This archive report was first published on 11 September 2019.
Published on September 11, 2019, in The Citizen, a South African national newspaper, Ralph Mathekga, a political analyst, criticized Rwanda's President Paul Kagame for declining an invitation to attend the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Cape Town.
Mathekga's view was that Kagame's response to xenophobic attacks on non-South African nationals reflected 'weak leadership' and lack of 'political maturity' in Africa. However, this conclusion was harsh, misleading, unjustified, and disingenuous.
Several African states, including Nigeria, Malawi, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Zambia, and Tanzania, had voiced grave reservations about attending the WEF under the prevailing circumstances in South Africa. Kagame was not alone in his decision, and he had no influence over the perpetrators of the xenophobic attacks.
Despite the SA Government's and WEF organizers' silence on plans to stem or mitigate the impact of the attacks, Kagame felt helpless and frustrated that the WEF seemed to be proceeding as if nothing critical was happening in its host country.
Mathekga's reasoning would have been sound if it proposed an urgent consultative meeting of African leaders to discuss the crisis. However, Kagame was a guest, not the host, and it was President Cyril Ramaphosa's obligation to solicit views from other African leaders.
By all indications, a give-and-take meeting of African leaders was not forthcoming. President Kagame's decision to formally absent himself from WEF was a carefully considered act of ultimate decency, political maturity, and diplomatic savvy.
His reaction was understandable, given his experiences with the Rwanda Genocide, which took place 25 years ago and senselessly wiped out 10% of his nation's population.
It was misplaced judgment for Mathekga to condemn President Kagame for finding it unacceptable to visualize himself sitting in an economic meeting while people outside were being hurt, maimed, and killed for no crime other than being born where they were.
Seen in this context, President Kagame's self-imposed 'exclusion' from WEF was indeed a dignified and decent diplomatic act to show that he, as a mature and committed African leader, drew the line in the sand to demonstrate that what was happening in SA at that juncture was far from acceptable.
