By Dr. Theogene Rudasingwa
Photos: Wikimedia Commons
Like the French Emperor Napoleon in 1804 and medieval kings before him, General Kagame treated the public to a magical spectacle of self-coronation in Rwanda’s capital city on August 11, 2024. Like previous rituals of self-coronation, the general who has ruled Rwanda since 1994 does not need people, priests, prophets, popes, or judges to bestow legitimacy upon him. He considers himself the all-powerful, invincible gladiator whose guns, money, and a vanquished population are sufficient instruments of his raison d’etre.
Before the most expensive self-coronation ritual Rwanda had ever witnessed, Rwandans were coerced into another sham electoral exercise designed to confer bragging rights to the general, who claimed over 99% of the vote. Not one to lose time in self-aggrandizement, he had to fly to Paris before the self-coronation to be entertained at the opening ceremonies of the Olympic Games. Before then, he had spent over $ 170 million on refurbishing an existing public stadium to show off his scandalous opulence to his guests, who included African presidents, prime ministers, kings, and an impoverished, hungry crowd of Rwandan citizens.
However, beneath his bravado, intended to impress outsiders and intimidate Rwandans into perpetual submission, there is a fearful man. The insecure warrior-king knows he is mired in a quagmire of despotic rule and a costly war of plunder with the Democratic Republic of Congo he will ultimately lose. For a man who has lived by the sword, inflicting death on hundreds of thousands of Rwandans and fellow Africans in East Africa, no wonder the subject of death looms large in his conscience.
Thus, addressing the crowd at the self-coronation, in a thinly veiled threat to President Felix Tshisekedi of the Democratic Republic of Congo, the fearful General Kagame laments;
for us who are not even afraid of death, if you dare us, you will not survive
In the fictitious, make-believe, or pretend play that characterizes the militarized police state the self-coronated monarch has built around himself, his family, and a coterie of sycophants, the general is aware he has reached a point of no return on a fateful journey. If he were a good student of Rwanda’s and the world’s history—demonstrably he is not—he would have known that violence begets violence, war conceives the next war in its womb, and that despotic rule ends in disaster.
The very conditions that were the precursors to the revolution of 1959, military rule in 1973, the RPF invasion of Rwanda in 1990, civil war, and genocide, as well as new ones, are alarmingly present in Rwanda today. For decades, there has still been no democracy, respect for human rights, the rule of law, freedom of speech, or freedom of association. State security agencies act with impunity, while high military expenditures ignore deep inequalities and widespread socioeconomic deprivation. A minority regime, through its propaganda machinery, churns an exclusionary and antagonistic narrative that distorts history to justify coercion and force to maintain its grip on power. Factionalized elites in and outside Rwanda fan inter-ethnic, intra-ethnic, and regional hatred as a polarized nation holds its breath. At the core of the regime is an aggressive, belligerent, and expansive appetite for war-making as the population growth explodes, swelling the ranks of jobless youth. Above all, there is pervasive individual, family, community, and national intergenerational trauma from repetitive cycles of violence, war, dislocation, and mass atrocity. Oppression inevitably creates enabling conditions for strife, armed rebellion, refugees, civil war, war crimes, crimes against humanity, genocide, and chronic unresolved trauma.
General Kagame himself is a victim of unresolved life-long trauma. Ghosts of his victims and the torment from the seamless web of national and regional risks cannot afford the self-coronated general any internal rest. Under the veneer of calm and clean streets of Kigali, skyscrapers, the glitter of neon lights casting color on five-star hotels, and a legion of foreign expatriates is the repeat offender held hostage and holding the whole nation hostage by his past and present actions.
This presents a clear and present danger to Rwanda and East Africa.
There is a way out of the national and regional crises that the general has imposed on the citizens of Rwanda and East Africa. Against the odds of the repressive and war-making machinery that the Kigali regime uses against Rwandans and the peoples of East Africa, we, the people, must resist peacefully. We must break down the communication, collaboration, coordination, and cooperation barriers. We must overcome our fear to counter the regime’s false and divisive narratives.
We must re-discover our inalienable right to freedom to heal, unite, prosper, and flourish in Rwanda and East Africa. This is the only viable choice as a pathway to democracy, respect for human rights, the rule of law, justice, security for all, equitable and sustainable prosperity, and East African peace and security. It is the only viable pathway to a trauma-informed national transformation founded on truth and human values.
General Kagame has self-coronated himself a forever president of Rwanda, promising more war and death to Rwandans and East Africans.
For us, we have chosen a struggle for freedom and life.
Dr. Theogene Rudasingwa
Chairman, Rwanda Freedom Movement-ISHAKWE
Co-founder, Rwanda Truth Commission
Washington, D.C.
USA
Email: [email protected]
