Friday last week, Rwandans and Ugandans woke up to very good news, the best in a long time, according to many. The government of Rwanda announced that the Gatuna border post would reopen on Monday, January 31. You would be forgiven to think you heard a collective, loud sigh of relief. Such had been the tension and frustration, but also the hope. Soon, excitement followed relief. Ugandans, especially the business community, celebrated the news in the streets of Kampala and towns on the common border. Understandably so. They had felt the effects of the border closure the most and had lost more from it. Experts put the loss in terms of business to Ugandans at US$ 600 million compared to Rwanda’s loss of US$61 million. For this community, reopening the border means resumption of trade and one can already imagine doing calculations of what they will make in renewed trade. Beyond that, they probably do not care much about the serious reasons that led to the closure of the border in the first place. For them the border has been the issue. Not their country’s hosting and supporting terrorist groups sworn to overthrow the political order in Rwanda, or economic sabotage, or mistreatment of Rwandans. But if they expect full restoration of ties and therefore greater business opportunities, they would be well advised to recognise these other issues and pressure their government to act on them. The excitement, however, is short of being euphoric. It is tinged with caution. With good reason. We have been there before, haven’t we? Ten years ago, to be exact. And when the celebration of normalisation ended and the warmth cooled relations between the two countries sank to their lowest point. The end of 2011 was perhaps the high point of open expression of friendliness. The two presidents and their families visited each other, spent that year’s Christmas holidays together and exchanged gifts. The goodwill extended into 2012. Everyone then spoke of a wonderful season’s present – not simply of good neighbourliness but of an enduring, unbreakable fraternal bond and solidarity. That feeling did not last very long. Soon hostility returned. It had really never stopped. The bond was loosened at one end and good neighbourliness disappeared to be replaced by cunning and treachery and even murder. From this one end there was a lot of plotting and scheming for the downfall of the other. There was active provocation of conflict and support for groups trying to create conflict. That is what got us here and to new attempts to try to live peacefully together again. There are similarities between then and now. Ten years ago, the work to mend relations was done largely behind the scenes by individuals not in formal government or diplomatic service. Some of them were young people, including, we understand, a much younger Muhoozi Kainerugaba. Today, it is much the same. Muhoozi is again involved. Only he is now a Lt. General in the UPDF, commander of its land forces, and a senior advisor the President Yoweri Museveni for special operations. This, of course, on top of being the president’s son. And so, like ten years ago, there is a sense of optimism again. Perhaps the bond only came loose and did not snap and may be tied again, this time tighter. The optimism, however, is tempered by a sense of caution arising from what went on before and the fact that not all issues have been resolved yet. But hope remains. We do not know the contents of General Kainerugaba’s meeting with President Paul Kagame. Or what factors were compelling enough to remove what some had made immovable obstacles. Was it a genuine change of heart and recognition of the futility of hostility by those who had for long been intransigent? Was this the result of the need to address a pressing domestic issue that might be complicated by unresolved regional diplomatic issues? Or perhaps it was part of a plan for a future without some of today’s main actors? For the moment we do not know and can only speculate. Some things, though, we can be certain about, like the outcome from that meeting we are beginning to see and lessons learnt from the experience of the past three years. Effective diplomacy is not necessarily done in ornate conference halls in the full glare of the media. More is often achieved by quiet, private conversations by individuals with the power to make decisions or expressly mandated to do so, or those directly vested in a positive outcome. Sometimes, a constituency sufficiently pained or worried by a certain course of action may exert pressure on their leaders to change course in order to avoid certain doom. That probably did happen in this case. The closure of the border has helped remove some misleading assumptions Ugandans hold about Rwanda. For instance, the general view has always been that Rwanda depends on Uganda for its survival. That obviously is not the case. There is a world beyond either country. No one should dismiss any country as being too small or insignificant as a former trade minister of Uganda once did. She advised her country’s business people to ignore Rwanda and look elsewhere for markets. They knew better. They were making money and it was no longer coming in. The closure has in this sense, been a strong argument for mutual respect and recognition of each other’s sovereign interests and rights. Whether this lesson will endure is another matter. For now, it seems good sense will prevail and mutual interests triumph over individual or short term gains. The views expressed in this article are of the writer.
