Rwanda is in for a long fight; but will always win

Shyaka Kanuma.

DR Congo information minister and government spokesperson Lam­bert Mende lies. By now it has become a truism. The man tells such out­rageous, and easily debunked falsehoods one who turns on the TV and watches him will think this is a comedian engaged in some parody of lies. Until you notice all those props – the name tag on the desk, the little flag beside it, the fact that he is being interviewed on non-comedy TV – and real­ize, holy s#@t! The fellow actually speaks for a government. A government made up of comedians and buffoons; a government whose writ does not extend much beyond the confines of the dilapidated capital Kin­shasa. But a government nonetheless.

Listening to Lambert Mende, to Ray­mond Tshibanda (DRC foreign affairs minister, too a pathological liar) and other Congolese “dignitaries” carry on with all their falsehoods about Rwanda, I always tell people Kigali is quite lucky to have these kinds of individuals as enemies. They have been accusing us of sponsoring rebel groups in their country, but without a shred of credible evidence, only lying loudly and hoping the lies stick. They have been accusing Rwanda of being their num­ber one enemy, only for facts to surface, such as the one that recently came to light, whereby Rwanda has been providing co­vert military aid to help neutralize desta­bilizing FDLR rebels in parts of Eastern Congo who have for years been robbing, and killing and raping indiscriminately.

If Congolese government officials were just a little bit more intelligent in their ly­ing; if they were a little more organized in their activities, even a little more re­sponsible in their duties towards the or­dinary Congolese they claim to represent, I suspect Rwanda would be in turmoil by now. If the Congolese looked more cred­ible in presenting their cooked up accusa­tions against Kigali, it would serve better their masters Monusco, the UN so-called peace-keeping force and other powerful actors like the blatantly political Human Rights Watch whose autocratic head Ken Roth (yes, Ken Roth, who has been at the helm of HRW since 1993 is an autocrat ev­ery inch as much as Vladimir Putin or Teo­doro Obiang and others like that (except that Roth doesn’t run a country) due to his propensity to crucify – on the basis of the most cooked up claims and canards – gov­ernments and leaders that he, for his own reasons, hates).

Do not doubt it: the combination of a couple of facts, a) that Rwanda is a poor African country dependent on foreign aid, and with very few natural resources at its disposal and b) that arrayed against Kigali are some groups whose influence and voic­es reach in the highest echelons of Western power, i.e. the same powers which may determine who of the world’s less power­ful or influential ends up a pariah, or in the International Criminal Court means that by now the Rwandan leadership would be in a state of instability. Very few Rwandan military leaders would be daring to step out of the country. Donors of aid would be falling over each other to see who cut more than the other. Rwandans would be in a high state of uncertainty about the future, turning against each other, and against the leadership. The gains of the past eighteen years would be experiencing assault on so many levels… less unity, less reconcilia­tion, less stability, less economic growth…

I do not exaggerate. That is where we would be if all the negative elements ganged up against Rwanda were succeed­ing in their objectives, and I am not talking only of the Congolese and their masters Monusco, HRW, (and of course the UN “group of experts” headed by Steve Hege whose main expertise is writing lynch-mob reports that nevertheless do not stand up to half a minute of scrutiny). I am talking about everyone, from French judge Jean Louis Bruguiere and his issuance of inter­national arrest warrants against top Rwan­dan military and civilian leaders on notori­ously trumped up charges, to genocidaires in exile to genocide deniers and trivializ­ers… their objectives have been to do ev­erything possible in their means to dele­gitimize President Kagame and the RPF government; to progressively rub the gloss of Rwanda’s success off and slowly turn us into a pariah in the international commu­nity; to slowly weaken all our institution and finally, in the long run achieve what they thirst for: regime change in Rwanda, in favor of a client government beholden to foreign interests, to their interests above anything else. Whatever the costs all this would be to the ordinary Rwandan, you or me, these powerful international players have absolutely no concern.

But they have miscalculated. At every turn. If Rwanda’s opponents have been George Foreman, brutally hammering away at an opponent and hoping to over­whelm with sheer physical power, Kigali has been Muhammad Ali, rope-a-doping this way and that, conserving energy, de­livering stinging, well-timed shots, induc­ing the opponent into all kinds of silly mis­takes, and setting him up for the knockout punch.

Kigali has intelligently cultivated pow­erful friends… Bill Clinton, Tony Blair, Rick Warren, Bill Gates and many others like that… who are very effective spokes­people, talking up Rwanda’s achieve­ments in delivering on good governance and making a positive improvement in all spheres of Rwandan life. Kagame has been quite skillful in choosing which friends best help our interests, while giving us lee­way to determine how to run our affairs. Rwanda has intelligent, articulate people speaking for us. Louise Mushikiwabo is simply devastating when she speaks be­fore a group. When she recently debunked the numerous falsehoods in the GoE re­port at the UN, she went with three other individuals, and she was well-armed with the facts. She left them open mouthed by the ease with which she undid the GoE’s “case”. On the other hand the Congolese who were supposed to make a case for Kinshasa entered, forty strong, and they were loud and chaotic, and within a few seconds every objective observer could immediately make a quick assessment of where problems in their country actually stem from.

Rwanda’s enemies are not about to give up. But against an organized Rwanda, with truth on its side, they will never win.

Follow Shyaka Kanuma on Twitter: @ShyakaKanuma

Posted by Shyaka Kanuma on Sep 17 2012. Filed under Opinion, Other News, Weekly Highlights. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. Both comments and pings are currently closed.