Kagame speaks out on Zimbabwe

•Says Africans need to get politics right•Blames international community on DR Congo President Paul Kagame yesterday said that African countries have to get their politics right saying that there is need for competitiveness and relevance of the different policies they make. He was speaking on the current situation in Zimbabwe where he said that leaders should not do wrong under the pretext of the good things they did for their countries in the past. While opening the high level meeting on African competitiveness held at the Kivu Serena Hotel in the Western Province, the President said that Zimbabwe which was once seen as Africa’s rising star, has now lost relevance. Zimbabwe has been in turmoil following the controversial elections held in March this year and the subsequent runoff that took place in June but boycotted by opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai on the basis that his supporters were facing persecution from government operatives. In the strongest statement he has made on the issue so far, Kagame said that the fact that the southern African country had once thrived under the same regime that liberated it from colonialism should not be taken as an excuse to do wrong simply because they did well in the past. He said that people need to be held accountable for any wrong they do notwithstanding what good things they did in the past including, liberating the country. Zimbabwe, which got its independence in the early 80s under current president Robert Mugabe, is faced with problems ranging from economic devastation --with the rate of inflation now reported in hundreds of millions percent and most recently, the cholera outbreak that has so far killed hundreds of citizens. On the issue of the Democratic Republic of Congo, the President said that the International Community has failed to address the problem in the vast country and instead puts the blame on Rwanda. A report recently released by a UN-commissioned group of experts blamed Rwanda saying it was backing the National Congress for the Liberation of the People (CNDP), a rebel group operating in the eastern DR Congo, led by Gen Laurent Nkunda. The Government of Rwanda has also reacted strongly on the report which was released last week, calling it ‘malicious.’ President Kagame told the meeting that there was clear lack of understanding of the problems prevailing in the DR Congo, the ignorance he mainly blamed on the international media that has been misleading people. He gave an example of a recent news article published by The Guardian, a British newspaper which ran a photo of a woman claiming to have been raped by CNDP troops and according to the article, she was from South Kivu, a region far from the operational zone of the CNDP. Kagame also blamed the international community for their failure to address the problem of the remnants of the Interahamwe genocidal forces grouped under what they call the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR). Most of the FDLR leaders are wanted fugitives responsible for the planning and execution of the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi which claimed over a million lives. He said that despite of fact that these forces being the root cause of the regional problem, they have been freely moving around European capitals. Ends