An open letter to all the critics of Rwanda!

Dear all, By definition a critic is a man or woman created to praise greater men than self, but is never able to find them. Again critics are people who tend to know the answers for all the questions without having probed deep enough to really know the questions/issues at hand. My fellow critics, much as you are entitled to your opinion, but also know that ‘it’s a thousand times easier to criticize than to create and that is why critics are never problem solvers. If we are to borrow DALE CARNEGIE’s words ‘any fool can criticize, condemn and complain, and most do it…!!Being a teacher by training I like this experience of a KINDERGATEN little girl. It goes like this; One day a kindergarten teacher was observing her class, as the children were labouring to draw pictures of their choice as per the teacher’s instructions. As the teacher was observing her class, she got to one little girl who was very enthusiastic in her drawing, the teacher asked what the drawing was. The little girl replied, ‘I am drawing God.’ Her teacher paused and said: ‘but no one knows what God looks like.’ Without missing concentration on her drawing, the little girl replied, ‘they will in a minute.’ Lessons drawn from this short story I am sure that when RPF, took over Government 16 years back, picked up the the shattered economy, a broken up health sector and picked everything from the scratch in all the sectors of the country…. in the eyes of the critics, putting the country together and make it functional, must have been farfetched a dream, and must have been as abstract as God is in the mind of the teacher in the above story. I even hear that the International development agencies first withheld their dollars and Euros because they were waiting for the Government to crumble and go to the dogs! However, they were disappointed and our Government registered tremendous achievements and what followed is the Rwanda we witness today! Back to the analogy of the KINDERGATEN story, who is the teacher and who is the girl? My interpretation is that the teacher represents the critics who always see the impossibilities and the little girl represents Rwanda leadership with its set goals to achieve. You see, the teacher saw the impossibilities and the little girl said ‘wait you will see God in a minute!!’ I guess that was what was on the mind of RPF leadership, when the world was waiting for the country to stumble and be written off. Particularly Kagame must have been saying let them wait they will see where we shall be in the next few years! Indeed what Rwanda has registered today is a testimony of what focused leadership can do. To the RPF leadership and President Paul Kagame particularly, I say to you all great people attract great criticisms, so accept and expect the unjust criticisms for your great goals and accomplishments. This is so because the critic is convinced that the chief purpose of sunshine is to cast shadows. So, that is why when we have peace in the country, the critics will say that Rwandans live in state of fear, when Kagame attracted big crowds during his campaign rallies, the critics said people were forced to attend, when people turned up to vote in big numbers, the critics said that voters were forced out of their houses to go and vote, when the same crowds gathered at Amahoro stadium kubyina intsinzi (to celebrate RPF victory), including myself, the critics said people were coerced! Again this should not surprise us as Rwandans because, the critics do not usually believe anything, but they stillwant you to believe them. Like a cynic, they always know the ‘price of everything and the value of nothing.’ To Kagame wacu, always don’t waste your time responding to your critics, because you owe nothing to them; let them say you can only forgive them; after all there is no revenge as complete as forgiveness! Again, if we borrow from this saying that some people speak from experience, and others from experience don’t speak…as Rwandans the latter suits us. So, let us concentrate on what is suitable for us as Rwandans, not what suits our critics and the so called the analysts.Why all this? Well, sometime last week I was attending a conference in one of the neighboring countries in the region. Much as I was there for the conference I also had time meet relatives and old friends. As luck could have had, one evening we planned a dinner out. On the invitation list was myself, my nephew and his girlfriend and old school mate of mine, names withheld, for the sake of this article I will call him Mumu (commonly referred to as my OB). Our dinner was at 7:30, but had planned to meet early so that we could have enough time to chat about our old school days. The venue for our dinner was at the hotel where I was accommodated for the conference and surely, I was the first to reach our reserved table where we were to have our dinner. My nephew and his girlfriend joined me shortly after; Mumu also joined us a few minutes later. I was burning with excitement to hug and embrace him hard because we had taken a number of years without meeting. Surely we hugged and flexed our muscles in true African spirit as friends who had separated for a long time. However, the excitement didn’t last because as we prepared to sit Mumu’s conversation turned to political happenings in Rwanda. He began his artillery attacks by asking me what I was still doing in Rwanda, since the situation is alarming and we are seated on a timed bomb!! I asked him why he was telling me all this, and to substantiate his assertions and he told me that, that was our number one problem that we are so much intimidated that we don’t know what happens in our country! I was caught off guard, and somehow I got scared thinking there could have been a terrible incidence in Rwanda on that day that I didn’t know of because I had spent the day buried into conference activities. As such I bent my voice and asked him what had happened. “Not today” he told me. “You mean you don’t know the political violence in your country he asked me. You do not know about this lady who has been harassed, and you don’t know the journalist that was killed, plus the news papers that were closed…you see these people are so scared that they don’t know what happens in their country!” Now he was accusing me in front of my nephew and his fiancé. I almost lost my head but I remembered that ‘quarrels would not last long if the faults were only on one side.’ I calmed down and asked him about the lady’s name, he didn’t know. I also asked him the journalist that was killed and he did not know, I asked him to mention the papers that were closed and under what circumstances. No idea! I told him to calm down and we share our views. After taking him in great details of what is happening in his own country, I told him the biggest mistakes that he made (most people make), he was the misinformed informer, who was also misinformed by the misinformed journalists and the so called analysts. And that now he was also trying to misinform the informed! I told him the that lady he has heard about is Victoire Ingabire, I told him that the dead journalist was Jean Leornard Rugambage and I told him that the papers that were suspended and not closed were Umuseso and Umuvugizi. I explained to him all the details, in each circumstance… how the criminals that killed Rugambage were now in prison, I also explained to him about inciting and inflammatory nature of the papers that were suspended which would only be compared to RTLM of Habyarimana’s regime, the discussion went on and on. Meanwhile, our discussion shifted to what Rwanda was 16 years ago and what it is today. I told Mumu how our health system is the best where every citizen has health insurance and functional one, how Universities have multiplied from one University in 1994 to about 20 universities in a spell of only 16 years. I also told him that when I to a public hospital, I get the medical attention I deserve without giving kitu kidogo (giving a bribe). I told him how Kigali was ranked as the cleanest city in Africa, a city with no potholes, the list of what makes me proud as Rwandan went on and on!! By the end of our discussion, Mumu genuinely confessed ignorance about the local realities in Rwanda. He further confessed to being fed on wrong media and other forums that portray negativity despite all the progress and achievements of the current regime. On my part, I learnt many lessons, but for sake of this article I will mention two as follows; As Rwandans, we could have won many wars including defeating dictatorial regimes, routing out the infiltrators and many others, but we still have a big enemy in form of misinformed journalists who write negatively about our country. Let us not ignore our critics and the negative propaganda spread by the enemies of Rwanda completely; instead we can as well counteract them by writing exactly what Rwanda is, not only through our local media, but also in the regional and international media. Ends