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Michela Wrong
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Do Not Disturb: The Story of a Political Murder and an African Regime Gone Bad Kindle Edition

by Michela Wrong (Author) Format: Kindle Edition
4.6 4.6 out of 5 stars 435 ratings
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SHORTLISTED FOR THE ORWELL PRIZE 2022

‘Superb’ The Times

‘Engrossing and revelatory' Observer

‘Powerful, compelling and meticulously researched’ New Statesman

A new book from the award winning author of In the Footsteps of Mr Kurtz,Do Not Disturb explores the controversial career of Paul Kagame and the legacy of the Rwandan genocide

Do Not Disturb is a dramatic recasting of the modern history of Africa’s Great Lakes region, an area blighted by the greatest genocide of the twentieth century. This bold retelling, vividly sourced by direct testimony from key participants, tears up the traditional script.

In the old version, an idealistic group of young rebels overthrows a genocidal regime in Kigali, ushering in an era of peace and stability that makes Rwanda the donor darling of the West, winning comparisons with Switzerland and Singapore. The new version examines afresh questions which dog the recent past: Why do so many ex-rebels scoff at official explanations of who fired the missile that killed the presidents of Rwanda and Burundi? Why didn’t the mass killings end when the rebels took control? Why did those same rebels, victory secured, turn so ruthlessly on one another?

Michela Wrong uses the story of Patrick Karegeya, once Rwanda’s head of external intelligence and a quicksilver operator of supple charm, to paint the portrait of a modern African dictatorship created in the chilling likeness of Paul Kagame, the president who sanctioned his former friend’s murder.

‘A withering assault on the murderous regime of Kagame, and a melancholy love song to the last dreams of the African Great Lakes’ John Le Carre

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  1. Print length
    513 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publisher
    Fourth Estate
  4. Publication date
    March 30, 2021
  5. File size
    6.0 MB
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Editorial Reviews

Review

"Her skills as a writer and expert knowledge of Africa make this a chilling story."

-- "Adam Hochschild, New York Times bestselling author"

"In Wrong's panoramic cast of characters, the voices of those whose lives were destroyed ring out the loudest...Gripping, stylish journalism that proves the modern history of Rwanda is hardly settled."

-- "Kirkus Reviews (starred review)"

"Superb... an epic tale of blood, bitterness and betrayal... a gripping tale."

-- "The Times (London)"

"[The book] stands out as perhaps the most ambitious attempt yet to tell the dark story of Rwanda and the region's deeply intertwined tragedies."

-- "New York Times Book Review"

About the Author

Michela Wrong is a writer and journalist with more than twenty years' experience of covering Africa. She joined Reuters news agency in the early 1980s and was posted as a foreign correspondent to Italy, France and Ivory Coast. She became a freelance journalist in 1994, when she moved to then-Zaire and found herself covering both the genocide in Rwanda and the final days of dictator Mobutu Sese Seko for the BBC and Reuters. She later moved to Kenya, where she spent four years covering east, west and central Africa for the Financial Times.

She is the author of three books of non-fiction and a novel.

She was awarded the 2010 James Cameron prize for journalism that combines "moral vision and professional integrity." She is regularly interviewed by the BBC, Al Jazeera and Reuters on her areas of expertise. She has published opinion pieces and book reviews in the Observer, Guardian, Financial Times, New York Times, New Statesman, Spectator, Standpoint Foreign Policy magazine, and travel pieces for Conde Nast's Traveler magazine. She speaks fluent Italian and French. She is a consultant for the Miles Morland Foundation, which funds a range of literary festivals, workshops and scholarships for African writers.
 

Michela Wrong lives in London.

Product details

  • ASIN ‏ : ‎ B08MBVD578
  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Fourth Estate (March 30, 2021)
  • Publication date ‏ : ‎ March 30, 2021
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • File size ‏ : ‎ 6.0 MB
  • Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
  • Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Print length ‏ : ‎ 513 pages
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.6 4.6 out of 5 stars 435 ratings

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Michela Wrong

Michela Wrong

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Half British, half Italian, Michela Wrong has spent nearly two decades writing about Africa. As a Reuters correspondent based in first Cote d'Ivoire and former Zaire, she covered the turbulent events of the mid 1990s, including the fall of Mobutu Sese Seko and Rwanda's post-genocide period. She then moved to Kenya, where she became Africa correspondent for the Financial Times. In 2000 she published her first non-fiction book, "In the Footsteps of Mr Kurtz", the story of Mobutu. Her second non-fiction work, "I Didn't Do it for You", focused on the Red Sea nation of Eritrea. Her third, "It's Our Turn to Eat", tracked the story of Kenyan whistleblower John Githongo. "Borderlines", set in a fictional country in the Horn of Africa with a fiercely-disputed border, marked a move into fiction. "Do Not Disturb", which came out in 2021, is a scathing assessment of Rwanda under President Paul Kagame. She lives in London.

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Top reviews from the United States

  • aalex dushime
    5.0 out of 5 stars No justice no peace, no justice no development , no justice no reconciliation
    Reviewed in the United States on April 24, 2021
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    I dislike the dictatorship ,injustice of all kind in which the people of Rwanda are facing under the tyranny dictatorship of kagame who is labeled as the good leader but everything is based on true lies
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  • Waddilove
    5.0 out of 5 stars Sterling yet very chilling
    Reviewed in the United States on June 5, 2021
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    This book is a must read for any student and citizen of the Great Lakes, and Africa in general, it will help with getting to know what is beyond the naked eye.
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  • M Prywes
    4.0 out of 5 stars A deeply researched, compelling, but flawed account of the Rwanda Genocide and Kagame's rule.
    Reviewed in the United States on April 7, 2021
    Michela Wrong is a widely respected journalist who focuses on politics, conflict, and corruption in Central and Eastern Africa. She’s the author of, In the Footsteps of Mr. Kurtz: Living on the Brink of Disaster in Mobutu’s Congo (2001), non-fiction books on Eritrea and Kenya, and a novel.

    In Do Not Disturb, Wrong weaves several themes into a compelling and dramatic story. The story is complicated. The book is nevertheless lucid and readable. It’s written like an action novel and page turner, except it’s non-fiction!

    Wrong opens with the assassination of Patrick Karegeya by Rwandan agents in Johannesburg, South Africa in 2013. She moves on to the origin story of the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) in Uganda during the 1980s. She concludes with a revised history of the Rwandan Genocide of 1994 and of the country’s recovery and growth. There is an over-arching theme: her disillusionment and growing disgust with Paul Kagame, the leader of the RPF invasion that stopped the Genocide and Rwanda’s president and strong man for the past 27 years.

    Patrick Karegeya was one of the key cadres of the RPF and a ally of Paul Kagame. Karegeya served as the head of Rwandan intelligence and was hence the bearer of Kagame’s secrets. Kagame turned on Karegeya, who fled to South Africa, where he joined in creation of an opposition movement led by Kagame’s former supporters. Karegeya was apparently an affable man, who loved to socialize and pursue women, and this led him to a hotel room along, which exposed him to a hit.

    The facts are not really in dispute. A South African judge formally stated Rwanda’s culpability, and the tapes of the planning of the hit can be found on Youtube.

    There is nevertheless a flaw in Wrong’s account of the assassination: it depends mostly on interviews with a small group of political refugees. These are Karegeya himself, General Kayumba, former Chief of Staff of the Rwandan Army and frequent target of assassination attempts, Theogene Rudasingwa, former head of the RPF and former ambassador to the US, and jurist Gerald Gahima. These are distinguished men. But their objective is to topple President Kagame. Therefore, their testimony cannot be entirely objective. In short, they have an incentive to say what makes Kagame look bad.

    Moreover, several of Wrong’s informants remain anonymous. I understand how fear could drive anonymity. However my experience in many years of working on development is that anonymous informers are usually reporting rumor.

    It is hard to distinguish the truth in the muddled world of politics, betrayals, spies, and hit men. The rational response is to ignore rumor and anonymous informants and instead to apply common sense.

    The significance of the assassination of Patrick Kageyera is not the incident in itself but rather its place in a pattern that extends back at least 20 years. In 2000, Kagame ejected Pasteur Bizimungu, a Hutu and RPF member since 1990, from the Presidency. Bizimungu was imprisoned in 2001, after he started an opposition political party. Since then, Kagame has broken with a long list of political allies, former comrades, aides, and doctors. The allies usually flee the country. At least ten have been assassinated. This suggests a presidential mind-set of suspicion, even paranoia.

    After writing about Kageyera, Michela Wrong moves on to a well-researched account of the origins of the RPF and its leaders. The RPF fighters were mostly children of Tutsi refugees from massacres in Rwanda in 1959. They grew up in Uganda and felt treated with suspicion as a guest minority.

    Many Rwandan-origin fighters joined Museveni’s National Resistance Movement (NRM) in the 1980s. The movement fought a guerilla war against the rule of Milton Obote. The National Resistance Army seized Kampala in 1986. About a quarter of its fighters at that time were of Rwandan origin. The NRA commander was Fred Rwigema, a charismatic leader who would go on the lead the RPF. Paul Kagame was Museveni’s chief of intelligence. The ambiguous and uncomfortable status of Rwandans in Uganda, and in the NRM was the motivating force in the formation of the RPF its drive to return the 1959 caseload Tutsi refugees to Rwanda.

    Wrong portrays Kagame as twisted from the start, with a history of punitive violence while in Museveni's NRM, and a spymaster’s paranoia. For her, Kagame is a psychopath. She describes him as losing his temper and personally whipping his commanders who disappointed him. He’s accused of blithely ordering executions.
    I’m not sure this a credible, and I wish she had attempted a more nuanced biography of Kagame’s character as evolving under the influence of the NRM’s guerilla struggle, his experiences in intelligence, his successful leadership of the 1994 invasion of Rwanda. It seems more likely that President Kagame grew more suspicious and psychologically isolated over his decades in power.

    Wrong’s final theme is a revision of Rwandan history through 1994. The conventional telling stresses General Kagame and the RPF’s role in stopping the Genocide, which killed possible 800,000 Rwandans, many of them Tutsis. There is no accurate statistic on the number slaughtered, just a range of estimates.

    Wrong stresses the killing of Hutus by RPA soldiers, and in particular the massacre at Kibeho. This is not new information. The most reliable history of the Genocide is French historian Gerard Prunier’s, The Rwanda Crisis: History of a Genocide, Columbia University Press, 1995. Prunier estimates the number of Hutus massacred by the RPA at about 30,000 –the same figure cited in Wrong’s book. The UN intervention force estimated the dead at Kibeho at 4,000. Once again, there are no exact figures.

    Wrong is correct to hold the RPF responsible for killing civilians. The problem is the way her account meshes with Genocide denial. The former genocidalists and their supporters deny there was a genocide, they say there was just a civil war with massacres on both side. There is no moral equivalence between the two sides. The Rwandan Army (FAR) and the Interahamwe militias systematically killed 800,000. This is not comparable to the killing of an estimated 30,000 killed by RPA troops.

    There’s widespread misperception of the motive for killing. Yes, ethnic hatred played a role, supported by the anti-Tutsi hate propaganda of Radio Mille Collines. This was not a strictly ethnic or political genocide. There was a major underlying motive: land. By killings, Hutu extremists -and others- seized land from the dead. This is an all-important motive in a country where the average family size is six and the average land-holding only a half-hector. An path-breaking study of a Hutu-only village found that the victims of the killing were mainly peasants with slightly larger than average land holding.

    Wrong accuses Kagame of ordering the downing of Rwandan President Habyarimana’s airplane as it landed in Kigali in April 1994 --the event which triggered the Genocide. This is a murky affair, and there are few facts.
    Common sense provides the best answer. It is hard to believe that Kagame would order a hit that would risk the deaths of so many Tutsis, yet Wrong reports that he didn’t care. Her sources are confessions from RPF leaders who now oppose Kagame. These leaders must say what they have to. A hero must be toppled on his own terms. As the man who stopped the Genocide, Kagame’s reputation can be dirtied by blaming him for the Genocide.

    Wrong’s book was published just after the publication of the French historians commission on the Genocide. French officials and courts have accused Kagame of ordering the downing Habyarimana’s plane. Yet the French historian’s report says the French external intelligence agency (the DGSE) never believed this.

    The available evidence suggests that Kagame and the RPF are innocent. The missiles that downed the plane were launched from the corner of Habyarimana's palace at Kanombe, adjacent to the airport, controlled by the mainly Hutu FAR. The missiles were most likely launched by Hutu military outraged by Habyarimana’s compromises with the RPF (for example, in the Arusha Accord). The Genocide started full-throttle within a day of the downing. It seems likely that Hutu extremists planned for the Genocide to follow.

    Finally, Wrong challenges the government claim to extraordinary economic management. According to the official data, GDP per capita rose from a bit over $126 per person in 1994 to US$ 820 in 2019. I am unsure whether I fully believe these figures. However, I’ve seen for myself, in numerous field visits, the massive improvement in health care, education, and living conditions since 1995. There has been a large decline in the poverty rate.

    Unfortunately, the decline recorded in 2015 probably did not occur. The true poverty rate was probably 6 percentage points higher than reported. An article in the African Review of Political Economy explains the problems with the statistic. Importantly, the consultants responsible for the calculation, from Oxford Policy Management, decline to validate the published numbers.

    Finally, I was shocked by her statement in the introduction that Rwandans delight in lying. The statement crosses a line. Wrong should know better.

    It’s true that if you speak with spymasters, commanders, and politicians-- you’ll hear lies. That's as true in the US and France as in Rwanda. I worked with Rwandans for many years and did NOT find them to be liars. The Kinyarwanda style of communication can be indirect and can draw on folk sayings and metaphor, but this is not lying.
    55 people found this helpful
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  • Robert B
    5.0 out of 5 stars Love it
    Reviewed in the United States on April 11, 2022
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    Great storytelling providing insights into kagame's regime in the authoritarian rwanda. A must read for all interested in post-genocide countries
    3 people found this helpful
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  • Fred
    5.0 out of 5 stars Spot on
    Reviewed in the United States on April 2, 2021
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    A page turner, it left me speechless. Michela is an impeccable writer and she has done her research very well when it comes to Rwanda, our culture and politics.
    Hope the world reads and understands
    16 people found this helpful
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  • Robert A. Onyango
    5.0 out of 5 stars Great read
    Reviewed in the United States on August 26, 2021
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    Insightful and well researched. Wonderfully done with proper historical context. I love the fact that Michela could also think through most details.
    One person found this helpful
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  • shopper
    3.0 out of 5 stars journalistic
    Reviewed in the United States on January 29, 2022
    A friend loaned me his copy of the book, and when I realized how long it would take to get through it, I bought the audiobook and returned his copy. He recommended it to explain the situation that led him to become a refugee from Rwanda.
    It's not the thriller-style narration that many reviews describe, but it does seem to be thorough with explanations without devolving into a classic textbook. I tend to get a little disoriented at the culture and lost with respect to who the good guys are, but it does hold my interest.
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  • Lincoln M
    5.0 out of 5 stars Must read for Rwanda, Uganda, Congo, and Burundi
    Reviewed in the United States on April 2, 2021
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    A brilliant expose of the political history of Africa's Great Lake Region. Riveting!
    10 people found this helpful
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  • Art Moore
    5.0 out of 5 stars It broke my heart about the Rwanda narrative and wrongdoings and network of the Kagame regime.
    Reviewed in Canada on August 20, 2021
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    It is heartbreaking.
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  • Habiyambere
    5.0 out of 5 stars empfehlenswert
    Reviewed in Germany on August 19, 2021
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    Ein Massenmörder der viel Aussehen in Westliche Länder geniest und viele finanzielle Unterstützung von USA, UK, BRD, Niederland usw... erhält. In Ostkongo sind über 6 Millionen gestorben und der Hauptverantwortliche ist der Dictator Kagame, Liebling von Western.
    6 Millions de morts ne sont que CONGO et non CHARLY
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  • N'Zhab Khally
    5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent.
    Reviewed in France on May 16, 2021
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    La vérité vaincra.
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  • Gitau Githinji
    5.0 out of 5 stars Chilling, but brilliant
    Reviewed in the United Kingdom on April 27, 2021
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    Before I read Michela Wrong’s latest book, Do Not Disturb, if anyone had asked me what I knew about Rwanda, I would have said that there were three certainties. First, that a horrific genocide occurred there in 1994 which involved the slaughter of nearly a million people, mainly members of the minority Tutsi tribe, by machete wielding Hutu militia. Secondly, that the genocide was brought to an end by a disciplined group of Tutsi soldiers who had been trained in neighbouring Uganda. Thirdly, that the Tutsi soldiers, led by Paul Kagame, had assumed power in Kigali, established an orderly government and presided over an economic miracle in Rwanda.

    Now I know better and feel ashamed of my previous naivete. The question to which I could never convincingly find answers and which had troubled me for many years was “Why?”. Nothing I read or heard about the genocide seemed to add up. Along, then, comes Ms Wrong and nearly everything I had held to be certain has been blown up. The only certainty I now have is that a genocide occurred in 1994. The gruesome, chilling realisation that this book expertly steered one towards is that the mass killing of innocent people, Tutsi or Hutu, did not begin or end in 1994, not even vaguely; Paul Kagame and his crew precipitated the genocide and then went on such a massive killing spree of Hutus in Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo that one shivers at the thought.

    But I am not alone in having been previously beguiled; Ms Wrong is forced to revisit some of the conclusions she had previously drawn when researching the region for her excellent first book, In the Footsteps of Mr Kurtz, and think them through afresh – a probably bitterly frustrating experience for this meticulously thorough investigative journalist.

    The book is set off by the cleverly planned assassination of Patrick Karegeya – previously Rwanda’s head of external intelligence and a leading light in Paul Kagame’s close-knit band of Tutsi strongmen – on New Year’s Eve, December 2013 in a hotel room at the Michelangelo in Sandton, Johannesburg. Karegeya, had uncharacteristically lowered his guard and agreed to meet an old close friend and business associate from Rwanda. It was a tragic mistake. There is no doubt in the author’s mind who is responsible for this and other similar atrocities from across the globe: a tall, softly spoken, spooky-looking man with heavy-rimmed glasses. The ingenuity through which Patrick Karegeya met his horrible end is testament to Kagame’s practised skill at disposing of his enemies. He is brilliant.

    If one of Kagame’s “good guys” – the team of intrepid Tutsi liberators from 1994 who earned international plaudits as ‘liberators” - can be garrotted in such a ghastly fashion in a foreign country, does anybody who has fallen foul of the irascible, violent, evil Kagame feel safe anywhere in the world?

    Considering the grisly nature of Ms Wrong’s account, I was pleasantly surprised to find the book to be as page-turningly breathtaking as any John Le Carre spy thriller. I have read all of Ms Wong’s previous books and this is without a doubt her finest, most extensively researched and footnoted effort by far.

    I cannot recommend this book highly enough and salute Ms Wrong for the enormous effort (and immense courage!) that went into it. The author even had to suffer acts of sabotage on her computer perpetrated by no less than the Rwandan High Commissioner to the Court of St James!. It was certainly not an easy book to write: the paranoia of Kagame is so intense that he seems to spend more time and energy spying on supposed enemies than anything else. Doubtless, anybody who cooperated with Ms Wrong on this work has reason to fear for his or her life – hence the numerous interviews with valuable witnesses who demanded anonymity.

    Should Ms Wrong be suffering sleepless nights for having placed herself squarely at the top of Paul Kagame’s list of enemies? Probably. But journalists of this calibre are built differently; the danger of encountering rough stuff like that is probably what drives them on!

    Gitau
    27 April 2021
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  • James
    5.0 out of 5 stars Loved it
    Reviewed in the United Kingdom on February 19, 2025
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    Great book. Informative, detailed without being boring or repetitive
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