Sunday, 21st September 2025, Kigali was the capital city of the World cycling. And it will remain for the entire week. In lively neighborhoods such as, Remera, Gahanga, Kicukiro, Kimihurura, and Kacyiru, café terraces turned into small improvised stadiums. Screens broadcast the race, and every pedal stroke by Evenepoel and Pogačar held the crowd’s breath.
When Remco Evenepoel crossed the finish line as the winner, a thunder of cheers erupted. Applause, car horns, and Belgian flags waved by fans gave Kigali the flavor of a celebration. Rwandans, happy and proud of the Belgian champion, stood up when the national anthem, La Babanconne, resonated and the Belgian flag was raised up.
Beyond Evenepoel’s victory, it was Kigali that shone, proving it has become a major meeting point for world cycling and many other sports such as basket-ball, golf, and football. And it’s just the beginning. Kigali savored this historic moment like a collective celebration, carried by the passion for sports and the pride of hosting the world. It is not only Rwanda that has won, but it is the entire African continent that is emerging and that we would like to see continue to shine.
Instead of celebrating their champions, some Belgians like Johan Swinnen, former Belgian ambassador to Rwanda in 1990’s, are taking the opportunity to spread their deadly poison in Belgian newspapers.
This man, whose only heroic deeds were those of a prince, ambassador, and then baron, has remained stuck since 1994, unaware of the rapid evolution of Rwanda and the world. Like his mentor Jean Paul Harroy in a RTBF interview in 1990, also mired in the colonial era, who understood nothing of the Rwanda that was looming on the horizon.
It wouldn’t be out of place to say that Swinnen literally lost the pedals this Sunday when we Rwandans celebrated the Belgians we love and who are winning, and rejected their politicians mired in their petty calculations that no longer interest anyone.
While they are stuck in their democracy, unable to have a stable government and national unity, we, Rwandans, have opted for reconstruction and innovation. The RPF has built in just thirty years what Belgian politicians could never have imagined seeing in their lifetime.
If there is any empathy left on the part of these people, they should take care of other places in Africa that they plundered and that lack everything. Rwanda has turned the page on the past without rancor and is now set on a better course.
RADIOTV10
