Remaking Rwanda: kicking but dying all the same

The pseudo intellectual fringe are fretful to the limit.Weird personalities. Filip Reyntjens is part of the intellectuals that defended and justified the genocidal regime from planning to implementation, Lars Waldorf and Scott Straus are intellectually immoral fellows who refused to include articles with alternative views about Rwanda in the Remaking Rwanda collection. Peter Erlinder, the reference “guru”, has made denying the genocide against the Tutsi his pet project. He has a case pending against him in Rwanda for genocide denial. He has also pleaded (and proved with clinical evidence) his own near permanent mental impairment in Rwanda’s High Court and obtained bail because, inter alia, the Court needed to be sure that he was mentally aware of his actions and intended their consequences. Judging from his blogs it seems his personal and professional conduct has steadily deteriorated to levels most professionals would find clearly incompatible with soundness of mind. Recently he was banned as a defence lawyer at the ICTR for reasons including a “medical condition”. Carina Tertsakian, is a lady with a grey CV and a shady background who coexists with lying and uttering false documents like they are part of her upbringing, and is fond of adjusting facts to fit into predetermined HRW conclusions. Rwanda’s Immigration denied her a work permit because she was not honest and her documents were fraudulent. And to dare do this to a Human Rights Watch staffer is mortal sin and she will do whatever it takes in revenge!! Kenneth Roth, on Rwanda, is simply a reincarnation of Alison des Forges. Timothy Longman, Sarah Freedman, Harvey Weinstein and Karen Murphy are arrogant consultants who, rather than do their work as per terms of reference, think they can as well unilaterally inquire into the ethnic labels and thinking of their Rwandan colleagues after their consultancy. Backbiters! Never mind they don’t disclose their own ethnic labels. Ethnic background is irrelevant even at family level in their countries. But when it comes to Rwanda they struggle to present it as a major factor of production that the country can never exist with less of or without. Susan Thompson is a malcontent and bitter researcher who has sacrificed independence and impartiality at the altar of petty hatred for the RPF (which, I doubt, she knows anything about). She not only sees nothing good in all Government policies, she asserts as well that behind each policy there is an evil intention. For her Gacaca is a Government tool of oppression and genocide ideology is also a tool Government uses as a pretext to deny citizens their freedom of expression. Because her evil machinations were exposed and rejected she is in overdrive tarnishing Rwanda. She predicted the RPF would not last beyond 2010. Its 2011 and it is alive and well. Rwanda National Congress are gamblers out to remake themselves albeit through the means they know best; twisting the truth. After they succumbed to corruption, intrigue and abuse of power they ejected with no parachutes and are politically and intellectually gravitating to their inevitable crash. The rest are no different. They whole pack are pseudo intellectuals because surely there is a limit to how long real intellectual social researchers can deceive the world that they are experts on Rwanda and can make accurate or near accurate predictions. Fretful because they are worried and nervous about the consequences of the wishful dreams they made the world believe were conclusions from objective research and have now gone haywire. On the fringe because as Rwanda continues to register social and economic progress, and more objective minded intellectuals enter the ring, these fellows’ motives get exposed, they get distrusted, more isolated and relegated to the diminishing and disgraced ilk of simply dishonest, bitter and morose individuals whom Rwandans and their partners in development will, and should, ignore; at zero cost. Their first round prediction was that Rwanda will not achieve any social, political or economic development, that that was not possible from the current Government in its form and substance. Their re-choreographed prediction this time round is that whatever progress the Rwandan Government is recording is not sustainable in the long run because there is no democracy, no social justice, no equal opportunity, policies are unpopular, no political freedom, no “real” or “meaningful” or “legitimate” opposition, no judicial independence, the media is muzzled etc etc, the worn out chorus that has been sang for ages. They say that because of this situation Rwanda will some day see another human violent eruption that will most certainly be genocidal. The Rwanda National Congress, at page 29 of their Rwanda Briefing, predicts a genocide against Rwanda’s Tutsi at some indeterminate future time. They predict that all of the current Government policies will be resisted, rejected and uprooted. In short Rwanda will return to the ashes of 1994. I never tire of wondering at the arrogance or malignancy of some so called scholars and/or intellectuals who in one breath become experts on Rwanda and in another expose an underbelly of a malevolent, albeit hopeless, determination to destroy Rwanda. To be a scholar, researcher or intellectual requires a minimum of neutrality, independence and objectivity. The Remaking Rwanda experts, in my view, are just experts at self destruction. As for destroying Rwanda, they will have to wait. Rwanda will not be destroyed because some professional nomads so wish. I have been around for some time and observed that policies in Rwanda are debated and discussed at very many fora. They get adopted after thorough scrutiny of all the pros and cons. Some, naturally, are neither without cons nor final. Even the decision to authorize the attack on Bin Laden’s hideout was not without its cons. Gacaca, for example, is one policy that was debated for close to a decade at literally all levels of Governance. I have heard and read criticism of the process (always the easy part), but I have not heard or read any suggestions of an alternative way Rwanda had to deal with her post genocide justice issues. Bottom line is that Rwandans know all about their Gacaca process, its strengths and challenges. They have embraced it. Countless neutral and objective scholars have researched about, documented and written constructive critiques about the policy and process. This helped a lot. But a scholar or researcher who defines the Gacaca process along ethnic lines and equates it to a tool of oppression, fits neatly in the tabloid or gutter category of intellectuals. But assuming a government policy or process, big or small, does not achieve 100% success, or it actually turns out so unworkable that it has to be scrapped, surely how can any sane researcher or scholar assert that the consequence will be mass violence, killings or another genocide? Is it because this is Rwanda? Is it because it is Africa? Surely Rwandans are not inseparably attached to violence and killing! Are these scholars so entrapped in subjectivity that they cannot see, if their eyes see, that Rwandans know that they had enough of death and are now well in the second decade of “never again”? There are actions or omissions that caused real tremors in our world but they were resolved without resort to mass violence, ethnic cleansing or genocide. The nuclear disasters of Bhopal and Chernobyl did not result in mass violence, neither did the Gulf of Mexico oil sleak. The financial meltdown that almost sank the global economy was not followed by killings and mass violence. Portugal, Ireland, Greece and Spain are still looking disaster in the face but no mass or ethnic violence has happened. When Jared Loughner fell through the cracks in January and emerged with a gun with which he mowed six and injured 13 in the Tuscon, Tragedy in Arizona mass violence and killings did not follow. Scrapping of student allowances in the UK did not result in mass or ethnic violence. The discovery and killing, in Pakistan, of the most wanted terrorist on earth has not been followed by mass violence and killings by Pakistani citizens against their Government for complicity or incompetence. The list is long. Yet the US comprises well over 70 ethnic groups from native Indian tribes to immigrants, Europe comprises over 100, Russia, China, India same story. Intellectuals worth their salt need to read Rwanda’s evolving story correctly. With their history as their best teacher, Rwandans are very much decided to move forward rapidly, seriously, peacefully, lawfully and non violently as a nation, not as compartments of ethnic groups. One cant stop wondering at the immorality of scholars who attempt to depict Rwanda not as a nation but as a collection of ethnic groups, forever quarantined in ethnic paddocks, incapable of learning from history, unable to debate and agree, or even agree to disagree, ever on their marks waiting for the next opportunity to pick up matchetes and kill innocent neighbours, strangers, children, destroy property and incinerate their own country just because they think an action was wrong, a decision was bad, a policy did not work or a process was abused. Countless policies on democratization, ICT, agriculture, health, nutrition, housing, infrastructure, rule of law, peace making and keeping, education, unity and reconciliation, disarmament, return and resettlement, equality, transparency, zero tolerance for corruption, land management and use, media deregulation, access to information etc have delivered Rwanda’s impressive growth. Most have been perfected along the uncharted implementation path. To read bad faith and ulterior motives behind each of them is cold war era nonsense. The country is now a full time destination for “miracle” tourists who want to see, first hand, how a poor, third world country can rise from ashes to a global player in record time. Quack intellectuals who wish that Rwandans would pick up matchetes at the slightest policy or process stumble are day dreamers and dying horses. Their kicks will not last and so will not shake our resolve. Rwandans do not just wish to move forward peacefully and non violently, they are making it happen through deliberate actions to unite and put country, not ethnicity, first, respect their constitution, treat each other equally and hold each other accountable. They have recovered their dignity which for long had been messed up and, this time, are determined to cling to it. Ends