DR. PAUL KAGAME

Recently the Co-ordinator General of Rwanda National Congress (RNC), Dr. Theogene Rudasingwa, in his call to all Rwandans he titled, “URGENT CALL TO ALL RWANDANS: UNITE, MOBILIZE AND ORGANISE FOR NATIONAL DEMOCRATIC REVOLUTION”, listed ‘FEAR’ as the first and leading of the seven demons that consume the people’s commitment to the brewing and must revolution taking place in Rwanda.  Many scholars have taken to trying to understand and make sense how dictators like Paul Kagame, Kim Jong-Il or Hitler, or Idi Amin or Sadam Hussein or Gadaffi for that matter maintain power over their people.  The research results are not only interesting but are also a source for providing tools to overcome this weapon of ‘FEAR’ dictators like Kagame use.

“Ibuye ryagalagaye riba ritakishye isuka”.  This Kinyarwanda famous adage simply reinforces the fact that if all Rwandans take a few minutes to make sense of how it is easy to conquer the demon of FEAR, soon our misery will be history.

 

Psychologists and sociologists who study terrorism say dictators are able to spread fear among their people, and place themselves as their only salvation.  Manufacturing an external threat, like Jews to Hitler’s Germany, colonialists, ‘gorilla’ and Zionists to Amin, or the entire West for Kim, and now genocidiers, RNC (throwing grenades), French, Belgians (colonialists) for Paul Kagame, help keep the society off balance and collectively paranoid as well. Paul Kagame has gone to great length to even stage manage throwing of grenades and trying opposition leaders like Victorie Ingabire,

Deo Musyayidi and now the unfolding drama a young prominent artist, Kizito Mihigo, who is being incarcerated, allegedly for seriously threatening state security.  Everyone will recall Kagame’s infamous speech during the National Prayer Breakfast soon after the callous assassination of Col. Patrick Kalegeya (May his soul RIP) when he insinuated that the government killed him because he was a traitor.  He went on to state that, “all those who challenge or oppose the government of Rwanda will face consequences …” despite Rwanda having abolished the ‘death sentence’ in public.  This was at a time when the youthful dictator in North Korea had just publicly fed his ‘uncle’ to the wolves for apparent insubordination.  Is this a coincidence or just a similar way of thinking?  After all most of Kagame’s killers are trained in North Korea and like the Kims he craves to portray a cult like stature.

Dictators like Paul Kagame control people through fear and deprivation.  The schemes like the ‘RPF umusanzu’, the ‘monthly local defence tax to every household’, the ‘one dollar campaign’, the ‘Agaciro fund’, and the most recent ‘lending to government for interest scheme’ are some of the many ways government uses to complement the fiscal policies of over taxation used to deprive the citizenry.  Kagame’s machinery also grabs land from the citizenry in the ‘name’ of development and land reform as a tool for deprivation of the Rwandans while servicing their lavish lifestyle.

They have exploited an existing genuine need for land reform to fulfil their agenda of depriving the population.

The dictatorship in Rwanda has perfected the ‘Land Rush’ and used its master plan of throwing its public relations (PR) machinery at anyone who dare raise an ‘eyebrow’.  The effects of the ‘Land Rush’ is that most of the citizens are being deprived of even their own last resort in what was inherited and life support, land for subsistence living.  The master plan of the dictatorship is to deprive everyone and present itself as the only provider.  This should explain the privatisation of all government treasures to ‘Crystal Ventures’ and to other Paul Kagame’s Cohorts. The most recent being the Rwanda Development Bank (BRD) to someone who was sacked, after the United States (UK) and United Kingdom (UK) policy makers intervened, as CEO of Barclays for overseeing the cheating or depriving of Barclays Bank depositors in the PPI scandal.  One wonders whether this is the last if we keep standing by as the pillaging go on.

The master plan is to deprive and in the process be able to control since the dictatorship will be able to present itself as the only employer and provider, something it is already claiming.  Kagame on the same infamous speech mentioned earlier claimed to have made individuals like Col. Patrick Kalegyeya (May your Soul RIP) what they were.

One can argue that this is a true thinking of a psychopath because these people did not only fight for their country by even putting their lives on the line but all of them were also unlike Kagame, well qualified in their various fields.  Here I am talking of qualifying in ‘serious areas’ and from ‘highly respected institutions’ like Makerere University of Uganda.  Even in Uganda and Kenya they held key positions without mentioning their role in the formation and success of the RPF in the struggle.  The thinking behind the claim that “he made them what they were” is to create a CULT KAGAME in the mind of people.  This cult would be Rwanda and Rwanda would in turn be this cult figure.  A true façade of a kind of deceitful thinking at best,  Rwanda was before Kagame, Rwanda exists simultaneously with Kagame and Rwanda will live even after Kagame.  President Paul Kagame leads a government that is currently misruling Rwanda, in my opinion, and he cannot and will never be Rwanda.  He can only be a Rwandan like any of us, period.

Dictators like Paul Kagame, Kim, Sadam and Gadaffi also use control of information as a tool to enhance their grip on power.  According to Jerrold Post, director of the political psychology program at George Washington Universtity, “Controlling information and controlling dissent are part of what goes into maintaining a totalitarian state.”  Kagame and his policies for supporting M23 were responsible for the suspending of aid and the continued hardship in Rwanda.  When countries like UK, Germany, Belgian and Netherlands reinstated some of the aid, out of the existing goodwill and commitment towards poverty reduction globally (Rwanda is still one of the poorest countries in the world), the message from the junta’s officials is that it is because of his leadership that they are through the hardship.  Recently in an unusual admission of the failure of the 2020 Vision, the Prime Minister blamed everyone else except the Dictactor for the failings.  He of course ignored the fact that the policies and actions has resulted in the failure or derailment of the vision are only centrally made by Kagame alone.  The button of responsibility should squarely lie on Kagame and his adventures in the region and no other person.

 

Once you become ‘Umwidishyi’ you should accept the cost too. Everyone is aware of the flagship ‘kwi hesha Agaciro’ at the height of the suspension of aid.  This was of course to divert the citizenry’s attention to the issue.  Agaciro based on what values and principles?  What Agaciro when individuals like Anastase Shyaka, the CEO of Rwanda Governance Board, can’t even visit their own father for fear of retribution as he is incarcerated for alledged genocide?  What Agaciro when some ministers have their parents and relatives bodies still dumped in galleys and bushes but can’t dare accord them a decent burial for fear of retribution?  What Agaciro when Ministers are only directed to lie to parliament, like the case of M23?

Controlling of information and dissent has led to the Rwandan people living double lives.  They have to express the official life in public and the real life that resides in their mind and soul only in confinement.  It is such state of failing to reconcile your inner mind and the reality that leads to the irrational behaviour exhibited by Rwandans both in government and in expert areas nowadays.  Otherwise how do you explain the clergy clapping for some psychopath preaching vengeance, let alone killing those people the psycho perceives as enemies during his (the psycho’s) cycle of episodes?  How do explain individuals holding key ministerial positions uttering slur and scorn at a body of a callously slain Rwandan in a foreign land?  The fear and deprivation has enabled the Paul Kagame, the dictator, to be cheered on as he publicly exhibits episodes of a psychopath.

Readers might turn around and challenge me on my labelling or even suggesting that their ‘loved’ leader is associated with psychotic thought processes.  I ask everyone to hold fire and reflect on what is happening in Rwanda.  Give it a hard deep thought and tell us if you thing it is right.  How can a President in one speech make more than two serious contradictions routinely and people continue to clap?  Here one can only mention two examples, his speech to the Youth Connect on the 30^th June, 2013 where he stated that if anyone claimed to have killed in Kagame’s name he would disown that person or even ‘kill’ them. So after that he was impressing on Hutus to apologise for those who killed in their name even though most of those youth were not yet born at the time.

The use of ‘kill’ by someone wielding immense power to powerless youth itself manifests some serious problem never mind the contradictions.  The other example is when he was addressing a gathering in the House of Deputy Chambers when he stressed that Rwandans should stand up for their right while encouraging them to hold government officials to account.  He then later in the same speech rubbished those who dissent and promised to crash any dissent from anyone.   Of course this is not surprising because these are traits of dictators.  In a 2009 research paper on Kim’s personality by Frederick Coolidge, professor of psychology at the University of Colorado, Colorado Springs, similar traits by Kim are discussed.

While using personality test of sorts, Coolidge and his colleague Daniel Singer had developed, for dictators it appeared that a big six emerged: sadistic, paranoid, antisocial, narcissistic, schizoid and schizotypal.  Coolidge and Singer wrote, “All three dictators also showed evidence of psychotic thought processes’”.

To claim that Paul Kagame is antisocial would be an understatement.  He is someone who has no friends but has ‘conveniences’.  After use the ‘conveniences’ become his enemies, ‘ibigarasha’, flies and other ‘unimaginable’ beings to him. This can be proved by his continued isolation in the region which has forced him to migrate to his new found ground of Boston and California in USA.  Of course this does come at a price to Rwanda and Rwandans.  The country is being mortgaged to risk takers like Bob and Tony who are out to milk Rwandans as cows.  Everyone knows what they did to Col. Gadaffi and Libya without forgetting Hussein Mubarak and Egypt.  When a president chooses to transfer his home and office to the back yard of another president’s country (I am talking of Obama) who has not even offered to meet him in five years, then either that president is feeling that he is too posh to live in his own country or he can re-launch his ‘appeal’ among the lobbyists of the world.  The lobbyists will milk that of course and Tony will have a payday.

As more and more Rwandans conquer fear, they free up their mind and start reasoning rationally.  They quickly learn that they are being led by a psychopath who exhibits most of the six personality traits Coolidge and Singer developed for their tests of what dictators’ demonstrate.  The challenge is how can we accelerate the conquer of fear among our people to save our own people and country from the misery of being mentally abused and trapped in the illusion of an insidious dictator, General Paul Kagame.  We Rwandans have a patriotic obligation to our children and future generations to stand up and shape a Rwanda that we strive to be in reality as is ideal in our minds.  Not a Rwanda that is an illusion where what we have in our minds does not reconcile with reality.  We should all stand up against living double lives and fight hard to uproot that cancer.  Like Aesop stated, “Self-conceit may lead to self-destruction”.  Let us not be the victims of the curse of the so called mantle of “Development or Economic Success” Kagame and his sycophants hide behind to destroy our most cherished resource, social capital.   We need to reclaim our humanity, like Kizito Mihigo stated in his song Igisobanuro Kyurunfu, “… Ubumuntu ige ibanziriza ndiumunyarwanda….”, as we reignite our imagination, reason and long known Rwandan resilience.  It can, should and will be done.

As we conquer fear we shall overcome all evil.

God Bless You and God Bless Rwanda!!!!