Editor, RE: “Instead of bashing Rwanda, why don’t you contribute?” (The New Times, August 14). Rwanda’s critics fall into many categories. There are those who derive more fun and satisfaction from throwing mud, or from tearing down what others have built with great effort. These are annoying, but that is all. There are also those heirs of a long line of racists (some unconsciously so and who would be vehement in their denials if you dared call them out on that) who cannot believe that anything positive can come out of deepest Africa (their forefathers couldn’t believe the social organisation they witnessed in the Kingdom of Rwanda when they erupted onto the scene at the end of the 19th century, hence their invention of the Hamitic Myth as, in their view, such socially and politically sophisticated order couldn’t be the work of negroes). No matter what progress you achieve, they will never acknowledge it as real, unless it has a white person—a Filip Reyntjens, if you will—somewhere as the brains and guiding hand. These are the kind of people who can never emancipate themselves from the phony notions of ingrained in the White Man’s Burden, the Civilizing Mission or Tintin in Congo, especially as it is still very lucrative for the those who manage to impose themselves in the role of saviour or adviser of the Black Chief. Those who think like this are more legion in the west than most people think. Then there is a subcategory of the preceding one; those who were advisers, partners of those with whom they conceived, planned, organized for and implemented the genocidal project, beginning with successive waves of pogroms, other mass killings and expulsions from the 1950s, and culminating in the 1994 Final Solution—the Apocalypse—Theoneste Bagosora openly said he was going to organize (see Dallaire’s Shaking Hands with the Devil). This strain cannot afford to acknowledge the facts before everyone’s eyes: that Rwanda has changed forever and for the better and that these changes are rapidly becoming irreversible. Acknowledging this fact would be to admit that all their lives’ work (abominable for most decent people, but sources of pride for them) was for naught; that it has forever been swept away. They remain in denial. If I were to present these categories I would do so on a continuum or with Venn diagrammes, with some of them in overlapping circles. And they often come together in tactical alliances. At the end of the day, it doesn’t really matter. If we continue on the course we have set for ourselves over the last two decades, with minor adjustments here and there on the way to take account of actual sailing conditions, we shall reach safe habour: a developed country in which all Rwandans have a stake. The rest is so much noise and thunder signifying very little. Mwene Kalinda
