Rwandans love their cops so much they build them houses

If you want to gauge whether a society feels secure or even liberated, its relationship with law enforcement agencies is a reliable indicator. Where there is high level of trust, there is likely to be a higher degree of safety and liberty. Where the converse holds, there is usually fear and insecurity. You might even take it further. A good relationship often reflects a greater degree of social transformation. Now, the usual measure of such transformation is some quantifiable data such as GDP growth. But as we continue to see, there are other tools for measuring people’s wellbeing than economic growth figures alone. A few weeks ago we saw such a measure when residents of Gisozi, a Kigali suburb, were reported to have built a police station, complete with a detention centre, and handed it over to the Rwanda National Police. Whoever heard of citizens building a detention facility likely to be used to hold some of their own? Or houses for policemen who might soon be charging them with batons for no other reason than passing near their barracks? The citizens of Gisozi did and they are not stupid. What they did was a show of confidence in the police we hardly see in many countries. Indeed this is a rare occurrence, certainly in former colonies or dictatorships. Here the police was feared and hated. Together with courts and prisons, the police was part of an alliance of injustice. Citizens would sooner burn a police station than build a whole complex for them, with good reason. The police was often the enforcer of an alien and oppressive rule. For instance, it was used to enforce tax collection, forced labour and other unpopular exactions. It was anti-people and kept subject peoples in bondage and when they tried to break the chains, it broke their struggles for freedom. Its preferred and only method was violence. To ensure the police remained brutal, the colonial state prevented normal social contact with the people. The police were housed in barracks, away from civilians. The legacy of the police as an anti-people force was maintained by the post-colonial administrations. They too used them as instruments of oppression or agents to enforce the narrow and divisive vision of the group in power. Since 1994, the image and role of the police in Rwanda has changed. The action of the residents of Gisozi is only the latest indicator of this change. The police are no longer a feared force. You don’t have to abruptly change direction when you meet a policeman, or look the other way when passing a police barracks for fear of being summoned and charged with staring at a strategic security installation with the aim of passing on what you see to enemies of the state. You can actually freely enter the police station. Or better still, build one. The police live among the people. They are not secluded in barracks in order to make them brutal and fiercely anti-people. They even do the unthinkable by standards of cops elsewhere. They routinely refuse free gifts by way of money or other property misplaced by some careless traveller or businessman. Instead, they look for the fellow and plead with them to take back their money, some in the tens of thousands of dollars. Whoever heard of a cop in another country refuse such a free gift? It would be the height of folly. Yet our cops continue to do that. Small wonder then that residents of a part of town where billions of francs worth of business are transacted every month and where some forgetful business person might misplace some of it thought of giving decent offices and housing to the cops. That speaks of a lot of trust. Then there are other programmes the police are involved in that get them closer to the people. There is community policing, for example, in which citizens do their own policing. Then there are the gender-based violence desks that have become the refuge of both men and women subjected to battering by their spouses or partners. And, once a year, there is the ‘police week’ when the cops work among residents building schools or houses for the vulnerable in our communities. Should it surprise anyone that citizens return the favour by facilitating the police to do its work? It says how they value the work of the police and how close the relationship with law enforcement agencies is. It is evidence of the level of trust and confidence and how far we have come in the last two decades or so. But don’t be surprised to hear commentators thousands of miles away say that this trust is stage-managed, that Rwanda is actually a police state where citizens live in mortal fear of security agencies. It is the way of the world. Some will refuse to see the light even when it is shone in their faces. As for me I am happy to live in a state where people and cops each trust and protect the other, where ordinary folk fear no evil. jorwagatare@yahoo.co.uk

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Rwandans love their cops so much they build them houses