REFLECTIONS : Better times ahead!

In Rwanda, 1959 ended on an extremely sour note. And the thirty-five years that followed were a succession of nightmares. Rwanda had not particularly been enjoying the good times before 1959, either, as it was under the stranglehold of the colonial master, who had sworn to keep his grip at her throat. The natives, however, were happy in the knowledge that together they would in the end defeat any force, however powerful. There was also the comforting situation on the African continent: Africans’ emancipation was spreading in an increasingly bigger number of countries, giving hope to a budding crop of nationalist firebrands, and meaning to their call for independence. Belgian colonialists, of course, were the most monstrous of all the colonialists on the continent. Apart from keeping their subjects in conditions of wretched slavery; beating, maiming or killing those who resisted forced labour, the Belgians made sure that all but a handful had no access to education. It was only through religious institutions that this handful, in the then Ruanda-Urundi and Belgian Congo, could get a chance to go to school. When they sensed that the tempo of agitation for independence was going up a notch in these three countries, the Belgians reacted with a ruthlessness reserved for Barbarians. They immediately killed King Mutara Rudahigwa of Ruanda through poisoning, Prince Louis Rwagasore of Urundi through the bullet of a hired assassin and Patrice Lumumba of Belgian Congo through the beatings and bullets of the goons of his ‘Escharotic’ compatriot, Mobutu Sese Seko, and the hands-off assistance of the American CIA. In the end, of course, the wave of liberation swept colonialism off the continent, but the damage had been done. When they left, the Belgians were sure the three countries were hurtling unstoppably into a hellhole. To-date, Burundi is engrossed in an intensive endeavour at self-heeling while the giant D.R. Congo gropes about blindly trampling her people as she totters on the brink of oblivion. Understandably, as Rwandans, to extricate ourselves from the mess that was the Belgian Congo-Rwanda-Urundi was a gargantuan undertaking and it has taken us a long time and cost us a lot of lives. Indeed, we have come a long way and there will be no looking back. Not that we shall forget whatever has happened, but that our sad history shall never repeat itself, ever. The sectarianism that had turned some Banyarwanda into second-class citizens, the expulsions that had rendered others stateless and the cycles of killings that had become the lot of yet others, must remain etched on the minds of all the generations of Banyarwanda if they are never to recur. Never again should we allow the growth of anything nearly similar to the 1994 Genocide, never again should people deride themselves that they are favoured by a small clique that lulls them into a majority-conviction happiness and drives them to kill their own. In Athens they did it 17 centuries before Jesus Christ was born, in Rwanda we are doing it 21 centuries after Jesus Christ was born, but we are doing it: we are ‘mid-wifing’ a democracy! If you remember any of your history lessons, there is where it said that a small group of landholders (akazu) controlled the people of Athens socially, politically and economically and had driven them into effective serfdom and slavery. When the masses rose against the Eupatridae minority, the latter were forced to call in one of their own, a Mr. Draco, who nonetheless took draconian measures and published a code that curbed the excesses of the Eupatridae clique. This draconian rule continued until the poetic Solon took over the reigns of power and softened and steered the ship of state towards true democratic rule, with the citizens choosing the “Council of Five Hundred” to represent them, a practice that spread in all the regions of Greece. They had learnt how to form a government of the people, by the people, for the people! Not an impossibility here in the regions of “Rwacongorundi” where, better still, the citizens of this vast landmass can form a federal government and together cleanse the area of all these rampaging terrorists and usher in ‘progressive democracy’. For his worth, even before he finished his reforms, Solon was begged to become a tyrant and rule for life, kisanja-like, but he politely declined. True statesman that he was, he demanded that everyone swear an oath to uphold his reforms, after which he went into ‘retirement’. Institutions had won the day! We are ‘mid-wifing’ institutions, and they, too, will win the day! As long as you swear an oath to spare a thought for all the innocent people in areas ravaged by wars, and natural disasters like the earthquakes and volcano irruptions! If only foreign busy-bodies who wish to see their theories proven right can give us the breather, we shall see our brand of democracy blossom and our people will once again live the good times. We only need to ignore lectures from these foreign harbingers of doom. ingina2@yahoo.co.uk