Today is Fools Day and parliamentarians will be debating the issue of whether April 1 should, starting next year, be a public holiday! Parliament welcomes contributions from people who have in the past or today been at the receiving end of hoaxes and other practical jokes. For serious consideration too will be the kind of hoaxes and jokes that will from now onwards be regarded as normal.

For example, it most likely will become illegal to call your boss or colleague and tell them a falsehood to the effect that the organisation they work for has caught fire.

That is not a good fools’ errand. It is like telling your friend or neighbour that their loved one has been involved in a fatal accident. Someone hurrying to take part in a fire fight or running to evacuate an accident victim might be tempted to violate, say,  certain traffic rules such as overtaking only when in full view of objects from the  opposite direction, in front of the immediate vehicle ahead.

This can lead to another accident, or double tragedy, which would have been avoided.
Indeed sophistication of jokes ought to be regulated. If not, jokers might take advantage of the light day and do the unthinkable. Like the jokers who made a futile effort last Saturday in Montreal to rewrite history.

A group of people, most of them Rwandans, but including some Congolese and Burundian refugees, with help from Les Intouchables, a Canada-based publishing house, had organised a conference to preach to the world that after all the 1994 Genocide was a hoax.

The publishers are also infamously credited with publishing Noires Fureurs, Blanc Menteurs, Pierre Pean’s book in which he talks about Tutsis in extremely unpleasant manner.

As it turned out, Rwandans living in Canada and Canadian wellwishers of this country’s people summoned their determination to fight anti-humanity ideology and virtually spoiled the revisionists’ event. It made a perfect gift to the Genocide Survivors and the entire nation as we begin the mourning period. You dread seeing something similar, even on All Fools Day.

The conference blockers act fits in well with President Paul Kagame’s message two days ago at the launch of the 40 Days of Purpose initiative by Pastor Rick Warren.

The President said the shameful Rwandan history epitomised by the Genocide 14 years ago was a result of severe lack of purpose. No purpose is worse than wrong purpose. Genocide Revisionists around the world possess the worst – evil purpose. It is as well their latest move met people tired of taking matters of life and death for a joke. Like the joke that parliament is today debating April Fools Day. 
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