Yesterday was Liberation Day. It is now 28 years since the Rwanda Patriotic Front (RPF) liberated the country from backward, divisive, and murderous governments, and set it on the road to progress.

The day is a milestone worth celebrating. But it is the achievements since then that make the celebrations even more meaningful.

Liberation Day comes a few days after Independence Day on July 1. In normal circumstances this would be celebrated as the rebirth of a nation after many years of colonial rule. But for practical reasons it isn’t.

Of course, the event happened 60 years ago and has to be observed as a historical fact. But as a moment of rebirth? Hardly. Yes, a nation was born but it was deformed by hatred and division, persecution and exclusion, and massacre of its own people.

Instead, independence was the beginning of 32 years of barrenness and destruction, of a backward, isolated, timid country, with eyes turned to the outside for support and validation. A wasted 32 years.

No country can be built or thrive on an ideology and practice of the negative. It cannot stand and it is only a matter of time before it falls and goes into oblivion. Or it can be rescued before that happens. Which is what the RPF did 28 years ago.

And so Independence Day is really a time of reflection: of waste, of what might have been, and more importantly, that such waste will not be permitted again.

Liberation arrested that descent into total destructiveness and also enabled reflection. The period since then has seen determined efforts to rebuild what had been destroyed, build what should have been done but was not, and then do what governments are supposed to do: build for the future.

An immense task that: restore, make up for lost time, and leap into the future, but one which the RPF government has done exceedingly well, almost beyond expectation.

Even the most vicious detractors cannot deny this. All they can do is to ascribe it to some terrible force that creates fear, suppresses people’s rights and freedoms, and demands obedience.

If all this they say is responsible for the positive changes visible in Rwanda today, then it cannot be such an awful thing.

One indication of such change is what has now come to be associated with celebrating liberation day: inauguration of integrated model villages in different areas across the country to resettle vulnerable citizens. This has been happening for the last seven years. Yesterday one such village was inaugurated in Nyaruguru District in the south.

These are integrated villages. Which means people who have been living in rickety houses, barely able to survive, in unsafe areas prone to such hazards as floods and landslides are given fully furnished houses with basic modern amenities and income-generating projects. There are well-equipped schools and Early Childhood Development Centres (ECD).

The impact on the people relocated in this manner is enormous. For the first time in their lives they experience some comfort, safety, and certainty that they will live to see the next day. They can lead reasonably decent and dignified lives, and are no longer at the mercy of nature. That is liberating and empowering.

Today’s model villages are a progression from earlier programmes, from the earlier encouragement for people to settle in villages to the eradication of nyakatsi (grass-thatched houses).

This year’s liberation day is being celebrated in the middle of a storm raised by an arrangement between the United Kingdom and Rwanda for the latter to receive migrants unable to get into the UK while a permanent solution is sought. The storm has nothing to do with Rwanda. It is raised mainly by ignorant, malicious, or racist groups, or campaigners for various causes who cannot even provide a workable alternative.

Rwanda’s willingness to take in migrants denied entry to the UK, however, points to a shift from what it was like 28 years ago. This country was closed to part of its own people let alone foreigners.

Post-independence Rwanda was founded on exclusion of part of its population and sending them out of the country and insisting they had no right to return, and making sure that would never happen.

Those forcibly excluded and exiled Rwandans and others within the country fought and changed that. Today, the story is different. The government wants all Rwandans to come home.  A policy of inclusion has replaced that of exclusion. And so those who wish to remain outside do so out of choice or because they have crimes to answer for. None has been forced out.

This is the work of a government that does not see its people as a threat but as a source of strength for the progress of all.  Foreigners, too, are seen in this light.

There is, of course, the physical and visible evidence of liberation: infrastructure development, manufacturing, urbanisation, education and health, and so on. But perhaps the most consequential change has been that of the mindset.

Rwandans have been liberated from everything low: low self-esteem, low expectations of themselves and others, low ambition, etc. The result has been the rise of a more confident, more assertive people holding their destiny in their hands.

Where once there was anguish, there is joy now. Anger has been replaced by resolve; dependency by pride in the opportunities available and ability to earn a living; and a sense of fatalism (survival by the mercy of others) by renewed self-worth. Above all, growth of pride in the nation, in being Rwandan.

These are the fruits of liberation in the last 28 years, a period that can be summarised as one of renewal and restoration, progress and claiming a rightful place in the world. Good enough reason to celebrate.

The views expressed in this article are of the writer.