Its not very often that authors feel the need to exclude the views of an entire community that constitute the content of their work, especially if the subject involves current and recent issues; its necessary that all sides to the story are given an opportunity to be heard. It is only when the writer has an agenda and a narrative to push that all the pretence of professionalism are cast aside. This is precisely what Michela Wrong did when she put pen to paper, writing Do Not Disturb, another revisionist work that seeks to smear the government of Rwanda and its leaders, as well as deny the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi. In an attempt to shortchange the readers, Ms Wrong comes up with the most insulting rationalisation for a book that turns out to be nothing but a smear job. She knew the book would in the end come across as the anti-Rwanda propaganda that it is, and thought some hedging was going to sanitize it: Had I spent months in Kigali interviewing those in power and getting their version of events, I would have struggled to win interviews with leading members of the exiled opposition. Here Ms Wrong acknowledges that her book isnt about fairness and accuracy, but a project to promote the version of what she calls exiled opposition. Of course, the leading members she refers to are the leaders of the Rwanda National Congress (RNC), a terrorist organisation that, as Ms Wrong herself points out in her book, has an armed militia in Eastern Congo. The author admits she knew them very well, way before the idea of writing the book came up. Michela Wrong had been in contact with them over the years and interacted with the group on a first-name basis. The suggestion that Kayumba Nyamwasa or Theogene Rudasingwa were not going to grant her interviews because she spoke to some government official in Kigali is simply a red herring. The RNC version she claims she was dying to uncover is no secret. The individuals Michela Wrong says she interviewed have, over the last decade, been putting out public statements aimed at smearing the government of Rwanda and its leaders. As expected the author ends up recycling the same propaganda, in effect, an RNC laundered content, published as a book. While the author unsuccessfully tries to offer explanations for not interviewing government leaders, she doesnt give reasons for excluding the views of Rwandans living in the country. For racist writers and scholars, the views of Africans have mattered only when they serve to promote a narrative, otherwise the opinions of European and North American nationals resident on the continent will replace the voices of the people the book is written about. It is in that same tradition that Michela chooses to include the views of people living in Rwanda, only if they look like her. However, you dont have to be Rwandan to be able to discern the true picture of the country, if you live here. Michela Wrong spoke to Europeans and Americans in Rwanda, alright, but since their observations werent aligning with her script, she wasnt having any of it: When a United States embassy advisor, she describes as an expatriate in Kigali puts it to her that the presence of police officers on the streets makes Rwandans feel safe, the author says she was careful not let my skepticism show! Here you have an American embassy official, not some government of Rwanda representative, giving her the true picture, yet the author wasnt prepared to express her opinion. Michela Wrong chose to keep her mouth shut precisely because she knew they were not on the same page and the American was going to shoot down, with facts, whatever skepticism she was going to come up with. It is clear the author had a narrative and wasnt going to listen to any opinion that contradicted her script, no matter how neutral the source. When a Western journalist she had met in Rwanda in 1994, who the author says has subsequently put down roots in the country where he is raising a family, pointed to how Kigali is remarkably transformed from what it was in the aftermath of the Genocide, with its current high-rise buildings and its safe streets---as a pretty good outcome, emphasizing to Ms Wrong that it is the only truth if they were absolutely honest, Wrong grossly twists the reporters observations, describing them as a lingering form of racism. According to Michela Wrong, Kayumba Nyamwasa is training a militia in Eastern Congo to oust his former boss and says the fact that the RNC had a military wing was common knowledge. Yet during the entire series of interviews with Nyamwasa, the author doesnt ask any questions related to the killing of dozens of innocent Rwandans that were carried out by his armed men. No writer or journalist worth the name would interview a leader of an armed group that has killed people and conclude without asking questions about the atrocities they were committing. Indeed her mission wasnt about asking questions; it was a hit job and she knew exactly who her partners were. Then, close to Michela Wrongs heart, as the book demonstrates, was the memorialization and glorification of Patrick Karegyeya, a man she knew very well. The author portrays Karegyeya as a renaissance man; the most talented Rwandan that ever walked the earth. However, the picture she paints: doesnt in any way resemble the man Rwandans, and indeed foreigners, who met Karegyeya remember. And you dont have to take anyones world in Kigali. According to the author, an American photographer friend who spent a night at Karegyeyas home in Johannesburg and had known him back in Kigali, throwing his weight around, begged to differ, describing Karegyeya as an asshole who was so arrogant and full of himself. Michela Wrong who describes Karegyeya as ladies man discloses details only someone who had a front-row seat to the party would know: with the women, suggestive hints would be occasionally dropped over those beers. Patrick had keys to the government flat located conveniently nearby----. The encounter already so pleasant would be taken up a notch. The author goes on to endorse the unbecoming lifestyle, as another day in the office: It was never a question of lechery--- Patrick knew that whether they worked for news organisations, --- women could provide him with the swiftest access routes---. It is very striking how anyone much less a female journalist would not only approve of such reckless conduct, but how she also reduces women and their bodies to objects which Karegyeya was using to gain access to, what the author calls normally closed doors. But ethics and morals were the last thing on Ms Wrongs mind, as long as she was advancing the RNC agenda and championing its leaders. In October last year, Rene Mugenzi, a prominent leader of the terrorist organisation, was handed a twenty-seven-month prison sentence, after a court in the United Kingdom convicted him of stealing 220,000 pounds from the Norwich cathedral. The author, though, says Mugenzis crimes were justified because he had an addiction exacerbated by the stress of his work as a human rights activist. You begin to wonder how many human rights activists end up stealing church money and going to jail! Michela Wrong documents a number of people within Ugandan president Yoweri Musevenis orbit, she says were interviewed for the book. There are many more whose input she acknowledges but chooses to designate as anonymous, to whom she attributes some of the most vicious attacks and insults against the people of Rwanda and their leaders. Therefore, the fact that much of the disparaging and derogatory verbal assault on Rwanda, contained in the book was contributed by Musevenis ruling National Resistance Movement (NRM) luminaries and CMI chiefs is in no doubt. Throughout the book Ms Wrong seeks to portray the Rwandan people as heartless murderers without any sense of value of human life. By her own admission, during a post-publication interview with Susan Thompson, a rabid anti-Rwanda propagandist, the Uganda government officials she spoke to looked at Rwandans as distasteful and murderers, who are casual about killing. Indeed the book repeats some of the most familiar phrases invented by Kampala to denigrate the Rwandan people, whereby the CMI has sought to push this scornful notion that Rwanda is governed by yesterdays refugees consumed by anger and prone to violence. In the aftermath of the Kisangani clashes, between Rwandan forces and the Uganda army, in the 2000s then chief of the CMI, Noble Mayombo authored a document that purported to diagnose the cause of the conflict. Despite numerous documented reports produced by United Nations and European Union representatives accusing Uganda of having provoked the fighting in all the encounters, according to the CMIs paper, the past refugee experience on the part of the Rwandans left them with a violent streak which was the cause of the conflict. Michela Wrong happily reproduces Mayombos talking points with abandon: The privations of refugee life are often cited as explanation for RPFs eventual ruthlessness, she writes. Uganda has had its own share of political violence that forced hundreds of thousands of its nationals to flee. Indeed everyone who has been president of that country, including Museveni, has lived as a refugee in a foreign land, at one time or another. Of all the six ex-heads of state only Godfrey Binaisa died in the country after two episodes of refugee life. Yet Kampala officialdom wants the world to believe that Rwandans turned out differently even if the experience is shared. Michela Wrong quotes past statements and publications by president Museveni but nowhere in the book does she refer to any interviews he granted her. Curiously, though, her description of the route to Musevenis country home, with details about the recent NRM campaign posters she saw along the way is intended to show the reader that she was hosted by the president: Rwakitura about forty miles east of Mbarara is impossible to miss. Yellow election campaign posters are plastered to its signposts and the tarmac is smooth as dark glass, she writes. Whatever questions Ms Wrong may have asked the president and what answers she got remain as anonymous as all the unnamed sources she purports to use as references for her book. Clearly, Michela Wrong set out to smear Rwanda and knew the RNC and their Kampala sponsors would be the perfect partners for the project. They didnt disappoint.
