A South African website, Daily Maverick has published an article with the aim to pin on Rwanda the demise of one Revocat Karemangingo, who died by gunshot in Mozambique earlier this week. Daily Maverick’s article, among other things, claims that the presence of Rwandan troops in Mozambique is “helping the Rwandan President get at his critics in that country.” It is a propaganda line that has quickly gained traction in all anti-Rwanda-hate circles, as if it is orchestrated. The first thing to ask however is how the author of the article, one Peter Fabricius, got to establish who to blame for Karemangingo’s death, and to then tie it to Rwandan military presence – all in less than one day. Karemangingo was killed in the evening of Monday (this week), and Fabricius had his piece ready on Tuesday. Fabricius has no facts. He has only conjectures and his own biased opinions, as well as the allegations of self-exiled Rwandans that will never say anything objective about Rwanda. He also has extensively quoted the allegations of Michela Wrong, a British journalist that has turned her anti-Rwanda hate into a lucrative book-writing venture, not mentioning a string of virulent articles in different UK media targeting President Kagame. The Daily Maverick’s article is characterized by the kind of condescending, racist white privilege that never ceases to astonish. When it comes to Africa and Africans, there isn’t any claim the likes of Fabricius or Wrong can’t make, whenever they feel like it, against whomever they please. In the article Wrong says: “It seems a tacit deal has been struck. Mozambique benefits from Rwanda’s military might in exchange for Rwandan intelligence agents to track down the men it considers enemies of the state.” Notice how their anti-Rwanda animosity makes them slander Mozambique without a care? This particular smear grossly disregards the true reason for the presence of Rwandan troops in the southern African country, or what made them go there in the first place. Mozambique this year invited Rwanda as a sister African nation to help combat terrorism. Militant, armed Islamists had taken over parts of Mozambique, wreaked havoc, and turned entire populations in some regions into internally displaced refugees. Rwandan and Mozambican troops worked together, defeated the terrorists, restored law and order, and people went back to their homes. But the Daily Maverick has reduced this cooperation to a case of Mozambique inviting Rwanda to commit murder on its territory. These distortions moreover are demonstrably false, because Rwandan refugees in Mozambique have been killing each other long before the Rwandan army ever set foot there. In August 2019 for instance gunmen shot and killed Louis Baziga, a Rwandan businessman in Maputo. Others have escaped assassination. “There is a sizable presence in Mozambique of former Interahamwe and other expert killers that perpetrated genocide in Rwanda then escaped,” a news commentator said one time. Fabricius and Wrong however have a mutual goal; and one that’s been behind their writings for some time: their mission is to sanitize violent groups against the legitimate, elected government of Rwanda. It also is to cleanse anyone related to anti-Rwanda armed groups – including financiers of groups like Kayumba Nyamwasa’s RNC, or FDLR, or any other terrorist outfit bent on destabilizing Rwanda. Wrong has many times published patent falsehoods against Rwanda, insinuating among other things the long-discredited theory that “the RPF shot down Habyarimana’s plane, triggering the Genocide against the Tutsi.” She has long joined the camp of negativist groups that spend days in machinations with the goal of discrediting the Rwandan administration – repeating false theories, unproven accusations, and outright slanders ad nauseum. On its part, the Daily Maverick is always ready to hurl false accusations of murder against Kigali at the slightest opportunity. When one Camille Nkurunziza, a Rwandan, was shot and killed in a Cape Town township the website, like many other peddlers of anti-Rwanda negativism, wasted no time pointing fingers at Kigali. Even before a single investigation, or police statement was out. When in fact the SA police issued a communiqué, it was to say that Nkurunziza had died as a result of police fire, as they combated a botched carjacking. None of the negativists recanted their story when the truth came out, however. Truth is never the objective. Propaganda is the name of game. They are at it again with the Karemangingo issue.
