Black Agenda Report
Black Agenda Report
News, commentary and analysis from the black left.

  • Home
  • Africa
  • African America
  • Education
  • Environment
  • International
  • Media and Culture
  • Political Economy
  • Radio
  • US Politics
  • War and Empire
  • omnibus

Rwanda: Kagame “Elected” Dictator-for-Life
Theogene Rudasingwa
23 Aug 2017
Rwanda: Kagame “Elected” Dictator-for-Life
Rwanda: Kagame “Elected” Dictator-for-Life

Rwanda: Kagame “Elected” Dictator-for-Life

by Dr. Theogene Rudasingwa

This article previously appeared in Pambazuka News.

“Kagame’s regime has acquired the shameful role previously played by dictators like President Mobutu of former Zaire during the Cold War.”

On 4 August 2017 President Paul Kagame had himself “elected” a life-president through the so-called elections in which he scored a perfect vote of 99%, earning himself a permanent place alongside Joseph Stalin, Saddam Hussein, Kim Jong Un and many other dictators, dead or alive. The costly and sham elections were preceded by the so-called referendum to change the constitution, allowing him to be president until 2034.

The results of the just concluded costly electoral exercise have not come as a surprise to Paul Kagame, Rwandans and other interested observers of Rwandan politics. On 14 July 2017, President Kagame publicly declared that everyone knows the outcome of the elections. Nevertheless, he imposed useless elections that cost impoverished Rwandan taxpayers five billion Rwanda Francs.

To justify his one-man-as-the-sole-hero status of contemporary Rwanda, he has amassed as many false arguments as his swelling numbers of victims: he is the Pan-Africanist who stopped Tutsi genocide, empowered women, rolled back malaria and HIV/AIDS, built hotels and conference centers, sent peacekeepers to represent American interests in Africa’s hot spots, became a shining example of Africa-led development model, and now, as evidenced by his perfect vote, built a perfect democracy in Rwanda. 

“The United States and the United Kingdom have amplified Kagame’s selective amnesia, deadly outlook, and actions.”

Kagame has conveniently forgotten that the civil wars of 1959 and 1990s, and the mass atrocities that followed them, were never about economic development but rather the exclusion of whole ethnic groups from power structures of the day. His benefactors and cheerleaders, chiefly the United States and the United Kingdom, have out of their seemingly perpetual guilt and geo-strategic selfishness amplified Kagame’s selective amnesia, deadly outlook, and actions. Emboldened by having powerful allies, Kagame rules with reckless intransigence and impunity.

There are several reasons why Paul Kagame seeks to remain in power indefinitely. One of them is to prevent accountability for the crimes that he and those under his command have committed against Rwandan Hutu, including war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide. The silence and complicity of the international community reinforces Paul Kagame to rule with impunity.  Coupled with pervasive fear that stems from rule by cliques, international indifference, as well as interference, these have been the key factors in Rwanda’s cyclical and sectarian bloodshed. Regime changes in Rwanda, often citing legitimate grievances among Rwandans, and in recent history backed by foreign powers, have never redressed the structures of power from Rwanda’s founding as a nation until now.

“The silence and complicity of the international community reinforces Paul Kagame to rule with impunity.”

Nor have Rwanda’s neighbors been spared the destabilizing effects of spillovers from its internal crises. Paul Kagame’s regime has now become the principal destabilizing force in the Great Lakes region of Africa, notably the Democratic Republic of Congo and Burundi.  Acting on its own appetite for natural resources from neighboring countries, and championing foreign commercial and geostrategic interests, Kagame’s RPF/DMI regime has acquired the shameful role previously played by dictators like President Mobutu of former Zaire during the Cold War.

At each turning point, as Rwanda witnessed cataclysmic upheaval characterized by extensive death and destruction, the international community abandoned defenseless people at the hands of violent cliques.

Two political organizations -- MRND (Hutu clique) and RPF (Tutsi clique) that succeeded it in 1994 -- have inflicted unparalleled damage to Rwandan society in its centuries-old history as a nation.  In 1994, as the MRND establishment unleashed its security forces and militia against Tutsi in the fastest genocide ever recorded in human history, the international community abandoned Rwandans.  Before, and in the aftermath of the Tutsi genocide, the new RPF establishment in power, through the notorious Directorate of Military Intelligence (DMI) and Tutsi officers directly under Paul Kagame’s command descended on the Hutu population in Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo, executing with ruthless efficiency what is now a well-documented and yet unrecognized genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity. The International community abandoned Rwandans by deliberately shielding and failing to bring Kagame’s RPF/DMI regime to account for these atrocities.

The international community has once again abandoned Rwandans. The overt and covert support that Kagame’s regime receives from the United States and United Kingdom, coupled with failures of the past, has led the majority of Rwandans to lose trust in the international community as a reliable partner in Rwanda’s social, economic and political development.

“Kagame’s life presidency imperils Rwanda, the Great Lakes region, Africa and the international community.”

The road to freedom, fundamental human rights, justice, democracy and the rule of law is long and particularly a dangerous one in Rwanda.  Kagame’s life presidency imperils Rwanda, the Great Lakes region, Africa and the international community.

There is no quick and cheap fix for tyranny. Dreadful as this reality is, it becomes crystal clear, urgent, and important, for Rwandans to seek Rwandan solutions for Rwandan problems in a self-reliant manner.  The long term consequences of Kagame’s role as Africa’s leading destabilizer, looter, war-maker, and tyrant can be ignored by his foreign supporters for some time but are nevertheless grave and real.

For now, freedom and peace may seem distant dreams for the majority of Rwandans. Evidently, the price of uprooting the evil and entrenched roots of tyranny in Rwanda is likely to be high, and a product of united action to be executed in the short, medium and long term.

Dr. Theogene Rudasingwa is from the Tutsi ethnic group and served in various capacities as the Secretary General of the Rwandese Patriotic Front (1993-1996), Rwanda’s Ambassador to the United States (1996-1999) and President Paul Kagame’s Chief of Staff (2000-2004). In 2011 President Paul Kagame tried him in absentia, and sentenced him to 24 years in jail for criticizing the regime’s state of governance. He lives in exile in the United States.

 

 

Rwanda

Do you need and appreciate Black Agenda Report articles. Please click on the DONATE icon, and help us out, if you can.


Related Stories

Ann Garrison, BAR Contributing Editor
Aggressors Unnamed in Rwanda-DRC “Peace Agreement”
02 July 2025
Rwandan and M23 forces are the aggressors in DRC. They are integrated under Rwandan command.
Maurice Carney
Donald Trump’s Congo Venture: A Scramble for Minerals Under the Guise of Peace
02 July 2025
Trump’s ‘peace deal’ between Rwanda and the DRC is a corporate resource grab disguised as diplomacy, rewarding Rwandan war crimes while U.S.
Ann Garrison, BAR Contributing Editor
Rwanda: Victoire Ingabire Must Not Suffer the Fate of Kizito Mihigo
25 June 2025
Kizito Mihigo and Victoire Ingabire both challenged Rwanda's fo
Black Alliance for Peace US Out of Africa Network
AFRICOM Watch Bulletin #56
04 June 2025
The Congo remains ground zero for Africa’s resource wars, where Rwanda and Uganda act as looters for the West. While international scrutiny has
Ann Garrison, BAR Contributing Editor
Propaganda Watch: Kagame Is Not Traoré
21 May 2025
A recurring social media trope casts Rwandan President Paul Kagame as
Peter and Victoire
Ann Garrison, BAR Contributing Editor
The Victoire Ingabire Umuhoza Democracy and Peace Prize, 2025
02 April 2025
This year’s Victoire Prize went to ICTR lawyers David Jacobs an
African Court of Human and Peoples Rights
Ann Garrison, BAR Contributing Editor
Judicial Sovereignty for Congo and Africa
26 March 2025
Western courts have imposed imperial justice on Africa, but African courts promise judicial sovereignty.
Ann Garrison, BAR Contributing Editor
Commemorate Genocide against the People of DR Congo
05 March 2025
The Congolese Action Youth Platform (CAYP) is campa
Ann Garrison, BAR Contributing Editor
Congo Activists to NBA: Black Lives Matter in DRC, Cut Ties with Rwanda
19 February 2025
As Rwandan troops tightened their grip on the capitals of DRC’s Kivu Provinces, activists protested the National Basketball Association’s close
Black Alliance for Peace Africa Team
U.S.-led Imperialism Is Directly Responsible for Turmoil in the Democratic Republic of Congo
19 February 2025
Western nations are fueling the atrocities Rwanda is inflicting on the Democratic Republic of Congo.

More Stories


  • Margaret Kimberley, BAR Executive Editor and Senior Columnist
    The Necessity of Birthright Citizenship for Black People
    02 Jul 2025
    Black citizenship was non-existent for the first 200 years that enslaved and free people were present in what became the United States. Even long-standing legal victories are tenuous, and now…
  • Editors, The Black Agenda Review
    ESSAY: Black Refugees Unwelcomed! Gaou Guinou Balewa, 1973
    02 Jul 2025
    “Haitian refugees and political exiles find themselves being refused the hospitality granted others.”
  • Ann Garrison, BAR Contributing Editor
    Aggressors Unnamed in Rwanda-DRC “Peace Agreement”
    02 Jul 2025
    Rwandan and M23 forces are the aggressors in the DRC. They are integrated under Rwandan command.
  • Jon Jeter
    Mamdani’s Train is Running But Blacks Wonder if There is Space for Them
    02 Jul 2025
    Zohran Mamdani’s democratic socialist vision won NYC’s primary but lost Black voters to scandal-plagued Cuomo by 20 points, exposing the left’s racial blind spot even as Wall Street prepares to spend…
  • Maurice Carney
    Donald Trump’s Congo Venture: A Scramble for Minerals Under the Guise of Peace
    02 Jul 2025
    Trump’s ‘peace deal’ between Rwanda and the DRC is a corporate resource grab disguised as diplomacy, rewarding Rwandan war crimes while U.S. investors stake claims to Congo’s coltan mines.
  • Load More
Subscribe
connect with us
about us
contact us