Blue, red and white, the mythic French flag was floating at every other mile all over the city of Kigali three days before Sarkozy would set foot in the land of a thousand hills.
The demonstrators, who were parading and publicly proclaiming their deep hatred to the French the other day, were nowhere to be seen; had they once again made use of their legendary ability to forgive, unite and reconcile or they’d just sustained severe amnesia, I was wondering…
Freddy MUTANGUHA, the Director of the Memorial, who’d practiced his speech for over a week prior to the visit of Sarkozy, was not given a chance to finish his exposé on the role of France in the genocide of Tutsis,
– Sur la photo que montre le directeur du Mémorial, on peut voir des jeunes miliciens courant à coté d’une Jeep française. Dans les commentaires inscrits sur les panneaux relatant la marche vers le génocide et décrivant “l’apocalypse”, la France est clairement considérée comme responsable. Here on the picture you can see the youth militias runnig beside a french army vehicule… in the comments, written on the signposts, narrating the march to genocide and describing “the apocalypse”, france is clearly considered as responsible for…
He had to cut his speech short as Sarkozy looked completely uninterested, and moved on to the next room in the memorial,
– “Au nom du peuple français, je m’incline devant les victimes du génocide des Tutsis. L’humanité conservera à jamais la mémoire de ces innocents et de leurs martyrs.” In the name of the French people I bow before the victims of the genocide of the Tutsi, humanity will forever keep the memory of the innocent and their martyrs… he wrote, in the legendary French poetic speech, as he was wrapping up his visit to the memorial
– So Monsieur Sarkozy, are you going to nullify the indictment now that the good relations are re-established?
– mais madamme, la justice francaise est independante! Madam, French Justice System happens to be independent you know… Answered the Frenchman who clearly didn’t expect the good Rwandan journalist to grasp the full meaning of such concept as free justice system!
President Kagame, lost in translation, was busy fixing his headphones to get some of the translated french jokes, as Sarkozy that most of us thought would have it low profile like, before him, Bill Clinton, his American counterpart, looked sharper than ever! Business is business… it’s time to turn the page, he said to the approving nods of Kagame. He couldn’t have looked more without prejudice, had he come to negotiate coffee transactions between Rwanda and France…
All in all, a quick and painless visit that had some mysterious meaning that we, the regular citizen couldn’t comprehend… considering that president Kagame, after seeing off his French counterpart accompanied it with his eyes until it was around Kenyan air space, a record!
I don’t know what this visit means, but it must be very important, I wondered to myself as I was switching off the TV to go speculate on it over a beer at papyrus with my friends Willy and Daddy, two of the few remaining francophilia of their age in Rwanda…