Michela Wrong - Do Not Disturb

The whole world wanted to believe in the miracle that was Rwandaa country built from the wreckage and devastation that intertribal violence and ethnic cleansing had caused. The whole world ignored the few voices pointing out the silencing of political opponents through imprisonment, kidnapping or torture. To our shame, our need for Rwanda to succeed far exceeded our desire or ability to see the cost at which that success was bought.

In this extremely important and profoundly disturbing book, Michela Wrong sets out all the missteps that were ignored, all the flagrant human rights abuses that were overlooked, and all the criminality for which excuses were found, until the new horrors that have been visited upon that country were perpetrated.

Ms. Wrong is not suggesting that we become Afro-pessimists but telling us that not only is the price of freedom eternal vigilance, but also that we must, in the words of Amilcar Cabral, tell no lies, claim no easy victories.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize

A withering assault on the murderous Rwandan regime of Paul Kagame, and a melancholy love song to the lost dreams of the nations of the Great Lakes. Michela Wrong proves once again that she is an intrepid and highly professional researcher of the subject she knows best. Its a major accomplishment, very driven, very impassioned.

John le Carr, author of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy

Michela Wrong takes her readers on an absorbing political journey, in which Rwandan comrades-in-arms Paul Kagame and Patrick Karegeya steadily mutate into lethal adversaries upon achieving power. The ghosts of other historic mortal falloutsStalin and Trotsky, Sankara and Compaore, Robespierre and Danton, Mugabe and Mujuruhaunt this story, but more importantly, it draws our attention to the significant structural problems created by ex-military leaders participation in the building of post-war democracy and peace.

Miles Tendi, author of The Army and Politics in Zimbabwe: Mujuru, the Liberation Fighter and Kingmaker

An intimate, clear-eyed chronicle of the violence and intrigue at the heart of the Rwandan Patriotic Fronts history. This is perilous terrain; Wrong skillfully navigates amid myths and disinformation to splice together the stories of the men who came to rule Rwanda.

Jason Stearns, author of Dancing in the Glory of Monsters: The Collapse of the Congo and the Great War of Africa

In rich, searing prose, backed up by damning evidence and compelling anecdote, Michela Wrong exposes the sinister paradoxes of Kagames murderous donor darling regime. Her book lays out a roadmap for another collective never again outcry yet to come.

Focusing on the happy beginning and tragic end of Patrick Karegeyaa spymaster strangled in a South African hotel room by a Mossad-like squad of operatives he helped establishDo Not Disturb is an insightful, scrupulous, stirring yet nuanced account of a reign of terror that set Rwanda and the whole African Great Lakes on fire, using four weapons of mass destruction: the cord, the hoe, the gun, the missile. Like Saturn, the regime is now devouring its children. This masterly investigative book should be widely read.

Noel Twagiramungu, Director, Africa Center for Strategic Progress

Imagine a journalist of the 1930s brave enough to investigate one of the mysterious assassinations of Stalins opponents who had fled abroadand to tell that story to a world where too many people were enamored of the Soviet leader. Michela Wrong has taken on a similar job: to use a killing to expose a man today seldom recognized as a ruthless dictator. Her skills as a writer and expert knowledge of Africa make this a chilling story.

Adam Hochschild, author of King Leopolds Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror, and Heroism in Colonial Africa

Those of us who remember her devastating inquest into the terminal spasms of the Mobutist state, In the Footsteps of Mr. Kurtz, cannot fail to have been impressed by Michela Wrongs talent as a brilliant journalist. Her companion volume, Do Not Disturbthe sign on the door of the room where Kagames spy chief, Patrick Karegeya, met his death by strangulation at the Michelangelo hotel in Johannesburgis no less captivating as an anatomy of Kagames Rwanda, except that, unlike Mobutu, widely reviled as a corrupt dictator, Kagame remains as an object of widespread admiration for having stopped the genocide of Tutsi, raising his minuscule state into one of the fastest-growing economies in the continent, and promoting peace and reconciliation between Hutu and Tutsi. On all three counts there are reasons to suspend credulity. The author raises the curtain on a dystopian landscape too long ignored and left undisturbed by too many observers. Through countless interviews with key actors, including the central figure in her narrative, Karegeya, the author paints a frightening picture of Rwanda as a police state with all the hallmarks of the Stalinist era, where opponents to the regime are not disappeared because they are guilty but whose disappearance is sufficient proof of their culpability. Refreshingly free of jargon, the book breaks important new ground in the literature on Rwanda, in lively and suspenseful prose. This is revisionist history at its best. I cannot recommend it too highly.

Ren Lemarchand, author of Rwanda and Burundi

A unique insight into many hitherto little known dark sides of a profoundly criminal regime. Based on firsthand observations and numerous interviews with key players, victims, and witnesses, this book is an indictment of those complicit in ensuring President Kagames impunity during the last quarter century.

Filip Reyntjens, author of Political Governance in Post-Genocide Rwanda

To Marilda Wrong (ne Musacchio), who made me what I am.

He believes in killing his opponents, that is the problem I have with them.

There is a long list of people that have died politically.

I was in a position to know.