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Officers from the Expanded Joint Verification Mechanism inspect the ammunition left behind by the attackers in Bugeshi Sector, Rubavu District yesterday. (Courtesy photo)

 

The Rwanda authorities are again accusing its vast neighbor it has invaded for many times of attacking her Defence Forces (RDF) base at Nyiramugweri hill in Bugeshi Sector, Rubavu District.

Speaking to reporters who visited the scene Thursday, Capt Edward Kalisa, an RDF commander in the area, said a group of between 16 and 20 soldiers, fully armed and dressed in fatigues of the DR Congo armed forces, attacked their base a few minutes after midnight. However, the Rwandan authorities have always been using such maneuvers as a pretext of attacking its vast neighbor or playing monkeys tricks of justifying oppression of political opponents back home.

The Rwandan Senior officer at the scene Captain Kalisa said that on crossing into the Rwandan territory, the attackers started shooting at the RDF soldiers, which prompted the latter to retaliate with an ensuing fire exchange lasting under 30 minutes.

The Rwandan newspapers aided by the government has started reporting  that the attackers could be part of the DR Congo-based FDLR militia, comprising of elements blamed for the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi, which claimed at least a million lives.  Again during the period of Genocide commemorations, the RPF government uses such measures to draw sympathy within the Rwandan population and internationally as a remedy of its failures for the last two decades.

The recent change of the Constitution to give Kagame more grips on power since his de facto rule in 1994 immediately after genocide makes Rwanda more vulnerable than ever before and does not guarantee stability and prosperity in the near future.

The Rwandan youth and the entire population can’t get employment yet President Kagame blames his ministers who he says are failures except himself.  In the recent concluded retreat of the RPF Senior officials he blamed his Minister of Gender and Family Promotion Oda Gasinzigwa for failure to stop children from going to the streets. According to Kagame Hon. Oda Gasinzigwa failed to reduce or stop the causes surrounding street children and orphans and they have persistently increased in the country.

Interestingly, President Kagame has replaced Hon. Oda Gasinzigwa with Dr. Diane Gashumba who has not only wrecked her marriage but who is morally incompetent to lead a ministry of Gender and Family Promotion. How can Dr. Diane Gashumba solve the country problems when she couldn’t solve her own? She was accused of promiscuity with the former Rwandan Prosecutor Mutangana who poached on this lady while she was still legally married?

It’s unfortunate that President Kagame did not use his lenses to see that Dr. Diane Gashumba is not the right person for this job, besides the causes of the Street Children are not only family breakdown of which Dr. Diane Gashumba has no remedy, but a general policy of the government of  RPF.

The high taxes on every business in Rwanda even those who sell tomatoes, does not only bring the children and their parents on the streets but endanger the whole economic system of the country.

Furthermore, the involvement of RPF companies in the private sector makes it impossible for other business to survive. Indeed, they have suffocated the Private sector and if you drive on the streets of Kigali, you will be told that all the big construction companies, retail supermarkets, tall buildings, or just real estates are either owned by the RPF directly or under proxy companies answerable to the RPF Secretariat.

The narrow political space in Rwanda coupled with lack of independent media exacerbates the already weak communities in one of the impoverished nations in the Great Lakes Region. Rwanda lacks the natural resources and depends on her neighbors like Congo, Uganda and Tanzania to export human labour for employment but apart from Uganda, the rest of his neighbors are very skeptical on the Kagame intentions, ambitions and polices of interfering in their domestics affairs. This has not only affected Kagame’s political life but has made many Rwandans vulnerable whenever they visit the neighboring nations in search for work and residence.

The Republic of United Tanzania expelled many Rwandans in 2013 for reasons the Tanzanian authorities said were lack of documentations, but the Vast East African nation was not happy with the Kagame’s maneuvers and his involvement in the affairs of its neighbors.  Indeed, President Kagame had even threatened to kill the then President Kikwete.  Unfortunately in Rwanda nobody has the guts to tell President Kagame that it’s the bad policies and greed for everything that has ruined the hopes of Rwandans and neighbors alike that ends the youth on the streets of Kigali or end up in Congo as Rwanda alleges.

Angel Uwera

Kigali.