‘Johnny come lately’ on self determination

I recently came across a news item that declared Rwanda is home to Africa’s internet connection speeds. In all honesty, my eyes almost popped out. Really?! If like me you spend a fair amount of your time complaining about MTN’s regular network interruptions, you would be more surprised than appreciative of this accolade. I put it down to having very high expectations of my Internet service provider but then again why shouldn’t we all?The President’s message of Agaciro or self-worth seems to have filtered through to all of us, we are not about to settle for second best. There is a palpable desire among Rwandans to leave the past behind and do our best at whatever ever we attempt to do. How else would you explain a tiny African country with an army estimated at total of hundred thousand being the sixth largest contributor to peace keeping missions around the world?Amidst the positive stories are the usual reports of detractors pointing sharp fingers of accusations. It seems to them, we are Cain to Congo’s Abel. We cannot prosper without destroying our brother with whom we share a border to the west.I despair to imagine what those who have never set foot in the ‘land of a thousand hills’ make of all these news reports. On the one hand a nation on the move and leading the pack in economic progress on the other a pariah state supporting rebels destabilising our neighbour!Could this be one and the same country? A closer look at the issue reveals that there are several interests at play and some more sinister than one would imagine. In the late eighteenth and most of the nineteenth century, the major European powers scrambled for the partition of Africa and other parts of the developing world driven by a desire to exert more influence on the world’s political economy. Squabbles that started at home (in Europe) where often settled in the school playground (Africa and the developing world).That is why Rwanda could be passed back and forth from Germany to Belgium.It was good when it lasted. The economies of Britain, France, Spain, Portugal, Belgium, Netherlands and Germany are what they are today largely as a direct result of tax free resources plundered from around the world in the colonial era.Today, while colonialism may be no more the squabbles continue. A new political game akin to chess is in play. The pieces may not be picked off the board but the threat of being picked up is enough to immobile them.In political science, this is called power projection. Think of a rebuke from a bigger brother, you comply because you know they can hurt you if they wanted to.Rwanda is paying the price of being a recalcitrant little brother. We have chosen to do a ‘David on Goliath’ and the philistines are stunned. They can’t get themselves to turn their collective backs and run just yet so they will stop at nothing. Be it mudslinging in the media, financial arm twisting and what not.Interestingly as early as 1918, the American president Woodrow Wilson highlighted the importance of political independence to all nations great and small in his fourteen points address to the US congress.“……….. That peoples and provinces are not to be bartered about from sovereignty to sovereignty as if they were mere chattels and pawns in a game, even the great game, now forever discredited, of the balance of power; but that every territorial settlement involved in this war must be made in the interest and for the benefit of the populations concerned, and not as a part of any mere adjustment or compromise of claims amongst rival states; ……”In trying to negotiate a peaceful end to World War I, President Wilson insisted that candid diplomacy was more important and productive than ‘behind the scenes’ military and political manoeuvres.Almost a hundred years later, Woodrow Wilson’s ideas remain as relevant as ever and can be applied to the war in Congo. To some powers that be in the global political economy however, what is good for the goose does not seem fitting for the gander!The Atlantic Charter of 1941 and UN General Assembly Resolution 1541 (XV) of 1960 re-affirm the rights of independent nations to strive for self determination politically and economically.Like any good party, Colonialism has left the world with a massive hangover! There are still illusions of influence among former colonial masters and it is hard for them to let go.The reality couldn’t be more different. Like an errant child punished constantly for their mistakes, Rwanda is learning from its torrid past. We don’t want to get punished again. We got whipped in 1994 when the world turned its back on us and the cane has come out in 2012 again in the form of aid cuts.How long will we take this? Where is the ‘Agaciro’ in all that?We are constantly being boxed into a corner and we all know what happens when otherwise harmless creatures are cornered. We are not unfamiliar to punching above our weight. What we lack in natural resources we more than make up for in resilience.The President said it aptly “we are a small country but not a small people!”The challenge is with us the youth to carry the fight on as ably as our present leadership so that no Rwandan shall ever feel inadequate when faced with unjustifiable aggression from any external elements be they mighty or diminutive.

Opinions

‘Johnny come lately’ on self determination