Category: Opinion

No nation state is built on sentiments and putting things out of context. Time and space factors so are objective and subjective ones interplay to bear fruits.

Before one pours sentiments out and attack innocent Rwandans on the streets of Belgium because some M23 are fighting in DRC, there is need to think twice.

Suffice it to say that most people in DRC and Rwanda are not aware of what is going on in DRC.

The ordinary folk apart, even the educated class may not give convincing food for thought on what is going on. It has been so dramatic an about turn that most people in Rwanda are wondering what is going on.

When Mobutu got overthrown, president Museveni in his speech on the inauguration of the late president Desire Kabila said that at last the hole that had separated the Atlantic Ocean and the Indian Ocean was sealed.

This implied that the regime of Mobutu with reactionary tendencies was over and the people of East Africa and central Afria/west Africa were going to interact. That the obstacle had at last been removed. Alas! It was not going to be.

What is transpiring in DRC now has objective and subjective conditions within the time frame that precipitated it. One thing sums it all-fallacious frameworks on which things have been built.

King Leopold of Belgium in a dramatic move declared Congo (DRC) his private property.

The Congo Free State as found in wikipedia the free encyclopedia,was a corporate state privately controlled by Leopold II, King of the Belgians. That It covered the present DRC.

Leopold the II’s administration is said to have been infamous because of brutality.

Indeed Belgian colonialsm in Africa is known to have been brutal.

Kiboko which has a taint in Rwandan history was a Belgian colonial tool which partly soured relations among Rwandans.

A British Consul Roger Casement is said to have engineered the arrest and punishment of Whites who got involved in cold-blooded killings during a rubber-collecting expedition in 1903, including one Belgian national for causing the shooting of at least 122 Congolese natives.

Roger Casement’s famous 1904 report estimated ten million people who died. According to him, indiscriminate “war”, starvation, reduction of births and tropical diseases caused the country’s depopulation.

From 1960 to 1965 Congo (DRC) is said to have been in a very unstable state. That regional tribal leaders held far more power than the central government.

1960 parliamentary elections saw Patrice Lumumba, the nationalist emerge as prime minister. Joseph kasavubu, who was pro-west, became president.

On 5 July 1960 Congolese soldiers mutinied against their European officers. On 11 July 1960 , Katanga, seceded under Moise Tshombe. The United Nations is said to have sent 20,000 peacekeepers to protect Europeans in the country and restore order.

Western paramilitaries and mercenaries, often hired by mining companies to protect their interests, are also said to have been sent. Kasai is also said to have announced its independence on 8 August 1960.

In the turn of events, Lumumba the nationalist got assassinated. Mobutu was propped up by the west and executed the task for them given the cold war dynamics.

One Simba Rebellion of 1964-1965 had half the country taken by the rebels. Mercenaries from Europe, US and Belgium in particular got called in by the then Congo government which saw the rebellion defeated.

When the cold war ended, pressure from within and from without got exerted on Mobutu. Domestic protests and criticism of his human rights record by the international community increased in late 1989 and early 1990.

The economy was not in good shape coupled with corruption in government and massive embezzlement of government funds for self aggrandizement.

As afore realized, DRC the nation state has been to an extent a fallacy.

This is explained by the fact that the central government in succession has been lacking in capacity to pull the country together as explained by traditional means of self defence.

Individual communities in their traditional set up all along devise means to defend themselves because of lack of security system operating from the centre.

Across time what is now DRC has been the making of external factors given world dynamics.

First the scramble for Africa(Colonialism), the cold war which saw the suppression of nationalism which would have brought another Nyerere on the scene in DRC and now the present government which was born out of the accident of history.

It is an open secret that Rwanda by 1996 was going to witness a locust type of invasion.

The genocide forces in an attempt to regain power in Rwanda, just like any other defeated system but with a distinguishing philosophy of wanting to come back and finish off even what was remaining, had prepared itself. They got defeated but their remnants remain in form of FDLR in DRC.

Camps were kept near the border of fled mother country contrary to international law which requires that refugees be taken far from the mother country borders.

This gets done for both the security of the refugees and the mother country. To make matters worse camps became militarized.

When the H hour dawned for the Genocide forces to attack, Rwandan forces in legitimate self defence along side Congolese who were against Mobutu, made a preemptive attack and thwarted the imminent attack on Rwanda.

The beginning of the end of Mobutu regime started. Indeed within seven moths he was no more.

The present government was born of outside intervention without internal revolutionary force capable of taking advantage of the situation. Without a Patriotic national army across the entire territory of DRC, it is hard to avoid civil strife.

People will always devise means of self defence. Rwanda (Rwandans) is not responsible for this. It is DRC internal dynamics mainly responsible.

Congolese in Brussels or elsewhere should blame themselves and their government not the government of Rwanda or Rwandans.

The international community,the regional groupings including SADC need to grasp the objective and subjective realities in DRC, contextualize and then arrive at sustainable solutions.

Conventional wisdom would require of me to not comment on an ongoing court case in which the radio station I am the proud owner of stands accused, alongside others, of copyright infringement;

I will however, do otherwise and share with the public a few thoughts I deem necessary to consider while making up your own mind on the issue at hand.

My thoughts go more towards contributing to what has now become a public debate, in hopes of shedding some light on the current state of our creative industry.

There was a time in this country when the only way to listen to the likes of Cecile Kayirebwa was on to tune in to the Short Waves dial of Radio Muhabura.

For most people living in Rwanda prior to the genocide, the name rang familiar but the work remained virtually unknown and banned from the airwaves, alongside others living in exile.

It was not until the post-genocide renaissance era that most people became privy to her body of work, thanks to ORINFOR; they deserve full credit for rehabilitate many of our previously shunned musical icons.

A new momentum was to be created for our local creative industry, further down the road, by the advent of private radio broadcasting. New talents saw in this development an appropriate venue to showcase their work and make a name for themselves; unfortunately, they were only but a few.

Local content available on the market at that time hardly reached 20% of their airtime of local radios; the biggest chunk went to regional acts from East Africa who greatly benefitted from this new market.

Yet everyone agreed that the time had come for local artists to shine; that’s when some of us, media owners, decided to go a step further by producing local content through talented youths such as KGB, Miss Jojo, Rafiki, Kitoko, and the list goes on…

young would-be producers saw the potential, grabbed the baton and made a run for it… greatly contributing to what is today a reason for us all to celebrate: quasi-total local content on the airwaves!!!

This was by all accounts a win-win situation for both local media and local talents alike; local media gained in local content while artists received extensive free promotion they could have never dreamed of getting otherwise.

Some would argue that the move from local media was anything but selfless; up until that time, the lack of local content had not made local media outlets any less popular, quite the contrary! But the industry, already practically non-existent, would have suffered from it a great deal.

The reality is that Rwandan media was committed to promote the local creative minds and become a proactive stakeholder; nothing sophisticated, just plain and simple promotional airplay at this stage of the game!

Artists need exposure, promotion and recognition for their work, no argument there. And indeed they got, free of charge, courtesy of local radio stations.

The word was out, the buzz created; going above and beyond the call of duty, local media gave them the full logistical support of production and broadcasting of adverts promoting their concerts and performance.

Artists were hosted in the most popular shows and given the star treatment they deserved.

Strong of their newfound status, they soon became hot commodities for the most powerful brands on the market like the telecoms and the breweries; their music is now used for ring tones, advertisement and a multitude of other opportunities, creating sources of revenue never before earned in the local music scene.

This, I argue, would have never happened without the media. This is equally true for the new talents as it is for local veteran artists such as Rugamba Cyprien, Sentore, Florida Uwera, Imitali & Muyango, Kabalira, Rujindiri and many others including Kayirebwa, who ran the risk of being forgotten by the younger generations.

Paying tribute to them by playing their music has been our small contribution in keeping their musical legacies alive.

Which now brings me to the issue of the law on copyright and intellectual property; the move was unprecedented and much needed, and we welcomed it with open arms.

It is of course a first step towards the future refinement of show business in Rwanda. At this first stage, it serves in the fight against piracy.

But when it comes to royalties for public sharing of artistic material, it becomes another ballgame.

In the “developed” world, there’s an all-inclusive system that permits all stakeholders to be part of the process.

You have organizations representing the intellectual property owners, you have the media and associates, and you have distributors and more … a well-oiled machine tried, tested and true.

It is against such a backdrop that agreements can be made about fees, royalties, editing, publishing, distribution, and so on… everyone needs to be accounted for every step of the way.

Record companies have multiple agreements with multiple actors worldwide; in other words it is not just about having a law protecting intellectual properties, it is about how one can use it to build a system that will generate trade and thus revenue for all stakeholders.

The bigger picture is in fact a HUMONGOUS one! Imagine any public space that uses music, image … they all need to be accounted for: discos, barbershops, restaurants, hotels, public transport, events, Internet … the list is endless.

Back to our case; most artists working with the media do appreciate the support of free advertisement for their work and actually wish they could be more in the media.

According to Igihe.com, Kayirebwa’s lawyer claimed that his client has undergone financial loss as a result of what she calls the unauthorized use of her music, negatively impacting her record sales.

Such defamation towards those who did nothing but help her make a name for herself can only be matched with outrage and dismay.

Who amongst us hasn’t seen the video clips of many of her greatest songs on Rwanda Television over the years; well, I’ll have you know that those were made free of charge by the same broadcaster she now seeks ‘reparations’ from the most! One can only assume that she has been ill-advised.

When she needed help promoting her performances and music, she knew exactly how to reach us; should she have wanted to stop our fruitful collaboration, she could have used the same channels of communication.

Instead she has chosen the rocky road of confrontation and litigation. Yet we are not bitter, we just want to be better.

The media helped and contributed in the further buildup of her carrier, but we didn’t make her; there will therefore be no attempts to break her!

Unfortunately, her absence from the airwaves will be a great loss to her, her musical legacy, and the throngs of fans she has acquired over the years thanks to her ‘friends’ in the media.

I truly wish it to be otherwise.

Critics of Rwanda’s President Paul Kagame say that he foments the war in Eastern Congo and suppresses opposition parties at home. These views prosper in the absence of facts.

The government of Rwanda has been accused of cracking down on so-called opposition newspapers.

On April 13, 2010, the government issued six-month suspensions to two Kinyarwanda-language newspapers, Umuvugizi and Umuseso, for publishing language such as the following:

“He who refuses a peaceful political revolution makes a bloody revolution.” (Umuseso)

These words reflected reality on Feb. 19 and March 4 of that year, when terrorists threw grenades into public establishments in Kigali and killed innocent civilians.

Rwanda knows a lot about freedom of speech and the role of the press. After all, the Hutu Power press helped ignite the 1994 genocide.

Today, Rwanda is a different place: growth has averaged almost 8 percent over the last decade, wages have increased by 30% in the key export sectors, street crime is almost unknown and corruption measures among the lowest in Africa.

Two weeks ago, Rwanda was named the third most competitive economy in all of Africa, after South Africa and Mauritius.

The secret to Rwanda’s success is that Kagame has built modern institutions on traditional values. In the aftermath of the genocide, modern courts were incapable of handling the hundreds of thousands of perpetrators.

International legal advisers were flummoxed. Kagame introduced the traditional Gacaca system to give the perpetrators of the genocide the opportunity to tell the truth and ask the community for forgiveness.

The National University of Rwanda found that 95% of the survivors and even 80% of the detainees viewed the system as more efficient than any other form of justice.

Kagame’s team rewrote the constitution such that his party could not have more than 50% of the seats in parliament. Though Kagame is from one ethnic group, his prime minister and 70% of his cabinet are from the other.

A world-leading 56% of parliament is now women. The country is secure and the World Bank’s Doing Business report recognized Rwanda as the greatest reforming nation in the world.

According to Gallup, 95% of Rwandans are confident in their national government.

77% of Rwandans are satisfied with their freedom of expression, belief, association and personal autonomy, and the same percentage considers their local area to be a good place for ethnic and racial minorities.

Confidence in the military and the judiciary is high, with approval ratings of 98% and 84%, respectively. And 86% of Rwandans believe the electoral process is fair and honest.

Rwanda now invests in biotech, software and communications. Young, highly qualified members of the Rwandan Diaspora are returning in droves; remittances from the same, knowledgeable Diaspora communities in northern Europe, the United Kingdom and the United States defy gravity and may be as much as US$1 billion per year.

Global leaders like Nestlé and Marriott are making huge investments in human capacity, plant and equipment.

This isn’t an authoritarian regime; it is just a poor, confident nation that defies conventional Western categories, and has found its own voice.

The Author is Co-Founder of the SEVEN Fund, a philanthropic foundation in Cambridge, Mass.

Rwandans have of late been pervasively brutalized, tortured, maimed and killed, in Goma and Brussels by Congolese security personnel alongside proxies.

I avail this opportunity to issue a query and a recommendation to Rwanda and D R Congo governments.

Has the government of Rwanda circumstanced and duly documented said cases of Rwandan nationals brutalized, tortured, even killed, by the Congolese government?

Has President Paul Kagame not reckoned he must ensure due legal action is stepped up in consistence with his constitutional obligation to protect the Rwandan people?

Are we to reckon President Kagame is presumably taking time to plan action? Such action must be taken in earnest in conformity with the laws and norms governing international relations.

Since said grave matter has come to the attention of the public, national and international thanks to IGIHE, Rwanda Government has the inescapable onus to inform the public of their handling of this issue.

This is not a matter to be left in the hands of journalists and police alone. Nay! This is an international affair of great significance, and it must be treated as such.

UNO induced pretenses of open enmity and unwarranted threats being voiced out loud of late, urbi et orbi, by top executives of the D R C government, namely Ministers Lambert Mende Omalanga and Raymond Tshibanda, have produced their first Rwandan casualties and fatalities.

It is no secret that Africans and their governments are often irresponsible, careless and to a great extent ignorant of the meaning, honor, dignity, value, obligations and rights of their fellow citizens at home and abroad.

African countries’ governments are generally known to care little, or not at all, about their constitutional obligations vis-a-vis nationals of their country.

Does the D R C government have any earthly reason to stick to the deadly anti-constitutional behavior of lynching and murdering Rwandans and Congolese Banyargwanda en masse?

Does President Joseph Kabila recollect that the Congolese government orchestrated genocidal killings of Congolese Hutu and Tutsi folks in D R C?

Joseph Kabila was not yet born when the first round of genocidal killings of Congolese Hutu populations was executed by the Congolese military in the North Kivu province:

1965. Records we have say Joseph Kabila was born in 1972, but the institutional person of the President of the Republic of the Congo did not wait for the birth of Joseph Kabila to exist.

The second such killings of Congolese Hutu occurred between March and September 1993. Why a genocide of Congolese Hutu at this stage?

Precisely because they had just won a legal battle in Kinshasa against a coalition of Nande, Nyanga, Hunde and Tembo representatives led by a certain Mr. Kaseso denying Hutu representatives the right to attend the 1991-1992 Congolese national conference canvasing for democracy, on allegations that they are not Congolese but rather Rwandan nationals.

The only solution left was to kill Hutu communities in Walikale, Masisi and Rutshuru to ensure they do not turn up at the electoral rendez-vous at ballot boxes when elections came.

Tutsi folks were in principle left alone in 1993, for their representatives were denied attendance in the 1991-1992 Kinshasa Congolese national conference, by the same coalition, on claims that they were not Congolese citizens, and they did not put a fight.

Saying they were left alone is of course to a great extent untrue, for you cannot really distinguish a Hutu from a Tutsi, when you embark on a mass killing of Congolese Banyarwanda in Walkale, Masisi and Rutshuru.

In 1993, the governor and vice governor of the North kivu province were respectively Nande and Nyanga tribesmen: Kalumbo and Bamwisho. They used government powers entrusted upon them to run said killings generally known as ‘genocide of hutu’.

Congolese Tutsi were however singled out to be genocidally murdered sporadically between 1994 and 1996; between 1998 and 2002.

Congolese Ministers Didier Mumengi and Yerodia Ndombassi are on record for issuing official statements relayed by media in 1998 to the effect that “D R C must be cleansed of the Tutsi vermin”: clear Congolese government instructions reminiscent of the 1994 Rwanda RTLM radio instructions to kill Tutsi folks were passed and executed in D R C.

The world was aware of that. I recollect in relation to this that the Belgian Government issued an arrest warrant for Congolese minister Yerodia Ndombassi in 1999.

The man never got arrested, for he did not budge from home, when he noted he was sought after by the universal Belgian jurisdiction.

These recurrent killings of Congolese Banyarwanda, engineered and executed by Congo government are glaring acts of genocide.
Let the UN Security Council be informed passim that documents exist that substantiate the commission of the crime of genocide of Congolese Hutu and Tutsi.

Genocide stricken mentalities are immune to such horrors and infamous scandals as having humans tortured, dishonored and degraded in broad daylight, with the youth looking on, as was noted in Germany and Europe in general in the aftermath of the genocide of Jews; as is still noted in Congo and Rwanda, alas! Let us shake off the genocide mentality and re-claim our human honor and dignity.

How else will you be respected if you are not respectable, honorable and dignified?

RECOMMENDATION

The minister of foreign affairs of Rwanda must in principle pass a diplomatic note of protest to the ambassador of D R C and the resident UN representative in Kigali to seek redress.

Rwandans injured and killed in DRC must be granted due legal attention and compensation by relevant authorities in DRC and the UNO.

Rwanda government has the legal obligation to ensure this legal process is initiated and brought to conclusion, on behalf of the Rwandan offended parties, i. e. the injured and their families; the dead and their families.

If they have not done that yet, let them hasten to do so in earnest. Specific notes tailored in diplomatic jargon are in various circumstances drafted, signed, and delivered to resident ambassadors or representatives of international organizations by the minister of foreign affairs of a given country having cause to diplomatically relate and interact with partners, bilateral or multilateral.

Question: Has the Rwandan minister of foreign affairs and cooperation drafted, signed and delivered such a note to the Congolese ambassador and the resident representative of the United Nations Organization in respect of the Rwandans who were tortured, maimed,…, and killed by the Congolese government as reported in media.

If the Rwandan foreign affairs minister has not yet done so, let her get police to brief her on said cases, and then she will without delay proceed to write her Note Verbale to accredited representatives of D R C and the UNO. This is an emergency!

”Et nunc reges intelligite, erudimini qui iudicatis terram” (The Ecclesiat).
Translation : « And now, kings, listen: get yourselves educated, you who have the onus to govern the world”

What have the different civil society organizations of Congo and Rwanda done in respect of the Rwandans that were terrorized, sequestrated, beaten, maimed, tortured, dishonored and killed by Congolese security personnel?

Civil society and private sector organizations of Rwanda and Congo must as of necessity and law step up transnational actions of the sort they are supposed to know to preclude any future debilitating recurrences of the sort we are being served by the Rwanda media through multiple public diplomacy practices.

We are closely watching what is happening in Yemen and elsewhere, and we certainly hope and expect that there will be steps taken to avoid violence and prevent the escalation of protests into violence.

I also want to take a moment to address the video circulating on the internet that has led to these protests in a number of countries.

Let me state very clearly – and I hope it is obvious – that the United States Government had absolutely nothing to do with this video.

We absolutely reject its content and message. America’s commitment to religious tolerance goes back to the very beginning of our nation.

And as you know, we are home to people of all religions, many of whom came to this country seeking the right to exercise their own religion, including, of course, millions of Muslims. And we have the greatest respect for people of faith.

To us, to me personally, this video is disgusting and reprehensible. It appears to have a deeply cynical purpose: to denigrate a great religion and to provoke rage. But as I said yesterday, there is no justification, none at all, for responding to this video with violence.

We condemn the violence that has resulted in the strongest terms, and we greatly appreciate that many Muslims in the United States and around the world have spoken out on this issue.

Violence, we believe, has no place in religion and is no way to honor religion. Islam, like other religions, respects the fundamental dignity of human beings, and it is a violation of that fundamental dignity to wage attacks on innocents.

As long as there are those who are willing to shed blood and take innocent life in the name of religion, the name of God, the world will never know a true and lasting peace. It is especially wrong for violence to be directed against diplomatic missions.

These are places whose very purpose is peaceful: to promote better understanding across countries and cultures.

All governments have a responsibility to protect those spaces and people, because to attack an embassy is to attack the idea that we can work together to build understanding and a better future.

Now, I know it is hard for some people to understand why the United States cannot or does not just prevent these kinds of reprehensible videos from ever seeing the light of day. Now, I would note that in today’s world with today’s technologies, which is impossible.

But even if it were possible, our country does have a long tradition of free expression which is enshrined in our Constitution and our law, and we do not stop individual citizens from expressing their views no matter how distasteful they may be.

There are, of course, different views around the world about the outer limits of free speech and free expression, but there should be no debate about the simple proposition that violence in response to speech is not acceptable.

We all – whether we are leaders in government, leaders in civil society or religious leaders – must draw the line at violence. And any responsible leader should be standing up now and drawing that line.