Why we must not sit back when African heroes are attacked by racist ideologues

Editor, RE: “Why Kagame speaks at top world universities” (The New Times, September 27). Ever wondered why some of these people detest President Paul Kagame with a passion they usually lack in other areas? Most self-regarding midgets hate giants, most importantly because it underlines their own lack of substance. In a world in which racism remains rampant, including (or rather especially) among those self-proclaimed global arbiters of who is good and who is evil, such people cannot accept the fact that a mere African and his men could single-highhandedly stop a genocide in which one of their very own supposedly civilized states was wholly complicit. They cannot accept that same African has achieved a feat never achieved before anywhere in history: helped guide a people deeply fissured by a genocide of one section by the other to reconcile and to work in harmony to pull themselves out of the abyss and build a truly astounding foundation for a shared prosperous future among people previously proclaimed by those same authoritative ‘experts’ as being irreconcilable ancestral enemies driven by atavistic hatred for each other. Set against their own manifest lack of anything substantial beyond questionable expertise, I can understand why they would wish to consign President Kagame and the people of Rwanda to hell. Some of these so-called experts are nothing more than learned sociopaths. They seem not to realise or feign not to understand that, for us, the issues on which they claim expertise are personally lived experience. I hold total contempt for their ilk. However, as they say, nothing, including the worst examples of lack of human empathy, is totally wasted: their contemptibly racist views and their belief they can express them openly help us to understand the ethos of so-called civilized and religious people who could see nothing wrong with owning fellow human beings as their chattel. Contrary to what some may think, the essence of racism that fed slavery continues to thrive to this day; it is what informs the views and positions of such people as Dan Magaziner. I can almost envisage his ‘intellectual’ (if not one of his biological) ancestors measuring the shape of our own ancestors’ skulls and the length of our noses. It is such memories that inform my views on these kinds of empty characters who nevertheless believe they are qualified (though I completely fail to see on what basis) to insult the hero of an entire people. Mwene Kalinda

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Why we must not sit back when African heroes are attacked by racist ideologues