On Tuesday, The New York Times, as it is wont to do, decided to publish an article that wasn’t just racist in tone, but inaccurate to boot. Penned by renown rwandaphobe Anjan Sundaram, and aimed to hurt President Paul Kagame’s global standing, the article was a litany of lies, genocide denial and sour grapes. He starts the article by saying that President Kagame’s “grip on power is nearly unassailable”. And then goes on to say that it is because he shut down free press and stifled political competition. That was the first falsehood in the article and it was two sentences in. I personally happened to be at the recent RPF Congress where the President challenged all the party members to start planning for a political transition. Mind you, this followed a close to 100% vote of confidence in his candidature as RPF chairman by party members in a secret ballot. So how is this leader, overwhelmingly popular within his diverse political party but still challenging it to see beyond his stewardship, a ‘dictator’? What is truly the most insulting aspect of the entire article is just how powerless Anjan makes us Rwandans. In his eyes, we don’t choose our leaders, our governance systems, our constitutional changes or any aspect of our lives. We are a people, according to him, without free will. What I find most interesting is the fact that what he accuses our President of, i.e., dictating how we live, is exactly what he is doing in the article. To Anjan, and others like him, we are not active participants in our government; rather we are a people without any say at all. What frustrates me the most with Western writers like him is their lack of imagination. If, like me, you’ve read almost everything they’ve written on Rwanda, you start picking up the ‘talking points’ that ensure that they get published. They call President Kagame a ‘strong man/dictator’, they call Kigali suspiciously ‘clean’, they either label the country an ‘aid darling’ or ‘aid dependent’, they talk about ‘Western guilt’ and wax lyrical about the ‘lush, hilly, small, overpopulated Central African country’. It’s quite lazy actually. Beyond just being lazy, their writing often becomes laughable. Anjan complains that Rwanda’s “Western friends”, hold their annual congresses and championships (FIFA and Basketball Africa League respectively) in our arenas and run assembly plants in Rwanda (Volkswagen). So what if they do? They understand that working with Rwanda is a smart decision and in their best interest. This has been recognized by not only our Western partners but our ‘Asian friends’, who partner with us in aviation, infrastructure (Qatar, China), as well as our ‘African friends’ who partner with us in security and trade (Mozambique, Central Africa Republic and the EAC). Interestingly enough, Anjan shows his hand and lets us know what bothers him so much about President Kagame. It’s because he unashamedly and intelligently challenges the “West’s superiority complex” while holding them accountable for their part in Rwanda’s dark history. It would seem that Anjan would rather President Kagame know ‘his place’ and remain mum. If The New York Times had published the article, with just the jabs at President Kagame, I’d have called the newspaper simply ‘biased and racist’. However, by allowing Anjan to engage in genocide revisionism by calling President Kagame a person who “supposedly ended the Rwandan genocide”, as well as accusing him of “doing little to prevent it” during Genocide Commemoration Week, the editors of The New York Times have decided to actively participate in spreading genocide ideology. I expected that from Anjan, not The New York Times. The writer is a socio-political commentator
