By David Himbara
Rwanda head of state Paul Kagame is back in Rwanda. He took part in the Car Free Day on June 17, 2018, in Kigali, Rwanda capital. This is the day that vehicles are not allowed onto the streets. The residents of the city are encouraged to walk and exercise.
Kigali is said to be the safest in the world. Also, Rwanda is said to have elected Kagame with 99% of the vote in 2017. And yet Kagame was surrounded by a military battalion during the Car Free Day. Here is a man who is terrified of the very people whom he claims love him.
Autocrats are doomed to paranoia. Kagame is no exception. Of dictators, Churchill famously stated:
”You see these dictators on their pedestals, surrounded by the bayonets of their soldiers and the truncheons of their police … yet in their hearts there is unspoken fear. They are afraid of words and thoughts: words spoken abroad, thoughts stirring at home — all the more powerful because forbidden — terrify them. A little mouse of thought appears in the room, and even the mightiest potentates are thrown into panic.”
