizens of the country’!!

Apparently, Kagame has become more ruthless than Idi Amin, there’s the steady crushing of political dissents inside and outside Rwanda. The Kagame regime has staged elections to legitimize his brutal government getting 93 percent of the vote; the exclusion of opposition parties from the race; the strangulation of Col. Patrick Karegeya and an attempt assassination of  Gen Kayumba Nyamwasa Rwandan  former Army Chief  who have broken with Kagame in broad daylight in South Africa; the fatal shooting of an independent journalist reporting on the South African incident; the grisly murder of an opposition politician; the closure of many opposition newspapers are some of the few ugly incidents that have marked the RPF/Kagme regime.

It is therefore surprising for my brothers, the Indian community in Rwanda for being so naïve and having a very short memory of what happened to their brothers on the next door in Uganda during Idi Amin’s regime which expelled almost the entire Indian community. Unfortunately, no human being will ever satisfy the mind of a dictator, the only thing Indians could do is either keep quiet or help their Rwandan brothers to remove this monster that is killing everybody irrespective of race, or colour. However, the opportunistic and selfish approach will only prolong the Rwandan suffering and postpone the same humiliation Amin did to the Asians; hence you will be harming yourself in future.  “Selfish persons are incapable of loving others, but they are not capable of loving themselves either”

Jacqueline

Umurungi