In Paul Kagame’s Rwamda of today, the government has inspired direct development by stirring a flurry of economic activity through heavy state investment in previously stagnated sectors. These investments are led by party-owned holding companies. Combined with clever agricultural strategies, the former German and later Belgian colony that suffered post-independence genocidal war through which nearly a million Tutsis and moderate Hutus were annihilated in Africa’s Holocaust, experienced an economic spurt of about 8% between 2001 and 2013. Within that period, the percentage of people living below the poverty line fell from 57% in 2005 to 45% in 2010. Other indicators of human development, such as life expectancy and literacy, have also improved. In the last 25 years, Rwanda, under Kagame, has made an amazing transformation so much so that it is hard to believe the country, some three decades ago, was enmeshed in a brutal civil and tribal war that ravaged human, natural and infrastructural resources and brought it to ground zero.
Today, mothers in Rwanda receive ante- and post-natal healthcare and maternal mortality ratios in the country decreased by 77 per cent between 2000 and 2013. Newborns are vaccinated. The capital city, Kigali, is among the neatest in the world. Kagame introduced Umuganda — a policy that forces Rwandans to commit a few hours of their time to community service on every last Saturday of the month. This has contributed to the neatness of the capital city and the country, in general. A central sewage system in the capital is currently under construction and the government plans to connect all households to it by 2024. Also, people can walk safely at night. Security has improved so much that ministers of state no longer require personal security details. “Your security will be guaranteed like that of other Rwandan citizens,” they were told. There are working state housing schemes that have accorded the average Rwandan a decent affordable home. The progress in Rwanda can’t be missed even by the sight-impaired. It is an African success story. From education, healthcare, agriculture, security, and housing, to technology, the tiny landlocked East African nation of 13 million people has made amazing progress, even surpassing some other African countries that never suffered such a brutal fate as it did in 1994 during the genocide. On the gender front, Rwanda has a majority-female parliament and is considered a world leader in gender equality, with 60 per cent of the country’s MPs being women. Despite taking a hit from COVID-19 like the rest of the world, its economy is now largely stable. It is hoping to achieve middle-income status by 2035. It is also proving to be a technology hub on the African continent. The first made-in-Africa smartphone (The Mara), for instance, is manufactured in an industrial area in the capital. The country also hosts a Volkswagen plant where the German carmaker provides an e-mobility service and assembles cars for the African market. In the World Bank’s ‘Doing Business’ report of 2019, which describes how economically friendly the 190 countries in the world are, Rwanda ranked 29th – the second-best African nation after Mauritius. Rwanda is one of the countries in Africa with the best and cheapest internet infrastructure. Many government services are online, making it easy, for example, for entrepreneurs to set up a company on a smartphone. The remarkable social and economic gains in Rwanda have been nothing short of a miracle with Kagame, perceived by some as a benevolent dictator and others as an outright autocrat, right in the middle of it all since he took power in 2000.
Kagame’s rise
In 1994, after the genocide and the civil war, Pasteur Bizimungu officially became President of Rwanda. However, Bizimungu was commonly seen as a placeholder for Kagame, who at the time assumed the joint titles of vice president and minister of defence.
“In fact, Kagame had unlimited power in Rwanda from the start,” a dissident, former insider and former senior aide and economic adviser to Kagame, Mr Himbara told DW in a 2020 interview.
Kagame previously commanded the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), a Ugandan-based Tutsi militia, which ended the Hutu slaughter of Tutsis by defeating the authorities responsible for the killing campaign. Although the RPF is regarded by the majority of Rwandans as saviours, they are also accused of massacring Hutus.
Himbara believes that Kagame’s military past is still visible today: “Kagame became socialized in the war. He is a very aggressive person, uncontrolled and violent.”
Rights organisations have also made serious allegations against Kagame. Human Rights Watch, for instance, claims that since Kagame took office, people have been prosecuted for doubting the official government’s explanation of the genocide. The rights body lists a long series of murders, disappearances, politically motivated arrests and illegal arrests of critics, opposition members and journalists.
Kagame himself has, at times, commented on such allegations, as in the case of former secret service chief and dissident Patrick Karageya, who was strangled to death at a hotel room in South Africa: “Rwanda did not kill this person. But I wish Rwanda had done it,” Kagame said.
On the flip side, Kagame advisor Jean-Paul Kimonyo, who authored, ‘Transforming Rwanda: Challenges on the Road to Reconstruction’, told DW: “You can see on social media that Rwanda, and especially President Kagame, is popular among young Africans. What they like about him is his ability to have things done,” adding: “Many Africans like this because that they too would like to have a leader who does things.” He said: “First, he became a soldier, then transformed himself into a statesman and a reformer, and finally gained international recognition”.
Tweaking the Constitution to stay in power for life
In a 2015 constitutional referendum, Rwandans voted overwhelmingly to allow Kagame to stand again for office beyond the end of his second mandate, which ended in 2017. Kagame won the 2017 elections, with nearly 99% of the vote. His current term ends this year, 2024, but he is eligible to run for two more terms, thus, possibly and likely being in power until 2034, something his adviser sees nothing wrong with. “Here in Rwanda, a possible extension of our President’s term of office is currently not an issue,” Kimonyo said, noting: “We want more prosperity and we need strong leadership for this. And Rwandans are currently very satisfied with their leadership.”
Kagame’s human rights blot
Human Rights Watch, in 2022, said Kagame’s administration continued “to wage a campaign against real and perceived opponents of the government”. It said the administration cracked down on political opposition and restricted the people’s right to freedom of expression, association and peaceful assembly. Critics were arbitrarily arrested and some even said they were tortured in state custody. There were many forced disappearances and suspicious deaths that were not investigated by the authorities.
However, Kagame, who has been re-elected as a candidate for his party, says Rwanda can’t be like the others. “As Rwandans, we cannot do things as everybody else in the usual way. The challenges they face and those that we confront are different. The one thing that you can do, and everyone starts saying, ‘Rwanda did this, Rwanda did that!’ Others would do things a hundred times worse, but no one will ever talk about them. For us to live well, we need to do things in a unique way so that even those who want to accuse us of all evils can hardly find any wrongs about us,” said President Kagame in his acceptance speech after being re-elected as chairman of the RPF-Inkotanyi.
Must democracy in its truest sense be sacrificed for development?
Tightening the noose on free speech, freedom of expression, freedom of the media and opposition voices, is anti-democratic. But some African leaders – the dictatorial ones – have found it a useful tool to avoid distraction and criticism. It appears Kagame’s focus is to build a Rwanda flowing with milk and honey and, if he has to step on some toes to achieve that, then the end, in his view, certainly justifies the means. A careful analysis of his quote in the last-but-one paragraph above gives one the unmistakable impression that Kagame believes in the ‘end justifying the means’ philosophy. He does not think democracy has to be business as usual. To him, it must be crafted to suit the special needs of his country. Rwanda, he thinks, must not go the way of others. It must find its own unique and customised way of doing the same things, achieving the same laurels or even better results for the common good of the entire country, and if it means silencing a few voices and gagging a few others, then so be it and damn the consequences. He appears to be borrowing a leaf from Singapore’s Lee Kwan Yew, Libya’s Muammar Ghaddafi and China’s Mao Zedong. To these former leaders, the press needed to be in sync with their vision and mission rather than a distraction. Opposition voices, in their estimation, must also support the national cause rather than impugn it. Such distraction cannot be allowed to survive if the vision is to be achieved. However, freedom of speech and expression are the most fundamental rights of any democracy. Therefore, once stifled, could the prevailing ideology, no matter how beneficial it is to the national goal and the majority of the citizenry, still be considered democratic? Has Kagame crafted a needs-specific development ideology for Rwanda (Kagameocracy) just like Gaddafi did for Libya, which serves a critical national-interest purpose and, thus, conveniently excuses and even justifies any claimed or rumoured excesses? And are those excesses founded on hindsight? Must he control the press to avoid its misuse that could plunge the country into another genocidal warfare? Or is it just a perfect ruse for him to hush criticism and dissent? Must democracy be sacrificed in the name of national development, cohesion, unity and prosperity when, in other countries, it has co-existed peacefully with these tenets? Are the likes of Gaddafi and Kagame the solution to Africa’s problems no matter how much they may be demonised by the West? Must milk and honey overshadow personal and fundamental freedoms? Or is freedom in hunger, thirst, need and want preferred to the obverse?
