April 23, 2021
Well, well, well, I’ll be damned! Who’d have thought that we’d be here to witness what the times keep tossing up into our faces these days.
First was how some blood-spilling armed fugitives in the jungles of D.R. Congo were being picked off like sitting ducks by their aggrieved hosts and sent to their ‘hot seat yonder’, as Lucifer’s guests. Or how they were being dispatched back to the land that had the misfortune to beget them, where they should’ve all begged to return, in the first place, to comfily cool their butts.
Their incursions into this bruised land through wicked Ugandan and Burundian border-points shall no longer achieve their intent of spilling the blood of innocent Rwandans.
Then there was the way their financier of long ago, arch-génocidaire Félicien Kabuga, was roused out of his slumber in a Parisian hideout and carted off to The Hague. And the way their recent fancier, ‘mafia-type-heisting’ Rusesabagina, waltzed into a waiting exclusive jet and ‘champagne-snoozed’ his way into the coolers of Kigali.
But we aren’t here to talk about our small-time brethren/sistren ‘gone jungle-rot’ when they are always welcome home. No, we are here to talk about ‘the mother’! The mother of all good tidings.
That Rwanda and France should finally find some congruent ground, with the yawning rift that has separated them for twenty-seven years, is nothing short of earth-moving.
That it should happen, sure, that was a given. The truth has a nasty habit of refusing to die away and disappear. But that it should happen in less than, say, a hundred years, is what’s astounding.
Today it’s a small world, indeed. And, truly, it’s a long way from Mitterrand.
François Mitterrand, he whose mere underling in the names of Paul Dijoud sounded the ominous knell of the Genocide against the Tutsi, expressing his boss’ threats, even before 1994 was anywhere near.
Talking to RPA liberation struggle Commander Paul Kagame in 1991, who had honourably tried hard to humour his boss with accepting his invitation, Dijoud had the lip to address him in such words (I quote): “…..I hear you think you will march to Kigali but even if you are to reach there, you will not find your people………these relatives of yours…” In their parlance of the time, it’s clear whom he meant.
The Commander’s rejoinder, in turn, was to this effect: “All Rwandans are my people, my relatives. So, do you intend to wipe out all Rwandans?”
Much as this latter rejoinder and other details may not be constituted in the Rwanda-commissioned Muse Report (wherein the quote), the rest of what Mitterrand’s threat, with all its ramifications, meant is laid out in all of its ugly totality.
It’s a full picture of the role Mitterrand’s government played in the genocide.
The ramifications are many. In “will march”, there’d be movement. That then meant that Mitterrand’s army would make sure that the liberation effort was stopped in its tracks.
In “even if you reach there” is the insinuation that the RPF would never be allowed to liberate Rwanda. And in “you will not find your people” is that his army would actively assist in bringing the full force of the Genocide against the Tutsi to its ‘mass-murderous’ fruition.
That’s how the Muse Report delves into the unpleasant details of the Mitterrand government’s extensive involvement in Rwanda before, during and after the genocide.
For the Macron government to salute such a document as a step in the right direction in bringing together the two countries, France and Rwanda, on a common understanding of their shared history, it deserves plaudits from Rwandans.
Many may think of “too little too late” but, doubtless, a hand of friendship has been extended.
Coming at the same time as the Macron-commissioned Duclert Report that dared open France’s Pandora’s box, albeit going about it with ‘walking-on-egg-shells’ care, anyone would have expected a French recanting. That there wasn’t is laudable on the part of today’s France.
No, no one should read any case of inferiority-superiority complex relationship in this. True, France is still a den of diehard genocide fugitives but all in good time; there is an entrenched system to deal with.
Rwandans should wish President Emmanuel Macron success in all his future endeavours.
The marriage of the Muse and the Duclert Reports has certainly sent signals of a rethink to many Western countries. Countries like the US and the UK that seem adamantly unwilling to name the Genocide against the Tutsi for what it officially is. No doubt, lest they wake up their own genocide ghosts strewn the world over.
Still, it adds insult to the injury of hosting and giving succour to genocide fugitives and their accompanying genocide deniers, negationists, belittlers, obstructionists, the horde.
Many countries in Europe, North America and on our own continent, Africa, may be home to these outlaws on the run from Rwanda but there is no doubt that the world is closing in on them.
All thee who have wronged and continue to wrong Rwanda, you may run but you won’t hide.
The chickens may have stayed out late but now they seem to be coming in to roost.
