{UAH} Mbu Kikwete's Wife Is a Cousin Of Habyarimana - Red Pepper

Why Kikwete Bounced Rwandan Immigrants

By: Our Reporter  RED PEPPER

Published: August 20, 2013

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In May this year, Tanzania's President Jakaya Kikwete publicly suggested that the government of President Paul Kagame in Rwanda negotiates with rebels of the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR). The group was formed in May 2000, but its members had been roaming DRC forests ever since they lost power in Kigali.

The suggestion by a head of state of Tanzania, a country that had long been considered a friendly nation to Rwanda, caught many by surprise. Since then, the two countries are embroiled in a bitter war of words.

Mama Salma Kikwete, wife of Tanzania's President Jakaya Kikwete

The Tanzanian government early this month repatriated dozens of Rwandan immigrants. Jakaya Kikwete, the President of Tanzania accused the Rwandans of illegally crossing into his country with their animals and settling in Kagera region and Misenyi district bordering Uganda.

New details have emerged and may give insight into why Tanzania's President Jakaya Kikwete came out as the sole global leader sympathetic to Rwandan FDLR rebels based in DR Congo jungles since 1994 and why he expelled immigrants majority of who are said to be ethnic Tutsis while the Hutus are believed to be "Collateral damage" according to some reports.

According to secret US State Department cables published by whistle-blowing site Wikileaks, President Jakaya Kikwete's wife fondly known in Tanzania as "Mama Salma Kikwete" is a cousin of former Rwanda leader Juvenal Habyarimana. The shocking details are contained in a cable sent to Washington on Thursday May 5th, 2005, by Shabyna Stillman, a senior diplomat at the US embassy in Dar es Salaam.

The US embassy was giving update on the selection of Mr Jakaya Kikwete to be the CCM flag-bearer in the presidential election late that year. "For years, observers of the Great Lakes conflicts have considered Kikwete to be virulently pro-Hutu," reads the cable, in part.

Tanzania President Jakaya Kikwete accused the Rwandans of illegally crossing into his country with their animals and settling in Kagera region and Misenyi

"Kikwete's marriage to a cousin of former Rwandan President Juvenal Habyarimana may have fueled these rumors, which are now fading as the Burundi conflict winds down," adds the cable, signed by Stillman.

According to the US embassy, Mr Kikwete's love affair with "Hutus" could be seen in his spirited support for Burundian rebels at the time they were fighting former President Pierre Buyoya.

Since 1995, up until 2005 when Mr. Kikwete was foreign affairs minister of Tanzania, rumours have swelled around him suggesting he sided massively with the ethnic extremist establishment.

It is this system that planned and executed the genocide against Tutsis and moderate Hutus in 1994, leading to an exodus to Zaire and other parts of the world.

It is alleged, around 1996, Mr Kikwete suggested publicly that "Hutus" need to be armed to fight off the government in Kigali at the time. A book published by virulent critic of President Paul Kagame and historian Gérard PRUNIER writes that Tanzania did offer to train troops for Seth Sendashonga.

A former leader of the Rwanda Patriotic Front (RPF), for whom he was a minister in the government set up after the rebel movement's victory over the army and the militias responsible for the genocide in 1994, Mr. Sendashonga was murdered in Nairobi, Kenya, on 16 May 1998 by, according to PRUNIER, "unknown assailants."

The ex-Rwandan Juvenal Habyarimana died on the evening of April 6th, 1994, after his plane was shot down by alleged extremist members of his government's inner circle who did not want the peace talks with the RPF rebels. In the same plane was Burundian counterpart Cyprien Ntaryamira and French pilots.

The death of the French crew has been the centre of legal battles in France and the United States. A French judicial inquiry did confirm that the plane was brought down by a missile fired from a military camp next to Habyarimana's home near the airport.

Rwandaexpress