Do Not Disturb” said the sign outside Room 905 of Johannesburg’s Michelangelo Towers hotel on 1 January 2014. When the police finally broke in they found the garrotted body of Patrick Kare-geya, Rwanda’s former head of external security, on the bed. Karegeya had fallen out with the regime he had helped create, and was murdered by a Rwandan hit squad as he helped build an opposition movement in exile.
“Do Not Disturb” is also the sign that has been metaphorically hung on the narrative that Paul Kagame’s Rwandan regime has so assiduously cultivated over the past quarter century – namely that a heroic band of warriors led by Kagame swept in from Uganda to halt the Hutus’ genocide against their fellow Tutsis in 1994, then built a prosperous and harmonious new country on the ruins of the old one.