The Bible-totting Dr Théogène Rudasingwa is fretting. He is seized by extreme worry because “his people” are not being given new ideas. They are not being modernised; they are engulfed in fear; they are being terrorised; they are being fed on deceptions; they are living in “white-washed graveyards”; they are led by plunderers who are nevertheless exposing themselves to the outside world.
So we, the poor citizens of this bruised land, should rejoice at the arrival of this salvation. We, “his people”, should rise and sing “Halleluiah!” because Rudasingwa has turned messiah. He is no longer the young man who was extorting money from his fellow Rwandan students at Makerere University, while in exile in Uganda, and later his own half brother in Nairobi, Kenya.
Eureka! We have found him who will not again found an elitist ‘Frolina’ religion, (read ‘liberation front’) and then in short shrift abandon his new followers. His God then was Karl Marx and his twin ‘Jesuses’ were Frantz Fanon and Paulo Freire. His Bible was Das Kapital and, like him, his flock were supposed to read it from first page to last. And I know three who did, only he left them in the lurch and could not as much as greet them when later they found him in Rwanda.
Spoiler that I am, however, I’d like to interrupt your party, fellow Rwandans in self-imposed exile who may be taken in by this man (for civility’s sake) who tells tales “full of sound and fury/Signifying nothing”. I think you should pause and first ask for explanations before you troop behind your new-found high priest.
Those fellow Rwandans who were fleeced while in exile must get an explanation. Those he drafted in his ‘liberation front’ and then abandoned in Kenya, they he ignored in Rwanda when later they came and found him Tsar of the ruling Rwandese Patriotic Front (RPF), must first get his apology.
Rudasingwa must first get forgiveness from those he confined to containers when he was Dark Prince of our embassy in Washington, USA. Those he gave shabby treatment while he was next to the highest office in Rwanda, we must first get an apology. Those were juicy positions in this government that he now vilifies, yes, so compelling are his conning abilities.
All Rwandans should be wary of a man who has never done anything good for a single individual and who has never honoured any of his commitments. If not for his continued conning ways, what new ideas can he offer to Rwandans, when he offered none while occupying those various high offices?
For the first time since the advent of colonialism, Rwandans are enjoying a re-integrated life together, since all are treated equally and none is discriminated against, and none can throw their lot behind a man of hitherto questionable conduct. The RPF continues to deliver on its pledges and Rwandans gave it and its chairman the thumbs up when they handed them a landslide vote. Who abuses it, and its chairman, abuses Rwandans.
Rudasingwa dares tell Rwandans to their face that they are living in “a painted graveyard” and they need “to clean their hearts”? Why should he think that he knows better than they that modernisation goes beyond clean streets? After all, that is why those streets are leading them to a life of clean hearts that are now living together as a reunited family and enjoying: access to better nutrition, clean water, education, health service, more energy, information technology and the list goes on.
A man who still mouths about only Kigali being clean clearly is a man detached from the realities of Rwanda today. But that should not be surprising because, in reality, Dr Rudasingwa has always been detached from the simple folk of this land and their country.
Mention the name Butaro and he will ask “Who?” He won’t know that that is the name of a place in the remote, northern fringes of Rwanda that from last year is playing host to an ultra-modern hospital, one of a kind in the region. He won’t know that, wherever you go on the surface of this country, an ambulance is only a mobile phone away.
Generally, what he calls “Seven Danger Signs in Kagame’s Camp” is a barb-heap anyone can pick out of the mouth of any genocide denier. His bed-fellow genocide deniers will typically be citing killings, fear, plunder and ‘Wolf pleas’ to any outsider willing to waste their time listening.
His rants only succeed in exposing him as a man destabilised by the fear of being nabbed by Interpol and haunted by his past and trying to get solace from the company of erstwhile crafters of a divided Rwanda, now having no place in a healed country.
Even then, our good doctor cannot be haunted to the point of confusing vasectomy with castration, surely? But yes, unfortunately, it looks like he is seeing things, such that he is even imagining visions of Rwandans moving around with clenched fists firmly fixed in their pockets, for fear of shaking a poisoned hand.
He should will that into becoming reality, because it would be sure to result in total self-annihilation of Rwandans, the way they are all always ready and happy to enjoy a warm hand-shake. Let him pray hard, because I see that as his only chance of seeing an “eventual fall of Kagame’s regime”. Your fickle ways are decidedly outlandish, Théogène!
Between you and me, though, Théo, in between Bible-reading bouts, are you not smoking something illicit?
