As the American Head of State Baraka Obama dines with African Heads of State except Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe, Omar Al-Bashir of Sudan and Eritrean Isaias Afwerki for gross human rights violations, the Rwandan butcher man Paul Kagame has been given a red carpet.  The invitation of Kagame has angered different political groupings in the Diaspora whose membership has now clocked twenty and more still expected to be born.

Uhuru Thank God we are cleared we have no Ebola, M7 is it true Kagame has to be reaxamined for Ebola? My friend we have to wait and see he is still inside and apparently he has been travelling to west africa quiet alot, specifically in Nigeria.

The challenge for the Rwandan opposition to enable the American administration to be convinced that the post Kagame Rwanda would not be chaotic has failed to score the required pass mark. Indeed, the Rwandan opposition is behaving as if they are already operating in Rwanda forgetting that disunity does not create the conditions that encourage American administration to side with them. Philosophically the Rwandan opposition should be identified with collectivity irrespective of their ideological political background; this has instead given Kagame a pass mark as a lesser evil in the Rwandan political school.

Although the American values of democracy, transparency, flexibility, accountability and commitment to human rights, the national interests (American) both economic and political override the foreign political interference. Any foreign interference by Americans just based on the assumption of humanitarian and foreign social justice must coincide with their interests. Besides that, failure to intervene in Rwandan genocide in 1994 does not only haunt them but also is still fresh in the memory of many Americans.

There is no doubt that, Kagame has butchered more Rwandans and Congolese than the genocide and previous regimes put together. However, the Rwandan opposition planning system has failed to integrate participatory processes, echoing much familiar existing issues that touch the common man rather than the sectarian differences that have characterized the traditional Rwandan politics. Indeed this has eroded the Rwandan opposition the American support and trust.

Make no Mistake, if there is anybody who knows Kagame, are the Americans, but the dilemma for all these years is who would succeed Kagame .Apparently, the Rwandan political thinkers and elite class are now busy blogging everywhere online and the social media on why the American head of state has invited president Kagame who is even worse than the current administration in Zimbabwe of Robert Mugabe. Equally they should be questioning why the Rwandan opposition is still fragmented in their own political cocoons without any political justification.

In fact this reminds me of the traditional excuses of African leaders when it comes to accountability ,whenever they are asked why they want to change the constitution so that they can make themselves Kings or the corruption that has become the African cancer.  They argue that colonialism, imperialism; have handicapped their development and transformation.  Interestingly, it’s not the only African continent that was colonized; the whole of Latin America was under the Spanish influence.  The Asian countries who have managed to build an atomic bomb have never given an excuse of failure as colonialism as their African counterparts. The Rwandan head of state as canny as always he said that the American Africa Summit should focus on partnerships not questioning about human rights, political space, disappearances of his own citizens or extra- judicial killings that have characterized his regime.

“We should not be going to repeat the same speeches but we should come out with something real. We need to be partners, where everyone is a stakeholder and benefits,”

Prior to the summit hall in what they called the East African project syndicate, the , Presidents Kagame, Uhuru Kenyatta of Kenya and Yoweri Museveni of Uganda said the African dream was a reality and invited the United States to partner with the continent on its transformational journey. On the contrary, the dream of the East Africa is in sickbay because of the missing two heads of state, namely Peter Nkurunziza of Burundi and Kikwete of Tanzania.  Except for Uhuru Kenyata of Kenya, the rest Museveni of Uganda and Kagame of Rwanda their political direction is cloudy and uncertain.  How then could these Excellencies claim and argue partnership when they have failed to partner with their own colleagues?

Again when Kagame was giving himself a credit for what he calls ending the 1994 genocide against the Tutsis, he said that no one gained from the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi. “We came out determined and committed to reverse the situation. We looked each other in the eyes and asked one thing: who benefitted from Genocide?”

“Not one single person or family benefitted from the Genocide. We could choose to work towards a common good or the common destruction that we had already experienced.”. While it’s true that no single family in Rwanda was spared both Hutus and Tutsi, the beneficiaries were Kagame family and some of his cronies, the clique of mafia that has amassed wealth from scratch. If you look at the business empires built by Kagame in the name of RPF, you don’t stop fail to see who benefited from the Rwandan tragedy. The sky scrapers in the Rwandan Capital belong to RPF or their proxies, the expropriation of the land from the Rwandan people was done by the RPF mafias who either did not pay or underpaid them. In fact this robbery is still haunting the Rwandan parliament dominated by the RPF and its sympathizers in the name of opposition in the parliament.

Therefore, the only hope for the Rwandan people will be the opposition that is constructive in nature based on the issues that are common to the common man, which the Kagame regime has denied them.  Extra-Judicial Killings have been normalized, in Rwanda, in fact the governor of the Northern Part of Rwanda Bosenibamwe meaning like father like son, praised the security forces for killing the executive secretary of one of his sectors and sent an apology to the head of state that they will kill more innocent Rwandans before the public is aware. The Obama Administration knows everything that happens in Rwanda or its neighbors, indeed, when Obama was the Senator of Illinois initiated a Bill on Congo to provide relief and promote democracy in the Democratic Republic of Congo, which was signed into law in December 2006.  Therefore, I would urge my country men who are angered by President Obama for inviting the Rwandan Butcher Man, that they should show Rwandans and the international community that they will manage post Kagame Rwanda. Rwandans and the international community wouldn’t like to see another 1994 Rwanda or Central African Republic, let’s work together for a better Rwanda.

Jacqueline Umurungi