“You wish or expect me to stay beyond 2017. However, at a personal level, I need you to consider two things: How do I stay? What you are asking me to do can lead me to stay as president but at the cost of destroying the political capital I have accumulated over the years… a political capital that is based on the fact that I am a person of my word. Secondly, if I stay, I will have behaved in a manner that most people have come to expect of leaders in Africa.”
“People say that I should stay because there is no one to replace me. But if in all these years I have been unable to mentor a successor or successors that should be the reason I should not continue as president. It means that I have not created capacity for a post-me Rwanda. I see this as a personal failure.” President Paul Kagame, February 8, 2012.
Source: Inside Kagame’s plan to retire
