Kabuye represents a long struggle for freedom

Footage of Mrs Rose Kabuye on France 24 television channel after her conditional release on bail tells a story. It is a story of a confident, compassionate and poised lady. This came out again when she addressed a press conference. In many ways, Kabuye has emerged as an ambassador and embodiment of the continuous struggle of the Rwandan people and Banyarwanda the world over. Her current situation is a familiar to many Banyarwanda wherever they have lived. What she has been subjected to in Germany and France, has also been subjected to many Banyarwanda the world over at different moments in time. Some have suffered individually, and their plight has not made the headlines. Kabuye’s struggle symbolises that collective struggle. We realise that from the outset, one Bruguiere and his handlers, were determined to humiliate and bring down the Rwandan people and this they would do by tying their leaders to political criminality. Thus the indictments based on concoced evidence. But as the Bruguiere case falls apart, we need to take a look at how we came to this point. It will be recalled that such injustices did not begin yesterday or around and after 1994. In the many years of exile, Banyarwanda suffered. They were not allowed to live in their motherland and in some of the countries they fled to; they suffered a lot indignities and slights. This was not only visited on to the refugees, but it was in some countries and as we are witnessing today in DR Congo extended to other Banyarwanda who are native to those countries. Whereas Rwandans in the diaspora were involved in a continuous quest to return home before 1990, it has been argued that there were also other local factors by some groups in the countries they lived in that increased the urgency of the need for liberation, and a permanent homeland where citizenship was accorded to all without discrimination. From all these trials, Banyarwanda have always emerged stronger than ever before. And from these, the zeal and determination to make it against all odds, has always been evident. Thus we realise that the struggle that Kabuye personifies now, is a long and continuous one that has had different spokesmen and public faces at different levels and moments in time. As Senator Aloysia Inyumba said, it is not Rose Kabuye on trial but the Rwandan people as a whole. And this is a trial from which she will emerge triumphant on behalf of the Rwandan people. Where do we go from here? It ought to be realised that in recent years, especially in the aftermath of the liberation struggle, European interests or sections of colonial mentality old Europe have embarked on a vindictive campaign against our leaders and in effect all our people, as we are witnessing in the case of Kabuye. More so, the way western press covers stories from these parts of the world, as compared to stories of their own, is telling. In most cases you will find reporters from the west attributing a popularly elected leader to a specific “ethnic” group, when in reality he was elected by all the people. As Uganda’s Sunday Monitor columnist Fredrick Mutebi Gooloba put it, western journalists, “aid workers” with a lot of self- confidence combined with wrong information or-unacceptable levels of ignorance about the reality on the ground (a strange but true contradiction) descend on different parts of Africa from time to time, and come up with stories that go on to become the standard point of reference in the west as regards Africa. All this is most probably a well orchestrated campaign by the authors and whoever they serve for specific ends. What informs the fact that western media outlets never report about success stories that are all over Africa. That they only choose to report misery and negativity says a lot about their intentions. The reported bigotry and prejudice that informed the response to the catastrophe visited upon the mostly black residents of New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, is the same mindset that informs those who we are dealing with in these cases like during the Tutsi Genocide and now. Contact: frank2kagabo@yahoo.com