RWANDA/DRC: Two African Scumbags of the Year 2009: Joseph Kabila (DRC) and Paul Kagame (Rwanda)

Fellow African Scumbags of the Year 2009

DRC's Joseph Kabila (left) and Rwanda's Paul Kagame (right)

(Credits)

These two men were responsible in 2009 of hundreds of deaths of innocent civilians in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo and,what’s more, this pair has put in place conditions that would soon obtain the death of tens of thousands of innocent Congolese civilians. Because of this tandem, people in eastern Congo won’t yet again celebrate a happy new year.

I was among those fools who, in January 2009, hailed the Rwandese-Congolese joint military operations in eastern Congo as the ushering of a new era of blissful peace in the Great Lakes region.
I was however shortly afterwards taken aback by the strong objections over these operations by Vital Kamerhe, then speaker of Congolese Parliament and a native of South Kivu—a rare person of integrity in the midst of the corrupt class of Congolese politicians.

Reacting to the joint operations decided in total opacity by President Kabila and without prior approval by both houses of the Congolese Parliament, Vital Kamerhe angrily voiced his disagreement to a reporter of Radio Okapi in a live interview:

“All I know is that the National Assembly adopted an exit-from-crisis plan in October 2008, submitted to the government as a recommendation. That plan had mapped out the framework of the normalization of our relations with Rwanda. That plan had also a political component. Which was therefore being done in Nairobi. But we also included in this plan that we must absolutely arrive one way or the other at eradicating the ex-FAR [pre-genocide army of Rwanda] and Interahamwe [genocidal militia].
[…]
Now you tell me that Rwandese troops have just entered the Congo, I wish to believe that it isn’t true, for if it’s true, it’s simply serious, for this would raise a number of questions. We ask ourselves the question, in what state of mind are our populations that have just come out of Rwandese aggression?”

The same news report of Radio Okapi noted that the “communities of northern Kivu province reacted with indignation [at the news of] this return of Rwandan soldiers in the Congo.”
But the stupefaction of Vital Kamerhe would prove costly to his political career. Within hours of his radio outburst, President Kabila’s party stalwarts were calling for Kamerhe’s resignation—with President Kabila claiming that Kamerhe was in fact calling for a popular uprising in eastern Congo.
Kamerhe didn’t go down easily, however, clinging to his speakership till April 2009 when he was finally demoted to a simple rank-and-file parlementarian. A downfall that makes a mockery of the qualifier “democratic” in the official name of the country as the “Democratic Republic of Congo.”
But just what happened that made the joint Rwandese- Congolese military operations possible?
In January 2009, General Nkunda, the renegade general who was wreaking havoc in the North Kivu province, was suddenly arrested in Rwanda and his troops all too unexpectedly decided to be integrated into the Congolese army. BTW, when Nkunda was arrested, the Congolese government made a tepid demand of extradition that was quickly brushed off by Rwandan authorities. And to this day, Nkunda is under house arrest in Rwanda and still remains a possible spoiler of “peace” in eastern Congo.
Jason Stearns, who is on the ground in eastern Congo and who maintains a terrific informative blog called “Congo Siasa,” explains that this dramatic turnabout happened because Rwanda wanted it to happen:

“When Laurent Nkunda was arrested in January 2009, he was replaced by Bosco Ntaganda as the military leader of the CNDP. According to several CNDP officers, General James Kabarebe, the Chief of Staff of the Rwandan army, invited their officer corps across the border to Gisenyi to give them a choice: follow Bosco Ntaganda and integrate into the Congolese army or we will consider you as our enemies.”

A quick reminder is in order here:

1) In one of those surreal developments that could only happen in the African Great Lakes region of this world, Rwandan General James Kabarebe was also Congo’s army Chief of staff under President Laurent Kabila, the assassinated father of Joseph Kabila, “the deus ex machina imposed by Museveni upon Kagame” to lead what the Rwandan and Ugandan dictators thought would become a “Tutsi-led protectorate” of the Congo (René Lemarchand, The Dynamics of Violence in Central Africa, p. 33 and p. 17 for the quotes between quotation marks);

2) General Bosco Ntaganda, a wanted war criminal by the International Criminal Court (ICC), is still protected by the Congolese government under, as Jason Stearns’ report indicates, the dictates of the Rwandan government.

3) As noted above, the arrest of Nkunda by Rwanda translated on Congolese soil by the overnight “integration” of his troops, now under the command of General Bosco Ntaganda, into the Congolese army. This nominal integration means that these troops keep their chain of command and the territory under their control prior to their integration. This also means that virtually all of North Kivu is under the control of the ethnic Tutsi militia of CNDP.

So what happened after the joint Rwandese-Congolese joint military operations?

The answer to this question is contained in the 183-page Human Rights Watch report entitled “‘You will be punished’: Attacks on Civilians in Eastern Congo” released on December 13, 2009 that documents the harrowing massacres carried out by genocidal maniacs of the FDLR, armed bands, the Rwandan army and the “FARDC and coalition forces,” that is, the CNDP of Bosco Ntaganda.

I only lift a few excerpts from the Human Rights Watch report that show the long-term implications of what is transpiring on the ground in the Kivu:

1) “The attacks were perpetrated by Rwandan and Congolese coalition forces, although witnesses found it difficult to distinguish between Rwandan army soldiers and former CNDP combatants newly integrated into the Congolese army, who wore similar uniforms and spoke the same language [Kinyarwanda]” (p. 13);
2) “Former CNDP commanders newly integrated into the Congolese army appear to be using the operations as cover to gain control over mineral-rich areas and to clear the land for the return of Congolese Tutsi refugees and for cattle being brought in from Rwanda. The perceived dominance and preferential treatment given to former CNDP commanders has already led a number of local militia groups, often called Mai Mai, to abandon army integration. Some have joined forces with the FDLR” (p.22).
3) Rwandan civilian Hutu refugees “have been isolated and preyed upon for years by all sides” (p. 22).

The HRW report clearly shows these disturbing developments:

1) Rwanda, a “Tutsi dictatorship” (René Lemarchand), has established a de facto ethnic buffer zone inside the Congo, an Anschluss of sorts that is managed by the ethnic militia called CNDP which now has the label “FARDC” stamped on its outfit.

This worrisome development was duly noted in the UN Security Council Resolution 1906/2009 of 23 December 2009 that “Reiterates the primary responsibility of the Government of the Democratic Republic of the Congo regarding the reform of its security sector, and encourages the Government of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, working in cooperation with MONUC and other international partners, to build a core, well-vetted, multi-ethnic force, whose size, composition and structure should be developed by the Government, with the support of MONUC, with a view to strengthening the capacity, discipline and professionalism of the FARDC.”

2) The sudden influx from Rwanda of so-called refugees that has “sparked” “accusations” of a systematic ethnic “demographic engineering of North Kivu” and “Tutsi expansionism” (Jason Stearns). According to Jason Stearns, these refugees “are either Congolese Tutsi who were living amidst the civilian population, of whom there are quite a few, or Rwandan citizens. Congolese officials who have tried to interview returnees have been rebuffed by ex-CNDP units.”

As already noted, the CNDP runs a parallel administration on the territory under its control and has even expanded it on the territory previously under the control of the Kinshasa government. In those territories, the CNDP treats local government officials with the same contempt shown by Rwandese occupying forces during Africa’s World War.

This is for instance what happened on Christmas Eve 2009 in the city Butembo, according to the website Beni-Lubero Online, in a post entitled “Butembo: A CNDP officer frees by force from prison 5 Tutsi criminals”:

“The city of Butembo didn’t spend a peaceful Christmas [Eve]. This comes as no surprise as ever since the month of March 2009, date of the peace accords between Kinshasa and the CNDP, peace at high level is struggling to extend to civilian populations at the grassroots who live amidst wails and the gnashing of teeth. For the civilian population, the agreement of Ihussi (in Goma) resembles a pure and simple handover of North Kivu to CNDP. In fact, all the military officers that command the army in North Kivu are Rwandophones [Kinyarwanda-speakers] issuing from the ranks of CNDP with at the helm Bosco Ntaganda, wanted by the ICP [International Criminal Court]. Political and administrative authorities who spoke on the condition of not being quoted by name claim to be powerless in the face of this CNDP military architecture[…]
[…]
The December 24 raid at the Central Prison of Kakwangura in Butembo shows indeed that CNDP officers are above the laws of the Republic and the institutions of the Province. The units issued from the CNDP are not only better equipped but better paid as well. This difference in treatment also explains the military superiority of former soldiers of CNDP over Congolese soldiers […] Thus a CNDP officer can disarm guards at the Central Prison of Butembo, detain the prison director, separate Tutsi criminals from other prisoners, and walk out with them—without the Territory Administrator, the Mayor of the city, the Province Governor, or the highest political and military hierarchy in Kinshasa uttering a word. It’s already the same thing in the case of the massacres of civilian populations in North Kivu and South Kivu, the political and administrative authorities keeping mum [over these incidents] while only talking about the ‘cinq chantiers’ [Kabila’s 5 development projects], peace restored in the east of the country, and so forth.
[...]
Here are the facts about the spectacular raid of Thursday December 24, 2009. At around 16:00, Butembo time, a Rwandese-speaking military officer coming from Kanyabayonga and who is claimed to be in charge of military operations in the area stretching from Kanyabayonga to Iringeti (according to some) or of the area called ‘North Sector’ (according to others), arrives at the Prison of Kakwangura in a jeep packed with soldiers armed to the teeth with assault rifles, RPGs, etc. Without delay, his soldiers encircle the building of the Prison of Kakwangura. This encirclement is followed by the disarming of policemen of the guard. The female director of the prison and other managerial agents of this penitentiary center are then remanded in temporary custody with interdiction to communicate with the outside. All these precautionary measures of the hold-up having been set in place, the military officer commanding the operation sets out to separate the 5 Tutsi prisoners [from other prisoners], all arrested in the south of Lubero for various crimes. According to our sources that have requested anonymity, among the 5 freed Tutsi prisoners were Captain Karajika Innocent, who is facing murder charges; Adjutant Bushiri and Lieutenant Bagabi arrested for violating direct orders; and a private called Eric Mwana Djuma, who was facing rape charges.”

This is the anecdotal lowdown in North Kivu: authorities bullied and manhandled, and civilians massacred in their own country by a predatory ethnic militia under the command of a foreign country. As one editorialist of Kinshasa predicts, President Joseph Kabila will bloviate in his New Year address to the Congolese people about peace restored in eastern Congo whereas on the ground it’s anything but peace. Shame on him!

René Lemarchand analytical concept of violence in eastern Congo and in the Great Lakes region is EXCLUSION. According to Lemarchand, there are three types of exclusion: 1) political exclusion, 2) economic exclusion, and 3) social exclusion—all three conditions have now coalesced in North Kivu, turning the place into a powder keg that will soon blow up. Again!

The eastern Congo is now under the occupation of a vicious ethnic militia of "Killers-Without-Borders", with the complicity of the Kinshasa government. Rumours are rampant in Kinshasa of their integration into the government without going through the cumbersome electoral process--the prerequisite of the coalition of parties that share ministerial posts in Kinshasa. A new war is definitely brewing in the Congo...

For conspiring to put his own people under the yoke of a foreign country and for endangering the sovereignty and the security of his country, President Joseph Kabila of the DRC is on top of my list of African scumbags of 2009.

Rwandan President Paul Kagame, the mastermind of the mineral control (Lemarchand states that the formidable 50,000 to 100,000-strong Rwandan Defence Forces are unsustainable without tapping into Congo’s minerals) and the ethnic “demographic engineering” in eastern Congo, shares with the Congolese President the infamy of being one of the two African scumbags of the year 2009.

 

Source:

http://alexengwete.blogspot.com/2009/12/two-african-scumbags-of-year-2009.html,

Thursday, December 31, 2009

OPINION: LA PUISSANCE ECONOMIQUE A-T-ELLE REMPLACE LA PUISSANCE MILITAIRE ?

A la fin de la Guerre froide, quelques doctes spécialistes ont proclamé que la "géoéconomie" avait remplacé la géopolitique. La puissance économique allait devenir la clé pour accéder au leadership mondial, un changement dont beaucoup pensaient qu’il allait ouvrir une ère dominée par le Japon et l’Allemagne.

Aujourd’hui certains observateurs considèrent que la place acquise par la Chine dans l’économie mondiale traduit une nouvelle phase dans l’équilibre des pouvoirs au niveau planétaire, reléguant à l’arrière-plan la puissance militaire. Ils estiment que cette dernière ne peut que s’aligner rapidement sur la puissance économique, oubliant que les USA ont été pendant 70 ans la première économie mondiale avant de devenir une grande puissance militaire.

Les observateurs politiques débattent depuis longtemps pour savoir ce qui est plus important : la puissance économique ou la puissance militaire ? Traditionnellement les marxistes considèrent que le pouvoir se bâtit sur l’économie et que les institutions politiques sont une simple superstructure - une idée partagée par le courant économique libéral du 19° siècle pour lequel l’interdépendance croissante entre commerce et finance rendrait la guerre obsolète.

Mais le fait que la Grande-Bretagne et l’Allemagne aient été des partenaires commerciaux majeurs en 1914 n’a pas empêché une conflagration qui a retardé d’un demi-siècle l’intégration économique européenne.

La puissance militaire que certains considèrent comme la forme ultime de la puissance politique nécessite une économie florissante. Mais que la puissance économique l’emporte ou pas sur la puissance militaire dépend du contexte. La carotte est plus efficace que le bâton pour faire avancer un âne, mais un fusil est plus efficace pour s’emparer de l’âne de son ennemi. La force militaire est impuissante face à bien des problèmes cruciaux, elle ne peut combattre l’instabilité financière ou arrêter le réchauffement climatique.

La Chine et les USA sont plus que jamais interdépendants sur le plan économique, mais beaucoup d’analystes se trompent quant aux conséquences de cette situation en terme de leadership politique. Il est vrai que la Chine pourrait facilement mettre les USA à genoux en menaçant de vendre ses réserves de dollars.

Mais cela réduirait la valeur de ses réserves du fait de la baisse du dollar et porterait un coup à la demande américaine pour les produits chinois. Il en résulterait pertes d’emploi et instabilité sociale dans le pays du Milieu. Autrement dit, mettre les USA à genoux affaiblirait la Chine.

Savoir si l’interdépendance économique renforce le pouvoir politique suppose de considérer les asymétries entre Etats. "L’équilibre de la terreur financière" entre la Chine et les USA ressemble à "l’équilibre de la terreur" entre l’URSS et les USA pendant la Guerre froide, lorsque chacun avait le potentiel nécessaire pour détruire l’autre sous le feu nucléaire. En février 2000, des officiers supérieurs chinois irrités par les ventes d’armes américaines à Taiwan ont demandé à leur gouvernement de se débarrasser ses bons du Trésor américains à titre de représailles, mais ils n’ont pas été suivis.

La puissance économique peut déboucher tout aussi bien sur le "soft power" que sur la puissance militaire. Une économie florissante permet non seulement de financer une armée conséquente mais peut entraîner d’autres pays sur la même voie. Le "soft power" de l’Europe à la fin de la Guerre froide, comme celui de la Chine aujourd’hui, tient en grande partie au succès de leurs modèles économiques respectifs.

La puissance économique joue un rôle de plus en plus important, mais ce serait une erreur que de négliger la puissance militaire. Ainsi que le président Obama l’a déclaré en recevant le prix Nobel de la paix en 2009, "Nous devons commencer par reconnaître cette vérité difficile à admettre que nous ne parviendrons pas à éradiquer les conflits violents durant notre vie. Il y aura des occasions au cours desquelles des nations - agissant isolément ou de concert - estimeront que le recours à la force n’est pas seulement nécessaire, mais moralement justifié".

Même si la probabilité du recours à la force entre Etats, ou la menace d’y recourir, est moindre que par le passé, les terribles conséquences de la guerre conduit les dirigeants des différents pays à se protéger derrière un bouclier militaire à prix d’or. Si la puissance militaire chinoise effraie ses voisins, ils vont probablement chercher un bouclier et ce sont probablement les USA pour l’essentiel qui vont le leur fournir.

Cela conduit à une remarque plus générale sur le rôle de la puissance militaire. Le fait qu’elle ne permette pas de résoudre autant de problèmes que jadis ne signifie pas pour autant qu’elle a perdu toute utilité, elle reste une source primordiale de pouvoir - même si selon certains analystes son rôle est devenu tellement restreint qu’elle n’est plus la mesure ultime de la puissance d’une nation.

Le fonctionnement des marchés et l’économie reposent sur un cadre politique qui ne dépend pas seulement de la réglementation, des institutions et des relations qu’elles entretiennent, mais aussi de la gestion du pouvoir de coercition. Un Etat moderne bien structuré détient le monopole de l’utilisation légitime de la force et permet aux marchés intérieurs de fonctionner. Sur le plan international où l’ordre est plus fragile, la crainte du recours à la force, même si sa probabilité est faible, peut avoir des conséquences importantes - y compris un effet stabilisateur.

La puissance militaire est à la sécurité ce que l’oxygène est à la respiration : on n’y prête guère attention, sauf lorsqu’on vient à en manquer. A ce moment-là cela devient la priorité absolue. Au 21° siècle, la puissance militaire n’a plus le même rôle qu’au 19° et au 20° siècle, mais elle restera un élément crucial du leadership politique sur la scène internationale.

Source: La Nouvelle Relève, du Vol No: 876 [ 13 Jun - 16 Jun 2011 ]

Author: PASCAL NIYONSABA

Diminishing RDC: FDLR capacity has helped improve security in DRC- UN official

Improvement of security in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) is partly explained by the weakening of the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda militia, a UN envoy told the Security Council Thursday.
Roger Meece, the head of the UN mission in DRC (MONUSCO) said that in the provinces of North and South Kivu, the FDLR, has been weakened. The FDRL, that has been terrorizing local communities in eastern DRC for the past decade and a half, is  mainly composed of perpetrators of the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda.
He added that the new development has encouraged a number of former combatants, some of them senior figures in the group, to surrender and return to Rwanda.
“There has been significant progress regarding the security situation in recent years in eastern DRC,” Meece said. He, however, observed that many challenges remain before stability is fully restored in conflict-afflicted areas.
DRC’s Ambassador to the UN, Ileka Atoki, told the council that his country is taking military and non-military measures to re-establish security in the entire country.
The arrest of senior FDLR political leaders in Europe, has also allegedly put a dent in the militia group’s operations – both on the ground in the DRC and internationally.
In November 2009, FDLR leader, Ignace Murwanashyaka, and his deputy, Straton Musoni, were arrested in Germany..
The following year, Callixte Mbarushimana, FDLR’s Executive Secretary, was arrested in France, on an International Criminal Court (ICC) arrest warrant for war crimes and crimes against humanity committed in the DRC and transferred to The Hague.

Source: Newtimes, Saturday, June 11, 2011
Author: James Karuhanga

RDC: A quoi sert la démocratie ?

A quoi sert la démocratie ?

RWANDA: Lunch with the FT: Paul Kagame

Paul Kagame, 53, has been president of Rwanda for the past decade and vice-president – and de facto leader – for seven years before that. But for all the power and years of command he appears as lean and austere as he was as the 36-year-old guerrilla commander of the Rwandan Patriotic Front, a rebel army that fought an end to the 20th century’s swiftest act of mass murder – the killing between April and July 1994 of some 800,000 Tutsis and Hutu sympathisers.

In the years since, we have met a number of times but this is our first lunch: the president is visiting London and suggests meeting at the Wyndham Grand in Chelsea Harbour, an expensive but unremarkable hotel not known for its restaurant. Our meal is to be prepared by a chef travelling with the presidential party. Kagame’s aides assure me in advance that this is not out of fear of being poisoned. Rather, they explain, it is for organisational reasons – feeding the entourage and past experience with the vagaries of hotel catering – and I half-believe them. Kagame’s administration, which has approached development with the same single-mindedness as it approached guerrilla warfare, is nothing if not well-organised.
The country that Kagame took over had collapsed, its institutions and people abandoned or destroyed during the genocide. In the ensuing years his government has overseen the return of millions of Rwandans displaced by conflict; hundreds of thousands of genocide crimes have been tried by village committees (see box below).
And, with the help of international aid, on which the government still depends for nearly 50 per cent of its budget, Rwanda has seen some of the highest growth rates in Africa. Yet no African leader divides opinion as sharply as Kagame does or inspires such contrasting caricatures: on the one hand, the visionary statesman, forging prosperity out of ruin and courageously tackling continental taboos; on the other, the blood-stained tyrant. He is accused of war crimes and human rights abuses at least as often as he is celebrated with honorary doctorates and global leadership awards.
The polemics are fuelled by Kagame’s mixed record. Unlike many of his African peers, he has relentlessly pursued results in his bid to transform an inward-looking mountain nation into a regional centre for services, agro-processing, tourism and transport. But he has also been given extraordinary licence to repress dissent, and the prosperity of elites in Kigali derives at least partly from the plunder of minerals from the Democratic Republic of Congo during Rwanda’s serial invasions of its neighbour.
According to United Nations reports, tens of thousands of Rwandans and Congolese died at the hands of Kagame’s army as he established authority and secured his country’s borders in the face of continuing threats to surviving Tutsis. Political opponents and journalists still end up in exile, jail or, in some cases, six foot under.

Yet Kagame can count among his international supporters the likes of Tony Blair, Rick Warren, the evangelical US pastor, and Howard Schultz of Starbucks among other influential figures in the west. Members of his fan club tend to overlook the more troubling aspects of his rule or support the notion that he has done what was necessary to restore security and lay the foundations for development.
In the anonymous, faintly ascetic meeting room at the Wyndham Grand, where we are about to be served carrot and tomato soup, Kagame says, “I have no regrets about being who I am, and being what I am in my country for my people. No regrets at all.” The round table where we are to eat, bedecked with white cloth and silver cutlery, is something of an oasis in a desert of empty carpet.
The wider global setting is more compelling: Kagame, though relaxed, is not a man for small talk and our conversation moves quickly to the conflict in Ivory Coast, revolutions sweeping the Arab world and the ramifications of both for sub-Saharan Africa. “These are not problems that just emerged yesterday: they are problems which people were not paying attention to because it suited their own interests not to,” he says of the corruption, social injustice and repression that fuelled the Arab uprisings.
Such a statement might raise an eyebrow among his detractors, coming as it does from a head of state who has yet to allow a strong opponent to rival him, and who in 2001 locked up his predecessor Pasteur Bizimungu, when he formed an opposition party. But the attention Kagame has focused on developing Rwanda’s essentially peasant economy has fostered the shoots of a remarkable recovery for anyone bothered to observe it closely. Few of Kagame’s detractors do, something he finds infuriating.
Fiercely defensive of the moral high ground, he is not shy of playing on western guilt at having failed Rwanda in its hour of need. “I don’t think anybody out there in the media, UN, human rights organisations, has any moral right whatsoever to level any accusations against me or against Rwanda. Because, when it came to the problems facing Rwanda, and the Congo, they were all useless,” he says, quietly emptying his soup bowl.
Weary of the problems associated with being a recipient of international aid – from the patronising, bullying tactics of donor nations to the often fickle nature of their policies in Africa – Kagame has developed an acute sensitivity to western mendacity and double standards. He also has a strong sense of irony. So it is with a wry laugh that he suggests that the historic focus of western governments on stability over freedom and good governance in the Arab world has had its comeuppance. “They have to face the reality now I think. They just can’t ignore it ... ”
If there is a broader lesson from the Arab Spring for countries south of the Sahara, he continues, it is in what happens to those in office who do not pay attention to the interests of their people. “You can be up there, talked about, appreciated all over the world, with people singing a lot of songs about you. But if you don’t measure up and you are not really connected with your people ... it will explode in your face, no question about it.”
Next on the menu chosen for us by his chef is steak, with beans, green peppers, rice and potatoes. It looks fortifying, so I introduce an awkward comparison. Bahrain, ruled by a Sunni minority distrustful of a majority Shia population now in open revolt, could, I suggest, be compared to Rwanda, with its administration dominated by a minority – ethnic Tutsis, who make up around 14 per cent of the population and were victims of the 1994 genocide. Not unlike Bahrain’s ruling elite, Rwanda’s fears real democracy would lead to majority rule and that this would invite chaos given the history of extremism among majority Hutus.
Kagame reacts sharply to the comparison. For one, he is not a monarch, he says, like King Hamad bin Isa al-Khalifa. But, I murmur, you were elected by a remarkable 93 per cent of votes only last year, facing no real opposition.
“In Rwanda there is a constitution. There are term limits; there is a parliament, there are elections. Somebody who makes that comparison, I will just say is ignorant,” he insists, defending the near unanimous result of last year’s polls as a vote for stability in the context of the country’s peculiarly bloody history.
Yet international concern is, if anything, mounting over whether the peace and economic growth Kagame has established is sustainable alongside a political system that remains rigidly controlled.
He continues with a tactic often deployed by African heads of state but which in this instance seems somewhat disingenuous: to harp on the exaggerated expectations made of developing nations by the west and the west’s failure often to meet the same exacting standards. “Why isn’t the majority in the developed world interpreted on the basis of race or colour or tribes? Why? You want to tell me that, in the United States, Barack Obama comes from which majority?” he asks.
We reach a point of agreement when we decide that had Rwanda been an oil-rich state like Libya it is unlikely that UN peacekeepers would have backed off when mass murder started as they did in 1994. We also agree that in the case of Ivory Coast, the elections that sparked this year’s conflict were premature, symptomatic of the pressure applied on African nations to import political systems that are not always suited to local circumstance.
“Elections must be held. But when? You don’t carry out elections anyhow, or under any conditions,” he says, pointing to the fact that Ivory Coast was divided when the vote took place under UN supervision in November, with rebels in control of the north, and a government army in the south. “It’s as if elections or political processes were things worked out in a factory ... They can’t be made in the UK; they can’t be made in America. No. If you force it, you end up with a problem.”
The waiters remove our empty plates, and replace them with bowls of fruit salad with oranges, pineapples and blackberries. We find another point of agreement: had we been almost anywhere in Africa, the fruit would have tasted a great deal sweeter. “Pineapples are very bland here,” says Kagame. “And the bananas are different.”
As coffee is served, I ask Kagame a question that intrigues me. He has skilfully courted the evangelical Christian community in the US, a factor that I am told helped swing the Bush administration to his side, after a frosty start. But is he himself a believer? “Yes and no,” he says. “I encourage believers to believe.”
The complicity of members of the Catholic church in the Rwandan genocide partly inform this doubt. There were priests among the killers. “I’ve seen religions make blunders. Let’s look at what the Catholics did in Rwanda, which still disturbs me,” he says. “You see the Catholics apologising for child abuse by priests and bishops, and the Pope has gone out of the way to apologise to the Americans. Then he goes to Australia and does the same. But they will never apologise for their role in the Rwandan genocide.”
For all the blame he heaps on the outside world for turmoil past, he tailors much of his rhetoric these days to chime with the times. He is acutely conscious, for example, that Africa will only catch up if Africans themselves live up to the task. He singles out the leaderships in Ethiopia, Gabon and Burkina Faso as like-minded. “People will patronise us but at the end of the day we have to remember it’s our problem,” he says. “Africa should not just wait to be exploited or influenced. No. We should be part of the conversation. We should raise ourselves to a level where there are certain terms we dictate in the conversation because we have a lot to offer.”
It is partly Rwanda’s meagre resources, he continues, that has made it so imperative that it behaves differently, that it roots out petty corruption and improves the business climate if it is to compete. And it has, becoming one of the world’s fastest reformers, rising to 66th out of 178 countries in the World Bank’s ease of doing business rankings. “We are landlocked, a very small country, in the middle somewhere. Some of our neighbours, they are richer than us, and they tend to attract people more than we do. So we have to strategically create uniqueness about us.”
Unique too, is the ruling Rwandan Patriotic Front, which grew out of the rebel movement he led to power from exile in neighbouring Uganda. It is one of the best endowed political movements in the world. Funds it controls own large stakes in key sectors of the Rwandan economy, including telecoms, banking, real estate and energy, as well as investments abroad that were launched when his movement was still in the bush. Kagame puts the RPF’s wealth at several hundred million dollars. “We don’t go out begging. For example, we didn’t have any money from Gaddafi for our elections ... And the reason is really we want to maintain our independence all the time in everything we do.”
That is one of the paradoxes about Rwanda. The country has depended on foreign donors to rebuild in the wake of 1994. Yet it is focused, as much as any aid-dependent African country, on becoming self-reliant. And its leader, despite the debt he owes to many foreign allies, never appears anything but independent-minded. “We’ve dealt with our problems very unconventionally and because we’ve had to do that,” he says – adding that this has often infuriated foreign partners who would like everything done their way – “it’s a struggle all the time.”
William Wallis is the FT’s Africa editor
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Wyndham Grand
Chelsea Harbour, London SW10
Menu prepared by Paul Kagame’s chef
Tomato and carrot soup x 2
Steak x 2
Mixed vegetables
Sparkling water
Bread rolls
Total (including service) £83
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Author: William Wallis

Source: FT.com, Published: May 13 2011 17:27 | Last updated: May 13 2011 17:27

RWANDA: My twitterspat with Paul Kagame

The Rwandan president was revelatory in his self-exposure. Shame so few of his own people saw it

Rwandan president Paul Kagame who has had a twitterspat with the journalist Ian Birrell. Photograph: Fabrice Coffrini/AFP/Getty Images

Returning home from a Saturday afternoon walk with the dog, I did what has become almost a reflex action and checked Twitter. Bizarrely, there was the president of Rwanda having a go at me over disparaging comments I had made about an interview he gave that morning.

This was strange enough – not least since his missives to me were peppered with the sort of text abbreviations used by teenagers (such as "Wrong u r ..."). Even stranger, we then traded tweets over human rights and repression in his central African nation, his foreign minister even joining the fray.

All slightly surreal. By the time I went to bed, the foreign minister still tweeting furiously, our twitterspat had gone global with supporters on both sides weighing in. Digital gurus speculated this was another Twitter first: a head of state directly engaging with a journalist.

The exchange raises various questions – not least whether you can really conduct a complex and highly-charged debate in 140 characters at a time. The answer is probably no, although the genius of the medium is how it draws attention to issues and amplifies them.

My electronic encounter with Paul Kagame began when I read an interview in which he said no one in the media, UN or human rights groups had the moral right to criticise him. I fired off a tweet, saying he was "despotic and deluded", something borne out by such a vainglorious statement.

"Not you either," he tweeted back. "No moral right! You give yourslf the right to abuse ppl and judge them like you r the one to decide …"

Thus began our beef. I repeatedly asked why no one had the moral right to question him, while raising issues of press freedom in a country where critical journalists are jailed or shot dead. He said I had no basis for my comments and told me I was insulting. His tweets were heavy with exclamation marks.

I linked Kagame to a damning human rights report on Rwanda. He replied that "we hold ourselves and each accountable to a high level and even deal with criticism honestly, openly and fairly …" I queried how there could be accountability when he had shut down papers and stopped rivals standing in elections, adding I knew of people living in fear of their lives for daring to criticise him.

Like many politicians, he ducked issues and answered questions with another question. Eventually, after more than a dozen tweets, he half-answered my central point, saying that while some in the UN, media and human rights groups liked to criticise, they were not without flaws themselves.

At least he made more sense then the juvenile nonsense spewing out from Louise Mushikiwabo, his foreign minister. She began by asking: "Wld u care 2 know what 11,000,000 Rwandans think of Paul Kagame b4 u spread ur formed opinion? 2 big a challenge 4 u?" An arrogant assumption, of course, to imply she spoke for all her people – and exactly the question that is impossible to answer in such a repressive autocracy. Her tweets became increasingly excitable; afterwards, she blocked people from looking at them.

Several observers criticised Kagame's Twitter tantrum as exhibiting a lack of dignity. I disagree. It is admirable to see a leader engaging so personally with new means of communication – although it is telling there is no one he thinks worth following. And there is something rather splendid about a president so passionate about his country he confronts foreign critics in this manner.

The exchanges underlined the revolutionary nature of what is fast becoming the most important journalistic tool around. On Monday the Sky reporter Mark Stone blogged from Tripoli about his amazing use of Twitter to find a Dutch engineer and prove a bombed Nato target was a military bunker. In this new world, I was able to draw attention to Kagame's original statement, he was able to respond and we could debate in real-time watched by thousands of people worldwide, scores joining in with links, opinions and comments.

Additionally, while the answers were terse, the immediacy and intimacy of the president's responses offered a glimpse into his mind that might never have been exposed so starkly in more formal circumstances. His thin skin, his self-delusion, his evasiveness and above all his belief – echoed by his foreign minister – that the supposed saviour of Rwanda is above criticism.

It is just a shame that with just a tiny proportion of Rwandans online so few of his own people were able to see such revelatory self-exposure. For the irony of this exchange is that while Kagame is happy to engage with a foreign critic like me on Twitter, he refuses to permit such dissent from journalists and political rivals in his own country.

Author: Ian Birrell

Source: guardian.co.uk, Monday 16 May 2011 20.05 BST

UGANDA: State of Uganda

Opposition lawmakers yesterday abandoned President Museveni in Parliament as he delivered his first post-election State-of-the-Nation address, protesting what they said was his tolerance of graft and corrupt individuals in government.

Leader of the Opposition in Parliament, Mr Nandala Mafabi, led from the front as the MPs stormed out of Serena Hotel's Victoria Conference Hall where Parliament had convened. They later denounced what they felt is President Museveni's continued failure to deal with crooked government officials. They also accused the NRM leader of ridiculing them during his address and pampering the new Prime Minister Amama Mbabazi whom they accused of being corrupt.

As soon as President Museveni reminded the country about the NRM’s policy of zero tolerance to corruption, at 6:15pm, the opposition MPs staged their unprecedented walk-out on such an occasion, accusing the President of contradicting himself. The last time the opposition walked out of a national function was in 2009 during the budget reading. Former leader of opposition Ogenga Latigo led his troops out of the chambers then—protesting the brutal arrest of opposition MPs.

Almost throughout his two-and-a-half hour speech, the President had repeatedly defended Mr Mbabazi whenever opposition members howled “Temangalo” in reference to the Shs11 billion scandal in which the Prime Minister was accused of alleged influence peddling in the sale of his land located in Temangalo, outside Kampala, to NSSF in 2008.

“Mbabazi has been a good NRM cadre for a long time, if some of you can last as long as Mbabazi, it will be a big achievement,” the President at one time said amidst chants of “Temangalo” by the opposition.
This upset the opposition members whom the President described as “survivors” of his “de-toxification campaign”.

Before the walk-out, the opposition also kept interrupting the President’s speech—reminding him about Gilbert Arinaitwe, the police officer who drenched FDC leader Kizza Besigye with pepper spray in April and the Chogm scandals where nine cabinet ministers were implicated in the abuse of more than Shs500 billion in taxpayers’ money meant for the 2007 Commonwealth summit in Kampala.

Explaining why they walked out, Mr Mafabi said: “One of the major issues disturbing the country is corruption. For 25 years the President keeps saying the NRM has the will to fight corruption but nothing is being done. He is just rewarding the corrupt officials with fat positions in his government.”

“We have (written) many reports which have been quashed. We demonstrated by walking out to send a message that what he is doing is wrong. He is busy pampering Mbabazi in front of donors and everybody, yet this man and others in government were implicated in two major corruption scandals. This country is bleeding because of corruption and all of us could not agree on that.”

Yesterday, Information Minister Mary Karooro Okurut was dismayed by the turn of events, saying “the opposition walk out was very undemocratic and an abandonment of duty”. “State-of-the-Nation address handles all areas including corruption which is a key concern of the NRM government. Walking out is cowardice. They have the right to oppose, but they should know that the President is the fountain of honour,” she said.

World Bank estimates put Uganda’s losses to corruption at more than Shs500 billion per year. However that figure could be worse. Whereas the opposition walk out did not stop the State-of-the-Nation address, the President was momentarily unsettled, asking
whether he should continue in the absence of quorum and whether people who walk out get allowances before he proceeded to delve into the new measures to deal with corruption in the country.

Mr Museveni promised to set up a special committee to investigate political officials, including ministers implicated in corruption scandals. He also promised to close the gaps in the existing procurement law to stop rampant corruption and asked the IGG, CID and DPP to expedite investigations of individuals named in the Chogm scam.

Offering an account of his administration’s achievements over the last financial year, Mr Museveni said Uganda economy continued to grow, despite pessimism from critics.

He predicted impressive growth in the years ahead as government deals with economic shocks. The President said the current inflation distressing Ugandans was a result of domestic, regional and global factors, singling out food prices as the main driver for inflation.

To be sorted
While the President did not offer any immediate solution to the double-digit inflation currently standing at 16 per cent, he said: “These are factors that are going to be sorted out when we begin using our oil.”

Calling for patience, Mr Museveni said globally food prices rose by 36 per cent according to the World Bank. He cited Kenya, Tanzania, Ethiopia and Zambia where inflation has also gone up, adding that “In three to four years, we are going to (resolve this) using our oil”.

On high fuel prices, the President again cited the examples of Kenya, Tanzania, Rwanda and Southern Sudan, saying the current prices were normal -- rejecting calls for government to subsidise fuel prices.
President Museveni said there will be short-term, medium term and long-term interventions to deal with the current situation, citing provision of energy and road infrastructure to improve production and productivity.
However, the President did not provide details beyond indicating that political measures were being put in place to address the situation.
Specifically on food price inflation, Mr Museveni said 100 households in every parish will be funded to serve as model farms in various parts of the country. He said the Naads programme is now visible in the 112 districts. He said he had written to the ministers of Finance and Agriculture to study the possibility of each of Uganda’s estimated 17 million households owning four to five milk cows as part of the anti-poverty strategy.

Walk-to-work protests
But in reference to the opposition walk-to-work and hooting protests against the rising cost of living, President Museveni cited Article 43 (1) of the Constitution which says in the enjoyment of the rights and freedoms prescribed “… no person shall prejudice thefundamental or other human rights and freedoms of others or the public interest...”

He stopped short of citing the subsequent subsections of the same Article which places a limitation upon envisaged limitations on the absolute enjoyment of fundamental rights and freedoms where it declares that any restriction must be demonstrably justifiable in a free and democratic society.

President Museveni also quoted Article 3 (1 and 4) of the Constitution – reminding the opposition that “it is prohibited for any person or group of persons to take or retain control of the Government of Uganda, except in accordance with the provisions of the Constitution.”

Amidst loud objections by the opposition, before they walked out, the President had said: “I would like to advise those engaged in riots to stop. The ulterior motives behind those riots are well known. All those groups we know what they are doing and what they are planning. The youth they invite (for riots) work for government. Those people will be handled firmly and decisively.”

Despite these pointed declarations by the President, the opposition members yesterday vowed to continue with their protests against the rising cost of living until the government intervenes.

As he concluded his two- and-half hour speech, Museveni who received a standing ovation from the NRM MPs said: “Every Ugandan should always be cautious of the fact that nobody owes them a living.”

Source: Daily Monitor, Posted  Tuesday, June 7 2011 at 00:00

Author: Yasiin Mugerwa & Mercy Nalugo  (email the author)