“The  Rwandan opposition is so weak and  disunited that it cannot hope to bring about  change to our motherland.”

This has been the chorus  to all the fault finding theories regarding our struggle to  bring about democratic change in Rwanda.

All things considered ,   if people would take a moment to look at  how far we have come , given our history they would probably not be of so little depth  in their quickness to judge .

Yes , we are doing well in general for a people that is  under the yoke of one of the most ruthless dictatorships on the African continent . Our country’s wounds from war and  genocide are still fresh .

In  1990 ,  Rwanda brutally introduced to freedom of speech and   although there were other events that added oil to the fire and  created the explosive situation we saw , had we been more concerned  with the restraint we see in the ranks of the so harshly criticized Rwandan opposition  today, there is no doubt that things would have certainly taken a different turn.

 

My hope with this  commentary is to induce a new  attitude towards the growing Rwandan  democracy.

In Rwanda , the RPF has  shamelessly monopolized the political scene  like a playground bully , completely burying its head in the sand  with regards to the inevitable day of reckoning that is just around the corner .

The opposition  is alive and well  within Rwanda , probably more so than  abroad .

Dictators  always make the mistake of thinking that their repression will know  no end, that it is built on an unfailing system that has been constructed with the sort of attention to detail that makes it impossible to demolish .  And yet, time and time again history has proved them wrong .

The people of Rwanda  cannot be contained forever! Change is coming , at its own pace , but it is coming .

To conclude , I would like to reassure those of us who feel threatened  and who get carried away by resentment whenever their party or members of their  party are mentioned negatively.

Look at Kenya ! If our  democracy is to grow and mature into a force to be reckoned with  on the Rwandan political scene , we must accept and respect each others’ different points of view. It is healthy to see things differently. We must learn to favor debate over immature resentment. We can agree to disagree and  join forces to fight a system that has blindly invested the future of Rwanda in a hopeless bottomless pit .

 

Noble Marara