I was going to write this week’s postcard on the passing of Ronald Reagan. He has been described as many things: ‘the man who changed America and the World’ , ‘one of the greatest Presidents’, the ‘conqueror’ of the Soviet Union and the harbinger of the collapse of Socialism. Historical figures are often divisive and depending on where one stood on the issues ‘the Messiah’ may turn out to be ‘the villain’ and the ‘liberator’ becomes a ‘tyrant’. I do not share the effusions on Reagan because his Presidency did not mean anything positive for Africa.

He was a supporter of Apartheid South Africa. His ‘positive engagement’ was a comprehensive destabilization and destruction of many lives and property in the whole of the Frontline states. He showed his contempt for African lives when he compared that Judas of African Liberation, Dr Jonas Savimbi, of Angola, to Abraham Lincoln, who freed the African Slaves in America. He is the ideological father of the current US president who believes in bombing people to freedom. That's why Reagan bombed Tripoli in 1986 against all norms of international law and decency.

These are just to mention but a few things orchestrated by this original Cow Boy president who is now presented as some kind hero. It is not only in Africa that he supported atrocities; he ran amok in Latin America whether in Honduras, El Salvador or Nicaragua. In his war against the Sandinistas, who led a popular revolution against an American puppet governing class, Reagan ignored international law, mined international waters and refused to recognize the authority of the UN or the International Court of Justice. Do all these sound familiar today? So do forgive me if I am not wasting my mourning on Ronald Reagan.

But I am mourning for another former President . Even though he is not dead yet his largely ignored trials and tribulations deserve our sympathies. He is the former President, Pasteur Bizmungu, of Rwanda. He was reportedly sentenced (on Monday) to 15 years imprisonment on a three-count charge of ‘embezzlement’, ‘associating with criminals’ and ‘incitement to civil disobedience’. He got five years for each count to run concurrently.

Human rights organisations have pointed out some of the grave flaws in the trial itself, since the man was first arrested in 2002. There are grounds for criticizing the legality of the process itself and how the charges evolved.
But the legality of the matter aside - even the veracity or otherwise of the case can be put aside - the politics of it is what most people see. Whatever the prosecutors say this has been and will remain a political trial. The initial charges were of threatening national security, but the court has now acquitted him. The other charges of which he was now been found guilty came later.

Would he have faced trial if he was still President? Certainly not! Could he have faced any trials if after resigning he kept his mouth shut and was not trying to organize an opposition party against his former RPF comrades?
These questions beg more questions. His persecutors want the world to believe that his trial is a demonstration of the rule of law and independence of the Rwandese Judiciary. However it is said that ‘it is not enough for Justice to be done it must be seen to have been done’. There is nothing in the circumstances that led to the former President's arrest in 2002 and the various twists and turns and the deliberate humiliation of the man that will persuade any independent observer that he could ever get justice from his former colleagues.

Rwanda is not a ‘normal’ state or society but it has confounded critics by the giant strides it has made in trying to confront its painful history and build a better society since the end of genocide. No doubt the RPF has been the major player in this but it could not have succeeded without the good will of most Rwandese.

The outstanding challenges it faces cannot be surmounted if this cooperation cannot be received voluntarily from its citizens. As an RPF person and its first post genocide president, Bizmungu has certainly been a partner in these struggles. When he felt that he had no more room for contributing through the ruling party and government he resigned and tried to form his own party.

It should not be a crime to form political parties to contest public opinion and canvass for support. Even Uganda - that has continued to dither on this matter - knows that it is tilting against the force of history. While parties are allowed in Rwanda it is obvious that the ruling elite do not want effective parties that can be credible to the populace. That is why they are criminalizing political disagreement. By all means any political party that promotes disaffection between the populations or supports genocide should not be allowed. But the temptation to treat any opposition to the RPF as ‘ethnicity’, ‘divisive’, ‘interahamwe sympathisers’ or a threat to national security must be resisted.

President Paul Kagame and RPF won a decisive victory in the last general election. That mandate does not mean that anybody that did not or does not support the government is an ‘adui’. The mandate should have made the government feel more secure and confident but it seems that they do not trust themselves or the electorate that gave them the mandate. Otherwise why turn a man who was for many years popularly seen as an ineffectual stooge into a martyr?

I know that this line of thinking will not go down well with many of my friends in Kigali but what are friends for if one cannot speak truth to power?

Bizmungu's treatment in the hands of his own former comrades is most appalling and will do the RPF and the government of President Kagame and the people of Rwanda more harm than good. One is not advocating that because he was a former president he should be above the law but this is not about finer points of law because the politics of the trials has compromised the morality of the matter.

* Dr Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem is General Secretary of the Global Pan African Movement, based in Kampala, Uganda and also Director of Justice Africa, based in London.

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