Editor,

RE: "Rwanda’s Paul Kagame: saviour or dictator?” (The New Times, August 31).

It continues to amaze me no end that Western self-annointed ‘human rights’ and ‘pseudo democracy’ traffickers (pseudo because their paternalistic version of ‘democracy’ involves depriving us of our own agency in favour of their own choices for us) can still fail to understand that in Rwandans they have met more than their match.

Having pulled ourselves out of the abyss by dint of our own efforts and the guidance and peerless leadership of the man they continuously slander, they must need their heads examined if they really think we could ever relinquish to any outsider the power to decide anything important on our behalf.

This is even more so given the role of outsiders in sowing the seeds of genocide among Rwandans; in watering that poisonous tree to full maturity and fruition; in providing support in the conception, planning, organising and execution of the genocidal project; in giving refugee and succour to the genocidaires and continuing to give them safe haven to this day.

As President Paul Kagame has said, these people tried to bury us, but they didn’t know we were seeds. We are determined to guard ourselves from them, for their propensity to plant poison ivy in thriving fruit gardens is so entrenched it no longer needs any demonstration.

Mwene Kalinda