The Independent Uganda: You get the Truth we Pay the Price
According to this source, Rwanda and Uganda created these verification mechanisms in the early 1990s when Kagame was fighting the government of Juvenal Habyarimana. But they were never effective. During the day, RPF combatants would hide and at night they would move with their supplies across the border. The UN-led joint verification teams were easily manipulated and Kagame knows this.
“Therefore the only way to resolve the differences between Kampala and Kigali is to reconcile Museveni personally with Kagame,” another analyst conversant with the relations between the two countries intimated to The Independent, “If the two cannot feel comfortable with each other every action at official level would not yield much.”
According to this source, if Museveni and Kagame are not on talking terms, then intelligence organizations on both sides will be incentivized to manufacture intelligence that confirms their biases against each other. This is the only way heads of security organizations in these two countries can prove their loyalty and keep their jobs. It also helps the intelligence organizations grow their political and budgetary power.
The meeting at the border and Museveni’s participation in it, observers say, was not so aimed at resolving the intractable problems between the two countries but rather to prove a point to the Angolans. “While Kagame may think he is trying to find a solution,” one observer told The Independent, “Museveni is using it to show the Angolan president that Kagame is a just bad neighbour.”
While at the border, the Angolan president appeared jovial and in good mood with Museveni, to the ire of many people on the Rwandan delegation. Already, sources say, Kampala has been trying to prove to Angola that while it is willing to meet all the demands of Kigali, it is Rwanda that is not reciprocating by opening the border.
“Museveni is going to accept and implement all of Kagame’s demands but he knows Kagame will not open the border,” an insider in Museveni’s State House told The Independent.
“This is because Kagame has spent two years telling Rwandans that Museveni is killing them. The day he opens the border, Rwandans will prove to him that they have not bought his propaganda and will flock to Uganda in droves. Kagame cannot allow that to happen.”
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That’s a great move!
Great analysis
Mr. Museveni can’t be trusted. Even his ally, the Devil can’t trust him.
museveni continues to prove himself as a political giant who hovers above all.
For Julis, to be a political giant means to be diabolically dishonest, corrupt, brutal, treacherous and dirty.
Bravo Madam Byanyima. Uganda and Rwanda must live in peace! Thank you your Excellency Paul Kagame for taking the first step to restore sanity. Thank you your Excellency Yoweri Kaguta Museveni for reciprocating. We are one and the same people (never mind the borders) and the faster we unite to tackle the common enemy, the better. A united Rwanda and Uganda can easily take on hunger and poverty, low education, ignorance, poor health, weather vagaries-the works! Those are our common enemies and formidable ones too. Bravo again your excellencies,our people need peace and prosperity!
“This makes me look impotent before my people,” sources quote Kagame as telling Byanyima.
This was probably due to the lack of access to Pres Museveni due to the people around him. Otherwise,
Kagame should have said this directly to President Museveni. You guys around the president you have kept people away from the president who were initially with him before you came around. Some of the people around the president are Johnny Come lately opportunists. He should sort them out. Why would such people block communication between two presidents? However, President Kagame also overreacted by closing the border and sending his soldiers to kill small scale traders along the border who tried to enter Rwanda simply for local cross-border trade. Apart from shaming Africa, this kind of behaviour of shooting people is diabolical.