The news hardly had time to sink in that Africa had yet again lost a great son in the person of former Tanzanian President Benjamin Mkapa.

The news was announced by President John Pombe Magufuli on television in the evening without giving any more details except that President Mkapa died in hospital where he was undergoing treatment.

He was a great statesman who will surely be missed by many, especially the warring parties in Burundi and Kenya where he helped broker peace.

Just as the late Mkapa will leave behind a legacy of a peacebuilder, France on the other hand finds itself yet again on the wrong side of history, especially for being a haven for Genocide suspects and senior members of the FDLR militia who have been wreaking havoc in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo for over two decades.

The latest is that a French media house has unearthed the hideout, in France, of one of the senior instigators of the Rwandan tragedy, Col. Aloys Ntiwiragabo, who left a trail of blood kilometres long, from Kigali all the way to the jungles of the Congo.

He has been living quietly in the town of Orléans in the heart of France, barely two months after another wanted fugitive, Felicien Kabuga, was arrested in Asnières-sur-Seine near Paris after more than two decades on a run.

So what does the above and many other cases tell us? That someone somewhere in the French establishment – most certainly security services – went to great lengths to cover the tracks of the fugitives.

How else would one explain that members of a terror organization operate in France with impunity? There is more to it than meets the eyes.