Kagame's Tweet ruffles feathers
Posted on AjabuAfrica, Saturday, January 28 2012
Rwandan President Paul Kagame last week made world headlines after he tweeted that Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger should quit over lackluster performance.CC) counted for nothing! How dare this Ekaterina Trendafilova and her ilk!
In what epitomises the much talked about the world being a global village, what Kagame might have thought was a private exchange with one of his followers – a Kenyan – spread like wild fire, attracting the attention of world leading media houses and blogs.
Kagame, an ardent arsenal fan, had just watched his team beaten 2-1 at home by sworn opponents –Manchester United on Sunday evening.
Fans at the Emirates stadium booed as Wenger replaced Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain, just as the young winger was in the ascendency, with the lethargic Andrey Arshavin.
Arsenal captain Robin Van Persie was also shown on TV uttering the words "oh no" towards the bench.
Arshavin gifted United’s Danny Welbeck a winner after allowing himself to be dummied by a superb Antonia Valencia.
But when a Kenyan, perhaps as a consolation, tweeted that Kagame was one of the prominent people who support Arsenal. Kagame responded acknowledging that he was indeed a gunner but went on to rant about Wenger’s skills.
He wrote: "I very much support Arsenal - but to be honest Wenger needs to coach another team now and Arsenal needs another coach."
He followed with tweets: "When a good team (players) and a good coach fail for long to deliver, one of them has to change, or even both.
"The real/main danger is for anyone to get used to mediocre/lacklustre performance and/or results and accepts to live with it … or keeps finding excuses for it."
What makes the whole thing worse for Wenger is that him and Kagame are pals.
The Arsenal manager wrote to him for his 50th birthday in 2007, speaking of his pride that an African statesmen was a dedicated gunner. Wenger even arranged for his squad to sign a banner for the one-time rebel leader.
But the untold story in the saga is how social media has made interactions easy. A few years ago, the only way to vent was through a fan’s email address, which would have passed unreported, even if it came from a Head of State.
But Kagame also found himself in the back foot, working tirelessly to clarify that he had not called for Wenger’s resignation.
In a light heart
When a blogger tweeted him alerting he had been quoted, Kagame responded: "...in EPL- Arsenal! My emphasis was on change... I didn’t use ‘step down’ or ‘resign’ etc that can only be interpretation."
Some Kagame followers went to joke how Wenger had called on the president to vacate office as he (Arsenal boos) did not like the way he was managing Rwanda.
Kagame responded: "Sure…soon I will leave" but added: "But since I talked about change in any case, I will try to change a few more things for the better! Light heart in all this though."
Arsenal has courted controversy with the list of its prominent supporters that included Osama bin Laden, the former Al Qaeda leader, who was killed last year by an American elite squad in Pakistan.
Prime Minister Raila Odinga, United Kingdom’s Queen Elizabeth and Prince Harry, US President Barack Obama and Congolese president Joseph Kabila.
CNN talk show host Piers Morgan, with over 1.7 million followers on twitter, is also a staunch supporter of Arsenal. Morgan was equally frustrated by Wenger’s substitution and tweeted: "The worst substitution I have ever seen."
Arsenal is 18 points adrift of English Premier League leaders Manchester City and, at position five on the table, are five points behind fourth placed Chelsea.
Only four clubs play in the lucrative Uefa Champions League.
The use of Twitter by president Kagame comes hot in the heels of a new report that reveals that South Africans and Kenyans are Africa’s most active Twitter users and that the social networking site is rapidly becoming a key information tool across the continent.
Researchers analysed more than 11.5 million tweets from specific locations in Africa during the last three months of last year.
They found South Africans made more than five million of those tweets, twice as many as people in any other country. Kenya was next with 2.5 million tweets. Nigeria, Egypt, and Morocco followed.
The study, called "How Africa Tweets," was conducted by two companies – Kenya-based Portland Communications and Britain-based Tweetminster.
Source: Standard
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