You cannot stand on the top of a mountain and announce your intentions to launch terrorist attacks on your country and expect that nobody will hear. Unless, of course, you are a fool or are consumed by an enormous sense of self-importance, or you are hard of hearing and think everybody is like that. That is what a one Paul Rusesabagina did and thought, and he is probably all those things. But people did hear and were horrified. Rwandans, to whom the terror was directed, certainly were all right-thinking people. So, yes, Rusesabagina did threaten to visit terror on his homeland and indeed carried out the deed. And yet he is a humanitarian angel according to his image-makers, Kagame haters and bashers (often misnamed critics), and ordinary people who have been deceived by the invented hero of the film, Hotel Rwanda. Fame, it seems, does tricks to certain minds, especially if it is unexpected or unearned. It gets to their head and turns them. That is what appears to have happened to our man. His greatly embellished tale of his role in saving hundreds of lives during the genocide against the Tutsi in 1994 in Rwanda formed the basis of the film and turned him into a hero overnight. He came to believe that this new-found status put him above normal conduct of ordinary mortals and inoculated him against any sort of accountability. That is probably why he looked bemused at finding himself in Rwanda, flanked by young, strong, and efficient law enforcement officers. They were civil and reassuring, not intimidating like the ones he is used to seeing in his new domicile. He looked at the handcuffs clasping his hands together, then at the young officers and at his surroundings and wondered what this was all about. Disbelief, incomprehension and bewilderment was written on the face of this supposed superman when the Rwanda Investigation Bureau (RIB) presented him to the public. He must have wondered: where has the armour of fame gone? Where the inoculation against ordinariness? Had it worn off too early or perhaps had been fake all along? By the time he made another public appearance three days later, reality had set in. In an interview with the East African, he appeared more aware of his surroundings and the gravity of his situation. This was not Hollywood. It was real and he was about to answer for his crimes, – from the mountain-top declaration of terror to the murder of innocent Rwandans, looting and destruction of their property, and many others before and since then. He looked humbler than the fearless hero created by the makers of artificial personality. But maybe some people did not hear the proclamation from the mountain top, or not enough of them did. That may be so, but many saw him do it. He had himself video-recorded giving the order before an assembly of hundreds of armed men and broadcast the video to the whole world. You see, those who acquire undeserved fame love the limelight. They fear it will vanish if they do not keep it in the public eye and with it their new-found hero status. And they are probably right. A made up image is only a veneer. It can wear off and lose its shine if not retouched. Or they believe they are exceptional people and are able to perform extraordinary feats. It often turns out that those special deeds are only the murder of innocents. And yet his sponsors insist he is a saint who saved more than a thousand Tutsi from the jaws of machete-wielding, blood-thirsty interahamwe. Never mind that he made a quick buck in the bargain. But it is not for this artificially crafted image that Rusesabagina has been arrested. He faces more serious charges than pretending to be a hero. He has the blood of Rwandans on his hands. Before that declaration, he had teamed up with known terrorists, genocidaires and traitors to form a unified terrorist organisation – the MRCD and its military wing, FLN. They unleashed terror on villages in the south-west of Rwanda, killing, looting and burning property. Not once but several times. And yet the same crowd of promoters scream: where is the evidence? Well, it is there for all to see – on tape, in print, and the confession of his rather big-mouthed deputy and spokesman of the terror outfit, Callixte Nsabimana, aka Sankara. Talk of self-indictment. Rusesabagina is not the only one to whom an inflated status has gone to the head. His family, followers and, of course, his creators have all been repeating the refrain: he is a high profile person; the government of Rwanda can’t touch him. Well, they have. Some diplomats sing along: Rwanda is making a mistake arresting such a high profile individual. The mistake would be to let him roam the world and kill more Rwandans. Or there is a variation on this: he is a Belgian national and a US resident. Apparently foreign citizenship and residence is exculpatory enough. It is all part of an inferiority or superiority complex depending on who is waving this European or American connection. The rejoinder: that does not give him the right to murder and destabilise his country. He will now find out that his new labels will not save him. The moment he dabbled in terrorism, he became damaged goods and his erstwhile sponsors will distance themselves from him. The views expressed in this article are of the author.
