Sympathy for the devil who’s ‘tightening his grip’ on us

Let’s make the assumption that the Rwandan administration has become the devil.

Let us make this assumption due to the reports coming out of Kigali of jailed of generals; of fleeing generals; of suspensions of a couple of newspapers; of the dragging of certain politicians to court; of other acts many outside Rwanda interpret to mean “Kagame is tightening his grip on Rwanda.”

Allow me for a moment — as a non-partisan Rwandan who lives in Kigali, whose day job it is to check the political pulse in the capital and to watch the intricacies of running a society some of whose members not long ago tried to exterminate their neighbours gruesomely — to play devil’s advocate.

The international media and rights groups roast Kigali for daring to drag Victoire Ingabire of the FDU Inking party to answer to charges of harbouring the genocide ideology.

“Genocide ideology is a contentious crime that many critics say has been used to stifle dissent,” charges the New York Times of April 2`.

Really? Says who?

But the American publication voices views that generally are the accepted wisdom among journalistic and rights circles outside Rwanda.

But how wise (or honest) is that wisdom?

What if Victoire Ingabire did indeed utter things and do things that are punishable under Rwanda’s laws?

What if she indeed is linked to genocidal groups like the FDLR in the Congo, a link exposed last year not by Rwanda but by the UN?

What if this woman has gone to the grave of one Dominic Mbonyumutwa and declared him the father of democracy in Rwanda?

Mbonyumutwa, mark you, is a person whom Rwandan Tutsis see the way a Jew would see a senior Nazi for his role in founding the politics of Hutu extremism.   

The media and rights groups in the West have their own interests in whatever stance they take on African stories.

The really sad part is to see even our African brothers buying into these potentially dangerous storylines.

Some slam Kigali for being concerned about genocide ideology only 16 years after the event, yet it is only a mad politician who, in Europe, would go to the grave of a senior Nazi 65 years later to proclaim him the father of democracy.