If you have never heard of Filip Reyntjens, don’t miss sleep over it. He is not that important, or relevant. He is a Belgian Professor of Law and Politics at the Institute of Development Policy and Management (IOB) at the University of Antwerp in Belgium.
He is also one of the architects of pre-genocide Rwanda, a good friend and advisor of Juvenal Habyarimana who now feels marginalized by the new Rwanda and saddened by the fact that his star has been diminished.
In a word, he is a self appointed expert on Rwanda who feels his opinion is valued. Not. And they are a dime a dozen.
If truth be told, he does not have clean hands nor in a place to judge Rwanda because of his active involvement as an advisor to the Habyarimana regime until 1992. Because of this I question his moral authority and intellectual capacity and honesty to pass judgement on Rwanda’s policies in the last 24 years.
Where was he prior to 1994 when Habyyarimana’s anti-Tutsi policies were being executed? Why did he not raise a peep when Habyarimana’s pogroms against Tutsi were being carried out? And was he not responsible for advising Habyarimana while the constitution that pitted Rwandans against one another was being drafted?
Silence gives consent. And Reyntjens position on the genocide against Tutsi and his advancement of the “double genocide” theory puts him squarely in the dock with hundreds of others with bloody hands. He ought to spare us his empty rhetoric in support of those who turned our country into killing fields.
His, and many others’ diatribes following Rwanda’s investment in the Arsenal football club smells of the rampant and ever present white patronizing attitude towards Africa, but in particular towards Rwanda.
He is neither competent nor qualified to question Rwanda’s decisions, in any given policy, and in particular this particular investment move with Arsenal.
He is the same man who predicted Rwanda would become a failed State following the collapse of Habyarimana’s regime.
I am sick and tired of listening to his tired speeches and reading his wobbly reasoning that Rwanda is worse off today than it ever was. Utter nonsense, and he knows it.
True, Rwanda receives sizable foreign aid. But we reserve the right to decide how and where to use, and the record is clear: Rwanda’s use and transparency in using donor monies is the best in Africa.
And Rwanda being a sovereign nation has every right to invest as it sees fit. We will be judged on the results.
