It’s been clear for some time now that there is something seriously ‘the matter’ with Michela Wrong, a British journalist and author who for the past several years has had a vendetta going against the president of Rwanda. Apparently, Wrong’s hatred of President Kagame is rooted in New Year’s Day 2014, when it was announced the body of former Rwandan spymaster Patrick Karegeya had been found in a Johannesburg hotel room, and that he had died of strangulation. The incident instantly gave rise to the conspiracy theory that it was the doing of Kagame. It also set off a major ruckus between the governments of South Africa and Rwanda. In no time a whole phalanx of actors; people nursing hate for Rwanda and others with grudges against Kagame, were accusing the Rwandan state of carrying out a political assassination. To be fair, even those with no enmity for Rwanda probably were thinking the same thing. Karegeya was part of a cohort of Rwandans in self-imposed exile who had, openly and loudly, declared violent conflict against the Rwandan government. This group, calling itself the Rwanda National Congress, among other things was behind a spate of grenade attacks in Rwanda, from around 2010 to 13, that killed up to seven innocent civilians and maimed many more. The RNC proudly took ownership of the terrorist attacks, boasting about them on its Internet-based propaganda outlets, most notably something called Radio Itahuka. Itahuka was “warning” Rwandans to expect even more since the goal was to overthrow Kagame and his government. So, this was war and Karegeya was a combatant, a principle one. He, and Kayumba Nyamwasa his immediate superior in the RNC were vowing they would only rest after achieving their objective. The South African authorities ordered investigations, which found nothing to pin any wrongdoing on Rwanda. The most strenuous investigations by the police forces of Sandton (the locality in which Karegeya died) as well as South Africa’s Directorate of Special Operations, known popularly as the Scorpions, failed to attach the crime to Rwanda. South African judicial authorities ordered arrests of several alleged suspects who were then subjected to interrogation, over lengthy periods of time. The courts too could find nothing to link Rwanda to the matter. In a sane world, that should have been the end of that, with everyone going about their lives, unless there were to be some breakthroughs in the case, which didn’t happen. But then, enter Michela Wrong with all the wrath of Poseidon, determined, come what may, to pin Kagame. To this end, she first went about writing a political hit job of a book, Do Not Disturb, which received several favorable reviews in Western media. (Because of course! After all she is a white British woman who’s worked with many of these same media, any of whose editors would rather have a root canal than entertain a doubt about anything their Michela wrote regarding an African “dictator”). I gasp in wonderment at the unshakeable belief of some white people, when one of their own make allegations against even the most highly placed personality, if it’s someone in distant “black lands”. I guarantee you, if Wrong were writing a similar book about a real Nazi that happened to be a white man, that book wouldn’t make it past her editor’s desk. There is no way a book that literally begins with the sentence: all such people are liars, makes it to the publisher. Yet that’s exactly what Do Not Disturb does, confidently proclaiming every Rwandan is a liar. Much of the book, which first and foremost is devoted to indicting Kagame, assassinating his character to bring him down is a love letter to Karegeya. (Read it, with its passages-full of descriptions of her friend’s physical good looks; his infectious laugh; his savage sense of humor, and so on, and make your conclusions). Since then, in Wrong’s rage against the Rwandan president, she has collected an assortment of bedfellows including genocide fugitives, deranged revisionists of Rwandan history, every individual with bad things to allege about the Rwandan leadership. Her X (Twitter) account is devoted to sniping, or taking potshots, or hounding Kagame, at every opportunity. Recently she’s among those that feature most prominently in Forbidden Stories – the Paris-based media pressure group that gathered 50 journalists working for 17 media outlets, from eleven Western countries, for their now notorious hit job against the Kagame administration, the so-called “Rwanda Classified” investigation. Hmmm, no prizes for guessing what’s drawn them together.
