RWANDA: LOS ANGELES SAYS:THE POWER OF HORROR

The power of horror in Rwanda

Fifteen years ago, efforts at genocide killed about 800,000 Rwandans. Now that tragedy is providing the government with a cover for repression.

By Kenneth Roth 
April 11, 2009

 

IT'S A HORROR EVERY WHERE IN RWANDA

During a gruesome three months in 1994, about 800,000 Rwandans were murdered as part of a calculated effort by a group of Hutu extremists to eradicate the country’s Tutsi population. 

The genocide ended only with the military victory of the Rwandan Patriotic Front, a rebel group founded by Rwandan exiles who ousted the Hutu extremists. The front’s austere and savvy commander, Paul Kagame, now serves as Rwanda’s president.

 

In the 15 years since the extremist government was ousted, Rwanda has become an island of stability in a volatile region. The economy is booming, the distinction between Hutu and Tutsi is officially downplayed, and ethnic and political violence has been largely eradicated. Kigali, the capital of a country that likes to portray itself as the Switzerland of Africa, is orderly and manicured.

But Rwanda has a long way to go. Despite the facade of occasional elections, the government essentially runs a one-party state. And ironically, it is the genocide that has provided the government with a cover for repression. Under the guise of preventing another genocide, the government displays a marked intolerance of the most basic forms of dissent.

There is no meaningful opposition. The press is cowed. Nongovernmental organizations are under attack. When parliamentary elections held last September produced a whopping 92% victory for Kagame’s ruling party, evidence collected by the European Union and Rwandan monitors suggested that the government actually inflated the percentage of opposition votes so as to avoid the appearance of an embarrassing Soviet-style acclamation.

One tool of repression has been the gacaca courts — informal tribunals run without trained lawyers or judges — which the government established at the community level to try alleged perpetrators of the genocide. The original impetus was understandable: Rwandan prisons were overpopulated with tens of thousands of alleged genocidairesand no prospect of the country’s regular courts trying them within any reasonable time. The gacaca courts provided a quick, if informal, way to resolve these cases. In theory, members of the community would know who had or had not been involved in the genocide, but in reality the lack of involvement by legal professionals has left the proceedings open to manipulation.

Today, 15 years after the genocide, people are still coming forward and accusing their neighbors of complicity in it, suggesting that gacaca has morphed into a forum for settling personal vendettas or silencing dissident voices. The prospect of suddenly being accused of past participation in the genocide, with little legal recourse against concocted charges, is enough to make most people keep their heads down in the political arena.

The government says it will close the gacaca courts in June. But the government has another tool of control — the crime of “genocide ideology.” Formally adopted last year, the law outlawing “genocide ideology” is written so broadly that it can encompass even the most innocuous comments. As many Rwandans have discovered, disagreeing with the government or making unpopular statements can easily be portrayed as genocide ideology, punishable by sentences of 10 to 25 years. That leaves little political space for dissent.

Pressing the government to amend these repressive laws and practices is not easy, as I discovered in recent meetings with senior officials from the prime minister on down. They are understandably sensitive about political invective that can lead to renewed ethnic slaughter, but the public faces the very real danger that any political criticism of the government will be construed as fomenting genocide.

Western governments, guilt-ridden at not having stopped the genocide and impressed by Rwanda’s stability and economic growth, have been all too willing to close their eyes to this repressive sleight of hand.

But Kagame’s strategy is shortsighted and dangerous. He claims to be building a society in which citizens are only Rwandans, not Tutsi or Hutu, but his repression of civil society means that avenues to forge alternative bonds among people are limited. That makes it more likely that in moments of tension Rwandans will resort to their ethnic identity, as so often happens in repressive societies.

The challenge for world leaders 15 years after Rwanda’s genocide is to overcome guilt and look beyond the enforced peace to convince Kagame and his government to build the foundation for more organic, lasting stability.

The best way to prevent another genocide is to insist that Kagame stop manipulating the last one.

Kenneth Roth is executive director of Human Rights Watch.

The power of horror in Rwanda – Los Angeles Times

The power of horror in Rwanda – Los Angeles Times

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The FDLR warn the Kigali regime against the preparations for massacres of innocent civilians within Rwanda

The FDLR warn the Kigali regime against the preparations for massacres of innocent civilians within Rwanda .

Reliable information in our possession indicate preparation of lists of young Hutu men and women across the country by elements of the DMI (Directorate of Military Intelligence) with the intent to wrongfully accuse them of collaborating with the FDLR within Rwanda.
The Democratic Liberation Forces of Rwanda ( FDLR ) remind the public that many people in Rwanda have been arbitrarily arrested in recent months and imprisoned on false charges of collaborating with the FDLR .
Under the pretext that there would be some infiltration of the FDLR into Rwanda, the Kigali regime is planning repression of the population, mass arrests and killings on a large scale in order to even more silence and terrorize conscientious objectors in Rwanda.
The FDLR urge the Rwandan regime to immediately stop these unjust arrests and its gruesome repression and murder, to free all conscientious objectors it has imprisoned since 1994 and to open without delay the political space to its opposition.
The FDLR request the African Union, the European Union and the United Nations Security Council to seriously condemn these murderous manoeuvres of Kigali and to do everything possible to prevent Rwanda and the African Great Lakes Region from falling again into fratricidal wars.
The FDLR condemn again and unequivocally the ongoing war in eastern DRC that the coalition of the RPA/RDF and the FARDC has imposed on them, on the Congolese people of eastern DRC and on Rwandan refugees.
The FDLR reiterate their commitment to peace and remain convinced that the Rwandan problem is political and must be resolved politically through a frank and direct dialogue between the Kigali regime and the FDLR.

Done in Paris on 20 May 2009

ON THE OCCASION OF THE VISIT OF A UN SECURITY COUNCIL DELEGATION IN THE DRC AND RWANDA .

 
The Democratic Liberation Forces of Rwanda ( FDLR ) welcome the visit of a UN Security Council delegation in the African Great Lakes Region especially in the DRC and Rwanda .
The FDLR seize this opportunity to remind members of this delegation that the Rwandan problem which is the cause of their presence in DRC is a political problem which can be resolved through a frank and direct dialogue between the various Rwandan stakeholders namely the Kigali regime and its opposition.
The FDLR remain convinced that the use of force advocated by some organizations for strategic studies can not resolve the political problem of Rwanda but may cause further humanitarian disasters for which warmongers must be the sole to be held responsible.
The FDLR reaffirm their unequivocal condemnation of the war that the Rwandan-Congolese coalition imposed on a peace-loving peoples of our region through the operation UMOJA WETU and KIMIA II operation under preparation and urge the United Nations Security Council delegation to formally condemn this war which is senseless, unnecessary and deadly, to demand its immediate cessation and not to engage UN troops of MONUC in it.
The FDLR request the UN Security Council not to allow itself to be duped by warmongers and their lobbyists who favour the policy of demonization and exclusion of the FDLR consisting in considering that the latter are demons to be overwhelmed by all means and the Kigali regime is a set of angels who deserve protection of the international community.
The FDLR urge the UN Security Council to seek real solutions for lasting peace and stability in the African Great Lakes region by addressing the fundamental problem rather than implementing solutions based on inadequate schemes for the specific problem of the region.
The FDLR urge the UN Security Council delegation to work towards the creation of a framework for talks which will enable all Rwandan stakeholders to sit together in order to find a definitive solution to the Rwandan crisis which is the source of insecurity prevailing in the African Great Lakes Region especially in the eastern DRC.
The FDLR inform the UN Security Council delegation that they have legitimate reasons that have pushed them to take up arms and urge the UN Security Council to be pragmatic and seek an immediate halt to the ongoing war in DRC and initiate a process of direct talks between the FDLR , the Kigali regime and the regime in Kinshasa under the auspices of the international community to begin real negotiations on their actual return in dignity and security in their country.
The FDLR reiterate their request to the UN Security Council lift immediately and unconditionally all unjust, unnecessary and counter-productive sanctions imposed on their leadership.
The FDLR remain convinced that the surest way to achieve their disarmament does not consist in seeking their neutralization by arms through a war but rather by establishing a political framework and state services in which all Rwandans feel protected, the opening of the Rwandan political space so that all Rwandans who wish, may exercise without hindrance their political activities within the country and the establishment of truly democratic and republican institutions in Rwanda.
The FDLR reiterate their commitment to peace and remain convinced that the war in the African Great Lakes Region can never bring peace but the latter will only be achieved through a frank and direct dialogue between different actors in the regional crisis.

 

THE REASONS WHY RWANDA HAS MORE WOMEN IN PARLIAMENT

RPF LEADER

When the visiting United Nation’s Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM) Executive Director, Ines Alberdi, came to Rwanda expressed an illusive satisfaction over women’s prominence and parity in the country’s governance. In her first visit to Rwanda, when Kigali hosted the UNIFEM’s central African regional office that covers nine countries. She addressed the Journalists shortly after meeting Mr. Paul Kagame.

Ines Alberdi was treated to the usual lies manufactured in Rwanda and imported within and without Rwanda as it always has been over two decades. Ines Alberdi was told that Rwanda is the first African country that has more women in the National parliament, which I don’t dispute but what they hid from her it is how they got there. As a professor of Political Science in Rwanda National University and an Economic Consultant for many African NGOs, I want to analyze for our special guest Ines Alberdi of the true picture of why we have many women in parliament unlike other African countries. As it was published in an online newspaper All Africa News which is the RPF sponsored medium of Kagame’s propaganda, the UNIFEM leader was told that Rwanda is following a right path to parity of women in all government institutions. But what they forgot to tell Ines Alberdi is that it is not by mercy or by grace that Kagame has put most of women in the institutions of leadership in Rwanda.

Instead Rwanda is a nation in crisis which called for special measures which turn into a political lying card. The truth is this that when the RPF invaded a sovereign nation and started butchering the people of Byumba whose story has never been told because of USA and UK interest, majority of those who were slaughtered were young people who were in High Schools, Colleges, and Universities. This mass killing that never drew the world’s attention just simply because of those who were dying they were not the race of interest to UK and USA.

The RPF Kagame led killings continued in most various parts of Ruhengeri and Mutara in Rwanda between 1990s and 1994. Majority of these people killed in RPF conquered zones were young people and learnt promising generation. The scenario didn’t stop there of exterminating the young male people in Rwanda by RPF led by Kagame. They continued to selectively kill and maim people believed to be from Hutu community in their pursuit of making the majority the minority and the minority the majority. When the fratricide of 1994 took place, the majority of those Tutsis and Hutu moderates that died were male. Majority of them were educated. This also is another contributing factor that has participated in male shortage in Rwanda.

In 1994 the RPF led by Kagame and supported by USA and UK managed to take over after lying to the world that the killing that happened in 1994 after the terrorism act of shooting Habyalimana’s jet which killed him and his Burundian counterpart was not a fratricide by genocide. This is when they executed their plans to kill all educated Hutus and jail indefinitely those who could escape their clubs. They embarked on a mission to make the majority who are Hutus into a minority community. They killed all young Hutus who had gone to school. Those who escaped are those who fled to DR Congo. This didn’t last because in 1996 the RPF backed by UK,USA,Uganda, and Kabila attacked the refugees camps in Eastern DRC where they continued their mission to exterminate all educated Hutus and young male who are the future of Rwanda.

Those whom they couldn’t kill put them behind the bars without any legal assistance in order to get rotten there. They hunted them throughout their flight into the Congo forest where they killed, maimed and imprisoned the innocent Hutus all in the name of killing the ‘Genocidaires’. The world continued watching the hopeless Hutus being murdered without any sort of help. This has continued until today. Those who were lucky to escape to farthest countries where Kagame has no access, they are scrupulously put on the list of genocidaires all designed to deny educated Hutus peace and access to freedom of movement in order to allow the Kagame led bandit group to continue oppressing Rwandans. Those who are abroad and are educated they have no rights to come and serve in Rwanda because of Kagame who continues preaching his lies to the world that all Hutus participated in the fratricide of 1994. This has made Rwanda experience a cute shortage of educated males in all domains of leadership in Rwanda.

All the people who were killed 67% were the males and educated ones. This has made Rwanda especially Kagame’s administration have no option but to use the female in order to fill up the gap left by this innocent Rwandans who are the victims of Kagame’s selfishness. Therefore Kagame has done nothing good to put more women in parliament, because he had no option but to put them there in order to rule without any opposition. Many men died since 1990s others are in the clandestine prisons, those who survived Kagame’s brutality are living in diaspora. These are the main factors of having more women in Rwandan parliament.

HUTUS SHOULD HAVE LEARNT WHEN MUSEVENI CHASED THEM IN 1994

HUTU REFUGEES SHOULD KNOW THAT UGANDA CHASED THEM OUT OF THEIR COUNTRY IN 1994

They should not have gone to stay in uganda if they had good hutu politicians. but now they are going to be taken to slaughter houses again where all young people are going to be butchered the same way people were chased in TanzaNIA AND THOUSANDS OF THEM WERE KILLED ON THEIR WAY BACK TO rWANDA AND  others were chased out of Gabon up to now no body knows their fate. UHCR has always been an enemy of Hutus so they should not expect any thing good from UNHCR.

Rwandese refugees in Uganda have up to the end of July this year to voluntarily return home, a spokesperson of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) office said on Friday.

UNHCR External Relations Officer Vanessa Akello told Xinhua by telephone that available funds for the voluntary repatriation of Rwandese refugees can only last up to July 31 and thereafter the refugees will return home without any UNHCR assistance.

Ugandan and Rwandese top government officials this week also signed an agreement setting July 31 as the deadline for Rwandese refugees to return home.

The two governments at a meeting held in western Uganda on Wednesday agreed to identify and isolate people who intimidated the refugees from returning home and called upon immigration officials to be more vigilant on irregular movement across borders.

“I am sure when we next meet, the mission would have been accomplished,” state owned New Vision daily on Friday quoted Protais Musoni, Rwanda’s local government minister as saying just after meeting Tarsis Kabwegyere, Uganda’s minister in charge of refugees.

A total of 20,000 Rwandese refugees are in several refugees camps in western Uganda.

Rwandese President Paul Kagame while on a one-day state visit to Uganda this week said many refugees are reluctant to go back home because of the crimes they committed during the 1994 Rwanda genocide.

He said the two governments were in talks to convince the refugees to go back home.

THE CLOSURE OF BBC AN OUTRAGE TO FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION IN RWANDA

Kagame shut down BBC transmission in Rwanda

I’m somewhat hopeful that Rwandan President Paul Kagame’s decision to ban local BBC broadcasts in the Kinyarwanda language will finally wake up those in the United States and elsewhere who still believe that he’s a benevolent ruler who has the interests of all Rwanda’s people at heart. Kagame contends that the BBC is giving airtime to “genocide deniers,” by which he usually means “political enemies of his regime.” The accusation is laughable. It’s not as though we’re dealing with the equivalent of FOX News here; the BBC does a better job of reporting unbiased news from central Africa than just about anybody.

This month marks the fifteenth anniversary of the beginning of the Rwandan genocide, during which a well-organized group of Hutu extremists, backed by the Rwandan army, carried out a detailed plan to murder as many Tutsis and moderate Hutus as possible. They succeeded in killing 800,000, and would have gotten further had it not been for the push of the Rwandan Patriotic Front. The RPF was a rebel army led by Tutsis whose families had lived in exile in Uganda since ethnic cleansings that occured around the time of independence from Belgian rule. The genocide ended when the RPF took control of Kigali and began to consolidate its rule outside of the capital. The Hutu extremists, meanwhile, pushed the civilian Hutu population out into refugee camps in Tanzania, Burundi, and, most importantly, Zaire, where between 1 and 2 million of them ended up. The refugee camps in Zaire were constructed close to the Rwandan border in direct violation of international law, and they were immediately militarized by those who committed the genocide. The camps were then used by extremist Hutus as bases for launching raids back into Rwanda.

The above facts are by and large not in dispute. What is in dispute, however, is the intentions of the Uganda-raised Tutsis who took over the government in Kigali and who are still in power today. They quickly consolidated power after making some symbolic overtures to moderate Hutus that rapidly fell apart. They also oversaw and allowed the murder of tens of thousands of completely innocent Hutus as revenge. Eventually, the government came to be led by Paul Kagame, who had been the general in charge of the RPF invasion.

Trained at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, Kagame understood the tactics of modern war, and by all independent accounts, his takeover of Rwanda was not designed to stop the genocide but rather to take and hold on to power. The new RPF-led government used the Rwandan base of power to launch an invasion into Zaire, at first for the purpose of dealing with the security threat from the militarized refugee camps. Soon, Rwanda was stealing Congo-Zaire’s resources, propping up the rebel who started Zaire’s civil war, propping up another rebel who kept the fighting going aftr the “wars” were over, and directly contributing to the deaths of 5 million Congolese. As Jocelyn Kelley so eloquently puts it, what happened in the Congo was not “spillover” from the genocide. It is not accidental.

Anybody who says these things in print automatically becomes an enemy of the Rwandan government. Alison Des Forges, the most knowledgable American expert on Rwanda before her untimely death in February, said them. She was banned from travel to the country. Gerard Prunier, one of the greatest Francophone experts on the region, says them in his new book. I have little doubt that Kagame is furious with him right now.

More than anything, I felt a great sense of relief in reading the first few chapters of Prunier’s work. Finally, someone reputable has says these things that everyone who studies the region knows to be true: the Rwandan government is not benificent. Its members allowed terrible war crimes to happen in the wake of the genocide, crimes that were just as bad as what was done to the Tutsis. Moreover, the government does not treat all Tutsis as though they are equal. It is an authoritarian regime. There is no political freedom, no free press, and no room for dissent in today’s Rwanda.

All of this is dressed up in the language of reconciliation and the need for a strong central government to rebuild the country. Kagame is a masterful politician and tactician; he manipulates everyone from Bill Clinton to Rick Warren into believing that he has the best interests of the region at heart. That, plus a whole lot of Western guilt over the genocide, means that Kigali has seen considerable economic development and foreign direct investment in the past few years.

But that progress comes at a terrible cost. An army that stopped a genocide after it killed 800,000 turned around and killed between 20-40,000 more innocent people. They are in very large part responsible for the massive suffering that continues to this day in the eastern Congo, where the situation continues to worsen. And shutting down a newscast will only draw attention to the very thing Kagame wants to hide most. He is sitting on a time bomb. Rule by a minority of a minority without any space for dissent won’t work forever, and Kagame is smart enough that he should know that his jig will eventually be up.

We can and should have sympathy for the hundreds of thousands of innocent Rwandans who died fifteen years ago this spring. The Hutu extremists took the lives of mothers and fathers and sisters and brothers and cousins, rich and poor, educated and not.

But their deaths do not mean that the people who took the place of those killers are automatically worthy of our trust. Or our foreign aid.

Of course, Kagame’s plan to teach every Rwandan English may cause this particular tactic to backfire. It’s still very easy to pick up the BBC World Service broadcasts the government can do nothing about – in English – with a $5 shortwave radio. Here’s hoping the West is listening

Museveni a self declared Machievallian of Africa

the man who has destabilized the region

Museveni; Machiavellian evil incarnate. He has packaged and repackaged himself so packaged and repackaged himself so successfully that while Charles Taylor has been marched to a court, and Omar al-Bashir faces arrest, every American Administration beginning with Ronald Reagan has considered him an “ally”. Will Obama break the mold? We won’t hold our breath. What might not be apparent to readers of a recent article in The New York Times, under the by-line of Howard French, is that both Howard French and Mahmood Mamdani, whose book he reviews, suffer from similar afflictions. On initial scrutiny, scratching the surface a bit, one might conclude the common maladies to be their status, prestige, career interests, and the hunger for acknowledgment. Looking deeper however we find that both help to cover up the truth about the atrocities occurring in the region in Africa that they have both been writing about. “A Continent For The Taking,” French’s summary of his years as a New York Times bureau chief in Africa (1993-1999) — is devoid of serious attention to the subterfuge of multinational corporations; absent any real discussion of covert operations; flippant in its treatment of racism; and wholly supportive of the white supremacy that has Africa under a stranglehold. French at least notes that a genocide was perpetrated against the Hutus in the Democratic Republic of Congo by the Paul Kagame military machine; and to his credit he expresses a bit of outrage about that. But whatever door to the truth was minutely cracked open during the abuses against Hutu refugees who fled the 1994 killings in Rwanda was sealed shut. French dropped his concern for Congo — what little of it that seemed to exist — and moved on to become a Times bureau chief in Shanghai. French’s treatment of Nigeria, 1993-1997, on the pages of the New York Times, is more a mirror to his own youth and shallow understanding than anything else; and the ghost of Ken Saro Wiwa — and all the other Nigerians sacrificed for the petroleum genocide there — will certainly haunt him. For if you read his summary of the Saro-Wiwa story in his “Continent….” you must more importantly go back and read French’s trivial pursuits on the pages of The New York Times prior to November 10, 1995; and then the back peddling on the pages of the Times after Nov 10, 1995; culminating in The New York Times triumph over truth, which appeared in the form of a two-full page Propaganda “advert” about the Ogoni story, earning the Times some $136,000. To see Howard French lauding Professor Mamdani in his review is rather apropos of how the system feeds itself and supports those of its kind. What is important to note is who Mamdani is and where he comes from, and that is what should inform peoples’ understanding of his position vis-a-vis Sudan or the Great Lakes of Africa. Indeed, extended a bit further South, we get a glimpse of how poorly — out of foolishness? Fear? Service to Empire? — Mamdani conveys his version of “reality” re: Mugabe in Zimbabwe, by reading the scathing critique of Mamdani on Mugabe written by Professor Horace Campbell. Now there is something worth talking about. Mamdani is never mentioned in Howard French’s “Continent….”, but neither are Maurice Tempelsman, or Donald Easum; yet, to borrow from the title of French’s book, the “Taking” of a Continent as Africa was easily achieved with the help of these agents of repression and organized white collar crime. Indeed, French lauds former Nigerian president Olusegun Obasanjo in “Continent,” but never mentions the relationship between Obasanjo and Easum; or their ties to the Africa-America Institute, another Tempelsman-backed entity whitewashing truth with white supremacy; and to the assassination of Nigerian President Murtala Muhammad in 1976. Back to Mamdani. When Paul Kagame and Yoweri Museveni ascended the throne in Uganda after their war against Milton Obote’s government between 1980-1985, Mamdani was all over it. There must be some skeleton’s in Mamdani’s closets, as he maintained tight relations with Museveni and Kagame to some degree for several years. So much so that when Kagame and James Kabarebe marched into Congo, wiping out the Hutu refugee camps, Mamdani was fairly silent. Mamdani was silent about the conflagration in Rwanda from 1990-1995, and only posthumously, meaning after so many Hutus and Tutsis had been killed there, did he conjure up his version of an expose in his book “When Victims Become Killers.” Madeleine Albright, Philip Gourevitch and the New Yorker magazine concocted a “new breed of African leaders”; Kagame, Museveni, Wamba Dia Wamba, John Garang, Laurent Desire Kabila and Meles Zenawi. When these men were all studying Marxism at the University of Dar-Es-Salaam in Tanzania in the 1970s, it seems Mamdani was there too. When Kagame and Kabarebe marched back into Congo in 1998, for the second invasion, slaughtering left and right, Mamdani went with them from Kigali, traveling with Jacques Depelchin, who was already funding the so-called RCD “rebels” of Museveni, Kagame and Wamba; before the RCD’s many pathological fractures. Where does Howard French situate these people? French personally told me that he had “dogged Maurice Templesman.” He was quite proud of his acumen as a reporter determined to get to the bottom of the Tempelsman matter; and yet, Tempelsman not only eluded French in real life, but also eluded any mention what-so-ever in French’s “Continent.” Accident? Self-censorship? Intentional obfuscation? Incidental omission? We’re talking about Maurice Tempelsman; right up there with King Leopold as one of the greatest enduring enemies of the people of Congo, Liberia, Angola, Botswana, South Africa, Central Africa Republic, Nigeria, Ghana, and Sierra Leone. Another curious feat of magic is attempted recently, April 25/26, by Jacques Depelchin, in his critique of the Foreign Policy article by Jeffrey Herbst and Greg Mills titled “68 Million Congolese Can’t be Wrong.” Depelchin, who funded the RCD, ostensibly split from Mamdani in 1998 out of Mamdani’s supposed concern for “objectivity”. It’s no wonder that Mamdani says so little about Museveni and the US-Israeli-UK backing of the Sudan Peoples Liberation Army, who play a role in the killing in Darfur, as sure as any Hutu is today certain to be labeled a “genocideare.” Howard French sums up the Museveni -SPLA story in a single sentence: “Our latest love affair with a Ugandan dictator stemmed mostly from Museveni’s willingness to sponsor an insurgency in Southern Sudan against that country’s Islamic Fundamentalist government.” If there is a glimmer of Hope — after all, French subtitles his book “…The Tragedy And Hope Of Africa,” it is that Howard French dared to press the limits as much as he did. French is an African American and Mamdani is a Ugandan of Indian ancestry. The system — the White supremacist system — is so ruthless and unforgiving against such people who “step out of line” that they can certainly be seen as men in line as fall guys when someone, anyone, ostensibly needs to be held to account for Africa’s woes. Such is the nature of system predicated on black [African] fall guys, who take the heat, and the white collar war criminals who don’t. Perhaps the shortcomings of such works as “Continent….” and “When Victims Become Killers,” can be placed in their proper contexts. James Baldwin comes to mind: “It is the innocence that constitutes the crime.” Tell it to the millions and millions of dead and the millions and millions more perpetually destined to suffer the abuses of the “humanitarian” misery industry, the Western profit sector, across Sub Saharan Africa. We don’t see Mamdani or French writing about that. Please post your comments online or submit them to Milton@blackstarnews.com