It gnaws at your heart to hear these pompous Western opinion-dispensers dismiss off-hand some of our third-world countries as autocratic regimes that their leaders should not engage. If you are too lazy to discern differences in these countries’ leaderships, who needs your opinion? There is this BBC radio journalist I caught only in passing. When he asked UK PM Boris Johnson what he hoped to gain from engaging the leader of an “authoritarian regime” like Rwanda, the PM asked him: “Have you noted the spectacular transformation the country has undergone these past twenty-six years?” All the journalist could mumble was: “But many democracy watchdogs have been sounding the alarm…” The journalist’s own opinion? Nary a one to find. Doesn’t a reputable, honest-to-goodness journalist need to do their own research, establish facts and build their opinion on such facts? Yet save for an occasional interview with any remnant of adherers to the genocide ideology, these journalists have never tried to get Rwandans’ popular opinion. If not these genocide-ideology hawkers, the journalists will have talked to thieves, robbers and embezzlers of public funds on the run from Rwanda’s unrelentingly stringent arm of the law. These are the renegades, in the country or out, passing themselves off as opposition politicians. These fugitives, what opinion would you expect from them? The journalists, moreover, will never pause to wonder why it’s these outlaws who seek them out for interviews, not the other way. If it’s not these elements that these advocates rely on for opinion, then it’ll be activist-organisations of a kind or another, with their own axe to grind. But these self-appointed experts on our countries are countless and diverse. There is this Canadian Associate Professor know-all at the University of Ottawa, Marie-Eve Desrosiers. The credentials making her the expert on Rwanda? She holds the International Francophonie Research Chair on Political Aspirations and Movements in Francophone Africa. The armchair intellectual researcher, you wonder, how does she qualify Rwanda? As Francophone or Anglophone? Because Rwandophone, you bet, she has never heard of! That aside, revered Associate Professor, what are Rwanda’s aspirations and er…movements? But no, that’s not what badgers her mind. When she hears her Prime Minister speak about the “strong relationship” between Canada and Rwanda, that’s what makes her go ballistic! Her diatribes on Rwanda as one of many other “despotic regimes” (!) are too many to quote. Among them though, interestingly, she concedes that her country needs to engage such countries. This is nonetheless in passing because the thrust of her point is elsewhere. “To start with,” she reasons, “we need to drop the naïve assumption that we can democratise these states, or at least nudge them toward democracy…” So she knows that it’s “naïve” to try democratising other countries, some of which may be more democratic than her own. Still, she goes ahead with: “Yes, these investments matter.” In short, it’s pointless to try democratising countries but it matters to invest in the effort. More contradictory, I never saw! Why she thinks her country should claim that condescending responsibility, where her wise Prime Minister sees an engagement of equals, only she knows. Does she know, first of all, that when her country’s former governments were matey with Rwanda, for having democratised her government, no doubt, that democratisation partly led to the Genocide against the Tutsi? And that, after that, not a single one of the liberators who put an end to evil was allowed to set foot on her country’s soil? But knowing that needs research, even if it means asking the many genocide fugitives still hosted in her neighbourhood. Too strenuous an effort. She’d rather quote Freedom House! Prof Desrosiers, why don’t you gaze down below your naval, USA, and dispense your opinion on the minorities’ situation? It badgers not your mind? And so for their laziness, these opinion peddlers don’t know that Rwanda cannot undergo that “spectacular transformation” if she were under despotic rule. Alone, it’s not scientific. Rwanda is not led by one man; she’s led by a party, the RPF. The party has a chairman who works for it, on the principles of scientific socialism. Which, as my humble mind interprets it, means the party must involve everybody, in a pragmatically transparent way. So, the party is not allowed to monopolise power, which power is in the hands of the people. The party perforce shares the responsibility of steering this nation with other parties and independents, ineludibly representatives of the people. You deliver to Rwandans, you will have a job. You don’t, you won’t. From Isibo, Umudugudu, Akagari, Umurenge, Akarere, Intara to the central government; down-top, top-down. Leaders at all levels must inter-consult and share information. That’s how her programmes are conceived and delivered. Gacaca court system that cleared genocide cases in no time. Nyakatsi grass-thatch eradication that has graduated to model villages of modern houses. Girinka cow-for-all that has created health and wealth for the poor. Mutuelle universal community health insurance that has given access to healthcare for all. Clean water, electricity, ICT, on and on. Hence, the “spectacular transformation”. Pulpit diplomacy of shoving your dogmas down our throats? West, waste not your time!
