Sunday 14th July 2013
Barring a few tit-bit news hawks, I doubt many Rwandans know who Anna Chapman is. But even among those few, only a limited number will know that she is as Russian as Vodka.
The reason that many will be unaware of her nationality is that her name doesn’t end in “v” or “r”. This is a fact that President Putin himself would be ready to stake his head on: you have an “ic”, “ir”, “iv”, “nko”, “ov”, etc, capping your name or you are not Russian.
At birth inn Russia, Chapman was named Anna Vasil’vna Kushchenko. After earning her master’s degree in economics she moved to London in 2004, where later she met and married Alex Chapman, a British national. That way, she acquired British nationality.
Restless girl that she was, however, in 2009 she moved to New York and seemed to prosper as an online real estate dealer. Which turned out not to be her sole occupation because, in 2010, she was accused of engaging in a conspiracy to act as an agent of a foreign government. She pleaded guilty and was deported back to Russia and, in equal measure, was deprived of her British nationality.
So, why should her name attract our curiosity? Before we go into that, let’s throw an eye at another interesting personality.
By now, Edward Joseph Snowden will have become a familiar name to every Rwandan, even a villager in the remotest nook of Rwanda, thanks to the army of local FM radios.
Apart from the silver-haired Australian, Julian Assange, no other single person has whistle-blown USA so completely off its hinges. As we speak, if USA could pull the wool over the unusually alert eyes of the world, it’d push these stubborn busy-bodies into the nearest bottomless sinkhole!
Yet, like Assange, Snowden is innocent. Moreover, he is an ordinary guy who has never shone in anything. When he tried to obtain a high-school diploma, he did not complete the coursework. He worked online towards a Master’s Degree but abandoned it before completion. He enlisted in the US army as a Special Forces recruit but did not finish the training.
All the same, he got a job as a National Security Agency (NSA) guard and, later, worked at the CIA as an IT security officer. He continued working in fits and starts until he took a training course as a Certified Ethical hacker.
When he sneaked out of USA and flew to Hong Kong last June, he’d again been working for NSA at the Operations Centre in Hawaii. His job was to break into the internet and telephone traffic of the world. Why he decided to spill these US government beans, don’t ask me!
What I know is that it showed one thing: whatever saying Rwandans have coined, it’s founded on the solid rock of undeniable truth.
In this regard, one word in the adage is not particularly polite in our polished society and so I’ll labour at translating it into English, the language of a society that enjoys bandying the “s—t” word about as if it was the most civilised invention. The adage: when you play at hitting dirt with your stick, expect to splash it on yourself. Translate into Kinyarwanda those who dare!
But before we start talking dirt or denouncing these “democracies” of the West, let’s again take a peek at our two protagonists. Snowden and Chapman, what do they have in common?
At the face of it, nothing at all. While Snowden was spying indiscriminately on his people and those of the world on behalf of his government, Anna was solely spying on another government, on behalf of hers.
But while Snowden volunteered to expose his country’s abuses on its people and those of the world, Chapman was caught red handed and exposed by the government she spied on. Chapman thus remains an accomplice of her government in its shenanigans, while Snowden has washed his hands of his government.
Even then, though, as I see it, they were made for each other. In fact, they should get into this nuptial union that Chapman so craves. For info, the other day Anna tweeted: @showden, will you marry me? And to NSA: @nsa, will you look after our children? If you ask me, this would be a union made in Heaven.
This is because once together, Chapman’d also opt for the clean path. Then the duo ccan show us the truth that these “democracies” have turned themselves into a man-eat-man society. While they are eating us, especially in Africa, they don’t spare themselves and one another, when they’ve done with us.
And while they are at it, they throw all scruples to the wind. See how practically all European “democracies” were not ashamed to toss around Bolivian President Evo Morales, innocent as he was. See how USA listens in on everybody; UK even on dignitaries of the big powers; France…..
How many scandals, in how many “democracies”, would the trio of Assange, Snowden and Chapman uncover?
Me, I wish we had more Assanges, Snowdens!
