Kayumba Nyamwasa was once Rwanda’s army commander; Patrick Karegyeya was its military intelligence chief; Theogene Rudasingwa was Rwanda President Paul Kagame’s chief of staff; and Gerald Gahima was the country’s attorney general and later deputy minister of justice.

They quarrelled with Kagame and his government, and now live in exile.

Recently they formed an anti-Kagame political party, the Rwanda National Congress, and Kigali has accused them of also setting up a rebel group to overthrow the Rwanda government.

Last month, Nyamwasa and Karegyeya were tried and sentenced to 20 years in jail in absentia by a military court.

A few years ago, if you visited Rwanda, you would have got the impression that all these men’s stars were set to rise and rise.

Though you no longer find much love for them in Kigali, I think that, for the strangest of reasons, they are one of the best things to happen to Rwanda and Kagame.

There is really no delicate way to put this, so we shall say it as it is. All these men are Tutsi.

One of the main criticisms of the Kagame government is that it is a condescending, Tutsi-dominated regime that, after winning the war in 1994 and ending the genocide, has gone on to lord it over the Hutu majority.

Until the RNC came along, the anti-Kigali rebel groups camped out in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, and the legal opposition parties inside Rwanda, were all Hutu.

Though in Africa there is a lot of pressure for everyone from the president’s family, village, and tribe to rally around him, and those who oppose him are often considered traitors, it is not a smart survival strategy.

Every president needs to have enemies and rivals from his tribe or region, because it gives him nationalist credentials.

If your “people” are all lined up to a man and woman behind you, it lends credibility to the charge that you are a tribal, not national, chief.

One East African president who has enjoyed the fruits that come from having a homeboy as an adversary is Uganda’s President Yoweri Museveni.

Opposition leader Kizza Besigye, with whom Museveni has had a frighteningly bitter rivalry since the former challenged him in the 2001 election, is from the west.

And he was Museveni’s confidant in his early days in power, and his physician during the bush war.

Unlike Kenya or Rwanda, Uganda’s political culture has not evolved to demand unquestioning loyalty from a president’s tribesmen and women.

Thus the first man who came close to finishing off military dictator Idi Amin was an officer from his hometown called Charles Arube.

In 1980, when Milton Obote’s Uganda People’s Congress stole the elections, the man who gave him and his party hell was one of the leaders of the Democratic Party, Adoko Nekyon. Nekyon is not just from Obote’s village, he is his cousin!

One result of this is that discussions about tribalism in Uganda can be very confusing and muddled.

For the same reason, Kagame needs prominent Tutsi critics and rivals, because the whole question about Tutsi power in Rwanda, could benefit a lot from confusion.

Charles Onyango-Obbo is Nation Media Group’s executive editor for Africa & Digital Media. E-mail: [email protected]