originally published in Africa Review, Kenya
A Rwandan opposition politician has gone into hiding and says that he is fearing for his life, after being ousted last week.
Mr. Bernarnd Ntaganda, formerly the president of the Social Party-Imberakuri, allegedly sought asylum in the American embassy in Kigali last Thursday after disappearing Wednesday night, following an internal vote of no-confidence ousting him from his position as party leader. The current crisis continues a season-long struggle for opposition parties as the presidential elections in August near.
While Mr. Ntaganda has been able to register his party – two other opposition parties have had their attempts met with violence – he is currently under a senate probe for fostering dangerous divionist sentiments, and Mr. Ntaganda’s sees last week’s vote as an internal coup designed by the ruling party.
“Ntaganda harbours divisionism ideology which aims at taking the country back to where it was in the past,” said Noel Hakizimfura, one of three new party chairmen.
Mr. Ntaganda founded PS-Imberakuri last year and has faced an uphill battle to register the party and begin campaigning. Along with another candidate, Victoire Ingabire, Mr. Ntaganda has been accused of disseminating genocide ideology, a particularly dangerous crime in the country, and has been accused of building his political party on ethnic platforms, to support Hutu people, who are the majority in Rwanda.
Earlier in the week, Mr. Ntaganda sent emails of distress suggesting that the country’s ruling party had been trying undermine PS-Imberakuri and that his security was in danger. On Wednesday, hundreds of party members organized from all over the country voted in Kigali to have Mr. Ntaganda removed as chairman of the party and since then he has gone into hiding. The new leadership of the party, consisting of three chief committee members, said that Mr. Ntaganda has been associating with terrorists and was disseminating divionism throughout the party and throughout the country.
But Mr. Ntaganda, in a letter released by those close to him on Friday, said that the internal coup of his party had been orchestrated by the ruling Rwandan Patriotic Front. The letter said that Mr. Ntaganda had been taken to the RPF offices earlier in the week and was told to leave his post by RPF secretary-general Francois Ngarambe.
During this meeting Bernard was asked by the RPF to resign yet he refused. Ngarambe then asked the other committee members to support the decision to force Bernard to resign, but they also refused. Ngarambe and RPF soldiers then took the committee members and Bernard back to their homes, but returned a short while later and demanded that each committee member return to the headquarters, but without Bernard,” the letter read.
As presidential election in August near, there are three signature candidates running against incumbent Paul Kagame and the ruling Rwanda Patriotic Front party. Mr. Ntaganda’s PS-Imberakuri is the only one to have been formerly registered with the government. The other two, the Rwanda Green Party and FDU-Inkingi have been embroiled in political drama as they try to garner the signatures needed to register.
But since his PS-Imberakuri was registered late last year, Mr. Ntaganda has been under a senate inquiry over accusations of disseminating genocide-ideology, Rwanda’s political kryptonite. None of the self-nominated fierce opposition parties have been able to register.
But it seems like some of the most serious challenges to the status-quo may be coming from within.
Rwanda and its capital Kigali have been rocked by a spate of grenade attacks and high-ranking defections in the last week, bring the usually calm and serene city to a tense standstill. While President Paul Kagame has been away traveling in the United Kingdom and United States, Rwanda’s citizens have expressed feelings of something slowly slipping.
While two renegade generals accused of being behind the grenade attacks have fled to South Africa, another supposed posse-member, former journalist Deogration Mushayidi, was arrested earlier this month in Burundi and appeared in court Thrusday on charges of terrorism and genocide ideology. He is accused of shuttling in between General Faustin Kayumba Nyamwasa, who fled the country at the end of February, and Patrick Karegeya.
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