Kwibuka21 and how reconciliation looks like

This coming week will usher in Kwibuka21, marking the twenty-first commemoration of the Genocide Against the Tutsi. It will, deservedly, also be marking the much that has been gained in the past two decades. Rwanda’s notable development achievements, economic, as well as social, speak for themselves. In these, reconciliation remains a key plank along with the continuing healing process, and has underwritten the peace-building and development on the ground. And that the country can peacefully commemorate – Kwibuka – it is only possible because of some measure of reconciliation with a pragmatic eye to the future. I recently had a moment to ponder aspects of reconciliation after a mild academic spat broke out in one of Kenya’s leading newspapers between, on the one hand, Gabrielle Lynch, an Associate Professor at the University of Warwick, United Kingdom, and, on the other, Dr Joyce Nyairo and Daniel Waweru, cultural analyst and PhD student, respectively. Against the background of Kenya’s 2007/2008 post-election violence, Prof. Lynch charged that there has been little debate on how reconciliation “would look like.” She recognised that it is usually understood to consist of the building or rebuilding of good relations. Rebuilding of good relations is how I would think of reconciliation in Rwanda, which brought to mind the Ubuntu philosophy famously articulated in Zulu, “Umuntu Ngumuntu Ngabantu (a person is a person through other persons)”. However, while good relations comprise aspects of trust and as respect, Prof. Lynch’s assertion was that “one cannot insist on reconciliation, since trust and respect are both conditional and subjective.” The thrust of her argument was that there should always be some measure of “contentious co-existence.” Full reconciliation as a state of social harmony and cohesion, Prof. Lynch wrote, where people fully trust others to always act decently towards them, is not only impractical, but also infeasible and dangerous. Dr Nyairo et al disagreed. Their rebuttal to the professor can be summarized thus: Her “ideal (of necessary conflict or contentious co-existence) contradicts the best-developed theory of an African ethic — the account in Theodore Metz’s Towards an African Moral Theory. Metz argues that the basic principle of African ethics is that an act is right insofar as it produces harmony and reduces discord, and wrong to the extent that it fails to develop community. Prof Lynch’s ideal violates the reflective ethical commitments of Africans.” This is where Ubuntu comes into play, as one African approach to understanding the process of cultivating cohesion and positive human interaction. Yet, as a concept, Ubuntu is not merely African, but universal, as there exist a common link between us all through our interaction with our fellow human beings, in which we discover our own human qualities. Nelson Mandela put it this way in his book, The Long Walk to Freedom: “I have always known that deep down in every human heart, there is mercy and generosity. No one is born hating another person because of the color of his skin, or his background, or his religion. People must learn to hate, and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love, for love comes more naturally to the human heart than the opposite. Even at the grimmest times in prison, when my comrades and I were pushed to our limits, I would see a glimmer of humanity in one of the guards, perhaps just for a second, but it was enough to reassure me and keep me going. Man’s goodness is a flame that can be hidden but never extinguished.” In penning those words, Mandela had reconciled with his past and crafted a future for South Africa and the world in which he endures as an icon in humanity. In this sense, to come back to Kwibuka21, this is how reconciliation should look like: Never to forget the past that we may lay claim to a future by continually working at our limitations. I believe this is the pragmatism that has seen Rwanda’s notable achievements in such a short time. The writer is a commentator on local and regional issues

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Kwibuka21 and how reconciliation looks like