Western experts and analysts, self-appointed authorities on Rwanda, often sit comfortably and theorise about our country. Behind their academic jargon, they overlook one crucial fact: Rwandans are not characters in a Hollywood movie, not subjects in history books to be dissected, nor mere political ideas to be debated.
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The failure of many in the Western academic world to see us as living, breathing, healing and hurting people, has convinced me that the idea that Rwanda has ever been the darling of the West is a myth born of the Western impulse to put itself at the centre of every successful African story.
In fact, while these self-styled experts love to talk about Rwanda, they care little about the Rwandan people.
Take the example of the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda. Western media often narrate this tragedy, but they rarely listen to those who lived through it. They will tell you about RTLM radio, the station that broadcast hate speech and incited neighbours to kill neighbours. They will explain how the media was weaponised and played a major role in the genocide. What they won&039;t tell you - or worse, gloss over - is that these broadcasts could have been stopped. The US was asked to jam RTLM's hateful messages, but US officials refused, citing a commitment to 'freedom of speech', as if these broadcasts were about speech and not incitement to mass murder.
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This indifference to African lives in the name of Western ideals is not new, but it remains shocking. When foreign journalists and academics discuss Rwanda, they often do so with the same distance and detachment, treating us as subjects in their intellectual laboratories. They examine us as case studies - tragic and complex, but ultimately distant. They talk about us, but rarely with us. They analyse us, but rarely try to understand the depth of our pain or our humanity.
In academia, this detachment is even more insidious. Scholars like Nic Cheeseman and Jeffrey Smith, who frequently comment on African governance, reduce Rwanda's story to tired tropes about dictatorship and repression. They frame our post-genocide recovery through the lens of Western liberal democracy, failing to grasp the unique historical and social context that shapes our country's politics. They criticise our government without fully understanding the scars of genocide or the challenges of rebuilding a nation from the ashes of near annihilation. Worse, they ignore the fact that Rwanda's solutions are for Rwandans, not for validation in Western academic circles. In doing so, they become the very trolls they denounce when criticised for their shallowness.
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Their biased framework extends beyond Rwanda to Africa as a whole. Africa is either portrayed as a hopeless, failed continent or, in rare cases, as a land of exotic success stories that don't quite live up to Western expectations. The nuances of African governance, history and culture are flattened into simplistic narratives that serve foreign interests. This isn't just a failure of scholarship - it's an extension of colonial thinking. These Western scholars, along with the media they weaponise, continue to exert control over our stories, over our truths, trying to keep us in a box of their own making.
But Rwanda is much more than their labels. We are more than their tired debates about 'dictatorship versus democracy'. We are more than the atrocities of 1994, and more than all that led up to them. When Western academics accuse us of erasing history or manipulating identity, they reveal how our reality is beyond the reach of their intellect. What they call manipulation is actually healing. What they call erasure is our conscious effort to redefine ourselves. We honour our past while actively rejecting the toxic ideologies that fueled it. To suggest that we, the children of post-genocide Rwanda, are "playing dumb" as we embrace our Rwandanness - rejecting the Western labels that once marked us for death - is evidence of the arrogant ignorance that passes for academic knowledge production. It's not just wrong, it's offensive.
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For too long, I have remained silent in the face of their detached, dehumanising discourse, feeling that anything I might say would be used against me in some kind of academic court of morality, where foreign voices would determine the validity of our experiences.
It was President Kagame, with his unapologetic clarity, who broke this suffocating silence for me. During a panel discussion, he asked a powerful question: "Why should I prove my innocence? You accuse me, so prove me guilty".
His defiance resonated deeply. It wasn't Rwanda that had to justify itself; it was those who perpetuated and profited from the distorted narratives about us who had to defend their distortions.
Rwandans are committed to justice. Justice is not just about punishing those who committed crimes - it is about rebuilding a society on new, healthier foundations.
We are not erasing history. We are learning from it, mourning it and ensuring that it is never repeated. We understand that validating the trauma of genocide also means correcting the thinking that led to it. That thinking wasn't driven by fear, as some foreign academics claim in their efforts to offer redemption to the killers or to create moral equivalence between the killers and those who saved our nation. It was driven by hate - by the belief that some Rwandans were less human, less deserving of life.
As our media, our government, and our communities, move forward, we do so with grace. We know that Rwanda is a survivor, not a victim.
We treat her with care, with the love and respect she deserves, knowing that she is fragile yet strong. We are not defined by outsiders' opinions of us, but by our actions, our resilience and our commitment to a peaceful future.
Above all, to love Rwanda is to see it and its people as they really are - not as theories to be dissected, not as a tragic history to be exploited, but as a people. Not angels, but not rudimentary souls either, as Chinua Achebe said. Just people - complex, beautiful, navigating life in the aftermath of devastation and determined to make our own way.
The writer is a law student.