Editor,

RE: "Why Rwandans get a lot of stick for doing right” (The New Times, July 27). Fully agree with Joseph Rwagatare’s analysis of why Rwanda, specifically President Paul Kagame and his Government, get so much stick for insisting on doing what is right for the people of Rwanda.

There is of course another angle to the anger of those who persist in trashing Rwanda’s obvious recovery and continuing progress in all economic, social and political aspects, despite clear physical and research-based research: spite and economic self-interest.

As Mireille Mutesi’s excellent opinion piece in this paper this week noted, "When charity is not charitable but self-serving, when aid is not aiding but subjugating, surely, urusha nyina w’umwana imbabazi aba ashaka kumurya”.

Very many so-called charitable organizations in developing countries are in it purely for the self-enrichment and self-aggrandizement of their leadership. They cannot tolerate the loss of any of their tools of raising funding. Worse, in reality being contemptuous of those whose plight they use to keep the cash-flow streaming in, they see it as uppity for such people to show them the exit unceremoniously and to openly keep them out of those countries’ business publicly. Such an ‘affront’ to their sense of superiority can never be forgiven.

But the question still remains. Indeed, as Einstein said, insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, expecting a different result.

Why do the scions of the NGO and think-tank world persist in trashing a country and a people who clearly continue on their own chosen path without paying any heed to the views of nattering nabobs of extreme negativity? Are these people and their transmission belts in the global media and among Rwandan dissidents so far gone in their insanity they don’t realise their efforts will always come to naught as long as Rwandans, in their overwhelming majority, are united in their determination to keep to the path they are on and that has served them so well?

Whatever the case, let them natter on, even as we redouble our efforts to continue up the course we have ourselves plotted for our own future.

Mwene Kalinda