We live in an amazing country, Rwandans will tell you. It has beaten numerous odds to be where it is today. It has proved false dire predictions and all manner of doomsday prophesies. It has confounded detractors and sometimes admirers as well. It has stood up to bullies with the dignity and calmness that come from knowing right is on your side. Above all, it has charted a path based on choices of what works for it. They will also tell you that they have an exceptional leader who has led them in doing the impossible. Which is why they have thronged to the campaign rallies of President Paul Kagame and the Rwanda Patriotic Front (RPF) in their thousands. They are in high spirits and enjoying the moment, showing their unreserved support for their preferred candidate. The mood is equally upbeat in the much smaller gatherings of Green Party’s Frank Habineza and independent candidate Philippe Mpayimanna., although you can read on their faces and general manner that they are up against it. Still, the enthusiasm is undiminished. Rwandans have a name for what makes this such a wonderful country. They call it ubudasa (uniqueness). Which really means taking decisions and actions that respond to their conditions, advance their aspirations, and suit their particular context. It means not relying solely on prescriptions from elsewhere that, in any case, rarely fit specific local conditions. All this ubudasa is evident in the presidential and legislative elections campaigns that got underway on Saturday, 22 June in Musanze. Even the campaigns for the highest office in the land are conducted differently. They are a huge open-air festival that moves from one site to another across the country for the duration of the campaign. Sometimes you get the feeling that the people wish it could last longer. But they also remember that they must balance pleasure and work. This manner of electoral campaign is perhaps the biggest and effective rebuttal of all the work of the inventors of stories about Rwanda and crafters of its image that do not have the slightest resemblance of what the country actually is. What is happening at the rallies (even the smaller ones) and in commentary in the media, exposes the claims that Rwanda is a repressive country as simply lies. Their creators lose whatever little credibility they had. Those crowds – were they carted there? And unwillingly? Even supposing this was so, was the enthusiasm and all those sentiments also forced on them? Impossible. There are things you cannot force. Joy, excitement, pleasure, those you cannot. Even if you tried, you would not change the essence of things. You would still tell the genuine from the fake, the happy from the sullen, and the frightened from the self-assured. The ongoing campaigns have revealed another uniqueness: the enthusiasm of young people, Gen Z, in the electoral process. Their eagerness is perhaps understandable. They cannot wait to cast their vote as proof of their coming of age and ability to make important decisions about the governance and future of their country. The naysayers might disagree with this assessment and ascribe the eagerness to a sense of novelty of the whole thing. That is rather condescending. The young people know the history of this country, certainly the most recent. They are aware of how things were like only three decades ago. Thirty years is not so far in the past. The events of that period are fairly recent and have not yet faded into distant memory. They have literally seen the rebuilding of the country, from near zero to the present and in a sense are or want to be part of it. They have a vested interest in the continuation of its trajectory. The eagerness to participate in the electoral process as voters and volunteers testifies to the politics of inclusion in this country. They are not claiming a right that they have been denied, but exercising a right freely available to them. Indeed one that they are encouraged to do. They are part of the politics and leadership, not simply waiting for their turn at some time in the future. This is markedly different from what we see in other places where young people are characterised by apathy, indifference, or even subversion. This is usually because they feel they are not engaged or are actively excluded, do not have a real role, or they feel unappreciated, ignored or looked down upon. Because of this, there is a strong urge to assert themselves, make their presence and worth noticed, which often results in violent confrontation with the authorities. Not so here. The youth are fully engaged.
