Yesterday, Uganda’s minister of state for regional affairs, Philemon Mateke, commented on the firing of Olivier Nduhungirehe, Rwanda’s former minister of state for East African affairs. "I warned him! The problem with these young people is that they never listen to the elders. They get a little power and it goes into their heads. I have been in politics for 55 years. My worry now though is for his safety. Next he will be accused of some sort of treasonous crime,” Mateke wrote on the same account that the Ugandan government had denied belongs to him.
Mateke, and many others in the Ugandan establishment, tried to link Nduhungire’s firing to the relations between the two countries, mainly because almost everything that Rwanda does is interpreted in Uganda as having a link to that country, no matter how ridiculous that seems to all other objective observers. This is the level of insecurity in Uganda: Despite claims that its much bigger than Rwanda in size, its instincts tend to reflect a deep-seated insecurity and inferiority complex towards its southern neighbour.
It is not surprising that Mateke was one of the first people to speak up. What then followed after that was the justification of Uganda's pro-FDLR narrative: "The official government position is that the genocide was against the Tutsi.” This is not just the position of the government of Rwanda. It is the position of the entire community of nations. The United Nations General Assembly has designated 7 April as the "International Day of Reflection on the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda” meaning that it’s not up to an official of any government or official to come up with those he thinks should be remembered on 7th April.
Mateke and his government were not only eager to promote the "double genocide” perspective promoted by the FDLR (composed mainly of the remnants of the ex-FAR and Interahamwe which spearheaded that genocide); they were also eager to create even further distortions. The Uganda military intelligence agency CMI’s Soft Power News falsely claimed that "the only country in the world which came to the rescue of the Rwandan people was Uganda under the leadership of President Yoweri Museveni.” It is well known that Museveni has continuously exaggerated his contribution to the RPF struggle generally because, unlike the contribution of Banyarwanda to the liberation of Uganda where several Rwandan youths paid the ultimate price, the support they received in return didn’t go beyond not having Uganda as a hostile rear and allowing its supplies to transition through its territory from Mombasa.
In fact, had Museveni really come to the rescue of the country from genocide, he wouldn’t be working with Hutu Power diehards like Mateke, or be in cahoots with the FDLR and RUD Urunana armed genocidal groups. It is Mateke's well known genocidal ideology and past links with the Kayibanda and Habyarimana regimes that attracted Museveni to him and in appointing him a minister whose sole purpose is to coordinate anti-Rwanda efforts, especially by liaising with the FDLR and RUD Urunana which are openly committed to the publicly declared goal of wiping out the remaining Tutsis who survived the killings.
In 2001, the New Vision carried a story titled, "Mbarara Municipality MP Winnie Byanyima was yesterday charged for sedition.” Byanyima had told Kenya Television Network (KTN) that "Uganda is training Rwanda Interahamwe killers.” According to the article, "The prosecutor said Byanyima on April 7, 2001 at Entebbe Airport confirmed that she made the offensive utterances on KTN on March 31, 2001,” and that the precise utterance was that "President Museveni was training Interahamwe genocidaires against the government of Paul Kagame.”
In a press conference on April 10, 2001 at Sir Apollo Kagwa Road in Kampala, Winnie Byanyima confirmed the statement as true. She was detained, her passport confiscated and refused to travel abroad.
In 2005, Museveni issued a passport to Ignace Murwanashyaka, the then President of the FDLR that Winnie Byanyima was talking about in her press conference. During this period, the killers who had escaped from justice in Rwanda found a sanctuary in Uganda because the FDLR was telling them that Uganda was an ally from which they could be assured of protection. In the meantime, the government of Rwanda has been making different diplomatic demarches to Kampala; notes verbale reminding Uganda of its obligation to arrest and repatriate genocide suspects that number well upwards of 135 who are thriving in Uganda.
In 2018, Minister Mateke convened a meeting in Kampala (December 14-15) at Serena Hotel intended to foster greater coordination between the FDLR and the RNC.
According to the very senior representatives of the FDLR in that meeting, then chief spokesman Ignace Nkaka, alias La Forge Fils Bazeye, and the genocidal group's chief of intelligence Lt Col Jean-Pierre Nsekanabo, alias Theophile Kamala Abega, who were intercepted on their way back from Kampala at the Bunagana border of the DRC and repatriated to Rwanda, Mateke tabled a "special message” on behalf of President Museveni for the occasion.
A 31 December 2018 United Nations Group of Experts Report on DR Congo confirmed the existence of this network of recruitment for the FDLR and RNC in Uganda, as well as official facilitation from the government.
Clearly, this is not the kind of support against genocide that anybody else but Museveni's Uganda would think is worth bragging about.