Paul Kagame

     Currently, the president of Rwanda Paul Kagame, took office in 2000 when his predecessor, Pasteur Bizimungu, resigned. Kagame previously commanded the rebel force that ended the 1994 Rwandan genocide. He was considered Rwanda's leader when he served as Vice President and Minister of Defence from 1994 to 2000. He was re-elected in August 2017 with the official result showing he won nearly 99% in an election criticized for numerous irregularities. He has been both described as the "most impressive" and "among the most repressive" African leaders. Kagame was born to a Tutsi family in southern Rwanda. When he was two years old, the Rwandan Revolution ended centuries of Tutsi political dominance and his family fled to Uganda, where he spent the rest of his childhood. In the 1980s, Kagame fought in a Ugandan rebel army, becoming a senior Ugandan army officer after Museveni's military victories carried him to the Ugandan presidency. Kagame joined the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), which invaded Rwanda in 1990. The RPF leader died early in the war and Kagame took control. By 1993, the RPF controlled significant territory in Rwanda and a ceasefire was negotiated. Once the genocide began and around 1,000,000 Tutsi people had died Kagame resumed the RPF civil war, and ended the genocide with a military victory.

Paul Kagame

     During his vice presidency, Kagame controlled the national army and maintained law and order, while other officials began rebuilding the country. Many RPF soldiers, however, carried out retribution killings towards the Hutu people. While Kagame did explicitly state that he did not support these killings, he still failed to stop them. There was a small number of these soldiers were later put on trial, but many consider this to not be enough. After the genocide, many Hutu refugee camps sprung up in Zaire and other countries. These camps were given food and medical aid by several western governments and aid agencies. The RPF later attacked the camps in 1996 however which, forced many refugees to return home, but insurgents continued to attack Rwanda. The attack on the refugee camps killed an estimated 200,000 people. As part of the invasion, Kagame actually sponsored two controversial rebel wars in Zaire. The Rwandan- and Ugandan-backed rebels won the first war, The second war was launched in 1998 and later escalated into a conflict that lasted until a 2003 peace deal and ceasefire.