Editor, RE: “Rwandans celebrate decades of gains at campaign rallies” (The New Times, July 18). Drawing our attention to some foreign ‘rights’ groups’ and Western media talk of a climate of fear in Rwanda, the author asks whether fear in the normal world looks anything like the festive mood of the crowds of hundreds of thousands we see flocking to the campaign rallies, at the RPF-Inkotanyi flag-bearer’s rallies. Of course it isn’t Rwandans’ fear that concerns these people. And it has never concerned them, except as something they might be able to exploit to their own advantage. The fear that concerns them is the one of Rwandans consolidating their reputation as Africans who persist in dancing to their own drummer and ignoring their previous masters’ injunctions to fall in line and obey. The example Rwanda continues to set fellow Africans that politics does not have to be violent for the titillation of foreign vultures who love nothing better than to see African blood spilled by African hands is considered dangerous to continued foreign control of African affairs, for when we are at each other’s’ throats it becomes a child’s play to continue to suck us of our life’s blood in the form of our ample natural resources. Yes, there is a climate of fear. But on their side, not in Rwanda, unless it is the fear of those who might be tempted to act as foreign cats’ paws to attempt to disrupt our orderly and peaceful political process. MK
