Two years ago I stumbled upon a tweet of an African intellectual I barely knew at the time. The message carried by the tweet was articulated as follows: “Since the role of education is to craft a lenses from which the educated view the world and much of education in Africa remains colonial in output, which education teaches the African to see Africa in African lenses?” The question raised by Dr Lonzen Rugira seemed to make sense in theory but it still remained too abstract to my mind which then stumbled its first steps in the pan Africanist belief system. Since then, the pan African spirit in me has grown and with it my perception of the world has changed radically. In practice, an event, yet another, has come to recall the crying need for an education that teaches Africans to see the world from an African perspective. And this event is none other than the tragic suicide of the famous singer Kizito Mihigo. Here is a man who was accused of, and admitted to, conspiracy to assassinate the Rwandan head of state Paul Kagame and to overthrow an elected government. Kizito was convicted and sentenced on these charges- for which he pleaded guilty and served only 4 years in prison out of the 10 years- only to then benefit from the pardon granted by the person against whom he was conspiring. Suddenly, in Rwanda and elsewhere, voices arose showering affection for Kizito and suggesting that somehow Kizito was a man of peace, who wanted only the best for his country. For my part, I watched, dumbfounded by these expressions of affection: those coming from the usual critics of the government of Rwanda who purported conspiracy theories around the suicide didn’t surprise me. This was expected. I would have been surprised had they said something else, more measured and rational. However, I was surprised by people who, without blinking, described the artist as a man of peace and suspended outrage towards the plotter of violence, both characters that resided in the same man. I understand that emotions caused by a person’s death are not always rational and no one can pretend to tell people how they should feel in the face of a tragedy. But such emotions take place in a certain cultural framework and the irrationality which is expressed through them has its roots there. And since this cultural framework is normally the fruit of an education system, the question that Dr Rugira asked kept resonating in my mind. In every society there has to be an education system that teaches people about a set of principles and values which inform people on what to hold dear in order for that society to be functional. In such a society individuals know what to expect from each other. Only fringe elements would dare publicly mourn R. Kelly, a world class artist who for 20 years produced songs that touched many people’s hearts. We now know that even as he sang “I’m your angel”, he was the devil to a little girl. Most people, especially those who consider themselves refined, would recuse themselves from publicly mourning the passing of a rapist, more so one who repeatedly raped underage girls. This boycott would happen because, much as it’s taking place at a frustratingly slow pace and conducted outside of an institutionalized framework, human society is building a consciousness which prompts people to express outrage in the face of rape cases. This proves that in evolved human society emotions don’t and shouldn’t take place in a vacuum. Yet, the consequences of a single psychopathic rapist are not anywhere as near those of a traitorous conspirator, who would add himself to the long line of Africa’s saboteurs. If one is to consider that today’s Rwanda is a miracle, the result of unimaginable sacrifices and compromises, then the leadership that oversaw this transformation is to be hailed as one of the greatest in human history. In fact, one would be hard pressed to find a society in modern history that accomplished so much in such a short time and most importantly, in the face of the ruins from which Rwanda has had to rebuild. You don’t have to like President Kagame to recognize this monumental achievement. You simply need to be reasonable, something critics have failed to be. If that is acknowledged, however, the centrality of Kagame to Rwanda’s rebirth leads to some irrefutable conclusions. If we, as Africans, agree on this factual truth, then we would logically conclude that Paul Kagame is one of the greatest sons of modern Africa, since independence in the 1960s. Such a conclusion would raise another related question: “Why do we, as Africans, continue to conspire against our greatest sons and daughters?” If we keep asking where Africa would be had people like Patrice Lumumba and Thomas Sankara lived and we observe the ruins from their untimely departure, how much weight should we attach to Kizito’s plotting against the person who released thousands of convicted genocidaires so as to give peace a chance. Kizito was not a man of peace; he tried to kill the man of peace. He was a pretender. Consequently his songs are irrelevant because even as he pretended to sing for peace, he was conspiring with those hell-bent on creating unimaginable violence- yet again. Therefore, by mourning him we demonstrate our inability to grasp the consequences of his crimes in the event that he had succeeded. We fail to focus on what is important, what should be held dear and fiercely defended. Like borrowed glasses, we do not see with the lenses we should.
