President Kagame: “We have to do more to strengthen our East African Community—it would be hard for anyone, either from the West or elsewhere to ignore this market and its opportunities.” (courtesy photo)

One of the more remarkable things he said was that his proudest achievement will be: “when I hand over power to some other Rwandan when my time to go comes; my proudest achievement will be this, plus seeing the continuity of my work in my successor.”   

It is a truly remarkable statement when one puts it in the perspective of what the man already has achieved.

Kagame is the individual who was at the head of a movement that led a people back home after three decades of exile—reversing a colossal injustice and stopping a genocide along the way.

This is the individual under whose leadership a poorly equipped, undernourished and at one point highly demoralized guerilla army (equipped with enough ideological clarity though) could take the fight to Habyarimana (with his French political and military support) and claim an impossible historic victory.

It is difficult to imagine anyone saying there is a prouder achievement than this.

Yet there the President was, talking of the relatively easy business of handing over power to a successor as the moment he will be most proud of.

On the other hand what Kagame may be weighing that future goal against is the tendency of African leaders to cling to power, and do so at all costs even long after their sell-by date. In the Sub-Saharan context it truly is an achievement for a leader to oversee a peaceful transfer of power and having done that for him to then retire from office.

The sad history of this continent is that such leaders can be counted on the fingers. Perhaps Kagame has an eye on history, wanting to join the pantheon of the likes of Nelson Mandela, Julius Nyerere (and his successors), Seretse Khama and Quett Masire of Botswana and a few others? Time will tell.

Kagame’s first term as the elected president of this country ends in 2010. He is eligible to stand for another seven-year term. He is emphatic he will leave at the end of his constitutionally mandated time.

The President plays it close to his chest however about whether he already is grooming a successor and who that might be or whether he has multiple candidates in mind and who those may be. He didn’t get into that during the interview.