Last week, President Paul Kagame visited the University of Rwanda for the first time since its creation about two years ago.

Speaking at the College of Arts and Social Sciences in the Southern Province town of Huye, he made a number of thought-provoking statements — including the need to not only change ideas that haven’t worked for 60 years and have kept us beggars since Independence and to “teach teachers”!

The need to teach teachers, the president explained, is ideological. It’s informed by the experiential knowledge that, while we have many formally educated men and women, ideologically they haven’t aligned their education with national development; in fact, some participated in the genocide.

It was schooling of sorts. Even then, the real takeaway for me didn’t come until the question and answer session. And it arose of what I would never have guessed.

The president was asked pressing questions related to student bursaries that aren’t paid on time, the persistent problem of FDLR and why he doesn’t support a constitutional amendment that would allow him to stay in power beyond 2017 yet he has the support and a record to ice it. But while the questions are juicy, they were predictable.

The real meat of the day came when a clever student asked the head of state what he thinks might be the main problems Rwanda is likely to encounter in 10 to 20 years that the youth should think about.

Surprisingly, the president didn’t say security or poverty or dependence but, quite simply, “Rwandans”! Yes, that Rwandans are the greatest threat to the sustainability of their motherland! Unfortunately, he didn’t elaborate. And to the uninitiated in Rwanda’s original problem, it would be appealing to dismiss the statement out of hand.

However, to those well versed with the country’s recent history, and indeed in the less developed world, the primary threat to nations since the Cold War isn’t external but internal.

Since 1989, when the ideological rivalry between the West and the East ended, empirical evidence indicates that while conflicts between nations have sharply reduced, for almost all the states that have collapsed, or face collapse, the primary cause is from within the borders.

From the collapse of former Yugoslavia to the upheavals in Eastern Europe and Africa in early to mid 1990s and most recently in the Arab world and in countries such as Kenya after elections in 2007/2008, Cote d’Ivoire, Mali, the Central African Republic, et cetera, the enemy is the same.

Yes, we could say the primary problem in all these situations is bad governance or dictatorship or abuse of freedoms, or election thievery, but still, the enemy is from within.

What makes Rwanda unique, however, is the ideological import attached to the relations between, and espoused by, some of its political protagonists. This ideology doesn’t need any introduction as its climax was the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi. Even today, there are politicians and organisations,but most importantly the President’s approach to fundamental principles of democracy and human rights.

This ideology is a brother to what, in his book The History of the Genocide, Gerard Prunier calls the “Rwandese ideology.” It elucidates the idea that a majority by birth (that is, Hutus) must rule and, if this is challenged, the minority and the challenger must die. It’s the same ideology that equates democracy to ethnic majority and vice-versa.

Unless both ideologies are defeated and replaced with respect for the right to life regardless of ethnicity and the right for everyone to seek office regardless of birth circumstances, and for the people to freely determine who rules them on the strength of their ideas rather than how they were born, it’s difficult to guarantee sustainable security or development.

That’s why, while Rwanda still faces challenges related to poverty and disease, the primary threat to it isn’t these or an enemy from without but the ideology of genocide and its cousin rule by birth right.

 

Placide KayitareAFRICAHUMAN RIGHTSJUSTICE AND RECONCILIATIONLATEST NEWSLast week, President Paul Kagame visited the University of Rwanda for the first time since its creation about two years ago. Speaking at the College of Arts and Social Sciences in the Southern Province town of Huye, he made a number of thought-provoking statements — including the need to not...PUBLISHING YOUR NEWS WITH CUTTING EDGE STYLE