Is the RPF breaking up?

QUESTIONS: Defections from the RPF and RPA are growing with time. What exactly is the problem? Answer: There is nothing in the system which is abnormal and which should make people leave Rwanda. If you have been reading our newspapers, you will see that people are free to say what they want. But we have a saying that if you lose your crown, you cannot stay in the land as an ordinary person. Probably that is what is haunting us. People find it difficult to continue living in a society where they have been ministers or members of parliament, as ordinary people. The trend is that when our officials lose prominent positions or jobs they choose to leave Rwanda. But I see no problem in the political situation here. If anything, according to the assessment of independent people, we have made progress since the genocide. In December 2000, the IMF and World Bank board of directors met and assessed the progress made by Rwanda in terms of governance and management of the few resources we have. They found that we had made steady progress and qualified us for the HIPC programme. Last month the UN Human Rights Commission met in Geneva and decided Rwanda no longer deserved to be under observation in terms of human rights. We had a UN team here whose envoy reported that the situation was as normal as in any other country. Those are two reports from independent observers who have been monitoring this country. In anycase if people run to Uganda or the US and Europe, it should be seen as progress because Rwanda is no longer a prison as it was during Habyarimana's days. People are free to come and go as they wish. According to our information former Interior Minister Gakwaya Rwaka escaped to Uganda using panya routes, not through gazetted border crossings. Had Rwaka wanted to take Alliance Express and go to Kampala, nobody would have prevented him. Sometimes people do that to dramatise and be welcomed. He had his passport and had been moving around this country and nobody questioned him. His story should be taken seriously only if he tried to board an aircraft and was stopped and therefore resorted to panya routes. But we know Rwanda Newsline Editor-in-chief John Mugabi and his deputy Shyaka Kanuma are under a travel ban for being critical of RPF. Mugabi was stopped from attending his father's burial in Uganda and Kanuma had to plead before he was allowed to collect his Africa Journalist of the Year award from South Africa recently. This is the first time I am hearing about this. But even if it is true, the mere fact that they were able to talk to someone and be allowed to leave shows it is possible to leave this country using normal ways. Maybe somebody in immigration department misused their power and tried to bar them from leaving. Individuals can abuse their power but that does not point to the political leadership necessarily. Analysts say the defections are because the RPF is cracking down on dissidents. RPF has always been a democratic movement. You can disagree with President Paul Kagame and that won't be a crime. We debate till we reach consensus. Rwaka was not a member of the RPF. If he is saying RPF is getting too tight for some people, that is his business. He doesn't know the background of RPF and what it is supposed to be. He is somebody talking about what he does not know. How about Major Alphonse Furuma? He's a founder member of the RPF but he found the going too tough, because he had a mind of his own, or so we hear. Major Furuma has been a member of RPF but I don't think he is been left out because RPF is intolerant. He never expressed any opinion for which he was rebuked or whatever. When RPF captured power, Furuma was appointed one of six MPs for the army. But his performance in parliament was not satisfactory. And especially his behaviour as an MP was unbecoming of somebody who should be called honourable. He was therefore withdrawn from parliament and given another job in ministry of defence. An MP is a powerful person and is an honourable; so not everybody would be happy to lose such a position. I think that's why he left. How does RPF handle debate and dissent? Is it not because of lack of proper handling of these two concepts that RPF is disintegrating? Debates are handled well. If we are say dealing with the issue of justice, people give opinions and we debate until we reach a consensus. Sometimes we debate for as long as six months. For dissent, if you say you no longer believe in what RPF stands for, you'll be told that RPF is not a prison. That if you no longer agree with our code of conduct and methods of work, you are free to leave. But if you just disagree on a minor issue we debate till we reach a consensus. If there is no consensus we vote and adopt the majority position. If it is a discipline problem we have a disciplinary committee that would investigate, give you a fair hearing and maybe recommend action which could be an apology, suspension from an organ of the party, etc. Those are our methods of work. We hear your disciplinary committees are so efficient, they do some killing as well. That is why Seth Sendashonga and Lizinde were killed when they defected to Nairobi. If we are killers as the dissidents in Kampala say, then they are not safe because Kampala is nearer than Nairobi, so they are not safer. But so far nobody has proved that we killed Sendashonga and Lizinde. Lizinde was a renown criminal here in the 1970's and 80's. So he had many enemies. If you ask people here, they may tell you that they could have killed Lizinde had they got opportunity. Let me remind you that RPF freed Lizinde from Ruhengeri prison when we captured that area. He had been an inmate from 1980 to 1991. That man flees to Nairobi where there are people who committed genocide and you think nobody would want to kill him? Sendashonga was one of the Hutus who joined the RPF and contributed in the struggle to defeat the "Hutu" regime of Habyarimana. So in the eyes of these Hutus in Nairobi, Sendashonga was a betrayer. Wouldn't such a man have enemies in Nairobi, a place infested with Habyarimana's people? Does RPF really accommodate all political views as you claim? Yes. Provided people agree on our minimum political programme. RPF is just a front of people from all walks of life, capitalists, communists, various religions, among others. What brings us together is to agree on our political programme. If you do not you are told to leave. It is a voluntary association; you are there because you believe the programme is good response to the ills of our society and you agree to work with us to implement it. Beyond that political programme, you can have whatever you like provided it does not contradict our programme. Our first point is to strive to build national unity. If you start saying Hutus should kill Tutsis or vice versa, then we will not accept you. I am a born-again Christian and that does not contradict our programme. How come we hear that this government of national unity is a façade? That where you have a Hutu minister there is a much more powerful RPF-backed and installed Secretary General (Permanent Secretary)? Rwaka seems to have suffered this problem and he got disillusioned. Rwaka did all sorts of wrong things which had nothing to do with having a Tusti Secretary General if the permanent secretary is a Tutsi anyway. I don't think when he went to hold meetings in his hometown of Cyangungu and plotting to destabilise this country and many other terrible things, all that had something to do with a Tutsi permanent secretary. If Hutu ministers want to be shadows that is their choice. And I do not think we should have ministries where everybody is Hutu or Tutsi so that nobody is powerful or what. Problem is that there are people who did not grow up with Tutsi or were brought up to believe that Tutsis are sub-human. They cannot relate to Tutsis as human beings. When he gives orders and a Tutsi questions them, he makes outrageous claims. They were told for 35 years or more that Tutsis are sub-human and Rwaka is one of those with this problem. How come there is so much Rwandese political opposition mobilising in Kampala and other cities in America and Europe? We have been soul-searching to see if we have ever done something wrong to Uganda to be qualified as a hostile nation. So far we have not come up with a good answer. We fought three times in Kisangani. We were attacked and defended ourselves. Even after that we were the first to ask for ceasefire and talks after each fight. We humbled ourselves and asked Uganda to make peace. But all of a sudden we were declared a hostile nation. But we have not given up. We will do everything possible not to provoke Uganda. Where and when we can do good to Uganda, we will do so. If it were possible for us to lift Rwanda and take it near Australia and New Zealand in order to avoid fighting Uganda, we would do that; because fighting Uganda is a very painful situation we were drawn to. Many of us lived, studied and married in Uganda. Is it true that Uganda declared Rwanda hostile because RPF funded Kizza Besigye's campaign to oust President Museveni and Kampala is revenging by helping Rwandese dissidents? We did not give money to Besigye or any other candidate. In the past we used to give money to Museveni, but this time he said he did not need any money from us. But in 1996 we gave him money for his campaign. There may be people who contributed to Museveni's or Besigye's campaign at individual level. I do not know of any. But many of our people grew up with both men and could have given to either easily. But neither RPF nor the government of Rwanda gave money to Museveni or Besigye. I know many Rwandese who went back to Uganda to vote for Museveni. Museveni's agents were in Mutara province mobilising. The historical relationship of Rwanda and Uganda is very complicated. There are people here who have Ugandan IDs but even get Rwandese government scholarships. But let me ask: had Rwanda or anybody from Rwanda contributed to Besigye's campaign, would that have been enough to declare us a hostile nation? Isn't Besigye a son of Uganda? So if he had won, would that be disaster; that Uganda would be ruled by an enemy? I have a cartesian mind because I am a mathematician by training. So I tend to use logic in my actions and analysis. But if you apply logic to this action by Uganda it does not hold. So what is the way forward in your relations with Uganda? We will try to behave, never provoke and try to be good boys as far as relations with Uganda are concerned. We will talk to people we know in the Ugandan leadership and even call upon friends of both countries to intervene. If you see how Uganda behaved toward us in Kisangani and then how she is helping people hostile to us, it is really surprising that she calls us hostile. ends