I used to be sceptical about claims of something or someone being first in Africa or the world. So what, I would retort - to myself, of course – dismissing them as mere claims or simply bragging. My regard for such claims as lacking in modesty, and even meaning, still lingers, but not as strong as it used to be. Experience over the years has made me less definite about condemning others for boasting. Rwanda has taught me that there is something in the claims after all. In the last thirty years, I have seen a lot of genuine and consequential firsts that have softened my attitude and checked my indignant and curt retorts. The word ‘consequential’ is responsible for that thaw. These firsts have to be of consequence to earn that position. There have been quite a few of these in the last several years. Just last week, I came across another first for Rwanda. The New Times reported on Friday, December 20, that the construction of the country’s first social re-integration centre, commonly known as a “Halfway Home” is nearing completion and is expected to begin operation in February 2025. The Halfway Home is designed to assist inmates nearing the end of their sentence to reintegrate into the community, the paper reported. This in itself was good news and worth noting. But it was the report that this was the first in Africa that caught my attention. According to Therese Kubwimana, Acting Director of Public Relations and Media at the Rwanda Correctional Services (RCS), it is the first such facility on the continent. Many of you might have missed this Halfway Home ‘first’. It is not the sort of headline grabbing glamour news. Nor that of a global event that would have the whole world pay attention. It was local, about prisoners re-entering society. Not a big deal, even boring. It happens all the time everywhere. That was bound to happen, coming so soon after another first: the FIA General Assembly and Prize Giving ceremony in Kigali and President Paul Kagame’s official announcement of Rwanda’s bid to host Formula One Grand Prix. This had the glamour, global reach and headlines. It even drove some commentators into a frenzy. Some applauded but others, the usual crowd of naysayers, condemned. The Halfway Home was not such news. Yet it is one of the most consequential initiatives in creating a society that is whole, where even those who transgress and have been kept away from their communities can be helped to renter them as smoothly as possible. That may include learning about what has happened in their absence, how to live in normal society again, acceptance of what they have done, It is a good example of Rwanda’s approach to justice and crime and punishment.. Those who err are not treated as outcasts that must be shunned, but as citizens who went astray and can be helped to get back into the fold. That philosophy is reflected in the name of what in other places is called a prison service. Here it is a correctional service. Prisons are correctional centres. Inmates, persons to be rehabilitated. The Halfway Home is therefore the final stage on the rehabilitation journey. Of course, crime must be punished. First, because it is wrong and second, to deter others from committing them. Punishment, however, should not be retributive or intended to destroy, but corrective, meant to build. People who break the law are human beings and Rwandan citizens and cannot be disowned. Helping them to reintegrate into society is one way of reclaiming them and is a social responsibility. This idea of justice is not new in Rwanda. We saw it in the Gacaca courts that tried thousands of perpetrators of the genocide against the Tutsi in 1994. They had to answer for their crimes but also be helped to reconcile with society and live in it again as normal people. Perhaps this Halfway Home not being picked up by many, especially those who have made it their task to denounce every Rwandan initiative may not be a bad thing. It may not suffer the same barrage of denunciation as the F1 Grand Prix bid and other great things happening in this country. But do not count on it. Negative critics of most things Rwandan are not driven by real faults they find in them, but rather by a dislike for anything positive coming out of here and a desire to see the country remain poor and backward. For this they will invent any reason. The favourite one currently is the accusation that Rwanda does these things in order to wash its tarnished image. That image and its laundering, of course, only exist in their wishes. The treatment of prisoners as human beings deserving equal opportunity and not as criminals should actually earn praise, especially of the human rights brigade. But it won’t because it disproves their claims of mistreatment in our correctional centres. No matter. Rwandans do not need approval or validation of their choices.
