Twenty one years down the road, RPA still being demonised

[mchambawima1]

By Frederick Golooba-Mutebi

Posted Saturday, July 11 2015 at 13:54





Twenty one years down the road, RPA still being demonised





Last weekend, Rwandans and the government of Rwanda marked the 21st anniversary of the capture by the Rwanda Patriotic Front of power and the ending of the Genocide against the Tutsi in 1994.

The official event was held in Gicumbi district, in the former Byumba region, in Gishambashyayo village, not far from the Rwanda-Uganda border.

Being in Gishambashyayo village provides one with a vivid reminder of how national borders can be formidable physical barriers and also meaningless inventions.

Those who travel across borders in motorised transport throughout the region know well how much time one spends filling forms and standing in queues to get one’s passport or “travel document” stamped before they can exit one country and enter another one.

Gishambashyayo is one of those places where locals don’t waste time with such processes. Here they simply walk up and down the hills, literally conducting this business in Rwanda one minute, and that business in Uganda, the next minute.

Reflecting on the issue, one former rebel recounted how, upon entering Rwanda from Uganda for the first time in 1990 as the Rwanda Patriotic Army embarked on its campaign to open up the country to all Rwandans who wished to live there or come and go as they liked, he and his colleagues met a woman headed in the direction of Uganda.

On asking her where she was going, she said she was going “home.” And where was she coming from? Again, “home.” Goodness knows whether she was aware there was such a thing as a border anywhere.

Thousands turned up for the event, some having covered miles on foot to get to the venue. As is often the case when he addresses himself to Rwandans, President Paul Kagame’s pronouncements were meant as much for them as they were for their non-Rwandan “friends” who won’t stop offering lessons on whatever they feel Rwandans should be taught.

“Liberation and independence are about having the courage to speak up and tell everyone that we have the right and the will to define our future and we do not need to be taught what freedom means. We know it because we fought and died for it. No one can like us more than we like ourselves. No matter where you are from, we are all equal and we should treat each other with respect and dignity,” he said.

Coming on the heels of the arrest in the UK of the country’s chief of intelligence, Lt-Gen Emmanuel Karenzi Karake on what appear to be dubious and politically motivated charges and Foreign Minister Louise Mushikiwabo’s subsequent denunciation of “Western solidarity in demeaning Africans,” the message wasn’t without context.

Just as notable as the speech were aspects of the proceedings that raised questions about the general’s arrest. Much of what informed the decision by the Spanish court to indict him and other senior Rwandan officials and presumably the decision by the British to arrest him, are claims pertaining to the Rwanda Patriotic Army’s conduct during the war and after, in different parts of the country.

There are many claims about what happened. One on which opponents of the current government, Rwandans and foreigners alike (some of them said to have been participants in or accessories to the genocide) are united, is that there was a systematic and premeditated “programme” to annihilate Hutus or, as one commentator has said, “significantly to reduce the Hutu population.”

This really is the fulcrum around which charges of genocide and war crimes against Karake and his colleagues and the entire Rwandan army and by extension the government, revolve.

They also formed the basis of some of the more striking claims the BBC’s infamous documentary, Rwanda’s Untold Story, made against the Rwanda Patriotic Front, the Rwanda Patriotic Army and President Kagame himself.

Gishambashyayo village and other areas of Gicumbi district happen to have been the first areas the Rwanda Patriotic Army occupied in Rwanda, very early on in the war.



Hutus and Tutsis alike lived there and still do. Many Hutus were there at the time the RPA captured and occupied these areas. They stayed there throughout the war and are still there.

During the events to mark the 21st anniversary of the end of the war, one young man, a member of the Hutu community from what I could figure out, gave a detailed testimony of what he heard, saw, and experienced before and during the war.

In testimonies recorded on video prior to the event, a young man who at the time of the start of the war was only eight years old, tells his own story regarding his first encounter and subsequent experiences with the then RPA rebels.

An old woman who says she stayed at home alone after her relatives ran away, talks of the rebels looking after her.

So why were these people not killed? Why were they protected? In war, all sides kill. However, what happened in Gishambashayo and elsewhere in Gicumbi during the war does, in my opinion, highlight the need to re-examine what the world has been told about the RPA.

Frederick Golooba-Mutebi is a Kampala- and Kigali-based researcher and writer on politics and public affairs. E-mail: fgmutebi@yahoo.com