If you want to go fast, go alone; but if you want to go far, go together.” (African proverb)

"A small house will hold a hundred friends” (African proverb)

As Rwanda prepares for its annual Kwibuka commemoration of the Genocide against the Tutsi and as whole communities are being divided, besieged, ripped apart, displaced and destroyed from the USA to Ethiopia to Ukraine to Afghanistan to Myanmar, many Rwandans have been particularly relieved and grateful to be able to resume the somewhat unique, traditional, communal practice of Umuganda after a two-year Covid hiatus.

Colleagues and friends outside Africa are often surprised and delighted to hear about this monthly event - loosely translated as "coming together in common purpose” – during which villages and neighborhoods spend the last Saturday morning of the month performing communal chores, such as repairing a roadway or unblocking the gutters on the roof an old person’s house, and then convening a meeting to discuss topics of mutual concern.

Even though Umuganda had some more sinister overtones of forced labor and civilian mobilization in colonial and pre-Genocide times, it is now seen as a key element of Rwanda’s ‘Home-Grown Solutions’ that have helped the country to reconcile, reconstruct and advance on all socio-economic fronts in the last 28 years since the Genocide.

On the first resumption of Umuganda on 26 February, Rwanda’s minister of local government, JMV Gatabazi said, "Umuganda brings back life in the community and it is another suitable platform for us to table and solve our issues”.

For those outside Rwanda, it echoes the influential work of Gordon Allport and other social psychologists, who began work nearly a century ago to develop theories of intergroup contact as a way of confronting and overcoming prejudice, along with stereotyping and discrimination.

In his seminal 1954 book, ‘The Nature of Prejudice’, Dr. Allport said: "Prejudice may be reduced by equal status contact between majority and minority groups in the pursuit of common goals. The effect is greatly enhanced if this contact is sanctioned by institutional supports (i.e., by law, custom, or local atmosphere), and provided it is of a sort that leads to the perception of common interests and common humanity between members of the two groups."

More specifically, the four conditions under which intergroup contact will reduce prejudice are:

1. Equal status: Both groups must engage equally in the relationship. Members of the group should have similar backgrounds, qualities, and characteristics. Differences in academic backgrounds, wealth, skill, or experiences should be minimized if these qualities will influence perceptions of prestige and rank in the group.

2. Common goals: Both groups must work on a problem/task and share this as a common goal, sometimes called a superordinate goal, a goal that can only be attained if the members of two or more groups work together by pooling their efforts and resources.

3. Intergroup cooperation: Both groups must work together for their common goals without competition. Groups need to work together in the pursuit of common goals.

4. Support of authorities, law or customs: Both groups must acknowledge some authority that supports the contact and interactions between the groups. The contact should encourage friendly, helpful, egalitarian attitudes and condemn ingroup-outgroup comparisons.

The communal practice of Umuganda certainly seems to meet these conditions in its purest form even though some may query whether the literal application of the first condition of Equal Status is either feasible or necessary.

What is clear is that there are many communities around the world that are far from meeting all or even some of these conditions right now. 

While it may seem to be a hopeless task to try to bring any sense of community back to the open conflict zones mentioned above, what can each of us do – based on Umuganda, Intergroup Contact Theory and any other social concepts - to help warn, prepare and fortify those communities that may be at risk of fracturing or dissolving in future?

Please share your ideas directly with me at jeremy@jeremysolomons.com and I would be glad to include them by name or anonymously in a future follow-up column on the topic of constructive community action in this newspaper and beyond. 

Individual voices and ideas are so important to help (re-)build stronger communities, even if they make others feel uncomfortable sometimes. Remember the African proverb, "If you think you are too small to make a difference, you haven’t spent the night with a mosquito”, which seems particularly apt for me right now after a recent, thankfully short bout of malaria.

The views expressed in this column are entirely those of the writer.