From adversity comes strength, so it is said. And shared hardship brings people closer together and creates a strong bond. That is largely true, but only if one has the reason and will, courage and tenacity to endure. Also true is that overcoming calamity and successfully rebuilding creates a new sense of worth and confidence to withstand even greater pressures. Rwanda’s recent history attests to the validity of this conventional wisdom. Tragedy has forged a sense of belonging and unity never seen before. Reconstruction has shown the extent of possibilities when people are prepared to apply themselves to whatever task at hand. Talent and endeavour can be rewarded. And life can be lived and enjoyed without fear that someone will decree that it should end. This has created a new mindset. There is something to be proud of, hold on to, and build upon. There is dignity in being Rwandan. You may not notice it much during ordinary times. People go about their daily lives normally. But when their collective being is threatened, or their right to conduct their affairs as they deem fit, the new attitude is clearly visible. Rwandans come out guns blazing, so to speak, to defend their country and put the aggressor in their place. The response is a swift, sustained barrage that often silences anyone with evil intent. They will take up the pen, go on the airwaves, or increasingly use other digital weapons to overwhelm miscreants. It was not always like this. Clearly something has happened in the last thirty odd years. A new patriotic army has been born and woe to anyone who will earn their ire. Last week Nic Cheeseman who has made it his mission to malign Rwanda’s leadership and questions its economic and political choices got a taste of the power of the new spirit of these young Rwandans. Not for the first time, either. He has always prayed that Rwanda’s development trajectory goes off course and political arrangement unravel, and hides his ill will behind scholarship. Every time he tries this he is answered with arguments that he cannot counter. But he doesn’t give up. Neither will those showing him the truth. A little earlier, US Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney wrote a letter to President Paul Kagame demanding, nay, instructing that the president release Paul Rusesabagina. Rwandans were incensed. It was not so much that she wrote the letter; that’s her choice. It was its tone that was offensive – rude, arrogant and condescending. Who was she to give directives to their president? What right did she have to question the Rwandan judicial system, which had just been ranked best in Africa by the World Economic Forum? She might, of course, have thought that she was doing her duty, but it is difficult to see of what interest Rusesabagina is to her constituents. More likely, she was doing the bidding of paid lobbyists. She was reminded of the biblical lesson about worrying about a speck in another’s eye and not the log in one’s own. Only this time there was only a huge log in her own; no speck at all in the other. She was also advised to be better occupied questioning presidential pardons, police killing of black people, incarceration of people for crimes they had not committed, and a host of other issues in her own country. Maybe she heard and will heed the advice, but don’t count on it. Others have not. Take the example of the Canadian journalist, Judi Rever. For a long time now, she has been engaged in what must surely be called a personal crusade against Rwanda’s current leadership. Her rabid hatred is difficult to understand. It seems to be personal. Did she perhaps suffer a personal slight of some sort from Rwandans? Was she rebuffed in some very personal way that hurt so much? Whatever the reason, she has become the chief spokesperson of those bent on revising Rwanda’s recent history, denying the genocide against the Tutsi, and the double genocide. But she too has felt the full force of the righteous anger of Rwanda’s young generation that her pursuit of a falsehood has caused. These young people have vowed that they will not permit anyone to distort this country’s history by rewriting it to suit their idea of us. In a similar way, efforts by regimes to our north and south to destabilise this country have met the same response. They will not get away with their misinformation. It will be uncovered and the correct version given. It has been the same story with other detractors of Rwanda. They can no longer have it all their way. You might say all this can be traced to a national tragedy. Rwandans died as a divided people and resurrected as a united nation. They have since forged forward together, strengthened by the fire of adversity. You might also say that this comes from a growing success, a new confidence, and the existence of something to protect. No one can attack Rwanda and get away with it. That’s the new spirit as we end this year and start the next. Happy New Year.
