The emphasis of President Paul Kagame’s government has been on rebuilding the economy and setting new standards of social and economic development across a country that was devastated by genocide 17 years ago
Rwanda has often been hailed as an African success story because it has managed to rebuild itself into a peaceful, stable nation, after the turmoil of the 1994 genocide. Most of the credit for the metamorphosis has gone to President Paul Kagame, particularly for the way he has managed to drive forward efforts to overcome the widespread devastation that followed in the genocide’s wake.
In 1994, more than 800,000 ethnic Tutsis were targeted and killed, in villages and towns across the country, by the army and militias that were made up mostly of their Hutu neighbours. Some Hutu moderates were also attacked. But while Rwanda is dotted with genocide memorials, and a week each April is devoted to remembering what happened, people, in general, speak very little of it.
It was the rebel army of the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), headed by Kagame, which succeeded in ending the bloody 100 days of violence that took place between April and July 1994. Since then, Kagame has been heralded as a hero, as much outside as inside the country. His election to the presidency in 2003 and subsequent reelection in August 2010 – with a landslide endorsement of 93 percent of the votes – came as little surprise to anyone. But while different groups of international observers described the August presidential election as largely peaceful, they did not fail to notice the absence of opposition voices.
Since the genocide, this tiny country in the heart of Africa has certainly made great strides in various areas of development – healthcare, women’s rights and education – but, at the same time, it has scored poorly in political indicators such as democratic rule, human rights and freedom of expression and the press. Like almost everything in Rwanda, politics fall under the shadow of the genocide. Fears that debate could stir up old resentments, even hatreds, mean people stay quiet and many things go unsaid.
Such is the continuing sensitivity, that the history of Rwanda is not taught in the country’s schools today. Efforts to develop a salient curriculum are underway, but in the meantime the national narrative is more implicit than explicit. The government encourages people on the opposite sides of the genocide to reconcile and talk about the events of 1994, but to do this “in the right way” – a way that avoids bringing back up the same differences that fuelled the killings in the first place. This approach is most strongly characterised by the current government’s constant stress on the phrase “we are all Rwandans”. Because ethnic identities are perceived to cause ethnic unrest, they have largely been abolished, and so-called ‘divisionism’ has become one of Rwanda’s most serious crimes.
In spite of the continuing restrictions on political and media freedoms, Rwanda continues to receive accolades and new investors because of the rapid economic growth it has experienced over the past decade. Kagame’s aim has been to make Kigali, the capital city, a regional centre of commerce and information technology. A new internet broadband project will see Rwanda become one of the best-connected countries in Africa and it is expected to develop into a base for web businesses, call centres and regional banking institutions. Kigali has also been the focus of much new enterprise. A construction boom generated business worth $1.1 billion in 2009 alone, and has created at least 10,000 new jobs.
Rwanda has not only been welcomed into the East African Community, joining its neighbours Tanzania, Burundi, Kenya and Uganda, but has also joined the Commonwealth, as it strives to open itself up to wider investment and political networking opportunities. In a clear sign that it wants to move away from the former influence of France, the government replaced French with English as an official language in 2008.
A major innovation has been the provision of national health insurance, subscribed to by more than 90 percent of Rwandans, which includes benefits like maternal and infant health and free birth control. Enrolled patients pay only $2 a year to get treatment and prescribed drugs at a discount of up to 85 percent of the real cost. The scheme has greatly helped the country to reduce the incidence of malaria, which is Rwanda’s top killer, especially among its children.
Another landmark has been the advancement of women, who now hold the majority of seats in parliament and are guaranteed 30 percent of most government jobs (see the article on page 79). Very unusually in Africa, Rwandan women also enjoy equality with men in property ownership and inheritance rights.
In education too, Rwanda is held up as a model. In 2010, the United Nations noted that the country has one of the highest rates of primary enrolment in Africa, with over 95 percent of primary age pupils now attending school. And yet there are continuing challenges in rebuilding the education system. With a shortage of competent teachers and facilities, the country still has a long way to go before it meets international standards. Rwandan teachers are poorly paid and there are few incentives to motivate them to do better.
It is on the political front that President Kagame’s government faces the greatest criticism – at home and abroad. This is largely because of the lack of any serious form of opposition, despite the existence of a constitution that guarantees basic political, social and economic rights. International human rights groups and unregistered political activists accuse the government of gagging the media and restricting entry to the political space. Even some key RPF figures, including political allies and a number of army generals, have fallen out with the government over this issue. In 2010, as the elections approached, there was widespread conjecture about who was behind the shooting in South Africa of a former army chief of staff, Kayumba Nyamwasa, and the murders of journalist Jean Léonard Rugambage and would-be politician André Kagwa, the outspoken vice president of the unregistered Green Party. Kayumba’s attempted assassination led to a diplomatic row between Rwanda and South Africa, in which both countries withdrew their respective ambassadors.
Politics in Rwanda has long been viewed through the ethnic lens as essentially being a contest between the rival groups of Hutus and Tutsis. The majority Hutus, whose then leadership was responsible for the genocide, were thought to be the primary opponents of Kagame’s Tutsi-led RPF government. While the Hutu extremist militia, the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda – based in Democratic Republic of Congo and made up mostly of génocidaires who fled after the killings in 1994 – were long considered to pose the main armed threat. Recently, however, things have changed. Four senior RPF officials have been sentenced, in absentia, to long jail terms after being convicted of collaborating with external armed forces planning to attack the country. And, several of Kagame’s former allies, who were active in the struggle for the country’s liberation, have joined other diaspora-based political parties working to end his rule. Increasingly, Rwanda’s challenges and politics cannot be reduced to the ethnic binary.
So far there is no clear indication of who may succeed Kagame if he leaves office at the time of the next presidential election in 2017. Many Rwandans cannot imagine their country without Kagame at the helm. Under him, the economy continues to grow exponentially, particularly in urban centres. Tomorrow’s challenge will be to reach out to the rural population; some 70 percent of Rwandans still depend on subsistence agriculture for survival, so the government is working to integrate these farmers into the national development programme.
For Kagame, or any leader who may follow him, the true challenge continues to be how to rule such a poor country, where the things left unsaid are as important as those that are spoken, where the past, despite best efforts, is not forgotten and where old resentments are never too deeply buried.
