“Only the struggle frees” – Thomas Sankara.
Rwandan and Mozambican armies’ recent victories in Cabo Delgado, five years after a preventable crisis was allowed to rage on, killing more than 3,300 people and displacing 750.000 more, is likely to create fresh enemies for Rwanda. Such enemies are inevitable in any liberation struggle.
For the Rwandan army, the struggle for liberation that started 30 years ago has not stopped, only the frontline kept changing. Yesterday it was in Rwanda, then in South Sudan and Haiti, today it is in Central African Republic and in Mozambique, tomorrow it will be in the Sahel, or perhaps in Mali, in Libya or northern Nigeria, for the African philosophy of ‘Ubuntu’ (I am because you are) devises that one’s freedom is not yet complete, if all’s peace is not fully achieved.
However in our experience as Rwandans, whenever we achieve an afro-African victory – such as the one in Mozambique – without help from the West – while the military enemies are defeated, their proxies, the intellectual ones emerge.
Worse yet, those who feared to intervene, cowards who sit by the wayside for fear of battle or by indifference, those who support the terrorists, usually team up with Rwanda’s hitherto enemies, pay some NGOs and opportunistic journalists to peddle fake news and instill resentment around them.
Since their defeat 30 years ago, genocide perpetrators have been hiding across southern Africa, and notably in Mozambique under false identities, telling stories of an alleged persecution once returned to Rwanda. They might attempt to poison the well and create a rift between our two peoples, as they have done elsewhere. We shouldn’t allow them, this time!
One recognizable fallacy that will emerge is that “in fact Rwanda is in Mozambique, not to assist the Mozambican people, but to ‘target Rwandan political opponents’ and ‘Kagame critics’. Or that Rwanda is in Mozambique to safeguard some obscure foreign interests”. These lies have worked elsewhere across the globe. Decades on end, foreign NGOs, journalists and populists have made a living out of it. We debunked them, with facts, but as French philosopher Albert Camus would say, “La bêtise insiste toujours…” (folly always insists…).
In reality, there are no political dissidents, nor Kagame critics in Mozambique. Or there shouldn’t be, by law. In its preamble, the OAU Convention Governing the Specific Aspects of Refugee Problems in Africa, is clear:
4o ANXIOUS TO MAKE a distinction between a refugee who seeks a peaceful and normal life and a person fleeing his country for the sole purpose of fomenting subversion from outside,
5o DETERMINED that the activities of such subversive elements should be discouraged […]
Art. 1(5) The provisions of this Convention shall not apply to any person who […]
- has committed a crime against peace, a war crime, or a crime against humanity […]
- has committed a serious non-political crime outside the country of refuge prior to his admission to that country as a refugee;
Art. 3(1) Every refugee […] shall abstain from any subversive activities against any Member State of the OAU – [now “AU”].
3(2) States undertake to prohibit refugees residing in their respective territories from attacking any State Member of the OAU, by any activity likely to cause tension between Member States, and in particular by use of arms, through the press, or by radio.”
There is indeed an important Rwandan community in Mozambique, living their lives and conducting business as regular citizens. Those have no incentives for the tags ‘critic’ or ‘opponent’, and do come often to Rwanda for vacation and family visits. In their midst however, hide killers, who ran away after committing mass atrocities in Rwanda and their offspring who continue to deny their parents’ deeds.
After their misdeeds in Rwanda, masterminds of the genocide against the Tutsi did not retire, their sponsors did not repent, and now, due to the enjoyed impunity in the West and across southern Africa, they have had time to infect their children and communities around them turning them against the current Rwandan government and its president Paul Kagame.
After a symbolic trial of 96 of them by the International Tribunal for Rwanda, the world seems amnesic of their deeds and their whereabouts. Everyone is now called a ‘Kagame critics’, ‘political opponent’, ‘democrat’. Rwandan citizens however, are unfazed by such sophistry – and so should Mozambicans.
To understand how it all started, we must first recall how Rwandans found themselves southern Africa: in Mozambique, Zambia, Malawi and Zimbabwe, etc. after 1994.
In the early 90s, when the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) launched a military struggle against the Rwandan government, its aim was to repatriate the Tutsi diaspora that was scattered across the world and mainly in countries neighboring Rwanda. The Tutsi had fled in the 60s, following pogroms that targeted their community, by radical wings of the Hutu majority, sponsored by the Belgian colonialists and the catholic church. Paul Kagame who led the RPF struggle had crossed to Uganda on his mother’s back, aged two at the time.
His father and other elite Rwandan men had been agitating for immediate, total and unconditional independence, which irritated the European colonialists and the church. In response, the two created a counter elite, made of Hutu extremists, whom they indoctrinated with anti-Tutsi sentiments. Their slogans were: “we do not need independence now, we need to be delivered from Tutsi”, in contrast with the elite’s pressing demands. The Belgians then supported the counter-revolution, and transferred power to its extremist wing, which celebrated by killing Tutsi, plundering their cattle and burning their houses to the ground. Tutsi families who lived near the borders managed to escape into exile, while those from central Rwanda were rounded up, massacred, other deported into ‘Tutsistans’; arid lands, awash with Tsetse flies, and left to die of disease and hunger. But some survived, both in the Tutsistans and in exile[1].
Parents who survived in exile, canvassed for thirty years for a peaceful return to their motherland, petitioning the United Nations, the African Union and regional leaders, in vain. The extremist governments in Rwanda consistently rejected them, ostensibly because “Rwanda was too small – like a glass that’s full”, and encouraged them to seek citizenship in their host countries. As destiny would have it, it was their children, the next generation, under the leadership of Paul Kagame and his comrades who successfully returned the Tutsi diaspora home. But the story doesn’t end there:
As is now extensively documented, the French government, through its infamous ‘Operation Turquoise’ created a buffer zone between the advancing Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) and the defeated genocide government – no doubt to preserve their hitherto allies and their mutual, dirty secrets – bearing in mind that the government that carried out the genocide was formed in the French embassy in Kigali[2].
The French buffer served to safely evacuate genocide masterminds into Europe, and resettle the bulk of killers in Eastern DRC, from where they would be trained, armed and funded to eventually return to retake Rwanda. This project failed miserably[3], and those groups have been gradually defeated in DRC, others going deeper into southern Africa and eventually settling in Mozambique.
However, in its “Nine pillar program”, the RPF had pledged to “Eliminate all causes of refugee status[4]”, accordingly, while Paul Kagame is credited for ending the genocide and for returning the Tutsi diaspora to Rwanda, less known, is that he also ended the Hutu exodus and returned its community home too[5]. Even killers and their children were returned.
By 31 December 2017, the United Nations High Commission for Refugees declared a “cessation clause”, ending the refugee status for Rwandans, and today, there are no preconditions for any Rwandan to return to his motherland, in fact, there are no preconditions for any citizen of the world to visit Rwanda: visas are delivered to all, upon arrival, unconditionally.
The experience of exile and of genocide, suffered while the world watched and did nothing, have taught Rwandans two things: To rely on home grown solutions and to be ready to come to the rescue of fellow Africans whenever they are called upon.
You see, during the Genocide against the Tutsi, safe heavens had been formed by UN and other foreign troops on the ground in Rwanda. Tutsi families, alongside foreigners had found refuge there, as no militiamen dared confront them. Seeing that, Western countries ordered their troops out, others sent fresh troops in, not to mount guard and protect everyone, but to egotistically evacuate their own citizens – and their pets, and throw the gates open for militiamen to come in and kill the abandoned Tutsi. This is vividly recorded in our psyche and guides every decision Rwandans make.
As a result, wherever they go, RDF create safe havens. In South Sudan for instance, “On July 8, 2016, intense fighting erupted in Juba, the capital. The July crisis was the latest iteration of a conflict that broke out in December 2013 between President Salva Kiir’s government and military, known as the Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA), and the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement/Army in Opposition (SPLM/A-IO), led by then-First Vice President Riek Machar.
The Rwandan troops deployed in South Sudan under a United Nations mandate, quickly set-up a safe perimeter in their base to protect – not Rwandans residing in the city of Juba – but all citizens, indiscriminately of their nationalities. East-Africans, other non-Africans and many Sudanese found refuge in this Rwandan safe haven.
Rwandan troops would never go into a conflict zone, evacuate Rwandans and abandon everyone else, they would never do that! They would rather die protecting them, for if they did abandon fellow human beings in danger, they wouldn’t find a place to return to, we would reject them, denounce them as aliens, for it is not African culture, and certainly not Rwandan post-genocide vision!
As a result, this atypical chutzpah which characterizes the post-genocide Rwandan army, police and government at large, has created enemies in the circles of those who benefit from African conflicts. Accordingly, of Mozambique, less will be spoken of the humanitarian actions by the two victorious armies, their courage and sense of duty. NGO and journalist conspiracies will spring up as though history was not made before our eyes. The conspiracies will be foreign made and foreign funded; and they have already started:
In this string of tweets a Mozambique-based NGO: ‘Centro Para Democracia e Desenvolvimento’ (CDD)’ (Center for Democracy and Development), through its director’s tweets, and their newsletter: “Club da Mozambique”, have been disparaging the Rwandan government for reasons that remain unknown to me. The man and his NGO, as you will see, had initially criticized Mozambican President Filipe Nyusi for inviting Rwandan troops to Mozambique. Their argument was that the population of Cabo Delgado had not been properly informed – they even preconized negotiations with the terrorist-islamists as the appropriate solution… At this point, they were totally within their right.
Later however, following positive results on the ground, they doubled down. Shockingly, the NGO claimed, as you will see here, that Rwandan troops are in Cabo Delgado to protect French interests, notably it’s gas plant. They criticized why Rwanda was not operating under SADC. 
Later, the NGO organized a workshop with a group of Rwandans living in Mozambique, after which they made a publication in their newsletter, alleging a “Paul Kagame’s government death squad was running ‘lists of 20 Rwandan refugees in Mozambique and other countries”. I read the article[6], no single evidence was adduced. No-thing! A group of people met, made up a list and accused a distant country. I invite you to read for yourselves here..
“This has always been the case. People who fled Rwanda after committing international crimes are presented to the world as activists and their story taken at face-value without holding them accountable and, like by magic, it is the Rwandan government that is placed in the box of the accused, to justify itself against baseless allegations from criminals, backed by opportunistic NGOs…” -Linda Melvern, Author of ‘Intent to Deceive: Denying the Genocide of the Tutsi’, 2020.
Melvern further reveals that since the accession of the RPF and Kagame to power, French intelligence (DGSE) has dispatched fake intelligence to services across the world to frame the narrative that RPF spies were out targeting dissidents overseas.
In reality, the allegation that Rwandans are in Mozambique to target ‘activists’ can only work on people who do not appreciate the distance between Cabo Delgado – where Rwandan troops are stationed and Maputo where the majority of Rwandans live; they are two worlds apart at 1,672 km, almost half the distance between Rwanda and Mozambique.
As for the argument that Rwandans are in Mozambique to defend foreign interests, it would be valid if there were areas of Mozambique that Rwandan troops neglected, where rebels still control. Evidently there is none, the Rwandan Army swept through the entire region of Cabo Delgado and cleansed it entirely of terrorism. The argument would perhaps hold water again, if multinationals were the first to return before IDPs, that too isn’t the case, the people of Cabo Delgado are home safe!
The people of Cabo Delgado will never been lied to. They have discovered Rwandan troops in combat, they are about to discover them in recovery and pacification. They are about to discover a gentle, gallant, disciplined army, courteous to civilians.
I know this because I live with them. In Rwanda we call them ‘Izamarere’. Our country has been at peace for 27 years now, but the Rwandan army and police have not rested. Today Rwanda is ranked as one of the safest countries on earth[7].
In addition, the Rwandan army and police have turned to development, treating citizens during annual ‘Army weeks’, building houses, health centers, classrooms, doing umuganda (cleaning day across the country), building roads, bridges and other infrastructure.
In peacekeeping missions too, where 7700 Rwandan Police Officers and 5000 Rwandan Army officers have been deployed in South Sudan (UNMISS), Central African Republic (MINUSCA), Darfur (UNAMID) Haiti (BINUH) and Abyei (UNSFA), once the area is pacified, they do the same.
However, killers have every reason to fear. With relations warming between Rwanda and Mozambique, genocide perpetrators and terrorists better either cross into South Africa, which still protects them, or relocate to Europe and America, where their acolytes are harbored with impunity, protect by both the complicit media and justice systems.
Of Rwandans who were murdered in Mozambique:
I lived in Maputo in 2013-2014. At the time there were many cases of kidnaping and ransom. In addition, there were weekly cases of killings within the Rwandan community in Mozambique, I briefly wrote about it at the time: Here
At the time, the perpetrators were members of the same community, and the crimes were caused by business disputes among them. There was even a weekend program on Mozambican television, where a detective-like presenter narrated a chilling account of these crimes, every week. In recent years however a new plot has emerged, infused by South African media, where the attacks are readily attributed to the Rwandan government. In reality this rejection of responsibility is obviously political, and hides failure of their own security services to catch the culprits and bring them to justice.
For instance, one victims of such attacks, Hitimana Vital member of the Rwandan Diaspora in Mozambique was shot eight bullets while entering his home, luckily he survived and immediately relocated to Rwanda, where he lives to date. How can Rwanda be accused of attacking alleged dissidents if those who survive run to Rwanda for safety?
In 2019, Late Baziga Louis (Head of Rwanda Diaspora in Mozambique) was shot dead in broad day light, in Matola, Maputo, Killers were not apprehended. He had survived an attempt on his life before. However, between the first attempt and his fateful day, he had travelled to Rwanda at several occasions and left unharmed. Same for Nkunzurwanda Florient, Matsiko Jean de Dieu and Iradukunda Tomson and Karemangingo Revocat, who were killed, but each time, their killers were never apprehended. In 2012, Turatsinze Theogene was killed by unknown assailants. As a rich businessman, it was suspected that his assailants were looking to kidnap him for ransom.
In South Africa, in 2020, a certain Nkurunziza was shot dead in Cape Town, while in 2021 one Nzamurambaho Abdunur was attacked by robbers and killed in his house in North Western Province. In 2021 Bihoyiki Issa Seif was also killed. For most of these cases, the corrupt South African police never caught the assailant, and simply pointed the finger on the Rwandan government, as though they had vanishing powers.
In principle, the Rwandan government would be within its rights to demand accountability from the Mozambican and South African governments. So to excuse their own failures to investigate and apprehend the suspects, they invent stories of unseen Rwandan killers, all remotely controlled by some omnipotent cell in Kigali.
In 2013, one Patrick Karegeya was also killed in a Johannesburg hotel room. Killers were apprehended this time. Of the three assailants, none was Rwandan, but the prosecution failed to establish their conviction, leading the Judge to dismiss the case and strike it from the court’s role. Instead prosecutors took to the media and claimed the suspects were sent by the Rwandan government. In our legal profession it is a known fact that whenever a magistrate becomes an activist on a case, it is because he failed to argue the case in open court, and choose the court of public opinion.
Misinformation on the deployment of Rwandan troops in Cabo Delgado, Mozambique was nipped in the bud, when Rwanda sent journalists to report the reality on the ground. Before August this year (2021), there were no Rwandan army or police in Mozambique. The mentioned killings of innocent Rwandans had been taking place in Maputo, 1,672 km, from Cabo Delgado.
But in Rwanda we are used to NGO who make up stories; let me tell you a story: American NGO ‘Human Rights Watch’ went to DRC forests and told genocide perpetrators on the run that they had the means to return them to power in Rwanda. They gave them phone numbers of two of their researchers, Lewis Mudge and Carina Tertsakian, both banned from Rwanda for reporting fake news. They told the genocidaires that if they were arrested while infiltrating Rwanda, they must call them.
Some were shot before they had a chance to and the Human Rights Watch telephone numbers were found on them. Others indeed called and publications were made in their names on HRW Website the next day.
The undoing of HRW in Rwanda came on July 2017. The NGO publish a list of random villagers from Rwanda’s northern province, allegedly killed by the Rwandan Army for petty crimes, such as stealing goats, etc. A few days later, seven persons reportedly executed in the HRW report, namely: Nsanzabera Tharcisse, Majyambere Alphonse, Nyirabavakure Daphrose, Karasankima Jovan, Habyalimana Elias, Nzamwitakuze Donati and Hanyurwabake Emmanuel, appeared a few days later in a press conference, very much alive. It was a MIRACLE! Others, as it turned out had died of natural causes and their relatives threatened to sue HRW for tarnishing their memory. We named the blunder: ‘The Walking Dead’, and never heard of HRW on Rwanda for years, until last month; Again, la bêtise insiste toujours. HRW published a story on their website, claiming that Rwandan authorities arbitrarily detained over a dozen LGBTI people ahead of a planned Commonwealth meeting. The problem? A “gay pride” had taken place in Kigali a week before with friendly and was covered by journalists and attended by government officials: here is the link.
And finally, for years, one Rene Mugenzi was a star in British media. He toured TVs and lending his name to ghost-writers (he can’t write to save his life) in all major British newspapers. An outspoken genocide denier, son of a genocide perpetrators, Mugenzi was presented as an activist and a ‘Kagame critic’..
An elder, doctor, diplomat and colonel, once told me: ‘if you see one anomaly on a human body body, know that there are many more..’ Mugenzi was not only a genocide denier, he was also a shameless thief who stole from man and God. One morning we learned that he had volunteered in a cathedral in Norwich, rural England, and spent months siphoning-off churchgoer tithes of around 222.000 pounds[8]. Ashamed, British media tried to bury the story, until a local newspaper fought them in court and publish it on the day he was sent to jail. A few days later, his father Joseph Mugenzi was arrested in the Netherlands for Genocide crimes.
I could go on and on, about the imposture and misinformation which is pervasive in Rwandan communities abroad, but I prefer to tell you a happy story: Rwanda is the only country in Africa that offers social welfare to all its poor, in three categories ranging from monthly cash stipends; employment in public works and SACCO subsidized loans, in addition to a free cow to each poor family and free, compulsory and universal education and health coverage.
Paul Kagame and the RPF are humane and magnanimous in fact. They pardoned genocide perpetrators, allowed them to go home, live side by side with genocide survivors. A presidential scholarship launched fifteen years ago allowing Rwandan children to study overseas did not discriminate. Children of genocide perpetrators, survivors, Tutsi and Hutu alike benefitted on equal footing.
In the national dialogue three years ago, Mukiza Willy Maurice, the second son of FDLR’s new leader Ntawunguka Pacifique, announced to the audience that he, his elder brother and younger sister all completed their undergraduate education in the University of Rwanda, then went on to pursue postgraduate degrees in China and in Ghana all under scholarships of the Rwandan government. Here is the link to his speech. Their father Ntawunguka had just been appointed by the FDLR, which means his children were benefiting from Rwandan scholarships long before.
A happy advent in ending, a baby named ‘Mahoro’ (Peace in Kinyarwanda) was born in Cabo Delgado. Freshly returned from an IDP camp, to her liberated home in Palma, 24 year old mother Zainabo Soumaile was expectant. So she was brought to the new medical facility set up by Rwandan army in Quitunda, where she was helped to deliver a bouncing baby girl of 3.2kg. When the Rwandan army doctors asked her which name she wanted to give to her child, she asked: ‘How do you say peace in your language?’. ‘Mahoro’ they answered. ‘That’s her name: Mahoro’, she finally decided…. Full story here
[1] See: Mugesera A: Imibereho y’abatutsi [guhera 1959 – 1994]. (The livelihood of Tutsi since 1959-1994) (2004): https://bit.ly/3BDsMwR, Kimonyo J: Transforming Rwanda […] (2019) https://amzn.to/3BG5N4l
[2] See: “Rapport Duclert”: A French Commission to study the Role of France in the genocide against the Tutsi, March 2021: https://www.vie-publique.fr/sites/default/files/rapport/pdf/279186.pdf
[3] See: https://www.newtimes.co.rw/opinions/double-genocide-conspiracy-drc
[4] See: Rwandan Patriotic Front, Nine Point Program: https://rpfinkotanyi.rw/index.php?id=23
[5]See: Jihan ElTahri, “L’Afrique en Morceaux” (2000) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OD4HhFn3F-M
[6] https://bit.ly/3DDATKD
[7] Ranked ninth safest destinations on earth by tourist agencies: https://www.safaribookings.com/blog/10-safest-places-to-visit-in-africa