Why Harold Acemah spews hatred for Banyarwanda

Editor, This is with reference to Joseph Rwagatare’s commentary, “It is wrong to demonise Rwandans” published in this paper on May 14. He drew attention to Harold Acemah for his unceasing revisionism of the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsis and his consistently hostile articles against Banyarwanda. Acemah attempts, but but in vain, to cast his views as reasonable discourse even as he distills his anti-Tutsi venom. I know Acemah. He is a die-hard Obote and UPC loyalist who shares his hero’s rabid anti-Tutsi feelings. He was promised a brilliant diplomatic career which got sidelined into a cul-de-sac as a result of the overthrow of government by Yoweri Museveni’s NRA in 1986. What Acemah does not divulge in any of his articles – in which he tells us that he is a retired career ambassador – is that he has never been appointed an ambassador en titre despite his seniority and ambassadorial grade in the Ugandan Foreign Service. A proud, ambitious man, Acemah is using the platform offered by Daily Monitor (a Ugandan daily) to vent his anti-Banyarwanda spleen for the injustices and lack of career satisfaction he feels he suffered from Museveni’s government which, like many Ugandan Northerners, he tends to assimilate to Banyarwanda – especially given the prominent role played by many Rwandan refugees in the overthrow of his hero Obote, and the subsequent Lutwa-Bazilio Okello military regime. This bitterness and initial animus would have festered into outright anti-Tutsi hatred as Acemah saw younger and more junior foreign service officers get promoted over him and appointed to the most coveted diplomatic missions even as he himself languished in a subordinate position forever waiting for an ambassadorial appointment that never came. The closest he ever came was deputy ambassador to Brussels; so close but never to the top, even as he saw many of those he would have considered less qualified and less deserving than he get there. This is, by no means, an attempt to excuse his unforgivable anti-Tutsi revisionism. It is merely aimed at explaining the causes of his consistent animosity against Banyarwanda. The fact that he ascribes wrong reasons for his lack of career satisfaction does not make his bitterness against Banyarwanda less real. Mwene Kalinda, KigaliRwanda

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Why Harold Acemah spews hatred for Banyarwanda