A visionary hero who put an end to the Tutsi genocide and modernized the country for his supporters, a despot who silenced all opposition for his detractors: one of the most divisive leaders in Africa, Paul Kagame shaped Rwanda during 30 years of unchallenged rule.
He will preside over the destiny of the country for five more years, re-elected for a fourth term with a score never before achieved of 99.18%.
For 30 years, he has been a key figure in Rwanda, where 65% of the population has only known him as head of the country.
On July 4, 1994, this tall, lanky man with round glasses entered Kigali at the head of the Tutsi rebellion of the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), overthrowing the extremist Hutu regime that instigated the genocide that left more than 800,000 dead, according to the UN, among the Tutsi minority. The genocidal regime also killed moderate Hutus.
Swapping his fatigues and beret for suits and ties, he became an influential vice-president and minister of defence. De facto leader of the country, he was elected president in April 2000 by Parliament after the resignation of Pasteur Bizimungu, before four re-elections by plebiscite by universal suffrage (95.05% in 2003, 93.08% in 2010, 98.79% in 2017).
Stranglehold
His three decades in power have made Paul Kagame one of the continent’s most divisive leaders.
Rwandans and foreign leaders hail his role as the architect of the spectacular economic recovery of the country, bled dry after the genocide and now held up as a model of development.
A fine strategist, he is the commander-in-chief of an army accused of destabilization by fighting alongside the M23 rebellion in the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo, but which plays a crucial security role elsewhere on the continent (Central African Republic, Mozambique, etc.).
“PK” is also the VRP (Editor’s note: traveler sales representative) of a luxury ecotourism destination that is displayed on the jerseys of the Arsenal, PSG and Bayern Munich football teams. A glamorous image that masks a repressive regime, denounce human rights NGOs.
In all these aspects, his control and that of the RPF is total.
Guerrilla
“Paul Kagame shaped Rwanda, but he is also a product of Rwanda,” said Paul-Simon Handy, East Africa director of the Institute for Security Studies (ISS), stressing Rwanda’s tradition of a strong state.
In the early 1960s, his family fled to Uganda to escape attacks on the Tutsi minority.
As a young man, Paul Kagame joined the National Resistance Army, the rebellion of Yoweri Museveni who would take power in 1986.
Along with other Tutsi exiles, he founded the RPF, which entered Rwanda in 1990 to overthrow the regime of Juvénal Habyarimana, dominated by the Hutus, opening a civil war.
When Habyarimana’s plane was shot down on April 6, 1994, Hutu extremists launched a campaign of massacres, which ended in July 1994 with the capture of Kigali by the RPF.
In its hunt for the perpetrators of the genocide, the RPF was accused by the UN of having killed, with its Congolese allies, several tens of thousands of Hutus in the DRC in 1996-1997. This subject remains very sensitive: Kigali considers the mention of these massacres to be negationism. Those responsible for these crimes have not been worried.
Eaten away by the guilt of its inaction during the genocide, the international community will remain silent, preferring to support the country’s revival (7.2% average growth between 2012 and 2022) and its remarkable progress in infrastructure, health and education.
It was only in 2012, after initial accusations of supporting the M23, that the West toughened its stance and reduced its aid.
” Lies “
Criticism has since grown against a regime where dissenting voices are stifled or forced into exile.
One of the most resounding cases is that of Paul Rusesabagina, Hutu owner of the Mille Collines hotel during the genocide who saved a thousand Tutsis, an episode which inspired the film Hotel Rwanda.
This exiled opponent was arrested in 2020 in Kigali, as he got off a plane he thought was bound for Burundi. The Rwandan government admitted to having financed the operation.
Sentenced to 25 years in prison for “terrorism”, he benefited from a presidential pardon.
“There is only one voice in Rwanda and no one challenges it,” says Louis Gitinywa, a Rwandan lawyer and political analyst, saying “this is not good for a developing country.”
Only one of the eleven officially registered opposition parties does not support Paul Kagame.
The latter brushes aside accusations of authoritarianism. “Lies” coming from the West, he castigated in an interview with AFP in 2021.
When his party voted him to run for a fourth term, the father of four and grandfather of two accepted “this burden of responsibility” but called on his supporters to find him a successor.
If not, constitutional amendments adopted in 2015 allow him to run again in 2029.