Youth will make RPF stronger – Rutaremara

The emphasis on the youth in the ruling Rwanda Patriotic Front (RPF-Inkotanyi)’s recruitment drive and structures and will only make the party stronger, Tito Rutaremara, a party founding member and its Commissioner for Information has said, three months ahead of the party’s silver jubilee.Rutaremara, now a senator and former Ombudsman, told The New Times during an exclusive interview last week that RPF is going stronger, with the younger cadres gradually taking over from the old guard.“What the RPF is doing now is to mobilise the youth. Those who started the struggle are getting old, we need to mobilise the youth to take up the mantle, if we can mobilise them RPF will grow stronger and stay on for more than 100 years,” Rutaremara said when asked about the future of the political movement, which is credited with liberating the country from years of misrule and unilaterally stopping the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi.He said the youth occupy at least 30 per cent of the party’s leadership position, ranging from the grassroots to the national level.Rutaremara said the party was not bothered by some of its former officials who fled the country when they were faced with questions of accountability, saying that more people had since joined and the movement. He added that RPF is not about individuals, but an ideology and doctrines that saw it grow to become one of the most successful liberation movements on the continent.“If you are in a bus travelling, say, from Butare (Huye District) and your objective is to reach Kigali, there are those who will get off from Save, while others will come onboard. When you reach Nyanza, some will disembark while others will come aboard and by the time you reach Kigali, the bus is full,” he said.Asked about the lessons learned over the last 25 years, Rutaremara said that as a party, they have learnt to be more tolerant because when they seized power, the party started to work with other actors with a different “ideology and orientation.”“Working with other political parties is going to take you some time, you have to listen, and you have to sell your ideas to people who are not in the same movement.”He RPF senior cadre recalled a meeting sometime in 1988 which he said was a turning point – after which the RPF members determined that Rwandan exiles had to return home by force after the government in Kigali had rejected peaceful repatriation, arguing that the country was full to the brim, with no space to accommodate extra people.“In 1988, there was a conference in Washington to address the refugee question but the Rwandan government chose not to attend. It was then that we were sure; we had to return by force,” he said.He spoke widely about the party’s early days, the factors that influenced the timing of the launch of the armed liberation struggle, the death of Maj Gen Fred Rwigema and the impact of his successor, then Major Paul Kagame, now the country’s President and the party’s chairman, among others.

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Youth will make RPF stronger – Rutaremara