A persistent line of attack against President Paul Kagame, come any campaign season, is that people – ordinary Rwandans – are “dragged (against their will) to his campaign events.” The reasoning is that the crowds at his rallies usually are so massive compared to other candidates’. Among other things, this implies that we live under authoritarian rule or, as the naysayers like to say, we live oppressed lives in “an open-air prison”. This begs a few questions: if one is made to believe that those huge crowds (the one I saw in Kamembe couldn’t have been less than two hundred thousand) are at the incumbent president’s events against their will, how do they “drag them” there? ALSO READ: PHOTOS: Nyamasheke youth, elderly to Kagame: You are our choice What coercive methods supposedly are used for this purpose? Detractors of Kagame – like the notorious Filip Reyntjens, an old Belgian who among other things was Habyarimana’s super wallah in charge of writing the late tyrant’s highly discriminatory, apartheid-like constitution – insinuate that security operatives in Rwanda “move to every home, terrorizing people into attending Kagame’s rallies.” Or that “Rwandans are driven like cattle to the rallies.” There are any number of individuals, many who probably haven’t been in Rwanda for years, or never at all, peddling similar stories. It would be too much to expect the detractors to examine the attitudes that make them say such disrespectful things about Rwandans. They have one thing in common: they are cynics with an agenda who long ago discarded truth in advancement of that agenda. To be present at an RPF-Inkotanyi (of which Kagame is chairman) rally is to see the true situation for oneself. PK (as Kagame is affectionately known across the country, mostly by the youth) presidential campaigns are more festive events than anything else. They are massive gatherings representing a citizenry celebrating times unlike any in Rwanda’s history. Think of the people that are giddy with excitement to see the man under whose rule they, for the very first time in their lives, saw electricity. One might think this is an exaggeration, reasoning that if someone had never had electricity where they live, at least they had been to some place, say a town, where there was. Let me then introduce you to some people from the island of Nkombo, a place a few miles off Kamembe that had never seen so much as a light bulb before Kagame. ALSO READ: VIDEO: Nyamasheke residents want Kagame to stay longer I talked to a man at PK’s rally in Rusizi last Friday who swore this was true, “it was only when Kagame became president, that we got electricity (amashanyarazi) on Nkombo, for the first time in its existence!” This man was one amidst the vast crowd of RPF supporters – many decked out in RPF-Inkotanyi party caps, t-shirts and shirts in white, sky blue, red, or black colors – some who had been in the stadium since midnight, so determined were they to secure a place for themselves (before the venue could fill up). Only serious sickness would deny them a chance at a glance of the hero that’s done so much that was unimaginable before, for them. Other than the man thankful that his birthplace now has electricity, I talked to a few residents of Kamembe town. They too had lots of praise for Kagame and the RPF-Inkotanyi. The thing they repeated most was the incredible change in their lives after the government built new roads connecting their region to the rest of Rwanda. “The road from Kamembe to Gisenyi (Rubavu) was the very worst! It was clouds of dust all the way, but also very rough, and because it has so many dangerous bends there were many accidents,” a middle-aged looking man said. He added: “in the times of Habyarimana the only way to go anywhere far was by Onatracom bus, which came only twice a week. Worse, it would be a badly dilapidated bus that would be terribly overloaded, and if there wasn’t an accident people would have knelt down and thanked God!” What a contrast to today, with smooth tarmac roads to even the remotest provincial town, and journeys that used to be terrible ordeals now a comfortable breeze. The ordinary people talking about things like these aren’t cattle, like some notorious racist from Antwerp would have the gullible believe. And people like these have much more to say about the amazing transformation the Kagame administration has brought to their lives. These are people watching their children grow up strong, healthy, free of malnutrition, and getting an education – a far cry from the past. Government programs to ensure no child is left behind, ensuring all children go to school, getting the proper nutrition once there, but also giving a helping hand to destitute families with a cow each, have seen to this. All this not forgetting Mutuelle de Santé, a first-of-its-kind in Africa health insurance scheme to the masses. At yet another rally, this one in Nyamasheke, I asked someone: but surely even with all the good things, some people might still hate Kagame. After a few seconds thinking the youngish man said in Kinyarwanda: “n’uwanga urukwavu y’emera ko rw’iruka!” Loosely translated: even the person that hates the rabbit has to admire how fast it is.” Another person I talked to, this one a young woman in a red t-shirt, looked at me as if in wonder, when I asked her about the possibility that maybe RPF-Inkotanyi mobilizers came to their village to drag her to the rally. “Let me tell you, they would have to drag me away from this rally!” That’s the truth that’s so bitter to some.
