An attempt by Victoire Ingabire Umuhoza to rally genocide convicts as cadres for ‘her revolution’

Surely this Munyarwanda mother and self-styled presidential hopeful is leaving in the pre-1994 era! The first sure steps that Mrs. Ingabire made on arrival in the country were of shock and bewilderment to Rwandans of the day. How could someone, a Rwandan in particular, for whatever reasons, without any sign of remorsefulness, dare stand above the hundreds of thousands of bodies of God’s children brutally slaughtered for only being what they were or better, what history had made them, Tutsis, and complain that “looking at this memorial, it only stops at the genocide committed against Tutsis; there is still another that concerns the massacres committed against Hutus…” Whether she aimed at being provocative or propagating the double genocide syndrome as her usual self, she only ended up preaching profanation of the dead, an utter shock, particularly when done by a mother and presidential hopeful-so to say. The very next day, as if to make the public cast no doubt on what she and her RDR/FDU-Inkingi political coalition and I am tempted to add the Interahamwe/FDLR, stand for, she proceeded to Gitarama to meditate at Dominique Mbonyumutwa’s grave. The message here was clear and sound as she has indeed performed since her arrival: we are here, to revive our forefathers’ dream of a certain idea of Rwanda that is devoid of all other Rwandans other than the Hutu power advocates. Mrs. Victoire Ingabire, in her Parmehutu nostalgic mind thought it wise to start her ill-fated struggle for the country’s highest office by seeking her ideological ancestors’ blessing for another revolution (the 1959 ‘Revolution’ was the birth of the ethnic ideology that climaxed into the 1994 genocide) as she indeed, has said in her own words. In her characteristic extremist hard-talk, she in a message posted on Youtube on 24 November 2009 argued that “ We are in the same situation as when our Independence was being negotiated. At first, people were very skeptical but they kept going and more people joined. Our generation must prove that we can do the same as the generation that negotiated independence and started the Republic of Rwanda…” One should recall here that Mbonyumutwa and other like Kayibanda were the godfathers of PARMEHUTU, the extremist Hutu ethnic political party whose ideological vision was to boot out of the country the ethnic Tutsis and thus construct a Rwandan republic made solely of Hutus. It wouldn’t be superfluous in this context to stress that it was the PARMEHUTU that initiated and carried out pogroms of Tutsis since 1959 and periodically afterwards, eventually culminating in the horrific 1994 genocide against the Tutsi. Although the international community, through the United Nations, recognizes the 1994 Tutsi genocide, Rwandans know very well that the extremist ideology was born in 1959 and the vision was to totally have been achieved in 1994 had it not been for the Rwandan Patriotic Front that stopped the macabre plan. Is this Rwandan mother and presidential hopeful now carrying on with the banner in the hope of achieving the dream? Surely Rwandans of today that in unison view Rwanda as their own and a state comprised of all Rwandans with a common future must, I believe, give her a clear no to her apocalypse-intended plan! Whereas logic would have dictated that, as we wrote in this column, the lady was to take time, analytically study the realities of today’s Rwanda and then compete for its leadership from an informed point of view with value addition rather than work towards destruction. Oh no! We can now ascertain that we were probably naïve and lured by our belief in evolution of human capacity as well as love for this country and Rwandans in general. We are forced to acknowledge that some beings, such as this lady who, as we shall demonstrate in the next article, was ideologically bread and groomed since childhood as a PARMEHUTU ideologue, it is now proven beyond reasonable doubt that she is irreversibly infected. The recent PDR-Ihumure’s communiqué (January 20, 2009) that was issued in support of Ms. Victoire Ingabire tells it all. “…We need to remind the world that the RPF now in power in Rwanda was busy killing thousands of Hutus for 4 years as a rebel group from October 1, 1990 to March 1994 before the genocide started in April 1994, and kept on killing thousands more Hutus in the years after 1994 in Rwanda and the Democratic republic of Congo, until today We shall stand in unity with our brothers and sisters in the opposition, whether armed or non-armed, against the current brutal RPF military dictatorship in Rwanda…” This indeed is from the horse’s mouth and the plans of Ms. Victoire Ingabire and her fellow ideologues along with their armed terrorist groups in the name of EX-FAR/Interahamwe/FDLR are clearly known as testified here. Let them however know that they need not remind Rwandans of this joint planning between the so-called political opposition and their armed terrorist groups. This is no new threat and Rwandans are united more than ever to confront it as they have relentlessly done. Blindfolded by her obsolete belief in the “Rubandanyamwinshi” ideological myth, she has been around visiting genocide convicts bragging: “Do you know me? Do not worry; I have come to put an end to your miseries. Your problems will end soon…” Well! Is she the messiah who is going to cleanse them of their confessed sins for participating in genocide while planning to involve them into another one? Let the poor ideologically lost woman be forewarned that even the genocide convicts are seriously weary of such politics that ended them where they are, as testified by some among them. They have been through a lot since committing the irreparable on behalf of such suicidal promises by the likes of her ideological ancestors Mbonyumutwa and other Bagosoras and most of them aren’t ready to be tempted by her likes after Gacaca courts have played some relative clemency role for them and as they get redeemed within the Rwandan society. Does she believe they do not know who brought those miseries to them and where they are now? The reporter said that she was surprised when the convicts told her they did not know who she was…She has seen nothing yet and had better know that she is still leaving in the past. As she continues meeting more Rwandans, she will herself hardly know who she is. Our only hope as Rwandans is that she will improve on her learning abilities and get to terms with the Rwanda of today where Rwandans value leaders for what they can or have done for this country with regard to building a reconciled society that in unison works for development and not destruction both of the moral fabric and the economy in general. We promise our readers to in our next article, disclose more of the too shoddy background of this so-called presidential aspirant. muhetofe@gmail.com