By Jean Damascene Habumuremyi
Warm greetings to you Mr. President. I write my second letter to you on behalf of millions of fellow Rwandans in Rwanda who cannot express how much they felt when you gain publicly exposed who the true dictator you are. You selfishly turned the wedding of the daughter of Gen. Rwigema into a crazy political lecture class, with outrageous statements aimed at Uganda, a country that raised you and made you. If you knew Mr. President, you would stop making yourself look redundant before us, especially on historic facts even primary school kids in Rwanda know about. Stop thinking that the Rwandans you are leading are cows that don’t reason! I will address myself to you on the following issues below;
Firstly, stop telling us lies that whoever disagrees with you politically hates Rwanda as a country. You have for long hidden under this cover of Munyangire (Hate him or her for me) on the pretext that those that don’t agree with the high-handedness with which you deal with those that don’t agree with you in terms of lack of good governance principles like freedom of speech and expression are enemies of Rwanda. Your leadership style and Rwanda as a country are two very different things. You have for long failed to convince Rwandans that your enemies should be their enemies. A good example is how much we Rwandans love President Museveni and Uganda no matter how much you tarnish his name. This is why we keep sneaking through porous borders into Uganda, to look for food and survival generally regardless of your travel advisory. Evidence is there to show how we are all over Kampala’s streets engaging in business as hawkers. The Ugandan government plays the pan African brother role of accommodating us as economic refugees.
Secondly, you have fooled us on many things including cooking up theories that aim at disassociating yourself from the assassination of our greatest hero Maj. Gen Fred Rwigema. You can do that, but there’s one thing we shall forever keep in our hearts; President Museveni’s unreserved full support in the liberation of Rwanda. At Teta’s wedding, you said, and I quote, “They never created us and neither have they given us anything. Only God can claim to have made us who we are. We fought for this country on our own, it should be known from now.” Of course, Uganda isn’t the almighty God who creates people. Uganda’s leadership simply played a brotherly pan-African role, that many at that time failed to play. This statement wholly exposes you Mr. President as a fellow who is so much obsessed with ‘Guhangana’.
Like I wrote in my previous article, this Guhangana is, unfortunately, done at the expense of the majority of Rwandans who are suffering economically because of you closing their trading business through the Katuna border which was their lifeline, and the lifeline of Rwandans who were getting cheap quality goods and fresh food from their brothers and sisters in Uganda. Back to your falsehoods Mr. President. For starters, I may not go into deep details of how President Museveni and Uganda became friends indeed at a time when RPA needed them the most, but I will quote a few lines from an interview former Observer Journalist turned legislator Semujju Ibrahim Nganda had with former Buganda Katikiro Joseph Mulwanyamuli Ssemwogerere over ten years ago. Ssemwogerere, who was the District Administrator of Masaka district which at that time included Sembabule, shed light on how his area served as a training ground on which all RPA fighters were trained. Under the orders of President Museveni, roadblocks were mounted and nobody was allowed to reach certain parts of Sembabule, not even Ssemwogerere. “They had created villages. That was just before the RPA attacked Rwanda and yet I didn’t know about it. What they used to do is to slaughter the animals and make mikalo (smoked beef) to prepare for the war. It was a training ground on which everything was done in preparation for the attack,” Ssemwogerere said.
Mr. President, there are videos and audios to show as evidence of this and so many things President Museveni did for us. Was all this being done under the leadership of Saddam Hussein or it was under the leadership of President Museveni, a man you and your henchmen/propagandists insult every day?
You should have known, using the sixth sense, that many Rwandans in that wedding room clapped at your treacherous words, but inside their hearts view you as an ungrateful, selfish and self-entitled dictator. Mr. President, absolute power corrupts absolutely indeed. Power has gotten to your head to the level of thinking that whoever disagrees with you deserves to die. That is why people are leaving our country. The participants at the wedding knew very well that if they questioned your statements, they would win themselves direct sentences in prisons, losing their jobs and being frustrated for the rest of their lives or being killed on tramped-up charges like working with forces that want to cause regime change. It’s the self-guilt that you have that keeps driving you into hurling insults at the Ugandan leadership and calling it names; calling public meetings and denying the fact that it’s Uganda that solely stood by us when the whole world turned a deaf ear and blind eye at us. You have now even started hijacking young people’s weddings to quench your anger towards Uganda’s President, who doesn’t utter any work at your regardless of your provocation. These outbursts and lamentations are unnecessary! Turita hanze!
Secondly Mr. President, other than lament and hijack weddings to express your frustration, work on issues that are hindering people like Eric Gisa Junior – Gen. Fred Rwigema’s son from returning home. You believe in Might is Right, and never believe in dialogue, Why? Why do you think that Eric Gisa Junior feels more at home in Uganda than Rwanda? In any case, why should you feel angry when the young man feels comfortable in the country where he was born? He is a Ugandan by birth just like all other Ugandans! Why should you advance your selfishness to think that Eric Gisa Junior must not associate with his father’s friends who are in a government where he was a Minister before RPA’s invasion in Rwanda?” Who doesn’t know the untold suffering you have subjected to Gen. Rwigema’s family simply because they feel at home while in Uganda? Do you want us to spill the secrets here?
Actually, Uganda isn’t meddling into the affairs of Rwanda; it’s you meddling into its affairs. Mr. President, at Teta’s wedding you became a laughing stock to all us Rwandans and friends of Rwanda when you said, “If they had handed us this country, people wouldn’t have died or shed blood in the struggle,” This is laughable to all of us Rwandans. We all know that other than military hardware and equipment, Ugandan military officers fought alongside the RPA and many actually lost their lives. If you need that list, it can be availed! Stop that selfishness and arrogance of lamenting like a cry baby!. You should borrow a leaf from President Museveni who has all children of his comrades and former Presidents comfortably and happily settled in Uganda and working with the Uganda government. He doesn’t have to spend millions of dollars of taxpayers’ money on external intelligence tracking and killing them outside Uganda as you do to even those that run away from you. At the wedding, you again publicly embarrassed yourself when you said that you hadn’t met Gen. Rwigema’s mother in a very long time. Is that how a friend treats the mother of his fallen comrade? Why do you pay attention to small squabbles? Mr. President, inside your heart you know that Gen. Fred Rwigema wasn’t killed by a stray enemy bullet like you always want us to believe, or that he was killed by Maj. Bayingana and Maj. Bunyenyezi!
In a recorded interview, inquiring about Gen. Rwigema’s death, you said that you had dreamt about his death. Alas! How does someone dream of another person’s death? How come you up to now can’t reveal the identities of the emissaries you claim you sent to check on whether Rwigema is alive or not? How come you have never set up a commission of inquiry into the death of this ‘very good friend’ of yours? Going by that interview, you actually implicated yourself that you are culpable in our hero’s death! My wise counsel to you is that you are clearly using a very wrong approach on your association with Gen. Fred Rwigema’s family, and the general management of the bilateral relations between Uganda and Rwanda.
In my letters, I will offer you free advice, that your strategists or advisors don’t know how to offer or they know but can’t offer it because of the too much fear and tension you have instilled in us as a population. Mr. President, reform now! The Turkana have a saying that goes, a fly that isn’t advised follows the corpse to the burial ground. Again, the truth is always bitter! UKURI GUCA MUZIKO NIGUSHYE!
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