In Failing to Understand Rwanda Today, the World Repeats its 1994 Mistakes

Sixteen years ago, the world looked by as Rwanda degenerated into “the usual ethnic violence” and refused to intervene as a genocide which left more than 800,000 people dead, unfolded. Country after country, institution after institution lined up to apologize for their failings, for not helping desperate Rwandans when they needed the help most. Even France which actively supported the slaughter of thousands has come short of an official apology. After the genocide, everybody expected Rwanda to become another failed state, like Somalia perhaps. Because of 1994, Rwanda became synonymous with ethnic hatred, senseless murder and inhuman capability to exterminate each other. Nobody wanted to help or be associated with Rwanda or Rwandans. Rwandans became ostracized all over the world. Even neighbors besmirched them and worried that they were going to wield machetes even in small domestic disputes. Rwanda was now defined by the various versions of 1994 in popular but heart wrenching genocide films. Many a world leader, with hindsight have admitted that the world never really understood the scale of what was being planned and executed in Rwanda and even when they understood, they were never really brave to do something about it. The most important role that the world community played was in expressing the collective human shock at what had happened in Rwanda over those torrid one hundred days. Today, Rwanda is forward looking, one of the fastest growing economies in Africa, arguably the most peaceful country on the continent, with a record improvement in encouraging investment, and a religious following for that man who the Rwanda Patriotic Front galvanized around to do what the whole wide powerful world could not do sixteen years ago. The irony of it is that once again the world is keen to repeat the same mistakes it committed in 1994. Then, the world wanted to think that Rwanda was just another African country where brutish tribal behaviour was playing out – they never understood that the government of the day was planning to execute a total wiping out of a section of Rwandans. The same grave mistake of the western world generalizing African problems as if Africa was one amorphous body, with countries that have the same uncivilized tribal make up, the same primitivism and poor appreciation of such ideals like democracy, transparency, merit, and the pure aspiration for the better, is that mistake that makes Rwanda look like a typical African dictatorship about to implode. Rwanda is barely out of an election in which an emphatic vote of confidence has been delivered in the man called Paul Kagame. Even so, the international media would like all of us to believe that this is something akin to a communist era election, where intimidation and lack of tolerance of genuine dissent thrives. In spite of Kagame’s impeccable record as a leader who did what the world failed to do in stopping the genocide and went ahead to lift the shell of the Rwandan state into a state that all world major leaders would like to be said to have helped build, the incessant, almost illogical criticism betrays the old lack of understanding of Rwanda’s complex make up. I have watched in awe, as the foreign media has lifted an otherwise unknown Rwandan exile who returned home sixteen years to attempt a bid at the presidency on no particular basis except the perceived lack of recognition that the genocide resulted in the death of not only Tutsis but Hutus as well, to ‘an opposition leader.’ On that single and very dangerous premise (which seeks to sweep under the carpet the main crime of genocide for the one of who really got killed), the world would like to use to show the dictatorial tendencies of the government of the day. Victoria Ingabire has not only been found to have strong links to the same genocidal forces that reside in the DRC, but has also been known to fund them, by of all people, the United Nations. As a foreigner who has experienced hotly contested elections in Kenya and Uganda, the likes of Ingabire are at best a blunt political joke. But the talk in Kampala and Nairobi is now all about the killing of journalists and opposition politicians in Rwanda. The most interesting part of this story is that ordinary Rwandans are so detached from the foreign views to the point of almost sheer disbelief. One might say, they might not be exposed to other views, but consider that in Kigali today, anybody with a computer can access wifi anywhere. Besides if there is any apolitical Rwandan, it is the Rwandan who does not know how politics can impact on an individual to the extent of a well orchestrated elimination of one ethnic group and anybody who sympathizes with them or opposes their elimination in whatever way. Rwandans really do not care about what the rest of the world think because they now live in peace, alongside each other and are proud to be Rwandan. They do not care about what the rest of the world thinks about them because history has taught them that when it matters, the rest of the world will not come to their aid. Ends