Rwanda’s critics like Wrong confuse personal interests with anti-Rwanda rhetoric.
A website called “Africa Digital News” has this Monday published a tirade of an article about President Paul Kagame; one that rehashes every possible smear against the President, while hiding behind a pseudo “objectivity” that is designed to mislead about the true intentions of the (anonymous) author.
The article, which goes under the headline “Can Paul Kagame’s exploits becloud his tyranny”, shares much with a myriad others of a similar nature in that at the very heart of it is the goal to delegitimize the leadership of President Kagame. Needless to say, it doesn’t ask, even once, what the people of Rwanda themselves want. Its tactic is to demonize President Kagame through repeated invocations of “crimes” or “atrocities” he is supposed to have committed – though not even one of the allegations has ever been backed with fact, while all have simply been debunked as pure fictitious nonsense.
Take (just one) allegation in the piece; the claim that the death of Patrick Karegeya in an upscale Johannesburg hotel in 2014 was the doing of Rwanda – something that the author attempts to pass off as if it is settled fact.
An objective journalist would at least mention the primary, salient fact of the case, which is that nothing was ever found to link Karegeya’s demise to Kigali. Elite investigators of South African law enforcement combed through everything, including cameras, the hotel’s guest lists, going back several days, phone logs, everything. There was nothing to show Rwanda Government involvement. Competent South African judicial authorities looked through every aspect of the case, and threw it out.
Yet the article insists on pinning President Kagame for the crime, which should be treated as an unsolved case at best. Interestingly, the author cites a book by one Michela Wrong, an embittered British woman that cannot conceivably be a reliable source on any matter to do with Karegeya. Wrong had an extra-marital affair with Karegeya. She writes as an aggrieved lover, and it shows throughout (calling his skin “honey colored”, his “hooded, sensitive eyes” and more. She cannot be a cleareyed observer of facts.
Michela Wrong has decided to become the prosecutor, judge, and jury in this unsolved crime, for which she pins President Kagame.
If the publisher of Africa Digital News indeed worked in the interests in a pan-African audience, they would be very cautious not to blow out of proportion the words of elements like Michela Wrong, as well as others such as Human Rights Watch, Lawyers Without Borders, and similar. Yet such are the primary sources for what turns out to be another, garden variety, hit piece on the president of Rwanda.
It is truly baffling that in this day and age a publication of Africans, supposedly there to serve Africans, in this day and age can still fall so easily for a clearly anti-African agenda.
The author of the piece, alas, relishes the poisonous words of those in the West that will never wish anything good for Africa: individuals or groups that can never be happy when Africans have good, sober leadership, and therefore will work overtime to pull such leadership down.
Moreover, this anonymous writer himself acknowledges Kagame indeed is a great African leader.
The author lists the president’s achievements in Rwanda: the astounding socio-economic transformation that’s turned Rwanda into one of the most prosperous countries on the continent; the delivery of millions of people from absolute poverty; the efficiencies in provision of services that’s unheard of in Africa; the achievements in curbing corruption in public office, and much more. Rwanda is a beacon to the whole of Africa, the article says.
Why then does the author next permit themselves echo the words of Western naysayers to tarnish the name of Kagame, and to negate the RPF government’s achievements?
Why publish unproven smears about the supposed presence of Rwandan troops in DRC (while leaving out important context such as the presence of genocidal forces sworn to slaughter Rwandans up to the end of time!?)
Why delve into supposed M23 rebel activity while neglecting to mention that they (M23), are an indigenous movement of Congolese – Tutsi citizens – fighting just for the right to exist, in their own country?
Why all this, and so much more?
It just shows that whoever wrote it must be serving interests completely opposed to what is good for Africa, and Africans.
If one acknowledges Kagame is one of the best at the outset of their piece, and then spends the rest of it attempting to tear him down, that is a reflection more of the author (and their agenda) than of the president.
