Victoire ingabire, a leopard cannot change its spots

Immediately after her arrival in Rwanda presidential hopeful Madam Victoire Ingabire said the following, “…there were genocides and massacres which killed millions of Rwandans. Every family lost someone…we thank those who stayed behind, you know the harshness of the yoke…in the secrecy your traditional wisdom teach your children, so that they can teach others who will teach others…I can see the towering buildings and good houses… but they do not hide malnutrition, jiggers, servitude, segregation, selling one’s self so he/she can live another day…” (available also on FDU- Inkingi website). The next day she went to the Kigali Memorial Centre and observed that the Centre commemorated the memory of one ethnicity and not others. To a stranger to Rwanda these are simple words from a politician trying to catch the attention of listeners and potential voters. One needs to know Kinyarwanda as a language, its usage, the background of Madam Ingabire and the history of Rwanda in order to understand part of the intrinsic meaning of what she meant. Born 3 October 1968, Victoire Ingabire, studied in the Netherlands. In 1997, she joined the Rassemblement Démocratique pour le Rwanda (RDR), the political wing of the genocidal army then holding hostages in the refugee camps in DR Congo, then Zaire. The defeated army and politicians used refugees as sources of humanitarian aid which they collected and resold and as a source of protection in form of collective guilt for the genocide. Owing to the fact that she was not a wanted criminal like many other members of the “Rally”, her virulent anti-Tutsi speeches and her well paying job in Holland, she became the President of its Netherlands branch a year later and in 2000, she was nominated President of RDR at the international level. Meanwhile the Military wing for whose activities she fervently defended was wreaking havoc on civilians in the region. Changing its names to evade international sanctions from Former Rwandan Armed Forces (Ex-FAR), Rassemblement Démocratique pour le Rwanda (RDR), Armed People for the Liberation of Rwanda (PALIR), Armée de Libération du Rwanda (ALiR), Combatant Forces Abacunguzi (FOCA) to Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR) and its many offshoots, the genocidal army carried bloody raids and massacres in Congo and Rwandan border areas and Madam Ingabire defended the crimes and raised funds as a representative in the Netherlands. The armed wing, of the politics Madam Ingabire represented so well in Europe carried out many bloody operations particularly against civilians and the major ones are: Operation Insecticide in 1995-1996, aimed at wiping out “cockroaches”, Operation Alleluia in Oct. 1997, Operation Alleluia II in Sept. 1998 Operation Amen in June-July 1999, killing of American and British tourists in Bwindi National Park in Uganda in 1999, Operation Odyssey in Jun-Jul 2000, Operation Goodbye Clinton in Nov-Dec 2000, Operation Oracle du Seigne in May- Dec 2001, Operation Trompete in Sept. 2003 and Operation Tabara in Oct. 2003. It is between 2003 and 2004 when the so-called northern Rwandese calling themselves Bakiga led by Jean Marie Vianney Higiro, Félicien Kanyamibwa, and Augustin Dukuze, fought for control of FDLR against southern Rwandese or Banyanduga as they call themselves led by Ignace Murwanashyaka, Christophe Hakizabera and Anastase Munyandekwe that led to the splinter of FDLR into Rally of Democratic Liberation Forces of Rwanda (R-FDLR-RUD Urunana) and FDLR-Combatant Forces (FOCA) for the northerners and southerners respectively, Congo under the Lusaka and Pretoria Protocols agreed to disband the FDLR-Interahamwe networks and repatriate them to Rwanda, the senior commanders had been arrested on the indictment of ICTR, died, defected or hid themselves like Ntiwirigaba hid himself in the Sudan, that Ingabire and others who had seen failure on the military front formed Union des Forces Démocratiques Rwandaise (UFDR). For over a decade she supported and defended a declared terrorist organization against the people of Rwanda and while Ignace Murwanashyaka represented and headed FDLR-Interahamwe in Germany Ingabire did the same in the Netherlands. The recent report by the UN expert group for the monitoring of sanctions against armed groups in the Democratic Republic of Congo reveals that FDLR military leaders are in phone contact with Jean-Baptiste Mberabahizi, the Secretary General of FDU-Inkingi that fronts Ingabire as its leader. During the period preceding and during the genocide in Rwanda different Kinyarwanda words were used to refer to Tutsi people. Words such as “cockroaches”, “snakes”, “enemies of the country”, “conspirators”, “those who hate Rwanda” and others were used to make people to see their neighbours not as human beings but cockroaches and snakes who had to die before they bit them and their loved ones. Killing such people was not killing people but cockroaches, which explains the name of the first military operation carried out by the genocidal army from the refugee camps in then Zaire. During the genocide killing Tutsis was “working” and stealing their property was “salvaging”. The Kinyarwanda word for “yoke” Ingabire used has traditionally been used to refer to the time Belgian colonialists forced Rwandans to grow coffee and tea for export which at times was equated to forced free labour. RDR and the its military wings (depending on the name they used) initially vehemently denied there was a planned genocide saying the “excessive massacres” were a spontaneous reaction of people who had just lost their leader. Their claims became futile and hollow in face of the overwhelming evidence so they changed and said that the massacres were a “political genocide” and later argued that there were two genocides; one their own and the other by those who drove them from power. Madam Ingabire therefore was telling people in Rwanda that there were two genocides something she has mentioned on numerous occasions and whereas she and her organisation always understated the number of victims of the “massacres” in 1994 but on 16th January 2010 she said there “the genocides which killed millions of Rwandans”. Faced with the consequences of the genocide on the social fabric of Rwandans, the government of Rwanda through decided to put in place a system that allowed justice to be seen to be done on part of those who killed others while reconciling the offender and offended families and the solution came from the Kinyarwanda traditional Gacaca courts. Many killers who professed their crimes and requested for pardon were allowed to join their families and were instead directed to carry out community works as an alternative to imprisonment. Madam Ingabire has been taking photographs of such people and promising them solutions to their “problems”. One would be naive to think that Madam Ingabire, drunk on ethnic politics her adult life, would change her venomous language. What is clear, however, is that what she has said and done is to test the resolve and determination of the people and government of Rwanda to forge forward from their past. Sure of perceived and real support from her backers in Europe, she is surely daring Rwandans. Someone should whisper to her that the people of Rwanda will not wait for people from overseas to solve their problems like they did in 1994; the solutions ultimately will come from the unity and rising above ethnic of the people of Rwanda. On the other just as a leopard cannot change its spots, it seems Madam Ingabire cannot see beyond the politics of her youth and the ethnic politics she served so faithfully. It is amazing why Africans will learn everything else from people from other continents except the politics that discuss issues, policies and development instead of ethnicity and always trying to rewrite history. Emaill: ekaba2002@yahoo.com