REFLECTIONS : Ali Yusufu Mugenzi: home wrecker!

Gabriel Kyotera: does the name ring a bell? If it doesn’t, it means that you didn’t listen to the Kinyarwanda programme of the BBC World Service radio, last weekend. Anyway, Kyotera is a Ugandan mzee who, when told his paralysis was incurable, made his own funeral arrangements as he waited for death. He paid for the digging of his grave and has had his coffin and suit made. As he explains, since all his older children are dead and the other children are too young, he had to prepare his own funeral. However, much as its eventuality is definite, that death may not be coming any time soon! Kyotera’s condition could be treated if only he could afford a hospital with the facilities. Unfortunately, Government hospitals in Uganda do not have such facilities. However, private hospitals, like International Hospital Kampala (IHK), have. That is how, on hearing this sad story, Denise Nyetera, a Rwandan lady who lives in Belgium, offered to help. As we speak now, Gabriel Kyotera is in IHK and may already have undergone the necessary operation that will seal the hole in his spine and see him walk again. Undoubtedly, Kyotera and family are over the moon and are praising Denise. And it is as well. That Kinyarwanda programme of the BBC World service has so well served the purpose for which it was set up, for it is known as “Gahuza Miryango” in Kinyarwanda. The meaning of its name is that its mission is to bring families together. Indeed, the programme was set up as a saviour sword that would be used to defend the Rwandan family and save it from the recurrence of any other form of cruelty. Alas! It has been turned into a double-edged sword and the other edge is being used to repeatedly stab the Rwandan heart with the aim of totally putting it asunder. Where it fulfils its mission in regard to other communities, the programme has been hijacked by one man and he is using it to squander the British taxpayer’s money on sowing mayhem in Rwanda. Ali Yusufu Mugenzi, the programme director, has totally hoodwinked the gullible BBC World service managers (strictly in regard to the Kinyarwanda programme and the Rwandan situation) to present himself as the star defender of balanced reporting. Now he is warming his disruptive a…sorry, bottom, (yes, he can lead any one into using self-disrespecting vocabulary!), sitting cosy, free to turn the BBC into the favourite hang-out for all genocide fugitives, their hangers-on and their running dogs. If he is not hosting the head of that terrorist organisation, FDLR, Ignace Murwanashyaka-ryo-kwica, he will be hosting that con hero, Paul Rusesabagina-b’imbwa-ze, the thieving ‘whore’ who fleeced the cowed refugees in Hotel Mille Collines during the genocide of Batutsi. When he is not hosting those, then he will seek out a garbage heap of discredited lackeys to present as representing a credible opposition to the leadership in Rwanda. I would never use their names here lest they soil my column, for the only appreciable service they rendered to Rwanda was that they rid it of their dirty selves! Where in Rwanda Gabriel Kyotera would have benefited from the popular health insurance scheme, ‘Mituelles de Santé’, to be treated in a sufficiently equipped local hospital, Mugenzi would rather send his reporters to confirm a baseless rumour. Remember, for instance, the totally fabricated rubbish he spewed on the BBC airwaves that nonetheless had peasants in Rwanda flee for their lives. There was this reporter who interviewed people in Butare who ‘confirmed’ that Batutsi were using Bahutu as slaves, after which they were cooking them (Bahutu) in large drums! For its popularity and strength of credibility, the radio convinced the people of this outlandish kafuffle, and they fled to Burundi. Government officials in Rwanda had to go and beg them to come back. How many Rwandan big stories have hit the world headlines elsewhere, for instance, but have never earned even a modicum of mention on the Kinyarwanda programme? Has any peasant been asked about the benefits of free universal primary education, e.g.? When the campaign to immunise infants under the age of one for pneumococcal disease by the end of 2009 started, it made news as the first of its kind in the developing world. Did this news elicit the least interest in your ‘cool’ Mugenzi? What can bring the Rwandan family together (the fundamental mission of the programme) more than such news, knowing that the three-dose vaccine will prevent the deaths of 6,000 people a year? For sure, the news of Kyotera’s ‘rescue’ is an exciting ear-some, especially when its magnanimity has its source in Rwanda. However, it is sad that BBC ‘Gahuza Miryango’ stringers in Rwanda do not enjoy ‘an encouraging hand’ from Mugenzi, as does Ignatius Bahizi in Uganda. No wonder then, that the result is the double-edged sword of ‘Gahuza Miryango’ (fond family unifier) of other communities and ‘Rusenya Nteko’ (sinister society destroyer) of Rwandans! ingina2@yahoo.co.uk