During the Extended National Executive Committee (NEC) meeting held on 30 April-1 May 2021, the Rwandan head of state staged an almost convincing performance of casual confidence for his usual audience of mesmerized ruling party hangers-on in an attempt to play down their ongoing gossip around his health and their unease around “ that English woman’s book”.

After the show of strength during the commissioning of RDF’s Officer Cadets,  it was a novelty to hear Kagame practically play the “misunderstood victim” card. Predictably, his monologue landed him in the troubled waters of Rwanda’s relationships with her neighbors.

“We are surrounded by only four neighbors whom we are at peace with”, he said.

Having carefully hinted at the possibility of making peace with Burundi without making any real commitments, he avoided opening the can of worms that constitutes Rwanda’s relationship with DRC and moved on to Uganda “ …we have issues with only one neighbor” as the top political brass listened bemusedly.

Kagame may want to leave his bad blood with Tanzania in the past but it is not quite under the bridge yet for the latter. Threatening a neighboring country’s head of state in a time of peace was quite unheard of until then and Tanzania has not forgotten it despite all the business Rwanda’s border crisis with Uganda drove its way.

What exactly is Kagame’s problem with Uganda and Museveni? A country that to this day hosts one of the largest communities of Rwandans. Has Kagame already forgotten that our mentor Museveni, who introduced him to the assembly of the Commonwealth, was behind the initiative of the constitutional amendments that recognized Rwandans as a tribe in its own right in Uganda? Has he forgotten that it was President Museveni who established his authority and helped him to rise to power when most of his comrades, familiar with his brutality, refused to recognize him after the death of Gen Fred Rwigyema?

It is old news now, that almost all those comrades that came with him from Uganda have either been killed or sidelined or are in exile. Gratitude is not a virtue familiar to the Rwandan leader.

And while attempting on Museveni’s life would today seem far fetched for this “new CHOGM hosting and Conciliatory President Kagame persona”, it would be prudent for the Ugandan leader to sleep with one eye open.

Be-they fellow presidents or his own (former) trusted collaborators, Kagame’s prowess in murdering those he considers to be his enemies would not be shy from comparison with L. Sulla’s. Melchior Ndadaye, Juvenal Habyarimana, Cyprien Ntaryamira, Laurent-Desire Kabila are all heads of states in whose assassination he allegedly had a hand. Theoneste  Lizinde and Seth Sendashonga, are former collaborators eliminated in covert operations from afar. The last known feat in this series is the failed assassination of his former army chief of staff Faustin Kayumba Nyamwasa, who survived a shooting in Johannesburg, South Africa. The cases of eliminated military officers who had knowledge of damaging classified information of his cruelty or could rival his power in the military are no less impressive. 

When threatened, Kagame will  “kill a fly with a harmer” and it is in this context that he doesn’t even spare musicians that he perceives as threats, such as Kizito Mihigo, who was murdered in a police cell and said to have committed suicide.

While failing to recognize Rwanda’s resilience and rebirth after the disasters of war and genocide under Kagame would be contemptible, blaming our neighbors for our inability to resolve our differences as a people is just as equally absurd. Authoritarianism will continue to condemn to exile all who disagree with the serving head of state or strongman of the moment and that will continue to poison relations between Rwanda and her neighbors.

In recent history, Kagame has been at odds with his neighbors because of his repeated invasions of sovereign countries under the pretext of pursuing forces threatening Rwanda’s sovereignty; the UN accused Rwanda of invading for the sole purpose of pillaging and looting DRC’s resources. Furthermore, Kagame’s erstwhile former comrades such as Gen. Kayumba Nyamwasa, opposed to what they claim is his authoritarianism, continue to harness support that poisons relations between Kagame’s Rwanda and her other neighbors.

 Noble Marara