The story of an African regime gone bad

If we were to ask a distant observer of African reality about Rwanda, he would possibly cite three facts: it was a colony of Belgium until the middle of the last century, it suffered one of the worst genocides in the contemporary world and today it is an example of progress and security in a continent ravaged by poverty and violence.

The reality, however, is only partially similar to this photograph, if we are to pay attention to the latest book by the British journalist Michela Wrong.

(4th State Editions) is a complex and harsh portrait of modern Rwanda and its lord and master since 1994, Paul Kagame.

A story whose implications go far beyond this tiny East African country.

Michela Wrong has a virtue above any other, and that is that she knows how to tell a story.

She proved it in her previous three newspaper essays on Africa and she has done it again now.

is gobbled up like a good novel by Le Carré – he even recommended the book – trapping the reader in a tangle of political assassinations, revolutions, corruption and spies.

Its nearly 500 pages are a lesson in the geopolitics of sub-Saharan Africa, whose ins and outs are so unknown in the West.

But the real protagonists of this book are the leaders of the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), who in the early 1990s return from their multigenerational exile in Uganda to force the radical Hutu government of Juvénal Habyarimana to share power.

The shooting down of the plane in which he and his Burundian counterpart, Cyprien Ntaryamira, were traveling to Kigali triggered the brutal and accelerated slaughter of 800,000 ethnic Tutsi and moderate Hutus men, women and children.

Only the entry of the RPF into the country manages to stop the genocide and put an end to the regime that promoted it, but two million people leave Rwanda.

The new government's promises of reconciliation, justice and prosperity are slowly turning into an

that separates former comrades-in-arms and destroys attempts at ethnic integration.

Facing the legend of the hero Kagame who put an end to a genocide, Wrong describes indiscriminate killings inside and outside of Rwanda

What could have gone so wrong?

Wrong points to a main culprit: Paul Kagame, a gray leader who takes control of the RPF after the death of his charismatic leader in unexplained circumstances and leads Rwanda after the genocide.

The metamorphosis is described using as a common thread the murder, in a hotel in Johannesburg (the sign on the door said “do not disturb”), of the former head of Rwandan intelligence, Patrick Karegeya.

The plot of this crime, which stands out among the many attributed to the Government of Rwanda, offers the darkest face of a leader who, to this day, is courted by the governments of rich countries and international organizations.

Contrasting with the legend of the hero who put an end to a genocide, Wrong describes indiscriminate killings inside and outside of Rwanda;

In front of the statesman who rescues his country from poverty, several experts parade through the book who question the veracity of national statistics;

Against the model of irreproachable and incorruptible leader, the criminal and greedy interference of his regime in DR Congo is described.

Only the narrative isolation of Africa explains why we have heard so much from Erdogan, Maduro or Putin, and so little from Paul Kagame.

Readers of this blog will especially enjoy the chapter dedicated to international cooperation organizations.

Led by DFID (former British aid agency) and USAID, the development industry has financed public budgets and guaranteed political platforms for Kagame and his regime, while ignoring the imprisonment and murder of opponents – Tutsis and Hutus alike – and the denial of the most basic individual freedoms.

The shame of not having been able or willing to prevent the 1994 genocide still weighs on these decisions, but the background is obscenely colonialist: if they are going to be unable not to kill each other, progress with order is always preferable to democracy with chaos.

The same ditty we've heard, right and left,

Do Not Disturb

is a tough book, impeccably researched, and really hard to get published.

Beyond the harassment in networks, it is impossible not to think that Michela Wrong has already entered one of the infamous blacklists of the RPF punishment squads, which have hit Europe and half the world.

And it is not that this possibility wrinkled him, as demonstrated by the campaign he has launched against the infamous Anglo-Rwandan agreement for the "outsourcing" of hosting refugees.

If all this is true, why leave open a flank of the investigation as delicate as the shooting down of the presidential plane?

The only reproach that I have heard about this book from those who know very well the recent history of Rwanda is that its author blames the RPF for the 1994 assassination with too much certainty. And, although this is a more than plausible option, there are still reasons to have Doubts.

Precisely because

was going to be scrutinized and subjected to a campaign of harassment and takedown, perhaps Wrong would have been better off showing more caution at this pivotal point in the story.

But this is the only blemish I can find on an essential book for anyone who wants to know more about contemporary Africa.

Indeed, for anyone who follows with trepidation, the proliferation and connection of liberal regimes.

That is why it is inexplicable that it has not yet been published in Spanish.

If I were a publisher, I would run to buy the rights.

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