Letter from Africa: Rwanda's general is no ordinary migrant

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-33363828

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In our series of letters from African journalists, film-maker and columnist Farai Sevenzo weighs in on the thorny issue of migration.

Rwanda's intelligence chief, General Emmanuel Karenzi Karake was taken into custody at London's Heathrow Airport the other week - following an extradition request by the Spanish government.

The Spaniards claimed that they wanted the general on charges of genocide.

We have to search the long shadows cast by the Rwandan genocide and its aftermath to get a complete grip of the accusations.

But the pertinent fact is that Spanish citizens lost their lives in the chaos of the genocide and Spanish fingers have been pointed at the Rwandan leadership, including General Karake, and the actions of the Rwandan army between October 1990 and July 2002.

Rwanda's President Paul Kagame issued a fiery condemnation of the arrest. His words chimed with recent current events:

"Absolute arrogance and contempt is the only basis for this arrest," he told his parliament in Kigali.

"They must have mistaken him for an illegal immigrant. The way they treat illegal immigrants is the way they treat all of us. Black people have become targets for shooting practice. We cannot accept that people treat us this way just because they can."

Gen Karake was arrested, but he was neither shot nor presented to the courts as a firearms target.

Mr Kagame, however, seemed palpably peeved not just at his general's lot but the altogether negative headlines concerning Africa's descendants and African citizens on both sides of the Atlantic, so much so that he appeared to use these headlines in defence of his man in London.

Farai Sevenzo:

But migration is a fluid and interesting human phenomenon. Europe will not 'turn black' as the Colonel [Gaddafi] once claimed, but Africans are moving in greater numbers to find places in the world where they can realise their aspirations.

US President Barack Obama remembered nine churchgoers murdered in the African Methodist Episcopal Church of Charleston, South Carolina; while the illegal immigrants President Kagame mentioned have been taxing political opinion and EU leaders as deaths in the Mediterranean continue.

In truth, illegal immigrants have been part of the European narrative since the days of Colonel Muammar Gaddafi.

Back in 2010 - as Europe ignored his dictatorship - Gaddafi advised that the Europeans would have to pay him €5bn ($5.5bn; £3.5bn) a year to stem the tide of illegal immigrants and prevent "Europe turning black".

"We don't know what will happen," Gaddafi told a gathering in Rome in August of 2010, "what will be the reaction of the white and Christian Europeans faced with this influx of starving and ignorant Africans."

'Crammed boats'

The Libyans dispatched the Colonel and his odd views to history with a little help from their international friends; perpetual chaos replaced his autocratic rule, and the migrant problem never went away.

We've all seen the harrowing images of crammed boats, deaths at sea and floating corpses. Last Friday EU leaders agreed on the principle of spreading 40,000 asylum-seekers across the European Union, but there is clear discord amongst them.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel called the migration issue "the biggest challenge" Europe had faced during her time in office. "I see a huge task approaching us, and here it will be decided whether Europe is up to the task," she said.

For many Africans, including Mr Kagame, the site of desperate men and women huddled in tents in the French port city of Calais, their dignity affronted on a daily basis, the scramble to smuggle themselves on lorries bound for the United Kingdom - all of this can only mean a new era of biased scrutiny is upon us.

Far from home, our skins, it is said, are illegal passports; and the cynics in Obama's America would say shooting targets.

But migration is a fluid and interesting human phenomenon. Europe will not "turn black" as the colonel once claimed, but Africans are moving in greater numbers to find places in the world where they can realise their aspirations.

Repression, war and totalitarian regimes make infertile ground for the seeds of ambition. And it is an ambition so determined that it walks across borders, braves the deserts then risks life and breath in choppy seas to end up at Europe's doorsteps.

'La Jungle'

Mildly interested observers of history may discern patterns of migration throughout the ages - French Huguenots spreading across Europe; great waves of Russian Jews fleeing Tsarist Russia's pogroms; America's pilgrims and even the enforced migration of what Obama called America's "original sin" - slavery. People have moved from one place to another without overfilling their destination or emptying their point of departure.

Just 55 years ago, between them, Paris, Lisbon, London, Berlin, Brussels and Rome once controlled the affairs of the entire African continent.

In that minute amount of time, Africans have joined the social tapestry of their adopted cities and children become second, third, fourth generations Africans.

The French have dubbed the migrant camp at Calais "La Jungle" - The Jungle. Here the coming freezing winter will be felt more keenly by these new African arrivals as they live in a place with no sanitation, no running water and are denied the right to work.

Mr Kagame's General Karake, however, has posted bail of £1m ($1.5m). He is a guest of the United Kingdom until his extradition hearing in October.

He will no doubt wish for his luck to hold and to return him to Kigali's sunshine before Europe's winter comes calling.