As that final scene to the Kagame era  unravels, and we are all rushing for the best seats from which we  will watch the unmissable finale, I cannot help but think of Mobutu’s own  downfall again.

The more things change , the more they stay the same  they say.

Kagame has failed to take notes from his  fellow Kleptocrat’s tragic fate.

Their manner of  scrounging their people and repressing the are quite similar when you look at it.

I was going to say that Kagame  will never have Mobutu’s class but  it cannot be said of a leader who starves and murders his people in cold blood  that he has any class . That is the first thing Kagame has failed to understand about power and leadership.

When the time comes  for a dictator to fall face down first , the human rights record is the first thing  on his balance sheet.

Then come the economic   and geopolitical concerns .

Kagame ‘s economy  based it self on Congo’s minerals for years . He became the go to man for  conflict minerals. He no longer owns the DRC , his proxy rebel groups are weak now that the FARDC  are standing guard .

Kagame was savvy enough to get the hint  that the change in American Foreign Policy is not a good omen for his house of cards . It has  nudged him into his new business venture of arms dealing complete with a law that his parliament has inked with a bold stamp of approval.

Like Mobutu , Kagame has been preaching and hustling dignity ( agaciro fund)  for a few years now . Mobutu only went as far as publishing a book about it , he didn’t have to look far, the minerals were at his disposal.

Kagame ‘s take is  balder and wicked , his  is a dignity fund that passive aggressively demands contributing to when it is lenient , he is not afraid to take from the poorest of the poor. Recently , school girls put their lunch money together and brought it  to his dignity fund which of course did not have the decency to refuse; such shocking extortion is encouraged in Kagame’s Rwanda.

 

For now the people of Rwanda are still  under his tight grip but the opposition   in the country is present and growing stronger by the day  in spite of the climate of fear enforced by different branches of  his “security” establishment , namely the army , the police , the RIB etc…

The truth is that Rwanda is really ruled  by the presidential guard . A small elite of  loyal guns who run every note worthy institution.

But Kagame must have forgotten that even the Mareshal’s precious “guarde presidentielle”  could not save him from his people ‘s malcontentment .

Kagame still has staunch supporters among Rwandans ,  people he has manipulated and mesmerized into believing all his lies.

People who refuse to imagine a post Kagame Rwanda.

But  the majority of Rwandans in and outside of Rwanda are fed up of  this era of bigotry and hypocrisy and the fact that Kagame is now so overtly regionally isolated  exposes him more than ever irrespective of the new friends he is restlessly trying to ensnare.

 An era of deceit appallingly chaired by a fraud who demands to be addressed as president elect!

 

Whether the people overthrow him themselves  or whatever tragic end he his looking at , it should certainly not come as a surprise to him or anyone who has watched his regime’s evolution.

 

Noble Marara