Thread by @LonzenRugira

Jacques Chirac: We shall not mourn this racist and genocide apologist

By

Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem

September 30, 2019.

Tajudeen reflects on the the life of the late former prime president of France and the injustices he committed against the people of Africa and Rwanda.

We shall not mourn this racist, and nobody should make us feel guilty for our freedom!

Jacques Chirac died in Paris on Tuesday 26 September. He died a cantankerous old man, incorrigible racist with no redeeming features and no remorse for his atrocities against the Black people of Africa.

Jacques Chirac died in Paris on Tuesday 26 September. He died a cantankerous old man, incorrigible racist with no redeeming features and no remorse for his atrocities against the Black people of Africa and Rwanda.

As Prime Minister in the 1970s and 1980s his support of a genocida regime enroute to committing genocide before the liberation war defeated it and its French patrons and stopped the genocide in 1994.

When he assumed the presidency in May 1995 he and his Prime Minister Alain Juppe remained unrepentant of the crimes their government had committed. They resented the fact that their protégés were defeated in spite of the active support of the French state.

They chose to persist in consolidating in the defeated regime in the then Zaire by providing it with material, diplomatic and military support in their aims to return to power and finish off the survivors.

Chirac insistent that the genocidal forces be integrated into the military or he continues to support them to launch an insurgency that would make Rwanda ungovernable and turn the people against those who has stopped the genocide.

He also conspired to have NGOs to have international humanitarian support for Rwandans diverted towards the defeated genocidaires in the refugee camps in Zaire rather than send it to genocide survivors in Rwanda.

Chirac placed all kinds of threats before the government that had stopped the genocide. He told the new government in Kigali that his administration would only provide development assistance on condition that such support goes to defense (so that they may overthrow it at will).

When he was told that defense was the only sector that did not need emergency support and that education, health, agriculture and other sectors were in dire need of support Chirac said it was either defense or nothing. The government chose nothing.

It was a false choice since France continued to sabotage the government diplomacy and militarily through a policy of regime change towards Kigali. France continued to support genocide perpetrators and to protect them from accountability.

For decades they deployed their soft power institutions like RFI, France 24, and NGOs in the regime change efforts by denying legitimacy to Kigali.

These facts are worth restating here because the World has changed so much in the past three decades that I would not be surprised even if many Rwandan young people (not to talk of other youth in Africa) do not have a memory of Jacques Chirac and what he stood for.

For many young people in Rwanda government means Kagame/RPF. For those of us shaped by the struggles against racist foreign domination in Africa and patronizing influences in Rwanda we know about Jacques Chirac and France.

It is only in Africa that such evil people benefit from lopsided national and diplomatic reconciliation and live till their old age with impunity. One day we will be strong enough and stable politically to demand accountability of all our leaders past and present.

Let all our oppressors live till old age (at the scene of their crimes) so that justice can catch up with them.

Whatever one thinks about the post genocide leadership in Rwanda we should not be fooled by the western media into believing that Jacques Chirac, and Mitterrand before him, were some kind of benevolent patrons under whom Rwanda prospered.

The RFI and France 24 have been doing their usual best in balancing this evil racism represented by Jacques Chirac with their opposition to Kagame.

They insist that Rwanda was better off under the genocidal regime and it’s French patrons like Mitterrand , Juppe, and Chirac.

They are simulating nostalgia for this vile white supremacist. If there is a hell I hope Chirac is roasting in it, in the most hellish section of it!

Africans are so alienated from our political leaders that many of us find it very hard to acknowledge any good in them. Even when they are doing the right things we often suspect them of doing them for the wrong reasons.

And we are reluctant to praise them because of the many false prophets that we have suffered in the past. These erring on the side of caution make us even look at our many victories with cynicism post facto.

That’s why you will hear many Africans, not necessarily apologists of colonialism or imperialism, declaring that ‘things were better under colonialism’.

It is not that they want colonialism to return (with the exception of some West African “Francophone” countries!) but they are disheartened by the inability of the post colonial government and elite to sustain the initial popular legitimacy & live up to the expectations of Uhuru.

Colonial apologists in the west interpret this disenchantment to mean Africans would be better served by a return to colonial rule and that today’s problems can be solved by colonialism. This way they wash their hands off their shame and guilt of their fore fathers.

Whatever criticism one might have Rwanda, it will be most erroneous and deeply offensive to celebrate Jacques Chirac and France’s legacy in Rwanda and Africa. No mater how well a master treats his slaves on his plantation they remain slaves with little or no dignity.

That was why Sekou Toure made that famous nationalist declaration against colonialism when the French offered all their colonies a choice between freedom and remaining under French tutelage in the name of French Federation.

He said:

‘We prefer Independence with dangers to prosperity on our Knees’. It is the same spirit of freedom that made that foremost Kenyan Nationalist, Dedan Kimathi at the height of Mau.