The youth vote is a central issue in any presidential campaign, whatever the country concerned. It is always the subject of analysis and great covetousness. In Rwanda, the generation that did not live through the genocide against the Tutsis thirty years ago is now in the majority. In Rwanda, as elsewhere, every political party is keen to win over this electorate, seeking to speak to it in a language it appreciates and understands. Social media networks are being used; Tik Tok, Instagram and Twitter (X) among others. They're replacing the traditional campaign flyers our parents have always known. Graphics and language are draped in colour, and young activists are in the spotlight to convince their peers. However, I have to share with you this powerful certainty, having lived on the ground for several months and taken part in a few campaign events. Young Rwandans - the post-ethnic, post-genocide generation - don't need all these gimmicks to get out and vote on July 15. Having been born and lived mostly in Europe, on the Old Continent, my voting experience has always been one of renunciation and choosing the lesser evil: The renunciation of any truly egalitarian and solidarity-based project, because most of these societies lack the basic empathy needed to put an end to the mistreatment of their elders, abandoned in gloomy retirement homes, to put an end to the hardship of sick people who have to travel miles to find the first place of care that will only receive them after dozens of hours - even in an emergency situation - or to the precariousness of students who queue up at soup kitchens, the last step before begging, between two university courses. Let's not forget that the context here is that of rich countries. The renunciation of any design for social transformation and revolution, because the common good is never the objective of the political regimes behind capitalist and ultra-liberal projects, which are based on the exploitation of whole swathes of the population, for the benefit of a few, on the basis of a social contract that is in reality racial and racist. This same system is at the root of the deafening anger that manifests itself in huge strikes, giving European citizens the feeling of a demonstration of popular power, while politicians respond only with contempt. The renunciation of any program of unity, because racism is the cement of the capitalist promise: the average European or Anglo-Saxon citizen must always be assured of remaining in a position of domination over a large part of the populations of the South, in order to accept not being part of the richest 1%. Racism is also the escape route from this same broken promise, when these same native citizens occasionally realize that the equation doesn't work, and that their leaders don't care as much about them as they do about the damned of the earth, national and extra-national alike. Yet it is these same European and Western countries that claim to be the arbiters of human rights in the (non-white) world, while participating in its continual destabilization: through war, despoilment and the twisting of narratives for eternal recommencements. It's true that Rwanda hit rock bottom thirty years ago. When the same colonial ideology had succeeded in dividing the people along racial lines and shattering all social ties and markers: from neighbors to friends to family. During the genocide perpetrated against the Tutsis and the decades of violent anti-Tutsi discrimination that preceded it, this poison destroyed hearts. All hearts. And some bodies and minds, those of people designated Tutsi. Today, three short decades after the crime of crimes, children play, learn, pray and squabble together without even thinking about those dark practices of the past. Far from any display politics presented by the Western media, which often see Rwanda as nothing more than a huge African start-up running on profit and authoritarianism, the whole of society is focused on the well-being of its children, its young people and, more generally, the most vulnerable. The principle that the functioning of a society can be judged by the degree of inclusion of its margins is strikingly true here, in a country where, despite poverty, no one is left behind. But since we're talking about young people, we need to understand that they know their historical and regional context, and revel in the privilege of peace, security and the opening of a path - by their elders, for them - to all possibilities. All young people, regardless of class or race, see it this way: we are the wildest dream of our ancestors. If the pragmatic objective for us is to achieve satisfactory economic progress, it is also to rediscover our battered humanity, and then to magnify it. To be able to look at our own - to look at each other - with kindness, and with the feeling that we're walking together, in the same direction, towards the same goal. The political project of the liberators of the genocide against the Tutsis is the struggle for dignity, for all. There is no campaign argument more profound and inspiring than this truth, both proclaimed and palpable. That's why young people will be out in force to support the RPF's political project and the unfailing constancy of its leader, President Paul Kagame.
