With election season just around the corner, the usual suspects are already in full swing disseminating their divisionist propaganda. These are the political hacks that always exploit their being Hutu as the only reason they should win elections and take power, and who think it’s the only qualification necessary to rule Rwanda. ALSO READ: Ten things to know about 2024 presidential, parliamentary elections Frequently they post messages such as, Tutsis are ‘illegitimately in power’. Or, the majority are suppressed by ‘a clique from Uganda’ (subtext: Kagame and his administration is made up of ‘foreigners’. Another meaning one can derive from this of course is that no administration in Rwanda can be legitimate if headed by someone of Tutsi ethnicity). These are recurrent themes that the political opportunists have kept alive from the first days of so-called independence, when the extremists of Parmehutu took over, unleashing horrific upheaval, on through Habyarimana’s two-decade reign, up to the cataclysm of 1994. When the hate mongers – most exemplified in recent times by the deceased Faustin Twagiramungu – loudly proclaim “Kagame and his army henchmen are Ugandan soldiers!” (conveniently forgetting to mention how they came to be in Uganda in the first place) what they are doing, apparent to anyone with two brain cells to run together, is this. They are trying to stoke the basest tribal instincts of a section of Rwandans. They do it for one very important reason. Because there isn’t another message they have to sell. They know that without ethnic hate, they lose, especially in any marketplace of ideas where they have to articulate what (else) they stand for. And so, you will see them relentlessly push their openly divisive messages on social media platforms. ALSO READ: PDI party to field parliamentary candidates for July elections They are the likes of Jambo Asbl (a Europe-based umbrella group of offspring of the individuals that planned, instigated, or perpetrated the 1994 Genocide Against the Tutsi). They are the genocide fugitives in various countries overseas. Or, much closer home, genocidaires harbored in DRC, some even integrated in that country’s military leadership. And, of course, Victoire Ingabire the current undisputed master of divisive politics in Rwanda. It is very rare to hear these people or others like them discuss how they intend to better the lives of the mass of Rwandans by, say, how they plan to find good export markets for our farmers. One will hardly hear the purveyors of “pawa” politics discuss what their policies are with regards to better housing for the poor that live in unplanned neighborhoods, in the most precarious conditions...or is it because their shame is too much, since it’s their past regimes that created those conditions, with the current administration battling to fix the mess they left? Or, is it possible we can ever hear anyone from Jambo Asbl constructively discuss how the country is to overcome the socio-economic problems Rwanda has had to bear as a result of its history of political upheaval? If these were people that acted on good principles, or even that could find some levels of human conscience, maybe. But we are talking of entirely shameless people whose main strategy is to devise all possible means to make the RPF fail, or fall. The grandchildren or Mbonyumutwa, or the sons of Habyarimana, or the offspring of mass murderers like Marcel Sebatware, and several others are bent on one thing only. That their ethnicity is taking power, violently moreover. Like Rusesabagina openly plotted not so long ago. It is the only objective of the terrorist FDLR in the Congo (with which they work hand in hand). It is what someone like Victoire Ingabire, lionized in the West as some “warrior for democracy” in Rwanda, is all about. Though a few of these individuals will hide their extremism behind a façade of rhetoric, with promises “to restore democracy”, or to “open up pluralist politics”, and other buzzwords cynically aimed at audiences of Western sponsors, their end goals, including perpetrating more genocide against the Tutsi, are barely disguised. To all these people or groups, democracy only means a government of the Hutu majority – something that they, ironically, fail to see is deeply anti-democratic in nature. A tyranny of that majority. It is a very unpleasant thing to contemplate, that in the twenty-first century this is where some still dream of taking us. But that’s why they fight, tooth and nail to undo the unity, forged by the spirit of reconciliation, that Rwandans of all ethnicities (internally) have forged to date. This togetherness is the kryptonite of the forces of darkness, including the ideologies of hate and ethnic divisionism. Right-thinking Rwandans can, even must, do their utmost to maintain our progress to a more unified society. I think we are perfectly capable of it too, since very few people are inherently evil.
