By Jean Damascene Habumuremyi
First of all, allow me my dear President to make an observation that many of your top strategists can’t make due to fear. You have devoted a lot time into explaining and cleaning yourself of anything that can point at you being the problem causer in the current Rwanda-Uganda relations.
You do this with passion and energy, yet it doesn’t produce any positive results, but instead worsens the situation. Mr. President, we would have found a solution by now, if explaining yourself in RPF conferences and press meetings, uttering strong words against Uganda were indeed the magic bullets. We would long have found a solution to the bitter relations with our northern neighbor, if injecting our meager resources into creating propaganda websites and bankrolling propaganda writers to abuse President Museveni and his government, were indeed great strategic undertakings.
Mr. President, you even stoop too low and pay hooligans to abuse Museveni’s mother, who long passed away, and poor lady has nothing to do with your politics.
Mr. President, I recently watched a video of you emphasizing how much Guhangana (fiercely tussling it out with those you perceive your enemies), is the only way that can guarantee our country’s political, economic, social development. Mr. President, we are surely punching above our weight! You can afford to Guhangana, because you and your immediate family, relatives and a few close associates fully live your lives off our sweat.
Not us who are dying quietly in our houses due to the border closure.
While I agree that enemies shouldn’t be given room, I also think that we as a country sometimes fire misguided missiles. I strongly believe it’s us trying to make Uganda an enemy, not them being one. Mr. President, how can you as Commander in Chief of our armed forces sanction shooting dead unarmed Ugandan cigarette/waragi or cosmetics smugglers at the borders with Uganda? Imagine killing such poor people, yet Uganda is happily home to hundreds of thousands of our brethren – banyarwanda of Rwandese origin? Mr. President, do you see that we are clearly in the wrong?
I also believe that Uganda’s leadership has never wished anything wrong to happen to Rwanda. Why would they destroy something they helped build from scratch?
In the whole world, it’s only Uganda’s President Museveni who personally supported you and the RPA in literally everything that you needed in bringing down a Genocidal regime. I know that you and your propagandists will be quick to say Museveni was paying back for the role of the banyarwanda fighters in the successful NRA liberation struggle. But remember Mr. President, we the banyarwanda have a saying that, ugiriwe ineza nuwo yayigiriye aba afite imana.
President Museveni was under no pressure to help us in the liberation struggle; after all we never signed an agreement that would have forced him to help us back. He simply did it out of parental love. Other than abusing him and belittling him every day in a show of how much we have grown as big boys, I would advise Mr. President that we still exploit his parental love which he still has in abundance. You and him know each other very well, swallow your pride and engage him on any thorny issues that arose out of our pride, arrogance and self entitlement. Cyisha bugufi!
I really don’t see any need for involving third parties which have often times worsened the already fragile relations. Funding propaganda writers like Andrew Mwenda and wasting our taxes in millions of dollars on international PR firms to clean us, can never solve the Uganda Rwanda stand off!
French born author of novels and short stories Anais Nin once said that when one is pretending the entire body revolts. Nin’s words fit well in our country Mr. President. We are in a complete mess only that we pretend yet we are dying from inside. In Byumba, me and many of my colleagues used to look out for a little capital and import low priced commodities from Uganda, but we’ve been kept out of business because we can’t afford the Dar es Salaam route which is more costly to us, and longer in terms of distance. This definitely has a direct cost implication on Rwandans majority of who live in extreme poverty.
Mr. President, you can never feel the pinch of Guhangana because you and your family sit and comfortably wait for our hard earned money we pay to you as tax. Just think about this. The distance between Dar es Salaam which is now Rwanda’s gateway of goods and Kigali is 1156 kilometers (718 miles), while it’s 314 miles or 505 km from Kampala to Kigali, which takes about 8 hours, 16 minutes to drive.
Mr. President, let’s stop this madness. We understand that guhangana is important to you, but it shouldn’t be done at the expense of our hungry stomachs. We as citizens of our motherland, continue to witness skyrocketing prices of goods and commodities to scarcity of food and milk. Before you closed the border, we relied heavily on high quality fresh produce from Uganda.
Mr. President you know that we Rwandans have appreciated Ugandan milk and other fresh commodities from there for a long time, but because of the hatred you have for Uganda, you conscript us into taking your company Inyange’s products and other high quality commodities imported from China and other countries.
You can laugh this off, but Uganda remains East Africa’s unrivalled food basket. Mr. President, of course you and your strategists will pretend like Rwandans are very fine, yet we are dying silently. We can’t speak out because of the fear that your regime long instilled among the citizens. We long got to a level where even husband and wife fear flies on walls in their bedrooms. You and your lieutenants keep massaging yourselves with propaganda that Uganda is instead the one economically suffering because of the border closure. Get out of that selfish egoism and live a realistic life.
Uganda grows economically stronger every day. Unlike in the past, during the month of August 2021, Uganda’s trade position with the EAC and the Rest of Africa improved from deficits of $64.93 million and $63.61 million to surpluses of $25.32 million and $45.96 million respectively.
This development implies that there has been a stable increase in trade volume between Uganda with East Africa and the rest of Africa countries. Compared to August 2020, the Ministry of Finance Planning and Economic Development said in the economic performance report for the month of September 2021 that there was a turnaround in Uganda’s trade position with the Middle East from a surplus of $179.86 million to a deficit of $73.43 million in August 2021 mainly due to a slowdown in exports of gold to the region.
For us we cook up figures to pretend and show the world that everything s fine, yet it’s the opposite. The economic empowerment of Ugandans is there for anyone to see.
It’s a common sight to find majority working Ugandan young men in their fourties who have built loan free homes, and have also built an upcountry home and also own a farm in their villages. The same category of people back home is saffocating on high interest loans to achieve what their Ugandan counterparts effortlessly have. Yes, our streets are spotless clean, with well shaved gardens. These don’t bring food on the table Sir!
Mr. President, open the boarder! We the low income traders want to trade with Ugandans who truly have been our brothers and sisters for a very long time. Not trading with Chinese or Tanzanians we have just seen. Mr. President, the choice is in your hands. I know you will rubbish my warning, and only yearn for cheerleaders.
But be careful! Our silence over so many internal pressing issues in our country is so loud. You might be superintending over a population that is seated on a time bomb. Thank you for reading my letter Mr. President. Ukuri gucya muziko nigushe!
