The Green Party chief Frank Habineza has reignited the issue of the exiled former Monarch Kigeli V Ndahindurwa. Though his reasons seem to be framed in a nostalgic context and more so the importance of fostering unity and reconciliation, a number of things are manifest when one engages the issues at hand in regard to the former king.

Mr Habineza, is clearly a political leader constantly in search of something to champion. But it would be snide to allege that he has no cause. He clearly has ambition of leading Rwanda. Ambition is not a bad thing at all.

It is admirable that Mr Habineza has put up a long spirited struggle to provide the only political alternative to the ruling establishment, inside Rwanda. Others are only eager to be co-opted or are abroad!.

The former Rwandan king, can now only return to die at home, and probably hold court for a few remaining monarchists in the meantime.

Otherwise, as a political leader, he is largely irrelevant at home and abroad. Yet, King Kigeli could have done better for himself. To understand the politics around King Kigeli V, one needs to take a historical perspective.

His plight, is more of his own making. It is apparent that throughout his long years in exile, he failed to read the politics of the time correctly. Probably, his most obvious miscalculation, was his failure to provide leadership to the political militants in exile since 1959.

From the years of the Inyenzi Movement in the 1960s, to the emergence of Ranu in 1979 and formation of RPF in 1987, Kigeli was largely absent in the militant politics of the time.

He clearly has lacked ambition, and was in any case according to some historians a reluctant monarch when he was unexpectedly chosen to succeed his half brother Mutara III Rudahigwa in the late 1950s.

In exile, he never understood the forces arraigned against him. Neither did he realise that the monarchy was untenable in the long run, since it was rooted in a minority within a minority if one looks at politics through the veneer of identity.

He could have reinvented himself as just any other political leader, willing to even provide leadership under a republican arrangement.

With the benefit of hindsight, it becomes clear that among the different tendencies that were in the 1980s organised in the RPF, the military arm managed to ultimately take centre stage and power.

Kigeli, not being a soldier or with any history in the revolutionary movements of the time that formed the bulwark of the RPF fighters, had little chance of ascending to power even if he had joined the front.

Indeed he failed to realise that if he was to win an election of any sort even a referendum on the monarchy, it would most likely only be possible if he was the one organising it. He failed to embrace military struggle, when it was the most viable pathway home and to power.

In championing something that has become marginal in the politics of the country, Mr Habineza seems to be fulfilling a role his opponents probably want for him. A symbol of an opposition devoid of substantial issues to champion.

He could have imagined it as an important issue that could buy him relevance in a political terrain that has largely ignored the role of his small party. The Greens, world over, have failed to become a major party, only playing a marginal role. At best a third party, and sometimes coming off as eccentric one issue environmentalists.

In exile, King Kigeli, apparently, has been susceptible to opportunists, including white men- social climbers eager to enter the circles of European nobility of old, that sometimes hang out together at receptions in places like Monaco, Vienna and Prague to reminisce and wallow in nostalgia about their fading family glory.

He has allegedly sold knighthoods; one, to someone now understood to be his ‘secretary general’ who is always eager to represent him, buying himself a place among the international nobility of old.

Mr Habineza as a modern leader, would certainly not want to come off as an opportunist bent on finding some relevance, however small by jumping on the Kigeli V bandwagon. There are far more serious political challenges to champion in Rwanda.

Frank Kagabo is a freelance journalist.