Liberation continuum: The reconfiguration of a country

This after-long-holiday feels like that euphoric time after being, not reborn but, born as a totally new being. To be exact, it feels like what we commemorated: the time after the forces of hope triumphed over the forces of evil that had sunk Rwanda into a deep, dark hole. A lot has been said in these pages about independence and liberation but enough cannot be said. Rather than a celebration of a people coming out of bondage, independence here was a celebration by colonialism of the triumph of its architecture, its design. It was worse than a mockery of independence. The intention of colonialism had been to divide ‘les indigènes’ (as they called us) and thus reign over them. So, before their departure, the colonialists made sure Rwandans’ traditional head, who had overseen the cultivation of strong unity as had been done by others (sometimes not so well) down the line, imperfections of traditional rules apart, was no more. But that was not enough. For extra assurance that their design had been fully successful, they assisted a section of the citizenry to set upon their compatriots. That’s how 1959 marked the first time that a Rwandan killed a compatriot and the country generated mass refugees. A divided people you couldn’t wish for better. When colonialists granted independence in 1962, it was with satisfaction for a job well executed. They may not have been happy to leave their colony at the time they did but Belgians knew that, in the elite left in power, they had good students who would serve their every whim. Which, to be sure, they proved to be, perhaps even beyond their brutal expectations. With independence, the campaign of division went full throttle and by the end of thirty-two years, if there was any line along which Rwandans were not divided, it was because that line had not yet been perceived! The perceived lines of ethnicity, as crafted by colonialism, were strengthened and some Rwandans were turned into more distant second-class citizens. They were totally ignored and whatever little development – meagre by all standards – took place, it passed them by. They were spectators in their own country’s affairs and a promise of iron sheets is the only thing they could hope for from its government. A promise which they good-humouredly turned into a discourse pastime (the illusive amabati ya Habyarimana) since, even if they’d got them, they’d probably have turned them into “bed-mats” (!), anyway, being of no use to them as firewood. For what use could they have been, since you couldn’t put them anywhere on a twig-and-grass shack? These sideline-spectators, however, could at least say they were in their country, even if that meant a “protected natural habitat”, a euphemistic term for wild forest. Some Rwandans were not allowed the luxury of calling their country theirs. The “lucky” ones of these were those of 1959, and episodes after, who managed to escape those colonially-assisted massacres, which consumed none-too-few, and went to roam foreign lands As to those confined in the ferocious frontiers of their ‘alien’ motherland, their lives revolved around eking out a living quickly before their expiry date. When time for their allotted life-span was up, as it was for some in 1962, ’63, ’66, ’73, etc, then they were in for ‘cropping’ in a “creeping genocide” that culminated in the final horrendous Genocide against the Tutsi. Meanwhile, in the house of the ruling elite all was not well. Here, too, this destructive discrimination reigned supreme. When the elite of the south were in power in the first republic, the elite of other areas, when not favoured with tolerance, were used as target practice for assassination. Their people, which is what citizens of their regions became, were ignored or harassed, or even sent to blissful heaven, if they tried to assert themselves. Those, too, were no longer Rwandan. And, sure enough, the reverse became the norm, if only more vicious, with the ascendance to power of the elite of the north, in the second republic. As things stood, Rwanda was headed for the precipice. Then the Rwanda Patriotic Front and its fighting wing, Rwanda Patriotic Army, struck. And France struck back and all but put to an end the existence of us all. For, had the heinous Habyarimana forces with their fighting father figure, France, and the Francophonie collection of fighters called to the rescue by France, succeeded in wiping out the RPF/RPA forces, this country would be no more. The Genocide against the Tutsi wouldn’t only have been totally consummated. Its Rwandan perpetrators would’ve turned against one another in a slow genocide of their own, to place the country squarely on that precipice. From the precipice, Rwanda would have hurtled to her death. Now, remember how the RPA reorganised into an elusive phantom fighting force that became unbeatable to the mightiest of this world. And how the RPF honed its development strategies into galloping advancement realities we see today. Then, pray, tell me: isn’t liberation an understatement? That mediocrity, that think-small, think-dependency, foolishly greedy beast of death and destruction of yore, does this clean, confident, prospering and burgeoning big-league player of a country have anything to do with it? Nay, this punch-above-self’s-weight country is a new reconfiguration, if not a new creation.

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Liberation continuum: The reconfiguration of a country