The Other Side of Kagame: On the Road to Presidency. Precision, Soft Diplomacy and Attention to Detail

Asteria Rutagambwa's Dream - Mother of The Nation

In the middle of a very quiet Rwandan night in Tambwe, Ruanda-Urundi, beneath a sky stitched with stars, Asteria Rutagambwa, lay awake, her heart swelling with a dream as old as time. The words of a distant prophecy whispered through her mind: “For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given.”

She pressed a hand to her womb, feeling the faint stir of life within, and imagined a future vast and unbroken. She had a vision. She saw Paul. She saw her son—tall, resolute, a quiet strength in his gaze—rising like the hills that cradled their village. To him would be given greatness, she thought, not in the clang of conquest, but in the steady rhythm of a nation rebuilt. In her dream, he carried the weight of a people, his steps guided by a mother’s prayer and a destiny yet unwritten.

20 Years Later

The sun hung low over Kampala’s bustling streets, casting long shadows across the cracked pavement where a young Paul Kagame stood, his wiry frame barely noticeable amid the clamour of vendors, hawkers, and pedestrians. It was the late 1970s, and the city pulsed with the chaotic energy of a Uganda still reeling from Idi Amin’s tyranny. Paul Kagame, barely into his twenties, balanced a weathered wooden tray on his shoulder, its surface lined with a dozen eggs and a few plastic bottles of water drawn from a nearby borehole.

His sharp eyes scanned the crowd—not for customers, but for opportunity, for survival.

He wasn’t like the other hawkers shouting their wares with practiced rhythm. Paul was quiet, deliberate, his voice cutting through the noise only when necessary. “Fresh eggs! Clean water!” he’d call, his tone steady, betraying none of the exhaustion that gnawed at him after hours under the hot humid equatorial sun. To those who passed him by, he was just another refugee kid, one of thousands of Rwandan Tutsis who’d fled the violence of their homeland in 1959, when the Hutu majority turned on their Tutsi neighbours. His family had crossed the border when he was two, settling into the uncertain life of exile in Uganda. Now, here he was, eking out a living on Nakasero Road, a street alive with the smells of roasted maize, fresh mangoes, bananas and the chatter of traders.

But there was another side to Paul Kagame, one hidden beneath the unassuming vendor’s exterior. He wasn’t just selling eggs to scrape by—he was WATCHING, LEARNING, PLANNING. The streets of Kampala were a classroom, and every interaction taught him something about military strategy, power, resilience, and the fragility of peace. He’d seen how the powerful exploited the weak, how Amin’s soldiers strutted through the city, demanding bribes or snatching goods without a second thought. He’d felt the sting of being an outsider, a Tutsi refugee in a land that wasn’t his own, mocked by those who saw his lanky frame and soft-spoken demeanour as signs of weakness. He has seen the brutal hand of Mobutu Sese Seko in Zaire and the streets perfected his mission.

Yet Paul was anything but weak. At night, after the last egg was sold and the water bottles emptied, he’d sit with a small group of fellow exiles—young men like Fred Rwigyema, his childhood friend from the refugee camps. They’d huddle in the dim light of a kerosene lamp, talking note of the day’s sales but of a dream that burned brighter with each passing year: returning to Rwanda, reclaiming their home. The eggs and water were a means to an end, a way to fund their whispered plans. Every shilling Paul earned went into a tin box hidden beneath a loose floorboard in the shack he shared with his mother—a secret stash for something bigger than himself.

One humid afternoon, as Paul balanced his tray near a busy taxi rank, a man in a worn khaki jacket approached him. “You’re the quiet one,” the man said, his voice low, his eyes assessing. Paul didn’t flinch, meeting the stranger’s gaze with the same intensity he’d later bring to battlefields. The man was Yoweri Museveni, a rebel leader gathering fighters to topple Amin’s regime.

He’d heard of Paul through the refugee grapevine—a boy who didn’t waste words, who listened more than he spoke, who carried himself with a purpose that belied his humble trade.

“You sell eggs, but you think like a soldier,” Museveni said, a faint smile tugging at his lips. Paul didn’t deny it. He’d been watching Museveni’s men for months, noting their discipline, their quiet defiance. That day, an egg cracked in his hand as he nodded—an unspoken agreement. The tray was set aside, the water bottles left behind. Paul Kagame, the vendor of Nakasero Road, stepped into the shadows of rebellion.

Years later, as he stood at the helm of the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), leading a guerrilla war to end the 1994 genocide that claimed nearly a million lives, few would connect the steely commander with the boy who once hawked eggs in Kampala. But those who knew him best—Fred, before his death in 1990, or the exiles who’d shared those late-night talks—saw the thread that ran through it all. The streets had forged him, taught him patience, strategy, and the value of every small victory. Selling water and eggs wasn’t just survival; it was preparation.

When Paul Kagame became Rwanda’s president in 2000, after years as its de facto leader, the world saw a man of iron will, a visionary who rebuilt a shattered nation. Yet beneath the polished suits and the aura of authority lingered the other side of Kagame—the refugee who’d once weighed an egg in his hand, calculating not just its price, but the cost of a future he’d fight to create. The road to presidency hadn’t begun in Rwanda’s hills or Uganda’s bush wars, but on a dusty Kampala street, where a young man learned that even the smallest acts could build something greater.