News
Brigadier General (rtd) Frank Kanyambo Rusagara, 1955-2025
I was deeply saddened to learn of the passing in jail of Frank Rusagara, a Research Associate of the Foundation, on 24 March 2025.
Frank was born in Rwanda but was exiled to Uganda at the age of six, where he lived, studied and worked, earning an MA in International Security Studies from the University of Nairobi. He became a friend when I undertook the first deployment of the Foundation in Africa in 2008 as the Strategy Adviser to President Paul Kagame.
Our family moved to a small house in Kibagabaga on the outskirts of Kigali. Frank, who had been with the Rwandan Patriotic Army since its inception and had fought (and been wounded) in the campaign against the Habyarimana government between 1990 and 1994, was always on hand with local advice and contacts. We would spend long evenings at the local tennis club eating goat brochettes and chatting about Rwandan and regional history. At the same time, the children swam in what was then one of the few sporting facilities available. Frank, who had also served as Secretary-General in the Ministry of Defence, had recently been moved from his job as Commandant of the Rwandan Military Academy in Ruhengeri (now Nyakinama) due to his outspokenness, and he was stuck in a small office in military headquarters as the resident historian as punishment. Frank always had a different view to many in the RPF, which brought him into conflict with its political leadership. He believed that bad politics not tribalism lay behind the country’s problems, which used identity to manipulate the masses, a tactic he saw shared by the Habyarimana and Kagame governments.
As the Foundation’s relationship with the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) in London blossomed through setting up an African programme, Frank became the first Visiting Fellow in 2008/9, during which time he produced his book Resilience of a Nation: A History of the Military in Rwanda.
President Olusegun Obasanjo and Brigadier-General Frank Rusagara, right, on exercise with the Colombia military, 2014.
His RUSI role translated into his temporary political rehabilitation as Rwanda’s military attaché in London when he signed up to pursue a PhD at SOAS. One of the last discussions we had was during a trip we organised of African military officers to Colombia in 2014, when he informed me that his relationship with Kagame had seriously deteriorated. His family was, he said, safe in London, but he was determined to go back to Rwanda. Over the next hour, I tried to convince him to go back to London and managed to arrange funding for him through a generous benefactor who recognised Frank’s outstanding qualities of scholarship and integrity. But he was steadfast, and returned, and was soon arraigned on charges of inciting insurrection and tarnishing the government’s image along with brother-in-law Colonel Tom Byabagamba, the former commander of the elite Republican Guard, and his driver. On March 31, 2016, the Military High Court of Kanombe sentenced Frank and Tom to 20 and 21 years in prison, respectively. Frank’s sentence was reduced to 15 years by the Court of Appeal in Kigali in 2019. François Kabayiza, Frank’s driver, was also sentenced.
The conduct of the trial and the interrogation process was criticised by numerous international civil society groups, as well as the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention. Regardless, the regime in Kigali was seemingly determined to make an example of the prisoners to others in the ruling Rwandan Patriotic Front. This affair was not only political, however, but personal. Byabagamba’s brother David Himbara was a former economic adviser to the President at the same time that I worked in his office, but had fled the country first to South Africa and then to Canada, where he is an outspoken critic of the Rwandan regime.
In response we mounted a campaign to try and secure Frank’s release, or at least a commutation of his sentence. Many we contacted sadly took the view that public action would make things worse – a convenient belief that proved as erroneous with dictatorships as ever. I was among those who wrote letters of clemency to President Kagame, including in 2016, requesting that Frank be allowed to phone his terminally ill wife, Christine, in London. The requests were refused, the letters going unanswered, a reflection, if nothing else, on the humanity of Rwanda’s leadership. With the help of friends, we were able to get an exercise bike to him in prison, though it was clear from the correspondence that he was able to smuggle back that the physical and psychological conditions had taken their toll.
Known for his generosity of spirit and engaging manner as much as his deep insider knowledge of the Rwandan military, Frank Rusagara’s passing is a great loss to the study of African military and strategy as well as a painful personal and political tragedy. It should serve as a living reminder of the value of civil liberties and the rule of law as much as the dangers of leadership adulation and the limits of the supposed overriding benefits of economic progress.
Dr Greg Mills, 28 March 2025
