Rwandans are still going through what is clearly a very long weekend. This is because Friday was Independence Day while tomorrow will be Liberation Day. That means that some people left office on Thursday and will next be seen on Tuesday and soon after may again stay away because the Holy Month of Ramadan will have come to an end too.

The mood is a holiday one for many whose work doesn’t require them to show up each day like journalists and doctors. My only worry here is that by the end of next week some salary earners will be contemplating applying for a salary advance after the weekend spending spree.

Rwanda shares its independence day with Burundi but like many African countries the day does not carry much weight. If you were to ask most Africans why they celebrate independence day and whether they even feel independent as a people you are likely to get hesitant and conditioned answers with phrases like ‘it depends’ being thrown around.

In many places, the colonialists just gave us keys to the house but like tenants we are not so free to tamper with the colour of the house or to resize the windows to our taste. After all the partying that saw our new flags going up as the colonial ones went down, reality soon dawned on us that there was indeed not much to celebrate. They still hover around our house trying to tell us what to do and how to do it or else…

Liberation though is a different thing. It is even a special thing when Rwanda is what you are looking at. For Rwanda, independence simply marked the time one group got the leeway to harass another group. This later escalated to an actual rehearsal and preparation for what the world now knows as the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi.

The fourth day of July therefore emerges as the one worth celebrating because it is only then that all Rwandans got access to the house called Rwanda. From then on it was no longer a preserve of some who even had the guts of arguing that if more were let it then the space would not be enough.

Many Rwandans therefore spent a huge part of their lives painfully renting citizenship from other countries as refugees. They needed to go back to their home and build it together with those who were still trapped in it and its problems. There was no other independence to wait on. What was needed was liberation. Liberation to free both the oppressed and the oppressors.

Independence was indeed the easier bit since even the colonial masters had already designed a way to continue the exploitation of Africa without necessarily being around to directly boss everyone around. Liberation on the other hand was a tougher thing to pull off. It needed a lot more sensitisation and mobilisation. Several lives were put on the line literary.

Those who took the decision to fight and get back their country soon found out that this would include stopping a killing orgy that had been organised and fuelled with the intention of wiping out all the Tutsi. Those who had been handed independence had not only used it to hound others they were now bent on wiping them out altogether.

All this is why Liberation Day counts for so much more here. It was liberation like no other and it has stood the test of time to bear clear fruits. The gallant soldiers of RPF/A not only liberated lives but also liberated the soul of the country. The people now have a sense of direction and a source of pride. They do not live their lives imbibing hatred like was the case in the past. They are more concerned with development at individual and national level.

It is now common to find pictures of Rwanda being placed alongside pictures of other countries not because Rwanda is necessarily better but because the liberation brought about a sense of pride. This is proof that the new Rwanda is something those in it feel the urge to show off every now and then.

After all they say no man after catching a big fish will use the dark alley to go home. People need to see his catch. Rwanda is now a shining example on the continent that a country can actually get its act together and bestow pride on its people. Happy Liberation Day!