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THE credibility of the Rwandan Patriotic Front as a guerrilla army is
beyond doubt after a string of victories this month it looks set to
overrun more numerous government forces but its political programme is
far from clear.
Officially the policy of the RPF is to institute democracy after a
transitional period which, it hopes, will follow its victory in the
civil war that restarted last month.
In an interview with The Times, Alex Kanyarengwe, the chairman of the
movement, said: Democracy is a state of respect for the opinions of
others.
Sitting in a wicker chair outside a bungalow with every window
missing as the smell of rotting bodies from government-inspired
massacres wafted through the warm air of Nyamata, he added: There must
be democracy of ideas before democracy for the masses.
His half-hearted commitment to democracy indicated what most members of
the RPF clearly feel, but few will articulate that it will be many,
many years before they entrust the country to the Hutu majority
responsible for murdering tens of thousands of Tutsi and opposition
supporters.
The chairman insisted that it would be impossible to bring every
murderer to trial because that would mean going after the whole
country
. Dwarfed by his tall Tutsi bodyguards, Mr Kanyarengwe a Hutu,
as are between 30 and 40% of the movement's fighters did his best to
argue that his was not a tribal organisation.
He also insisted that Rwanda's civil war was not a tribal issue. It was
true, Mr Kanyarengwe admitted, that the vast majority of the victims
had been Tutsi, but he said they had been slaughtered along with many
Hutu supporters of opposition parties.
About half of the million Tutsi in Rwanda are believed to have been
killed since April 6. But many remain in pockets around the country
where, in towns such as Kabgayi and Cyangugu on the border with Zaire,
they are dragged from concentration camps and murdered. With every
rebel success does the RPF not put these remaining people at risk of
outright massacre? Are there camps of Tutsi? I do not know where they
are. There are many refugees throughout the country and we are
concerned for the safety of them all,
he said.
The admission that he had no idea about the large numbers of Tutsi
40,000 in Kabgayi alone still at risk was in sharp contrast with
military officers, who seek news of where such camps are, and how many
people are in them. His ignorance is, however, also a reflection of the
sang froid with which the RPF has greeted the massacres of the Tutsi,
who dominate their own movement.
Although Paul Kagame, the military leader of the RPF, has refused to
talk about a ceasefire with the rump government of Rwanda, whom he has
described as a clique of murderers
, many of the soldiers in the
field, who were born and educated in Uganda, appear largely unmoved by
the mass killings. That is war,
is their usual comment.
Mr Kanyarengwe might be dismissed as the token Hutu
in the RPF, which
was formed in Uganda by ethnic Rwandan officers from President
Museveni's National Resistance Army and invaded Rwanda in 1990. But his
background indicates that he should be a significant force in the
country when, and if, the rebels take power.
He rose to prominence in the Cabinet of President Habyarimana, killed
in a plane crash last month, as the Minister of the Interior between
1973 and 1980. He had earlier served five years as head of the
intelligence services, but was forced into exile after he was
implicated in a coup attempt.
We will negotiate only with the army never with the illegal government
of criminals,
Mr Kanyarengwe said. There will be no ceasefire until
they stop the massacres.
The government says that it will not stop the
killing until the rebels stop the shooting.
From Sam Kiley in Nyamata, southern Rwanda.
