By Jonah Ruhima
The East Africa region was poised to enjoy peace after the many bloody wars of the ’80s and ’90s but it seems like the mission has not yet been achieved.
Certainly, the three founding members of the EAC are peaceful, Burundi seems to be on the right path and Rwanda seems to be seating on a ticking time bomb. Congo doesn’t have a visible war, but a lot is brewing beneath, and timely intervention is needed to prevent this.
But to focus on our immediate neighbor, Rwanda, a very fragile country that tried to fight a protracted people’s warlike the NRA and ended up with genocide instead. This was despite many warnings that this was the most likely outcome. This in contrast to Uganda who emerged very strong and popular saving millions of lives.
Even after the war, Kagame failed to unite the country. Rwanda up to now is still deeply divided. Deep inside majority Hutus still see the RPF as an occupational force. Many Hutus who were about 3 years of age are now adults and question why they are criminalized when they are totally innocent. To top it off, many equally lost their relatives and loved ones in the genocide which they consider having been started by President Kagame whom they accuse of shooting down the President’s plane.
Most observers, especially from the west, don’t know the differences amongst the Tutsis (the groups of Theogene Rudasingwa, Gerald Gahima, Kayumba Nyamwasa Vs Kagame) on Economy, Politics, and human rights. Which are wider than the differences between the Tutsi and Hutu. For example, when you look at the original senior leadership of RPF, very few remain loyal to president Kagame, running important offices in government or party. Many were murdered/assassinated, others are in prison, and others in exile, a few remaining in the country have no freedom to freely express themselves. Such kind of a situation is unsustainable and bound to explode. This is the reason Kagame is very sensitive to criticism and any help, even if it’s humanitarian that is given to his opponents. Because he understands the fragility of the political and security situation in Rwanda. Therefore, when someone he doesn’t like comes to live and work in Uganda, he goes up in arms claiming that Uganda is arming people to fight him. He will do all that it takes to make the lives of all his critics miserable, including closing the busiest border point.
Here in Uganda President Museveni has managed Political dissent very well, none of his founding comrades are out of the country as a political exile or in prison. Those who disagreed with him and started political parties like Besigye are even richer and freely doing business in Uganda. It’s actually a few of his loyal cadres that have been assassinated by obvious enemies of Uganda.
Even the economy, if President Kagame was wise he would invest in economic integration, regional peace, and stability because their economy is very small and are landlocked. They must rely on the neighbors for much of their supplies and exports.
Now Rwanda is only left with the Tanzanian route to the Indian Ocean, what happens if it shuts down? We all saw what happened when Uganda over-relied on the port of Mombasa and Kenya had a shutdown due to post-election violence.
On the side of security, with time Rwanda has manufactured a huge population of refugees due to their wars and political instability that started way back in 1920. Many of these refugees settled in the neighboring countries and these may pose a security threat to Rwanda. It seems like the reasons for the refugees of 1920, 1959 and 1994 are similar, ethnic tensions between the Hutus and Tutsi. Something that even the Kagame regime has fueled instead of fighting. So, it’s in the interests of Rwanda to build a good relationship and a peaceful neighborhood such that all refugees can return home and be part of the healing process and rebuilding of Rwanda.
The refugee crisis is one of the challenges Rwanda has failed to solve for the last 100 years from 1920 to date. Let’s remember RPF were refugees here who demanded to go back home and Pan Africanists like President Museveni argued that these people have a right to be in their country and any efforts to refuse them to go back home deny them their right of identity and nationality which is very crucial.
Years later Rwanda has more refugees and people leaving outside Rwanda than it was before the RPF invasion. It should be remembered it was during the RPF invasion that the world watched in horror the mass exodus of Rwandese running away from their country many of these have never returned.
This is a huge crisis that requires immediate solutions but President Kagame prefers to call all these people “genociders” when some of these people lost their relatives in those dark days of Rwanda, others supported the war with finance and physical involvement.
So leaders like President Museveni who have tried to advise president Kagame to emulate countries like Uganda in peace building and reconciliation because we had similar challenges here like the war in the North (Kony and Lakwena), ADF, Karimojong cattle rustling, President Kagame calls them sympathizers of Genociders and enemies of Rwanda.
We cannot have peace in the region unless president Kagame ceases and desists from destabilizing the DRC. They should stop killing and tormenting innocent citizens of the DRC to rob their mineral wealth. Rwanda claims to have left Congo, but they have been sponsoring rebel groups that continue to operate in Congo.
Rwanda claims to be fighting Interahamwe militias who are in Congo, but is Rwanda so weak that it has failed to defeat this militia for all these years? Again, with logic, if Rwanda is fighting those that participated in the genocide, we assume by the time they left Rwanda many were in their late 30s and now around 60 to 70 years. Is a person of 70 years fit enough to fight a war? And is this the rebel group that Rwanda has failed to defeat?
The problem is, as Rwanda rejects advice from neighbors but its actions affect us whether they fight internally in Rwanda or in Congo. We’re the ones who pay the price of the huge refugee influx.
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