Editor, RE: “What is France 24 agenda on Rwanda?” (The New Times, November 12). We are in no doubt that this is part of the information war the French, using their media, and increasingly that of their Western allies, have been waging against Rwanda since the defeat of their allies in 1994. “Respectability”, like beauty, is in the eyes of the beholder, and France 24 or any of their stable mates have absolutely none in mine. Neither do any of the has-beens like Reyntjens that they use for this latest smear attempt raise much more than a bored half-hearted response from us Rwandans. What could be more of a joke than to dust the cobwebs off this Habyarimana Belgian crony who has constantly begged for a visa but been refused entry into Rwanda for the last 21 years and who behaves increasingly like a particularly senile King Lear, wheel him out of the attic for the Big Breaking Story of chicanery in a country he knows absolutely nothing about? The only people who are taken in are their audiences, who have been fed on a ceaseless diet of misinformation about Rwanda. Rwandans, whose opinion matter most about the reality of today’s Rwanda and its direction, don’t need the French media—or any other for that matter—to tell us about where we are, and where that is relative to where we were yesterday. They certainly can see photos of wooden bicycles and beggars on the street in a neighbouring country France 24 uses to illustrate their story of Rwandan Government chicanery and recognize a fabrication, for none of them see any such wooden bicycles or beggars on our streets. Of course, according to their Western media colleagues, Rwanda keeps its cities clean, without beggars—and perhaps wooden bicycles—because it jails its would-be beggars and other repressive measures. These arguments fail to take into account the fact keeping people in prison, where the state has to house, feed, treat, and clothe them is more costly in every way than providing them with the skills and other means to be productive and to help themselves and their families. Fortunately, Rwanda’s real partners, who have supported our efforts to recover and transform our society for the better, also have the means to monitor, assess and evaluate for themselves the reality and the progress the country has made and continues to make. They have rightly dismissed the fictitious situation of the country depicted by France 24 and their terminally delusional “Rwanda expert”. But, as the French themselves would say, c’est une bonne guerre. We expect nothing better from them, and so we aren’t surprised or, for that matter, even disappointed. Mwene Kalinda
