Tom Ruzagiriza, son of Byabagamba: An Example in More Ways Than One
Yesterday, I listened to the tribute paid by Mary Baine to her husband, Tom Byabagamba.
I learned that he was among the pioneers of the Rwandese Patriotic Army (RPA) who returned home to Rwanda in October 1990.
He was reportedly the only survivor of his unit after the debacle of the โOctober War.โ
Why did he survive the hardships of the 1990 attack, only to die in prison? That was the question she asked herself during this tribute to her late husband.
They married in July 1995, and their two boys would, perhaps, be the answer to that question.
She recounted that they met in Kenya, where they had been deployed as Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) cadres.
Thomas Ruzagiriza did not obtain a secondary school diploma because he chose to take part in the armed struggle.
In 2014, it had been 20 years since the former refugees organized within the RPF/FPR had returned to their homeland. There had been the crisis of 2000, the removal of Pasteur Bizimungu, and his imprisonment in 2001.
The head of external intelligence, Colonel Patrick Karegeya, would also spend time in prison before eventually leaving the country.
Then, in 2010, it was the turn of Kayumba Nyamwasaโformer head of military intelligence during the guerrilla war, Deputy Chief of Staff of the Gendarmerie, and later Chief of Staff of the Armyโto fall from grace. He went into exile in South Africa, where he founded the Rwanda National Congress with other recent exiles, including Karegeya.
In 2014, another crisis swept away General Frank Rusagara, the former Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Defence (when Paul Kagame was Minister of Defence and Vice-President), and Colonel Tom Byabagamba, his brother-in-law and co-accused.
I have already discussed this before. At the time, there was much talk about the post-Kagame era…
Who would become president after Kagame’s second term in 2017?
What did they say about this? What did they say about the Head of State? What did they do against the system?
The military court determined that they were guilty of the charges brought against them, and that was that. Both ended up in prison.
Should the examples of 1990 have been made into examples again in 2014?
Mrs. Byabagamba also spoke of his passion for education: despite not having completed secondary school, he went all the way to Oxford for a Master’s degree in Computer Science.
It was one of the late man’s older sisters who revealed his true identity. Byabagamba was their father’s name, not a family name. Family names in that sense do not exist in the Land of a Thousand Hills and its surrounding region.
Ruzigamanzi was not Thomas; it was another younger brother. Tom was the youngest of them all.
