In a world full of mysteries, one has become particularly unfathomable to me. I am talking about a Cameroonian (one that also has French citizenship) called Charles Onana who has devoted his life to denying the 1994 Genocide Against the Tutsi in this country, demonizing the President of Rwanda, and demonizing all people of Tutsi ethnicity. Someone help me understand why Onana, a PhD no less, has written not just one, not just two or three, but several books about Rwanda – a country that hardly is the only one with issues that merit attention; a country that, one would argue, least deserves all the negativism that flows from Onana’s pen? Also for all I know Rwanda has never had a quarrel with Cameroon, doesn’t share a border with Cameroon, has no linguistic, or cultural connections with them, and indeed is a friend of the West African country. So what is Onana’s ‘beef’ with us? The only thing I knew about Cameroon growing up was its national soccer team, the Indomitable Lions, which I supported like madness. I remember as a teenager in 1990, when they lost in the quarter finals of the World Cup to England, walking back home to our shack on the verge of tears. I was very bitter with the refeere, whom all of us were convinced had rigged the game for England (what kind of officiating awards two penalty kicks within minutes of each other, one of them for a fall that looks suspiciously like a dive?) Anyway, The Indomitable Lions (and Roger Milla!) was the only thing most children in our neighborhood knew about Cameroon. I would learn much more about the West African nation through my habit of reading every newspaper, magazine, or book that I could lay my hands on. I learnt it was just another sub-Saharan state, with the same struggles as all the region’s other countries. Fast forward, to half a decade back, and I began to hear of this man Charles Onana who was – with a hate filled pen – doing everything to re-write our (Rwandan) history; to negate the worst atrocity of our past; to advance the worst conspiratorial drivel that seeks to turn the Tutsi, victims, into perpetrators. Onana was peddling the worst revisionist malarkey ever concocted by the genocidaires who fled Rwanda, to escape justice for what they had done. He was consistently writing the worst revisionist smears about those who fought so Rwanda would be a home for everyone of us, regardless of ethnicity, without discrimination of any kind. Onana hates the Tutsi people for reasons he knows best. Strangely, it seems he hates Tutsi women even more. In the fever swamps of his imagination, the administration of President Kagame apparently is using its women “to conquer”. (Upon reading this, I pause and think maybe the man mentally isn’t all there). Here is Onana, at length: “The central device of their (Tutsi) strategy of conquest of the West is the Tutsi woman. She is their weapon of mass destruction. She destroys Belgian, German, American, British, French, Swiss diplomats..., politicians, businessmen, and even Hutus. No one is spared when it comes to defending the Tutsi cause. “These young ladies are tasked with tracking down Western targets for the needs of the Tutsi cause. They are homing missiles that can be either luxury prostitutes, intelligence agents, death squads by poisoning or simply ordinary women. They use their charm to make ‘Tutsism’ triumph. They operate wherever the Tutsi ideology deserves to be defended...they are ‘swallows’, trained like cold monsters in clandestine and sometimes deadly missions...” That is from Charles Onana’s book, no less titled: “These Tutsi killers at the heart of the Congolese tragedy.” When I read that I thought, aha! The Congo connection! A shared hate! Anyway, whatever. But what kind of publisher could accept such deranged ramblings from an obviously hate-filled mind? Tutsi women are weapons of mass destruction that destroy diplomats, politicians, and businessmen, and Hutus too? How could a publisher put this in print? A serious editor would peremptorily throw the manuscript of such a book into the bin. What were the sources of the claims first of all? What, where, who, when? Onana’s slanders would fall apart within a few minutes of serious scrutiny. It defies logic that only a white publisher of the most racist kind would work with him. It had to be. His publisher is some outfit called Edition Duboiris, of France. Maybe they patted themselves on the back for committing to print the man’s wholesale smears, of a people that did nothing to him. The publishers instead ought to be deeply ashamed of themselves. My (uncensored) thought when I read the above passage was, “this pos Onana would have been right at home in Rwanda in 1994, working alongside the likes of Ferdinand Nahimana, Georges Ruggiu, and Kantano at the Radio Television Libre des Mille Collines. Which is why it gives me happiness that the Cameroonian now is standing trial in Paris (together with his publisher), on charges of denying, and minimizing the 94 Genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda. Maybe, going forward, he won’t be running his mouth as much as he has for the past several years. Onana no longer has the luxury of impunity. Good!
