Ingabire Opens Can of Worms in Rwanda

originally published in Africa Review, Kenya

Controversy over Rwandan opposition politician Victoire Ingabire reached new heights this week when the government refused to provide the presidential hopeful with private security.

Ms Ingabire and her aide were last week attacked outside a government office in Kigali. Five men were taken into police custody following the confrontation in a government office.

Ms Ingabire has stirred controversy since returning to Rwanda in mid-January after 16 years abroad, most of them spent in Europe. She has been condemned by a spectrum of Rwandan Government, media and civil society for her campaign strategy that they say pivots on ‘ethnic divisionism’ and historical inaccuracy. Days after landing back in Rwanda for the first time since 1993, Ms Ingabire, who heads the yet-to-be-registered United Democratic Forces – Inkingi, visited the Gisozi National Genocide Memorial, the largest of its kind in Rwanda, where over 250,000 genocide victims are buried.

The Memorial tugs at the emotional heart of Rwanda’s recent history and the official determination to ensure the lessons of 1994 genocide will never be forgotten. Nearly 1 million Tutsis and moderate Hutus died in the 1994 genocide.

From the local Gacaca courts, aimed at reconciliation, to new holidays designed to inspire patriotism, many of the country’s development programmes revolve, at least in part, around the genocide. The Gisozi memorial has been a must-do stop for students, tourists, and visiting politicians.

Political establishment

But when Ms Ingabire got to the memorial, and after she bowed her head in remembrance, she raised it and said that Hutus, just like Tutsis, were killed during the genocide, and that these Hutu victims were not part of the nation’s official narrative.

Those comments and the place where she made them, have earned her the ire of Rwanda’s political establishment. From party-line newspapers to local NGOs, voices have come out in force to condemn Ms Ingabire at nearly every opportunity.

Some said that she was diminishing the reality of the 1994 genocide; others said she was denying it altogether.

While headlines from the international press focused on her attack, media within Rwanda focused on how and why Ms Ingabire “provoked a fracas”.

Indeed, the real conflict between Ms Ingabire and the ruling Rwandan Patriotic Front could by lying elsewhere.

While Ms Ingabire continues to rock the boat in Rwandan politics by saying some of the keystones of Rwanda’s reconciliation were paper-thin, the ruling party’s satellites accuse her of harbouring ‘genocide ideology,’ saying she was just as bad as extremist Hutus, who slaughtered Tutsi during the genocide. Ibuka, an organisation that speaks for genocide survivors, has gone further and linked her family to the actual genocide.

Despite the incident, and a written request by Ms Ingabire directly to President Paul Kagame, the government declined to provide the candidate with special protection.

“What is wrong with someone trailing you as long they do not harm you?” asked the minister of Internal Security, Sheik Harelimana, adding Ms Ingabire was “one among 10 million Rwandans.”