This article marks a one-year anniversary for this column. It is a series of conversations with readers that has taken place over fifty-plus articles on a range of topics that touch the lives of Rwandans. This coincides with the time of year when most people trace their steps backwards in assessment of the closing year as they put in place strategies for the one ahead. 

For Rwandans, this was no ordinary year. For one thing, it was a year in which they marked 20 years since the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi. With the events of this commemoration beginning in earnest in January this year, this column noted an opportunity for honest and compassionate reflection in which the world would reflect on this tragedy that befell humanity and hopefully learn lessons that would avert future catastrophes, but also a period for soul-searching for Rwandans.

With many of the world’s dignitaries descending on Kigali to pay their respects and in a show or remorse for failing to do something to stop the genocide as the United Nations Secretary General did speaking on behalf of the international community, others took the opportunity to remind us that not much has changed in their perception that, "In such countries, genocide is not too important.” Such was a reminder that while the Rwandan tragedy was a lesson for some, it remained a political arena for others.

This column attempted to understand such uncouth conduct. It noted a sustained hostility towards the country’s ruling party (RPF), which is traceable from 1990 to the present, and practiced through direct and underhanded maneuvers to discredit the government (a campaign conducted in the media and in diplomatic channels) and deny it international legitimacy.

It is a campaign that is intended to achieve two objectives: to evade accountability and to punish the RPF for its recalcitrance. Unfortunately, it is a hostility that has been extended into the victimisation of all Rwandans by attacking the record of genocide.

Soul-searching is also undermined by political myopia. With a penchant for fishing in muddy waters, our exiled political elite has chosen the path of willing accomplices in this charade. In the name of politics, they are busy undoing decades of efforts geared towards nation building such as the formidable work of the National Unity and Reconciliation Commission (NURC).

They will do anything for political mileage. They are prepared to go as far as arguing that today’s Rwanda is as ethnically ruptured as that of the period of Presidents Habyarimana and Kayibanda, for instance.

Where they should rather focus on how they differ with the RPF in the vision for the country and convince Rwandans of the better future they can provide for them, they have chosen the politics of mudslinging, ever eager to exploit the country’s historical soft underbelly: ethnicity.

However, they can’t be accused of a monopoly on political glaucoma. Where a political party should rather spend time setting up structures across the country as a platform for gaining popularity among Rwandans, valuable time is spent on the trivial.

In what was clearly an indication of its disregard for freedom of speech, suggesting a likelihood for suppressing avenues for expression in the event that the party were to gain political power, an official from one of the registered political parties "operating” inside the country wrote a strongly worded email – or something like a threat – to this newspaper demanding an apology and insisting that the retraction of a statement made in this column!

This column was equally disappointed by the conduct of a hitherto respected political combatant for his decision to join forces with perpetrators of genocide in a bizarre political alliance. For this, many readers agreed that were the Twagiramungu of the 1990s – formerly known as Rukokoma – to cross paths with his most recent version, nothing short of a fistfight would be ensured.

Then Mandela died. And a part of us – a part of humanity – died, too. Indeed, his demise forced us to reflect on the quality of African leadership on the continuum of virtue and vice.

Contact: lonzen.rugira@gmail.com