In 2018, he was voted as African of the Year’ at the eighth All Africa Business Leaders Awards (AABLA). In 2017, he was awarded the Golden Plate Award by the American Academy of Achievement at the International Achievement Summit in London, United Kingdom.
The Former Chair of the African Union and Rwanda’s President Paul Kagame is a man few leaders will ever match up to leave alone mere mortals. He shoots from the hip and speaks his mind especially when he feels like an entire African race is under attack by white supremacists who see and hear no good coming from Africa and Rwanda in particular.
On Monday, France 24 hosted President Kagame, alongside EU Development Commissioner Neven Mimica, at the European Development Days event in Brussels. The two leaders were hosted by blonde haired Catherine Nicholson who hosts the Talking Europe show.
The three had a lengthy discussion on a range of topics ranging from Rwanda’s economic recovery, eradication of global poverty, United Nations Sustainable goals to Human Rights.
It was the insistence of Nicholson to portray Rwanda as ‘a living hell on earth’ where gross Human Rights abuses is but the norm of the day and orchestrated by Mr. Kagame administration that brushed the Rwandan leader the wrong way and he made it crystal clear.
“I think this kind of discussion which has gone on for a very long time sounds a bit cynical in the sense. In fact, it is like the tragic situation of 1994 isn’t considered even as a violation of Human Rights it has now gone to the background. I think it’s just ridiculous because there is nothing like human rights minus what you are talking about in terms of development. Education, health, food security and development these too are human rights,” President Kagame said.
Nicholson, who represents much of the western view that seems never to have accepted colonization ended decades ago and forever insists on seeing Africa as the source of everything dark and evil wasn’t, however, done with Mr. Kagame and interjected him to cite some Amnesty International report about Rwanda’s Human rights record and allegations of opposition leaders being jailed but President Kagame had had enough.
“It’s rubbish absolutely rubbish because Rwanda is completely different from what it was 25 years ago in fact maybe you need to be looking around in Europe because you are violating people’s rights when we have this problem of people being bundled and sent back to go sink in the Mediterranean Sea and so on and many people being mistreated in your own countries why don’t you talk about your own human rights record and stop just offloading everything on African leaders,” he fired.
“You really need to stop this superiority complex nuisance about Human Rights. You think you are the only ones who respect Human Rights and all other people are violating Human Rights. We’ve fought for Human Rights and Freedoms of our people much better than and more than anyone including you people who keep on talking about this nuisance, where we have taken our country from and where it is now speaks for itself the rest of the stories just come from this complex,”
Kagame loudly wondered who had appointed the western world as the judge, jury, and executioner of what passes as Human Rights and not.
“Yes Human Rights is universal but if it is universal and you believe it then you don’t become the judge yourself, you don’t start telling the other what to do, what they should do or not or what they are doing it is not to your satisfaction who are you?” he posed to Nicholson.
“When we respect the things, we respect in our country it is not for you or anybody else it is for ourselves,” said Kagame.
“I believe you shouldn’t be there belittling Africans or leaders of Africa who are trying to do their best. Human rights abuse occurs even in Europe, not only in Africa,” he finalized.
It is not hard to see why African leaders like Paul Kagame are seething at this western attitude that has no place in the 21st century.
Viewers who watched the entire drama unfold couldn’t help but wonder how funny it is how foreign journalists and western elites try to give Africans lessons about human rights just less than 60 years ago when they treated the same Africans as second-class human beings.
“We got tired of being bullied by the same people who constantly invade and bomb poor nations; who treat migrants like animals, sell weapons of mass destruction, put babies in concentration camps, put innocent people in Guantanamo without trial and they still get the nerve to bully a leader who has healed a nation that was completely destroyed by the genocide while the same white saviors watched from their comfortable land.” One viewer posted.
It is only in the west where you will find a white balding man who has never stepped into an African country passing as an expert and spewing unverified personal statements as facts. Such sad scenarios should never be witnessed in our time and indeed should be condemned and called out.
It is also now coming out in the open that indeed some Human Right organization which operates in Rwanda have political motives far more sinister than uplifting the lives of Rwandans.
I mean Rwanda and Africa do not hold the crown of everything evil if anything the continent has been at the mercy of white imperialist and supremacists who have plundered, raped and traumatized ‘Mama Africa’ without as much as caring a hoot.
The world has allowed Germany to move past its dark history of slaughtering over six million Jews in the Holocaust and today the country is considered the economic powerhouse of the European Union.
The world has allowed the United States of America to move past its horrendous slavery history much as its effects are still felt today and my question is why can’t the world let Rwanda be? C'mon for god sake let Rwanda prosper in peace.
In 2019, just months after the gruesome murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi at the hands of Saudi agents much of the western world led by dozens of Western politicians and business executives quickly tropped back to Saudi Arabia’s Riyadh to ink business deals, make merry and toast to good health. Where was western morality then or does it only come out alive and uninvited when Africans are involved.
It is a fact that fifty years since a majority of African nations attained their independence much of the continent is still known for only bad news and this has mainly been perpetuated by ignorant white journalists who should know better.
Many EU countries have tainted history of colonialism, racism, economy based on plundering richer nations at the time yet they insist on being the moral god to the entire world.
Africans now understand that political freedom without economic freedom is a farce. Political democracy while it is necessary and indeed African nations have in recent years taken huge steps to open up their political space doesn’t necessarily translate to economic growth.
The US became the most hegemonic global superpower after 1945 as an apartheid state. South Africa, the true home of apartheid, had Africa’s most dominant economy under apartheid white minority regimes.
China became the second most powerful economy without learning how to spell the word democracy.
Rwanda is more than its genocide story and it is high time Africans and the entire world also realise that and cast their lens further.
The $5 million plant is located at the Kigali Special Economic Zone in Gasabo District is expected to boost efforts to ensure that Africa adds value to its minerals before exporting them.
Isn’t this what western elites who usually sit on their sprawling office suites in western cities and draft reports about Africa and proceed to lecture African leaders of what they ought to do in order to reduce poverty preach? Now that it has finally happened why do they suddenly go mute?
Smartphones made in Rwanda are also set to hit the market soon and with increase the mobile penetration in Sub-Saharan African even further.
Yet such news doesn’t make it to western news table with the same veracity as when an Ebola outbreak occurs in Congo or Uganda.
It is no wonder that China is winning African hearts without firing a single bullet because while they have their shortcomings at least they put an effort in hiding their condensing attitude and don’t play god when in Africa.
In Kagame’s words African leaders and by extension Africans just want to be accorded the same respect as western leaders and be left in peace to carry out their mandate, history will judge them not some ignorant western journalist who thinks Africa is a country.
“My answer is simple is to do my best to serve my people the best way they can be served,”
