The Independent Uganda: You get the Truth we Pay the Price
In seeking to settle scores with incumbents who may even have unfairly treated them, they retreat to subversion. It is this behavior that should help us understand the unique circumstances leaders in Africa have to operate in when making decisions. No American British leader goes to bed worried what a fired head of intelligence will go around telling enemies and even allies abroad state secrets.
Wrong claims that when Kagame fires people from government he follows them with threats and intimidation until they run to exile. Any Rwandan would laugh at this claim. It is true many military officers and politicians who have fallen out with Kagame have ended up in exile. And this may have been the price for the stability, consolidation and reconstruction we see today. However, the vast majority of people who have been removed from influential positions have gone into private life, recognising that official jobs and titles are not personal or permanent. But some Rwandan officials have such huge egos they cannot afford being ordinary citizens.
Worse still, Wrong claims that Kagame is unforgiving. True there are cases when he has acted this way. And who forgives everyone, everything, every time? Not even God the almighty does that, that is why there is hell. But even if we ignore that under his leadership, the government of Rwanda has forgiven those who committed genocide, there are many examples where Kagame has mended fences with those who fell out with him. The current Inspector General of Police, Dan Munyuza, whom Wrong writes extensively about has twice been fired and even imprisoned on the orders of Kagame. Munyuza does not carry an exaggerated sense of entitlement – this feeling that he must always occupy an influential position of power and privilege and if it is removed then Rwanda should come to a halt.
Another example is David Himbara. Wrong quotes him extensively. He was Kagame’s Principle Private Secretary (PPS) but fell out with the president and left Rwanda in the late 1990s. In exile, he said many horrible personal things about Kagame, which I found objectionable and unforgivable. This is especially because of his close proximity Kagame had given him. You don’t abuse such trust. Yet in mid 2000s, Kagame, to my shock, brought back Himbara as head of the strategic unit in president’s office. I told Kagame the things I heard been told Himbara had said against him. The Rwandan president told me he was giving Himbara another chance adding that he had heard those things, had forgiven the man and hoped he had really changed. Later, Himbara was made PPS again. I felt Kagame was taking a big risk and I expressed my reservations to the president. I was not surprised when a few years later the true nature of Himbara was revealed. He ran to exile again and today he uses every opportunity to speak against Kagame at a very personal level.
In regard to Karegyeya, I pleaded with the Rwandan president to forgive him. I remember one time in 2011 at a lunch with Kagame, his wife and Emmanuel Ndahiro, I made a spirited case for Karegyeya to be forgiven. I had discussed and agreed with Karegyeya that being in exile hobnobbing with Hutu extremists and other enemies of Kigali was beneath contempt and dangerous for him. In the middle of lunch, Kagame got upset and pushed his plate. Trying to suppress his irritation he said: look here Mwenda (he calls me by my surname when he is angry with me) I know these people much better than you do. Karegyeya is not being genuine with you. I don’t want to waste my time agreeing to something he will neither appreciate nor honor. Do you understand?”
I struck back with the naivety of a neophyte. Please, I told Kagame, don’t act as president and commander in chief to a subordinate in this matter. Handle it as an issue between Paul and Patrick. He was your friend (Kagame had told me once that he went with Karegyeya on his first date with Jeannette, whom he later married). Trust me I will get Karegyeya to see sense. After a long pause, Kagame told me: Ok. I accept. But if Patrick is to return, I have two conditions. First, he should not join active politics. Two, he should stop speaking loosely in bars and other places. He held a very sensitive security position in this country and he knows what that means. I promised to ensure Karegyeya honours these conditions.
While driving out of state house, Ndahiro thanked me saying asking Kagame to act as a friend not as president had been “a great idea”. I informed Patrick of the discussions and for a while he seemed to see the sense. However, weeks later I saw him on BBC Tv threatening to bring government down and calling Kagame a nincompoop. It was as if I was struck by a nuclear weapon. This is a man I had staked everything for and here he was breaching our understanding with impunity. How was I to face Kagame who had severally warned me about Karegyeya’s intransigence – and I had refused to listen. When I went back to Kigali, and met Kagame, the president was calm and instead of reproaching me, he said he hoped I had learnt my lesson.
I had not. My next job was to plead for one Kalisa (whom I had never met or known and Wrong writes about). Approached by his family, I asked him to write an appeal to the president and I personally took it to Kagame. The Rwandan president was touched by the contents of the letter (which I never read) and he expressed deep moving concern. The next week he was released. A few months hence, a top intelligence official told me they had eavesdropped on communication between Kalisa and Ugandan intelligence and “it was not good.” It did not take long before he was caught at the border with Uganda trying to escape. Apparently, Ugandan security contingent was the other side waiting to pick him up.
I took on the matter of businessman Tribert Ruzujiro. I pleaded with Kagame to meet him. He was reluctant. So I pushed and pushed at almost every meeting I had with Kagame. Finally, he relented and generously gave an appointment to meet in Kigali on a specific day and time. On the appointment day, Ruzugiro called me saying he had decided not to come because he feared Jack Nziza would kill him at the airport. When I told Kagame, he got upset and asked me if Ruzugiro thought the president of Rwanda had no power over Nziza.
In spite of this betrayal, I pursued Ruzigiro’s case with fresh vigour. Rwandan intelligence officials had given me information about Ruzugiro’s funding of RNC activities, and how RNC was working with Hutu extremists and some neighboring governments in pursuit of regime change in Rwanda. I asked Ruzugiro to write a letter to Kagame explaining his innocence. The president accepted to receive Ruzigiro’s letter (imagine?) since the businessman had refused to return to Kigali in spite of the president’s personal guarantees. In effect, Kagame gave Ruzugiro license to mistrust him in spite of the president’s gestures of goodwill.
Ruzugiro drafted a letter which I found objectionable. We agreed I draft one for him, which would open communication between him and Kagame. Contrary to his later claims to New Vision, my draft did not admit guilt, it only explained his innocence. I sent him the draft and instead of signing and sending it to me to take to Kagame, Ruzigiro trashed it and sent his original version directly to Kagame. In it he had said many unsavory things. Kagame called and asked me to leave Ruzugiro alone. The UN was later to issue a report saying the same Ruzugiro was funding RNC which was also working with Hutu extremists in DRC.
There are other Rwandan officials I helped in these circumstances who were later released and/or reappointed to government. In all cases, I found Kagame always willing to give his colleagues a second chance. But in some cases, based on the information he had, he could be tough and unrelenting. Wrong picked only those cases and presented them as everything. Kagame can sometimes get angry and act high-handedly. Who doesn’t? But many times he has been kind and gentle to people around him, like Himbara.
If Wrong were really interested in telling the story of Rwanda, why didn’t she find it fitting to listen to Kagame’s side? The fact that she could write an entire book based on interviews with Kagame’s enemies as her only source tells us what her motive was. This was not an attempt to tell a story about Rwanda. `Do not Disturb’ was a hatchet job. And she did it well. But history will judge her harshly for failing to practice the most basic rule of journalism and natural justice – do not condemn anyone without hearing their side.
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Whereas, it’s true that Rwandan economy has arguably significantly improved during the post-genocide era under President Paul Kagame’s leadership, it doesn’t wash away RPF’s culpability in sparking the 1994, slaughter of the more than 800 000 both Hutu and Tutsi!
Mr Andrew Mujuni we’ve all had the opportunity to interact with both Hutu and Tutsi who fled Rwanda during and after 1994 genocide into all neighbouring states but none exonerates either!
Your last paragraphs are of great interest. You’re at pains to acknowledge the fact that RPF’s role ignited genocide when Karegyeya reveals that actually RPF assassinated president Juvenal Habyarimana!
Very ridiculous when you argue that whereas RPF’s mistakes are of particular individual errors, those committed by Habyarimana’s govt were institutional, i.e written in the constitution that certain tribes can lawfully be eliminated!
Again you don’t tell the reader why Patrick Karegyeya and company disagreed with President Paul Kagame on whether due to fundamental public policy differences or just individual personal interests? Instead you hastily condemn them for not preserving the so-called interests of the state! As if you’re not aware that Africa’s strongmen regard themselves as the state!
So, your scorecard in as far as critiquing Ms Michela Wrong’s book is 3/10!
IT IS EASY TO PLUNDER A NATION, CREATE CHAOS AND FAKE REBELLIONS in it, BUY OUT CORRUPT ELITE AND EXPLOIT AND ENGAGE IN ILLICIT AND ILLEGAL EXPLOITATION OF ITS RESSOURCES, AND BUILD OR RECONSTRUCT A ROMANIAN CEACESCU POST WAR KIND OF SOCIETY , BUY MEDIA AND SOCIAL MEDIA AND CLAIM AND KEEP CLAIMING MIRACLE RECOVERY. and bla bla bla bla.
Your case is well put. Now who is paying for this hatchet job?
Probably we the readers.
I paid US$25.00 for the book (got a discount because I was among the first people to buy it, otherwise I would have paid US$32.00).
Hmm, kyokka Andrew Mwenda!
Mbu, “could the high-handed measures employed by the post genocide government been the ones responsible for this dramatic and indeed miraculous transformation?”
Yes, Andrew, tyrants can bring about amazing transformations in the short term. Stalin did; he transformed a heap of WW2 rubble into a world power in no time. Hitler did; he and built a fantastic war machine inside a decade. Our won Shaka Zulu did. Yes, tyrants CAN perform economic “miracles” sir!
You say “Does it not follow that not every killing by the Tutsis could not go unpunished? Is Wrong saying that Hutu killers could be forgiven but not Tutsi ones? Is that fair?”
But, Andrew, you (conveniently?) forget that the Hutu genocidaires who were forgiven had to go through a cleansing process of confessing and accepting responsibility for their crimes. No such thing has happened with the RPF “avengers”. Killed Hutus? What Hutus? According to the prevailing official political mood, to say that Hutu people were killed in the revenge blood-letting is to “deny the [Tutsi] genocide”. “Is that fair?” you ask? You are comparing apples and oranges!
You seem to know these people well; may be you are too close to maintain focus.
For someone on Kagame’s payroll what else would you say. Wrong is right
Do not Disturb’ was a hatchet job.” An extreme of it’s kind, a bad one, one sided story and extremely lacking in facts or cross checking. I know the stereo types and prejudice and the negative representation of Africa by western journalists and some scholars, but Wrong’s work in her ‘Do boy Disturb’ went into the extremes. Kagame is a ‘dictator’ and kind who even closes country boarders when he has a disagreement with a president of a neighbouring country. However, Wrong’s Do Not Disturb is too far fetched, it fell far short of minimum standards and one of the most uncritical book I have ever read. It was a poor job. Above all, it shows how the West thinks and approaches anything about Africa.
Is it likely- like wrong provides in the intro and many other areas- that Mwenda was another naive and presumptuous intruder on a game only insiders understood when he says he tried to sort out a fallout between erstwhile friends? Is it likely that Karegeya was the intractable one when the well meaning president extended an olive branch, like Mwenda surmises? I’m inclined to believe Wrong here that the subterfuge in Rwanda is so thick even for our resident expert on Rwanda
Karegeya was my friend….. I used to visit him and his wife when everyone avoided him…… when he was sacked, we remained friends….Mweand writes. Mwenda, if this is what you write about someone you claim was your friend; then you have a very big problem. Whoever out there who thinks Mwemda is his/her friend, listen to me, please run and run away from Mwenda very fast because Mwenda can chop off your head at any any given opportunity, especially to make money.
I dont understand. Michaela Wrong, jane Corbin and judi rever are writing, uncovering untold truth today, 29 years after happening of the said events and they say their versions are truthful. Where is Fergal Keane who was on the ground in 1994?, where is Mark Doyle who was present in 1994? Gen. Romeo Dallaire who interacted and spoke with actors in real time? these men have written on the events of those days. But to these three women, all these are fraud. The truth can be told by them after interviewing disgruntled dissidents.
Mwenda has a point. Michela Wrong was angry, biased, bitter and full of hate when she set out to write the book. she gets away with defamation of highest degree because she is white, writing about an african country. the main media publish reviews without fear of being sued, it is about an african cannibal. they also reject counter-opinion about this work from african journalists such as Mwenda, because they dont want to challenge the narrative. I would appreciate if Wrong wrote a book about:
1. Afghanistan
2. Iraq
3. Imperial actions in Kenya and elsewhere.
To say the least Andrew Mwenda is a soulless moral agnostic. Whereby the good includes never distinguishing good from evil, right from wrong. No wonder he told Ugandans that Corruption and Land grabbing are economic and social virtue. And good because his sister Muhanga had grabbed UBC land inn Bugolobi at the price of Shs.10 billion out of the sale of a few goats and contributions from relatives and friends.
Which means, by for example Gen Tibuhaburwa sponsoring the RPA to invade Rwanda in 1990; and remotely pushed the hands of the 1994 genocide, was functionally a good thing. A good thing because, the demise of close to a million lives, created enough room in the over populated Rwanda for people like Patrick Karegyeya Kagame who were stateless and landless in the diaspora.
I was privileged to have read Mwenda’s part 1 of this series. At that time I had not yet read Wrong’s ‘Do Not Disturb’ book. I’m a huge fan of Mwenda (and still are) but some basic honesty is required here: All Mwenda’s reviews from part 1 to part 3 ring so hollow after one has read the book.
Secondly, Wrong’s book is good for intellectual discourse in Rwanda specifically and Africa generally. In other words, Africans need to read many more of such books about their leaders and country. Authors can come from any part of the globe.
HEPK and the RPF government has done lots for Rwanda, lots! However, HEPK’s administration needs Wrong’s book (and others like it) as flavor or seasoning if you like. That’s a major way in which the ‘meal’ prepared by HEPK and co. can be enjoyed by many even beyond Africa. The taste of the pudding is in the eating – critically not in the preparation or the serving. This book, in my view, is very well written. A monumental piece of investigative journalism.
Thirdly, I have come to realize that most commentators against Wrong’s book have no idea that she’s already written separate investigative books on DRC (Following in the Footsteps of Mr Kurtz), Kenya (It’s Our Turn To Eat) and Eritrea (I Didn’t Do It For You).
That background reading provides grounding for perspective and reception of the subject matter.
Thanks for the explanation you have given concerning the reckless documentation of non facts by Miss Wrong.