Today, we live in an era of instant communication and gratification. Satisfaction is derived from communication regardless of whether an actual action has taken place. There is no longer an intermediary between the generation of knowledge, whatever quality it may have, and its distribution. This, unfortunately, may confuse people into believing that facts no longer matter, as long as there are followers and likes. Worse, in some cases, the so called post-literate era has brought a belief in impunity, as long as there are followers and likes. Paul Rusesabagina would say, if Hollywood says I am a hero, it doesn’t matter whether the society I come from believes it or not. As President Trump once said, I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldnt lose any voters, OK?”. The politics of instant gratification is being rejected elsewhere in the world, why should it be different for Rwanda? In fact we have already quite an experience with the politics of instant gratification. I once asked RPF emeritus cadre, the late Emmanuel Rushingabigwi, what character flaw informed the lost decades between 1959 and 1994. He replied without hesitation “guhaga vuba”, instant gratification. It may sound surprising that the discrimination at play during the lost decades had to do with small ambition. At a closer look, however, how do you explain the logic of limiting access to resources instead of seeking to expand them? During the lost decades, the Governments were more concerned with preventing access to services through ethnic quotas than expanding them for all. You would find the same logic at play when populists elsewhere want to erect walls and barriers. But having political ambition is equally not something alien to Africans. We know in our culture and recent liberation struggle that real change takes long-term aspiration, therefore delayed gratification. Our centuries-old history starts with “abami b’umushumi” (kings whose sole task was to think and plan), it continued with a 100-year old cycle that was successfully repeated four times from Kigeli I Mukobanya to Kigali IV Rwabugiri, before Rwanda was disrupted by colonialism. Recently, however, the same spirit of long-term aspiration brought a novelty: planning the new Rwanda while fighting in and for another country. During that time, Rwandans planned and recruited in secret while serving in the Ugandan Army. This long-term sacrifice borne by a just and legitimate cause is what distinguishes a liberation movement from a rebellion. If you are still somehow confused, judge an organisation by its results. This culture of thinking big stands in stark contrast to a continuous political culture that promises change through violence and superstition. The champions of such political culture claim to be sources of authority because of their family background, education, or understanding of the bible. They are weaponised by the immediate and global broadcasting of social media. How has this culture emerged and persisted in modern times? First, it is important to understand that this culture originates from people who had access to modern education. On the night of 26-27 February 1973, students from Shyogwe in Muhanga started large-scale massacres with the murder of a medical staff called Oswald Murekezi, who was attending to the health of their community. The killing spree continued under so-called Comité du salut public organised in all schools and the university. The educated killers never saw in Murekezi or their fellow students forces of Rwanda’s productivity, they saw in them Tutsis who had to be killed. People would loot their neighbours’ cows not to constitute a herd, but to eat them. One has to recognise that the lack of vision meant that the acts of violence were an end in themselves. Was it right because people followed, or rather people followed because they could give in to their most basic instincts with impunity? Crude violence and education are strange bedfellows in Rwanda’s history. At the University of Rwanda before 1994, the practice of hazing involved ritual rapes and freshmen had to be medically treated. Unlike other universities in the region, the University of Rwanda was not known for revolutionary ideas. On the night of 31 May 1990, a few months before the liberation struggle began, students started repeated manifestations against the Government of President Habyarimana because of the killing of an innocent student. What shocked eyewitness is that students armed with a legitimate cause ended up on a drinking spree, put up barricades and covered their heads with banana leaves. In other words, formal education did not result in political maturity. Similarly, people like “Sankara” or Cassien Ntamuhanga received an education, but did not come out politically wiser. Instead, they believed they could become field commanders through YouTube videos and the killing of innocent people. Second, it is important to know that the culture of small-mindedness results in superstition. In the early 1990s, every political event was analysed through the revelations of a guy called Magayane. Today, YouTube channels are full of prophets who like Yvonne Idamange promise that complex issues such as the management of a new pandemic can be solved by bible verses infused with a laissez-faire attitude. Religion and superstition are two cohabiting forces within the genocide ideology, prayer beads at the neck and a bleeding machete in their hands, genocidaires use to kill people in the very church they worshiped in. Similarly, Idamange, with a bible in her hands, and the former catholic priest Thomas Nahimana, say that the leadership of Rwanda is actually not alive. A student of Rwanda’s history knows that this is a political repertoire used during the genocide to promote a done deed. Third, there are instances where family background is called upon to justify authority. Kizito Mihigo or Yvonne Idamange being survivors of the Genocide against Tutsi they say, conferred authority. This type of thinking has been tested and left behind. Before 1994, if you were by birth from the North of Rwanda, you had higher authority either in the army or administration regardless of merit. This resulted in chronic corruption and outright criminality. However, in the modern history of Rwanda, your family background has never been a free pass to accountability. It goes even further, you may have done great things in the past, but this would not spare you from accountability in the present. “Leadership without the context of the society it is in does not exist,” said Lee Kuan Yew. The context in Rwanda requires one to question sources of authority through accountability, including the international community, because they have failed Rwandans more than once. Aspiring leaders should not fall into a trap; the price Rwandans paid for instant gratification was too high. The context of leadership in Rwanda demands the pursuit of African dignity translated into ever-increasing opportunities.
