Stop abduction of African leaders

One Netanyahu, the famous Israel officer who led the successful raid at the Entebbe Airport to free captured Jews in 1972 left behind an impressive tale. It is said that he was such a terrifying fighter that to kill him, Idd Amin’s soldiers had to shoot him from behind. That is exactly what Germany’s recent abduction of Rwanda’s Director of Protocol, Rose Kabuye, boils down to. It is a test of wits not only against Rwanda but also against all Africans, not least because the African Union had earlier on rejected Judge Jean-Louis Bruguière’s November 2006 indictments against Rwanda’s leaders. Kabuye’s arrest came under a controversial French universal jurisdiction clause, the equivalent of the US’s interventionist law that for more than twenty years has held behind the bars Panama’s former President Manuel Noriega. Of course this is nothing but jungle justice, which must be fought by all civilized humanity. I have argued before that such unwarranted actions against African leaders are a clear testimony of disunity among them. One would have expected that after the AU’s strong statement at Sharm el Sheik, against wild indictments and especially the noise against Rwanda’s leadership, Africa would fiercely fight against attempts to execute Judge Bruguière’s claims. After all, Kabuye’s charges cannot be proved in a French court because prosecutors will need to do more investigations in the locus of the 1994 genocide that is Rwanda, as well as bring witnesses. But the country is a no go-area for them now. Surprisingly the East African Community, to which Rwanda is affiliated, has not strongly condemned or taken visible measures against Rose’s kidnappers. On the one hand this could be construed as a muted support for Germany’s bullish act, while on the other it could simply demonstrate the continent’s total impotence at world politics. How many times must we invoke Mwalimu Julius Nyerere’s past deeds to guide our political path? We should learn from the maximum exploitation of his membership, first to the threesome Mulungushi Club and then to the Frontline States, of how weak Tanzania, Uganda and Zambia and later Mozambique clobbered colonialism and racism in southern Africa. It was a gigantic piece of work that could not have been accomplished by a single country, however powerful. Mwalimu and company’s blitzing diplomatic onslaught pushed forward Africa’s interests by bringing down entrenched colonialists and rabid racists in Portugal, apartheid South Africa, former Rhodesia, Mozambique and elsewhere. That is exactly what this continent needs today, not passive leaders who bask in the molestation of their own colleagues, thinking they are safe. Unfortunately, the West, as it were, cannot guarantee their safety for long. They can only do it as long as we defend their interests, but as soon as they feel we are useless they will come after our neck. Didn’t they do that to former Zaire strongman Mobutu Sese Seko and Iraq’s Saddam Hussein? That should explain Rwanda’s present ordeal apparently because of her unfinished business with France. In the last few days, for example, the Central African country ditched the French language, putting the last nail in the coffin of their relations with her former colonial masters. Weak Africa should stop behaving like a monkey who saw his burning bush and broke down laughing, forgetting that he had become homeless. Today they indict al Bashir and Rwanda’s leadership; tomorrow it could be our turn. If some of us think Africa’s interests are secondary, they should see why the US has so far refused to ratify her membership to the International Criminal Court (ICC). Because they know their past war-monger leaders could face the music in The Hague. Yet, as earlier suggested, this is not an effort to exonerate the leadership in Kigali. Far from it, I believe there are problems in Rwanda, like elsewhere, but certainly it is neither for the Bruguières nor the Fuhrer’s descendants to dictate how to sort them out. Africans have the capacity to put their house in order. It recently happened in Kenya, Burundi, and the Comoros and seems to be succeeding in Zimbabwe, why not in Rwanda and elsewhere? I know someone will picket me for mentioning Africa’s seemingly failure in Zimbabwe. Doubtlessly, our leaders owe us a reason for protecting President Robert Mugabe’s intransigence. But again we don’t need the Bruguières or Adolf Hitler’s offspring to sort it out because the SADC and the AU and even the international community, for that matter, have the diplomatic and military muscle to untangle the situation there. Clearly though, we are not against the person of Judge Bruguière or the ICC’s prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo. To the contrary, we are opposed to setting a dangerous precedent that could allow foreigners to abduct our leaders at will. In this case, therefore, African leaders should do a stitch in time to save nine. Ends