As Rwandans who love peace and care about our brothers and sisters, we are pleading to President Paul Kagame of Rwanda to stop killing his colleagues, even though there is no proof of his physical or direct involvement in these assassinations, circumstantial evidence points and leads to his intelligence services, or indirect involvement and so, someone should tell President Paul Kagame of Rwanda to stop killing his colleagues.

Paul Kagame

There is a better and civilised way of dealing with political opposition than assassinating its members. You should know that one day you will relinquish power and this may come in so many forms such as; getting a permanent life threatening ailment that might incapacitate you from running the office of the president of your country, through election defeat (though at the moment it seems so remote), overthrown by your strong military (this is not so remote) or you may choose to retire.

 

You started as a revolutionary, though sincerely speaking you have failed to revolutionaries the army, the intelligence services and other security agencies. The army and all security services should be transformed into people’s institutions representative of the demography of your country. You journey in denial that the Tusti-Hutu tensions do not exist anymore. Burundi has acknowledged this fact and moved on to transform its institutions that were previously Tusti-dominated into people’s institutions that clearly address the demography of that country.

Today there is healing, reconciliation and open positive debate about Burundi’s past by the citizens of that country. There is a vibrant democracy developing in Burundi than in Rwanda. You take credit for revolutionising the economy including the IT industry. The relentless effort you have taken to do that should be the same effort to render into the institution of democracy. You have muzzled the press. You have jailed political opposition by concocting flimsy charges against them. You have tried them through kangaroo courts. You have denied them justice; you have bogged down the judiciary. You have extended the grip or grasp of your iron fist to control each and every aspect of the life of citizens of your country. In short you have turned Rwanda into a big and giant prison. The assassination of your political opponents living in exile thousands of kilometres away from Rwanda is clearly a manifestation of cowardice not expected from a gallant soldier like you.

 

The kidnapping of exiles from Uganda, the two failed assassination attempts on Lt. Gen. Faustin Kayumba Nyamwasa’s life.

Now the assassination of Colonel Patrick Karegyeya. The forced exile of his wife and children, the expulsion of some of Rwanda’s diplomats in Europe because of the allegations that they are involved in attempts to kill or spy on members of your political opposition do not augur well for you It would be of honour for you to retire one day and enjoy the status of a statesman just like Julius Nyerere of Tanzania did.

But according to what is happening this may not be the case should the time of your leaving power come. We do not wish a politician of your stature leaving power and dying the way President Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana left power and died. We do not want you to leave power the way President Modibo Keita (The first president of Mali) left power and eventually died. We would not be happy if you go through the same trials and tribulations of Charles Taylor of Liberia and president Gbagbo of Ivory Coast.

Africa will not be proud for you to meet a similar fate that befell our beloved presidents Thomas Sankara of Burkina Faso and Ndadaye of Burundi. Africa does not want you to end the way Colonel Muammar Gadhafi of Libya ended. Neither does Africa need to see you end the way president Juvenal Habyarimana of Rwanda, Cyprian Ntaryamira of Burundi and President Samora Machel of Mozambique ended. It would be doing a disservice to Africa if you end the way president Muhammad Anwar Sadat of Egypt ended. The African continent does not want to see you sent into ‘retirement’ the way president Samuel Doe of Liberia was sent into retirement. You are a cockroach and poisonous snake. Why should you eliminate your comrade in arms this way? It is these people that brought you into power. It is these people that you have now targeted. What an irony! You are doing exactly what president Jaffar Numeiri of the Sudan did. Jaffar Numeiri assassinated the entire political bureau of the central committee of the communist party of the Sudan. Prominent amongst the people he killed were Abdul Khaliq Mahgoub (The secretary General of the Sudanese Communist Party), Joseph Garang (Garang was the first black lawyer in the Sudan and he should not be confused with John Garang), Alshafi Ahmed Elshikh, Babkir Elnour and Hashim Elatta.

You should note that it was these members of the communist party that had brought him into power. They also helped him organise a successful counter-coup when he was temporarily overthrown in 1971. Here in Uganda where you were mentored I want you to remember very well.

The assassinations of politicians like former chief justice Ben Kiwanuka, Oboth Ofumbi, GW Kalema, and so on did not help the regime of Iddi Amin we all know how he ended. Neither did the mysterious assassinations of NRA Commanders Ahmed Seguya, Sam Magala, Kaggwa ‘the giant’, of my father commander Prince Fred Nkuranga Rubereza, and of my uncle in Gulu late captain Prince David Ndayondi. And the assassination of Dr. Andrew Lutakome Kayiira, Smith Opon Acak, Edidian Babumba Luttamaguzi and so on were acts of cowardice which have no relevance in the real world.
Africa lost the talent of Dr. Kwame Nkrumah because of his intolerance to political opposition.

Nkrumah’s megalomania led him into political oblivion. The incarceration and eventual death in prison of his arch political rival Dr Danquah turned many Ghanaians against Nkrumah. His introduction and excessive use of the Preventive Detention Act did not help him it instead created resentment amongst the population of that country. The assassination attempt on his life at Kulungugu (famously known in Ghana as the Kulungugu incident) was a desperate attempt by some members of the population to fight back and restore their dignity. Economic development goes vis-à-vis with democracy. You may ask why China is developing on such a rate economically when there are no elections. The answer is: there is democracy within the Chinese Communist Party; it democratically elects its leaders. To achieve democracy on a macro level we have to democratise the parties first. This is what is lacking in Africa more especially with the African revolutionary parties excluding the ANC in South Africa and to the lesser extent CCM in Tanzania. Most ‘revolutionary’ parties in Africa are nothing other than dictatorial and corrupt institutions of repression and oppression that do not live beyond the death or retirement of their founding presidents a good example is UNIP of Dr Kenneth Kaunda of Zambia. Chances are very minimal that the NRM as a revolutionary party in Uganda will survive after the departure of its founding president so will be the MPLA in Angola after the departure of president Jose Eduardo Dos Santos. It is likely that in Uganda after the demise of the NRM party president the country might break into chaos with a possible return to civil war, in Angola, a military coup is possible after the demise of president Jose Eduardo Dos Santos. The international community would like to see a stable Angola and the military is positioned to perform that role because of Angola’s significant output of petroleum products and its position as a member of OPEC.

Uganda is least important due to the fact that the biggest chunk of our annual budget is donor funded therefore, the international community would not allow or support any coup. There is a limited chance that Uganda may transition into full democracy after the exit of the NRM party. International support for a coup in Uganda of any nature is unthinkable.

The western world always supports coups in countries: one; where there is immense mineral wealth and it is only the coup leaders that could guarantee continuous exploitation of those minerals like the case with the DRC and Libya, or, two; when a country is of strategic importance such as Egypt.