It is really very sad to see how the whole misery visited on our troubled neighbour, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), is being treated by the entire collection of Western organisations. Instead of focusing their effort on identifying the source of the problem and addressing themselves to it, they are turning it into a farcical, and irrelevant, attack on Rwanda.
Make no mistake. They know, as we do, that Rwanda does not feature in this whole muddle. Yet, for instance, the whole Western media has been on fire because they sighted a “leaked UN memo” on the involvement of Rwanda in these troubles. When Rwanda soberly asked for supporting document, now the fire is suddenly dying down.
You begin to hear murmurs of: “The UN did not produce a report…that Rwanda is…involved in…eastern Congo”; the media got it all wrong. The media, on their part, had not seen the alleged “memo”. They had not seen any evidence. But, rather than smell a rat, they smelt a rose!
The organisations were not done, though. When the UN seemed to balk, Human Rights Watch (HRW) has come to its rescue. HRW has “conducted research, interviewed villagers and deserters” and voilà: evidence. And, to outdo their clumsy ‘sister rights defender’, they trained their binocular-sharp eyes on Bosco Ntaganda. And, bingo! They picked him up, cosily enjoying a glass of some beverage inside Rwanda. No document. No picture. No evidence.
Still, again the media has picked the story and turned it viral and they are sitting cosy. They are waiting for the public to swallow it hook, line and all the accompanying garbage of sinker. But this is the 21st century, a century of the Information Revolution. A public with information readily at its fingertips is a difficult public. It is discerning. With ability to compare and contrast, it cannot be anything but.
So, the public remembers London, when the highly meticulous Metropolitan Police abandoned their duty of protecting citizens, even if of Rwandan origin. It remembers how this police left these citizens at the mercy of “death squads” from a country by the “dreaded” name of Rwanda and told them each for themselves. The police even caught one member of the squad but, competent force that they are, they let him go. No interrogation. No picture. Nothing.
And the public remembers Sweden. A whole powerful intelligence system was alerted by a little-known asylum seeker to the fact that its country was teeming with “death agents” from Rwanda (Ru—what?) come to do him in. And, in short shrift, the intelligence system spirited the asylum seeker into hiding because they were powerless in the face of the “fierce force” of a tiny African country whose name they could hardly pronounce. Eviden….what?
What is mystifying in all this, of course, is that the Western media can thoughtlessly report such fantastic allegations without the least effort to confirm them.
Which begs the question: are all these organisations in the service of a dark force that we are not aware of? Is something nipping at the soul of their sponsors? What is it about Rwanda that is sending the West into a panicky spin?
But maybe there is no panic here. Maybe there is cold calculation at the heart of it all. Cold calculation whose expression we may find in a distant city, in a distant land, in a distant era.
Berlin, Germany, 1884/5. Rwandans may never know what was discussed in the Berlin Conference. They may never know how the partition of Africa was decided on. But they know that, whatever the method of decision, at the end of it they came out the ‘tinier’ for it.
From a vast country that covered swathes of eastern Congo, southern Uganda and north-western Tanganyika, Rwanda became the tiny hill of Central Africa. There is no doubt that having a strong, centrally-organised administration had something to do with it. No one wants a strong, bothersome influence near when they set out to ‘civilise’ a region.
So, at the Berlin Conference, they all – repeat, all – agreed to crop Rwanda until it became a hilly patch of land. Also, Germans and Belgians may have disagreed on everything but, as colonialists, they were in agreement when it came to ‘partitioning’ Rwandans into three ‘races’. Yes, later improved to ‘ethnic groups’ to cater for the culture, language, et al, Rwandans share. Still, a ‘different-races’ construct.
The truly ‘tiny’ clan (not ‘tiny’ land!) of Bahindiro that provided a leader was turned into a representative of a whole section of Rwandans. To cap it all, these were branded “invaders from Ethiopia and further north”. Rwanda became a land of a ‘thousand’ disparate hills and ‘three’ disparate races.
From then on, this is the narrative about Rwanda that the Western world has driven and continues to drive. This is the holy cow. There are, of course, other ‘cows’ for other countries. But for Rwanda, this is the ‘untouchable’ elephant in the room.
And that explains a whole horde of things that would need more than a ‘thousand’ pages to delve into.
Diversion of attention from DRC to Rwanda. Refusal to indict FDLR barons Mbarushimana and Mudacumura; to end the FDLR menace in DRC. Tenacious hold on genocide fugitives, no repatriation. Bruguère indictments. Opération Turquoise. Recall of a bulk of the UN peace-keeping contingent during a painful genocide. In-consummation of Arusha Peace Talks. Branding RPF a Ugandan invasion. Hima Empire myth. Contradictory label of Rwandans as Communists -in a monarchy! Et al.
Indeed, there are urgent interests to serve. So the DRC must be left to burn. Hopefully, sparks may be blown to neighbouring hills westward.
A Rwanda with a strong politico-socio-economic management will always be anathema to Western official establishments and their proxy organisations. That’s what these establishments have decreed. Their leaders will come and go but the official line will never change. It is cast in iron.
