Every time I look back at our journey from Uganda to Rwanda’s state house , I am dumbfounded at how  things went wrong.

It was predictable . Afande Fred Rwigema ‘s generation of senior commandants would have done everything in their power to uphold the principles of the revolution that he wanted to bring about . That is why Kagame had to eliminate them one after the other .

To be fair to the man , like many Rwandans , he inherited a  tangled situation that his personal history could  only contribute in making worst and that is what happened .

Over the past 24 years ,all things have been  collapsed under regulation of the macabre specter of the RPF, outside of which nothing has a right to exist .

Aggressive propaganda , shameless coercive  lobbying…you name it ! Every trick in the book was used to legitimize Paul Kagame ‘s dictatorship.

It doesn’t take much scrutiny to see the  deceptive methods that “the Paul Kagame show  “ was built on . The question here is what his Legacy will be  beyond the straight jacketed era  that his authoritarian rule has imposed on Rwanda and Rwandans in their homeland  and all over the world .

What will Rwanda really remember Kagame by,  say …30 years from now.

 

If we consider how under his leadership , RPF’s  destructive governance policies of repression are so  bad that the only hope is utter chaos that would return us to the drawing board .Tomorrow, Kagame’s Rwanda will be the sort of  nightmare that echos the chilling testimonials of life under  the Khmer Rouge.

I have been accused of being too critical with regards to Mr Kagame.

Very often I am asked :“Is there really nothing good  you can think of when it comes to him?”

Freedom of speech is something that has traumatized  Rwanda. It was introduced to Rwanda in 1959 and the seed for the authoritarian regime that Kagame’s one man state  would be  was planted .In 1990 it was brutally returned to the scene and the lack of moderation in the inflammatory remarks of  some political parties that disregarded the seriousness of such recklessness in a time of war, is largely to be blamed  for the horror we all know ensued .

While I  understand how offended  some people can be of my criticism of their “ Exemplary, yet short tempered  Leader “, I believe in risking offence in the pursuit of truth.

No matter how well it is presented , Kagame ‘s Rwanda is a mono ethnic regime  that has institutionalized cronyism. The violence that Rwandans experienced that led to 1959 and  then to 1990, 1994-2000 could only lead us to where we are today: Kagame’s repression where again , group identity is predominant.

I will say this   about Paul Kagame , he has been the man of the situation in that , even though he clearly favors Tutsi, he  practices cronies politics .

There is no ethnic group in Rwanda that his regime has spared.

He kills the Tutsi , he kills  the Hutu , he kills the Twa.

Has given us the perfect opportunity  to be combative and to reach out to true reconciliation .

But to get there , we must fight the cowardice that we have all been traumatized into . Rwandans have been lured  and seduced into tolerating intolerance for too long .

 

I believe we have seen the worst , and if we pay attention to the lessons we have so far learned, we can be one people ,one day soon.

 

Noble Marara