By David Himbara
I have lived under General Paul Kagame’s quarantine for a decade since 2010 when I fled Rwanda to South Africa. The year 2010 was when hell broke loose in Rwanda. A year of presidential elections which Kagame won by 95%, many Rwandans were jailed, others simply disappeared, fled, or died mysteriously. Among those who died in 2010 were opposition leader, André Kagwa Rwisereka, vice-chairman of the Democratic Green Party of Rwanda. He was found murdered and partially beheaded near a wetland in Butare on July 14, 2010. In South Africa where I fled, I was quarantined in my house, especially after I was almost kidnapped to Rwanda in 2012. On the New Year’s Day of 2014, the exiled former Rwandan intelligence, Patrick Karegeya, was murdered in Johannesburg, which led me to flee to Canada. Once there I was quarantined once again – I couldn’t travel least of all to Africa. Fast forward to 2020. Kagame who is a club member of billionaires who fly the Gulfstream G650ER jet – including Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, Larry Ellison, co-founder and chief executive of Oracle Corporation, and Laurene Powell Jobs, the widow of Steve Jobs, Apple’s cofounder – is quarantined. Coronavirus has trapped Kagame in Rwanda. As the saying goes, God works in mysterious ways.