The Spoilt Habyarimana’s Son and the Nation That Moved On

Jean-Luc,

You sound like a spoilt boy crying over spilled milk — mourning a kingdom that never existed, a throne your father destroyed with his own arrogance. You speak of “panic in Kigali,” of “fear and tyranny,” as if we have forgotten what real tyranny looked like. Let us remind you.

There was once a boy in Gisenyi, your age. He grew up under your father’s Rwanda — not in palaces or parades, but in dust and hunger. He never saw electricity. He never saw a tarmacked road or a car. He walked miles for water, studied under trees, slept on banana leaves. When fever struck, his mother prayed to God because there was no clinic to go to. When night came, darkness wasn’t a metaphor — it was life itself. Nta bwo byari ubuzima, byari icuraburindi.

That boy is a man today. He owns a transport company that moves goods from Kigali to Mombasa. He employs dozens of people, pays taxes, and uses digital payments your father never imagined. His children go to school in uniforms, eat well, and dream bigger than their parents ever dared. He does not ask who is Hutu or Tutsi. He asks who can deliver. That’s Rwanda. That’s what President Kagame built. That’s what your father destroyed.

You say your father built peace. Let’s remember his peace. It wasn’t peace — it was paralysis. Tutsi families herded into silence, confined in isolated zones. Teachers dismissed for “wrong origins.” Doctors jailed for treating the “undeserving.” Priests killed for preaching reconciliation. Journalists who questioned power vanished without trace. That “peace” you boast of was the stillness of fear — the quiet of graves.

Meanwhile, children in Gisenyi, Ruhengeri, and Gitarama grew up barefoot. They never saw a car, never saw electricity, never went to a hospital, never saw a tarmacked road, never heard of internet. In 30 years of your father’s rule, fewer than 2,000 people graduated from the National University. By 1990, Rwanda had only 48 doctors, 7 judges, 12 engineers, and 4 pilots — all serving the elite around your father’s table. That was the nation he left you to defend.

Now compare it to the one you despise. Today, 7,000 engineers graduate each year. 1,200 Rwandan-trained doctors serve in public hospitals. Over 600 pilots have been trained since liberation. More than 12,000 health posts stretch across the country. Life expectancy has risen from 48 to 69 years. Electricity now lights 75% of homes. Internet penetration stands at 62%. We have 32 universities, 93,000 graduates a year, and 1.7 million passports issued in 2024 alone.

Go to Nyabihu, and you’ll find milk collection centers with solar panels. Visit Nyagatare — herders now check cattle prices on smartphones. In Musanze, girls code software; in Huye, boys design drones. Even in Bugesera, once called “igice cy’iminyenga” — land of sorrow — irrigation pipes run like veins through green rice fields. That is the Rwanda your father never dreamed of — a Rwanda that breathes, that builds, that questions.

Even those who lived under his rule now confess they were blind. Today they are free — prosperous, equal before the law. They own land. They run businesses. Their children learn coding and engineering. Hospitals have ambulances. Villages have power and water. Roads reach every corner of the country. People travel without fear. They debate, compete, and create.

Even the children of the Interahamwe your father raised walk these same streets without shame or stigma. No one curses them. Their parents’ crimes are not their inheritance. They study, win scholarships, and employ others. That’s the Rwanda your father never believed in. That’s the Rwanda Kagame built. In Nyaruguru, a young man whose father was a convicted génocidaire now manages a tea factory. In Rubavu, a survivor’s daughter and a perpetrator’s son co-own a logistics firm. They laugh together, toast together, and hire others. Ubumwe si amagambo — ni ibikorwa.

We don’t measure people by bloodlines anymore. We don’t ask whose son or daughter they are. We ask: What do you bring to the table? We don’t bow to nostalgia; we build futures. The old hatred your father baptized in blood is gone. The only people still haunted by it are those like you — igisigaratire cy’igihe cyashize — relics of a time Rwanda buried long ago.

You and your father once divided the nation into tribes. Kagame divided it into workers, dreamers, and doers. That’s the difference. And the majority of Rwandans — those who lost everything, those who fled, those who returned — they stand behind him. You think you can insult that unity with hashtags and interviews in Brussels? You think words from exile can undo what we bled to build? No, Jean-Luc. Rwanda has already answered you — not with anger, but with progress.

Many of our parents grew up on UNHCR rations — maize and milk powder stamped with blue letters. They stood in refugee lines in Tanzania, Uganda, Burundi, and Congo, holding bowls that said Property of the United Nations. Meanwhile, you ate cheese and mayonnaise, wore imported shirts, and studied in Catholic schools funded by the taxes of the same people your father persecuted. When they pleaded to return home, your father mocked them, and when they persisted, he answered with massacres. “Let them dare,” he said. He dared them — and he destroyed his country. You watched. And you learned nothing.

As for the exiled son who writes to please his foreign hosts — you still worship at the altar of the white gods who shaped your father’s power and your own resentment. You trade your homeland’s dignity for applause in foreign papers. You perform outrage for the cameras, hoping the ghosts of colonial approval will make you relevant again. But the homeland you mock no longer belongs to ghosts. It belongs to its people — young, united, relentless.

Rwanda has nothing left to prove to men like you, or to the world that once pitied us. We have already done the impossible: rebuilt from ashes, reconciled enemies, turned orphans into leaders. We don’t beg for validation anymore. We are the validation. Go to Muhanga and watch a genocide widow managing a bank branch. In Rwamagana, a boy born in a refugee camp now teaches physics. In Kigali, the grandchildren of exiles and killers sit together in cafés, arguing politics over icyayi n’igitoki. That’s u Rwanda rushya — the new Rwanda.

You live in Europe, tweeting bitterness between cappuccinos, claiming to fight for “freedom.” But your father was the one who banned it. He feared ideas. He jailed thinkers. He silenced dreamers. He called it “unity,” and it became death. You’ve inherited his denial — not his throne.

And somewhere in Gisenyi, that boy who grew up under his rule stands on a hill at dusk. He watches the lights of Kigali flicker in the valley below — highways, hospitals, and schools glowing where there used to be dust and despair. He whispers softly, not to you, not even to Kagame, but to the land itself:

“This is the Rwanda we built.
Not perfect, but ours.
The Rwanda of sweat, of second chances, of peace earned, not inherited.”

He turns away, smiling. Because he knows you’ll never understand what it means to rebuild what your father burned. You lost a throne, Jean-Luc. We found a home. Come home and settle like everyone else. No one with bother you, prodigal son of Rwanda.

Poor boy!

Uwanga u Rwanda aba yanga ishusho ye.