Kagame is taking us down a road we will one day regret

I am a Tutsi and I love a lot of close family members in the genocide. But Kagame is slowly moving Rwanda and our region toward another mass slaughter and violence. There is a lot of underlying resentment and bitterness amongst the Hutu people in the country. It makes me sad and depressed. Because Kagame doesn’t understand that economic development means nothing if people are not allowed to reconcile and health and face the truth of their history.
For example, as a member of a Tutsi family descended from the royal clan, I know that for 300 years my community repressed other Tutsi but more severly repressed and dehumanized Hutu. But Kagame wants to play with history and say its the Belgian who taught us this. The majority Hutu and all the people of the region knows this to be a lie, and it causes them to further hate Tutsi, because Kagame is dehumanizing our past by denying the suffering of 300 years right in the face of everything who knows he is doing it.
Another example, and this is what these authors who brilliantly covered. the Hutu elite just like the Tutsi royal elite care little to nothing about the people or its people. pre-colonial Tutsi feudalism was just like post-colonial Hutu elite feudalism. As a Tutsi living in the 80’s I saw how the Hutu in the South suffered while, my family just suffered worse, but we all suffered by the dictatorial rule of the akazu Hutu extremist clan which surrounded and controlled Habyarimana. These exploited history to make the Hutu fear us Tutsi, but the history they exploited was a real history that is why it was so easy to exploit. And if it was not for the Hutu manifesto, we all would be living in a Tutsi kingdom in which honestly only my family and the royal clan families would of prospered..just like the Hutu akazu regime. So they used this history and remember what happened in Burundi, hundreds of thousands of Hutu were killed in the 30 year rule by the Tutsi ran military. So the majority Hutu people had a reasonable fear that was stroked by the political rhetoric of the akazu regime to stay in power. We are all victims.
But Kagame wants to deny this dynamic and pain ony Tutsi as victims, dehumanizing the history, legitimate fears, and well humanity of Hutu people by making it seem like it was ony us who suffered.
He has done this best concerning the genocide. We all in Rwanda know that as much Hutu if not more Hutu were killed than Tutsi. Yes, the Hutu akazu regime tried to annihliate my community, but the narrative of our suffer included equally the suffering of Hutu and Twa people from before the genocide, during the genocide, and after when the RPF killed hundreds of thousands. We are all victims every single Rwandan, but that is not the narrative, the RPF does not recognize the victimization of the people that make up 90 percent of our country, the RPF does not acknowledge how our army played a role in the victimization and death of millions of human beings of Africans of neighbors right acress the border in Congo.
How can we go on like this without paying for it. How long can we go on without acting like the lives of millions of Hutu and Congolese are as valuable as the life of hundreds of thousands of Tutsi, were not the majority of them innocent and victims just as we were. As a group we Tutsi make up so small a community in a sea of Hutu and Congolese and yet we don’t recognize our role, we don’t lament the lives of Hutu and Congolese, we simply blame the Belgian and the Hutu for the deaths of Tutsi, Hutu, and Congolese, but as a state we only lament the deaths of Tutsi.
Kagame has lost all moral compass and fails to understand that common people are not so common, they know history, they can count, they see what the Tutsi political elite has done and what it refusing to do.
If Kagame instituted a peace and reconciliation program, if he sacred memorials were not to only Tutsi but to the hundreds of thousands of Hutu who were also killed, if he acknowledged that what is at fault is our history, than Rwandans would of been moving forward, but as smart as he is economically, he has made a tragic choice to continue to see our nation and its history as a Tutsi and slanting it in a manner in which Tutsi life is more valuable. That is why he can’t open up the political culture, but what he doesn’t realize, man does not live off of bread along. Rwanda is not Singapore or China, the Chinese Communist and the Chinese people are majority the same people, Singapore history is not full of the vicious horrors like what happened to Tutsi, Hutu, and Congolese in the 90’s.
For Kagame to believe that economic development will make this go away is very naive and lacking in vision. Eventually when the Hutu acquire any kind of economic or political power the issues of the 90’s and Congo will come back up and the lack of recognition of our true history and the devaluation of Hutu lives and fears in the political narrative which has made them look like crazy irrational African savages will come up.
What are we going to do than. Tutsi will all revert back to fear and anxiety, as we are now, because we are indirectly being told only we were victims, so we will fear that Hutu will unleash their savagery. One sides lack of being valued will percipitate the others anxiety and will spiral to yet another vicious civil war for control of the political narrative.
And on the Hutu side it will not be people like Victoire Ingabire, who though I completely disagree with her, only exist as a dialectal result of Kagame’s denying Hutu victimization in our narrative, it will not be people like her who will be in the political led amongst the Hutu,it will be real Hutu extremist, who will exploit the mess that Kagame is greating. I pray that we as Rwandans realize we need a third way. I don’t know what it is, but Kagame is taking us down a road we will one day regret.

Joseph

4 COMMENTS

  1. This is a wonderful piece of article. You’ve just managed to convert into clear, plain words what some of us common people feel without being able to express it, the kind of message smart people convey in a convoluted language inaccessible to the majority of us.

    Well done Joseph

  2. I think you are right hutu extremists will exploit the mess that Kagame is creating….the anger that hutu extremists unleashed on tutsi was the result of the 300 years of unjust rule by tutsi rulers of that time!Kagame is not a visionary leader…he only knows how to revenge maliciously against the hutu community and this is not good for the future of the tutsi community!The question is how many tutsis who can see this ?

  3. Well done Joseph. You are really visionary man.
    Can you try also to convince some of our people to do so.
    God bless you.

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