No world for gunboat diplomacy

Let us start on a lighter note, with a female house help in Kigali who called into Sandrine’s popular morning show on Kiss FM asking for help to find a man, but not just any man; she had special specifications on which she would not compromise. “I need one of medium height, in the frame of singer King James; not tall, not short. He should be financially stable, able to support my family; most importantly, he should be a Master’s degree holder,” she told Sandrine. Let me call her Sallie since I never caught the name. I liked Sallie for her sally attitude; going out hard and focused on getting the very best for her; a fine man. Asked whether she would accept a man with everything including love for her but lacking the academic qualifications, Sallie said no! Picture any well groomed young man you know in your neighborhood, it could be a son, a brother or cousin; juxtapose him with your image of Sallie the house-help; do you see a fine couple? Regardless of what you see, the point here is that sometimes it doesn’t matter what other people think is best for you; people know what they want and have the exact specifications of how exactly what they want should look like. If you don’t see Sallie finding herself the husband of her choice because of her own social status, you are probably not much different from those who like to choose things for others and when they try to make their own choices, get castigated for it. Enough of the procrastination; it has been a fine week here in Kigali. The jolly city jollily received U.S. Secretary of Commerce Penny Pritzker and her delegation and held fruitful deliberations with the President and a number of high ranking government officials. Her visit was a follow-up to the US-Africa Summit that took place in the US in August, 2014. In a statement following her visit, Pritzker who led a group of top executives comprising of President Obama’s Advisory Council on Doing Business in Africa said Rwanda was chosen as one of two destinations on their first tour because the country is ‘a remarkable success story.’ ‘A remarkable success story’ is a phrase that has become synonymous to Rwanda, that, no one disputes. But what is often not pronounced well is the fact that, that remarkable story is a result of the choices that Rwandans have made for themselves along the way. If in 1995 Rwandans said they wanted to have the cleanest city in Africa, the safest country in the world and a place where poverty feels harassed, the ambition would probably have sounded like house-help Sallie’s quest for a Master’s degree holder to marry her. If the choices of Rwandans in the last twenty years have led to what is described today as ‘remarkable success,’ where then do some people get the notion that their recent decision to remove term limits was aimed at undoing the remarkable achievements of their efforts? “While we continue to deepen our commercial relationships, our delegation arrived at a challenging moment {when} United States has expressed disappointment that President Kagame has chosen to run for a third term in 2017. We believe that respecting established term limits can strengthen democratic institutions and help build a vibrant and free society…,” said Pritzker. Ms. Pritzker, don’t worry about the politics, just get us those business deals. The same Rwandans who removed term limits in December are the same who established them. While most things consumed in Rwanda are imported from countries including USA, the constitution is among the few locally manufactured items and citizens are proud of that; one could do with an imported suit but not the rules on when and for how long to wear it. Fortunately, Pritzker’s statement ended with a fine paragraph. She said, “the depth of our relationship does not mean we never have disagreements; rather, the depth of our relationship means that we discuss disagreements openly and candidly and we work together to address them.” Therefore, there is no more space for ‘gunboat diplomacy’ in international relations. The bilateral relationship between rich nations and their developing counterparts should not be defined by threats and rebukes but rather respect and compromise. Where we have played gunboat diplomacy, the results have been messy. A good example being the statistics issued this week showing that 4.4 million Syrians have fled since the externally fuelled conflict broke out in that country about six years ago. If the West hadn’t chosen to play gunboat diplomacy with President Assad, the scale of bloodshed and displacements of civilians we have seen would perhaps have been limited. Also this week, South Sudan rebel leader Riek Machar travelled to Uganda and met President Yoweri Museveni to follow up on two letters he has written to him in the past without response; he also requested the Ugandan leader to help him start a new chapter of peace at home. The other story was a hoax. Don’t travel to Eritrea on the premise of reports that men there are allowed to marry two women.

Opinions

No world for gunboat diplomacy