Party within a State or State within a Party- Part II: The battle for the soul of the RPF

 

“There is no single model for nation-building. At the root of any success are good choices, built on a mindset which can be summarised in three words: Do It Yourself.”                                   RPF Chairman, Paul Kagame, August 18, 2017.

Introduction:

The Rwandese Patriotic Front is a political movement born out of the liberation struggle in Rwanda few years before the end of the cold war in 1987. Its origins are deeply rooted in Rwandese culture, hence its name Inkotanyi, and anti-imperialism as evidenced by the confrontation against France before, during and after the genocide against Tutsis. Unlike other liberation movements, such as the ANC, the RPF spent more days in government than in the struggle, only 15 years after its creation. Nonetheless, the RPF had inherited grievances as old as 27 years by the time of its creation.

The early entry into government, however, has created a unique legacy whereby the weight of the administration played a central role in how the RPF reconciles divergent policy opinions. Whereas political movements with late entry into government develop a higher sense of ideology, those with early entry into government are more pragmatic. The RPF has quickly appropriated administration tools to develop policies, instead of party commission analyzing policies in the prism of party ideology; policies are preceded by studies developed by technocrats. The RPF has actually embraced performance based management system, imihigo, as methodology to judge the loyalty of its cadres. This trend has been reinforced by the reluctance of RPF to allow the formation of ‘historicals without accountabality’ like we have seen in Uganda’s NRM. The discipline within RPF is measured in real time and not in the rearview of past achievements.

There are policy choices however, which are not always easily settled through scientific studies. Such policies are related to societal choices with an open ended debate. Critics of RPF often argue that there is no debate within RPF and Rwanda in general, they argue that those questions are settled through hierarchal power. Such view is very problematic as it assumes a mechanical society of people without opinions. It borrows from pre-determinism by assuming that all policy choices can be subject to a single minded ‘order from above’. It is an avatar of the myth of ‘cohesion by oppression’ which prevails since 19^th century, itself grounded in the constant refusal of African agency.

 In reality, there is a lot of debate within RPF reflecting the divergent opinions of its cadres. Whereas some societies are paralyzed by social policy issues such as racism and migration, Rwanda has had a quite disproportionate share of complex policy issues to decide upon: unity and reconciliation, death penalty, distribution of land after exile and displacement to name but a few. This article aims to shed a light on how RPF has over the years settled divergent political opinions.

While Party within a State or State within a Party- Part I focused on RPF versus the opposition, this article focuses more on policy debates within the RPF. It identifies two tension points: conservatism (I) and progressivism (II). The article identifies four variables explaining policy shifts within RPF, consensus, pragmatism attributed to conservative policy choices as well as culture inspired and technology led innovation explain progressive policy choices. The underlying political dynamics are often complex. For example, what has informed progressiveness in Rwanda is culture and what has informed conservatism is consensus building.

I. Conservatism within RPF: The bitter taste of consensus

Conservative policy choices within RPF are informed by consensus (A) to unite all political trends within the movement and pragmatism (B) when dealing with unprecedented political issues or indiscipline.

A. Consensus: From reconciliation policies to legalized abortion

The RPF had been started by refugees who, when they came back, had to renounce their old properties and accommodate those who had killed their relatives. Unlike genocide survivors, refuges were not entitled to government financial assistance yet they had suffered similar onslaught in 1959, 1963 etc. There was no compensation for parents who lost their children on the front liberating the country from genocidal government. The home coming for the founding RPF cadres was bitter to say the least. Yet this consensus, allowed the RPF to have the moral high-ground to ask concessions from all sections of the Rwandan society. Against this background, one can only wonder how people think of RPF as dictatorial decision making machine, if that was the case then why didn’t the RPF enforced choices that were much more comfortable for its cadres?

The search for consensus was inbuilt during the liberation struggle, as the organization relied on volunteering and sacrifice. Consensus also enable to unify all parties in exile within one single movement, this had implications that can be felt today: people like Theogene Rudasingwa or Seth Sendashonga had their own political formations and ambitions, their divorce with RPF was therefore not a surprise to those who recruited them.

Consensus became the preferred method of policy making in post-genocide Rwanda as confrontational politics had not borne any positive outcomes in the 1950s and again in the 1990s. Like any society, Rwanda is composed of people with divergent policy preferences, for example, some are of the view that abortion should be legalized others wants it to be penalized. After intensive debates, the middle ground was reached by a hard won consensus: abortion remains penalized except in case of rape or medical grounds. The debate on abortion revealed the big difference between common assumptions and political reality. Prominent amongst the anti-abortion lobby were female politicians. I remember discussing with one female Member of Parliament about this topic: she was of the opinion that the punishment for abortion should be life imprisonment!

Consensus as decision making procedure comes of course with the negative externality of endless meetings and rounds of consultations. It is again baffling when some suggest decision making in Rwanda is top-down yet the country is always in meetings. The best proof of consensus policy making in Rwanda is the Urugwiro Debates from May 1998 to March 1999, where opinion makers, academics and political parties came together to discuss Rwanda’s future, the recommendations were translated into the policies we see today.

This culture of consensus also has a big consequence on the style of policy makers, it favors discrete honest brokers instead of media savvy straight shooters. This inevitably makes political life in Rwanda less sensationalist as it favors technocrats with astute networking skills. It is also true that culturally, Rwandans view opinioned outbursts as lack of self-mastery. Thus, consensus is the default-mode of policy making within RPF and it will remain so for the foreseeable time to come due to its effectiveness in uniting the country around a single developmental vision.

B. Pragmatism: Success is what numbers say not norms

Pragmatism is deeply rooted in RPF’s DNA. Whoever lived in exile knows how refugees do not have an accurate perception of reality. They tend to indulge in wishful thinking, forever hoping for a sudden turn of events which will bring them home. RPF cadres grew up with parents who were hopelessly nostalgic. They witnessed the failure of previous attempts to go home either through communist rebels or through the UN. There is a deep distrust amongst RPF cadres about any romanticized view of the reality. Thus, it is not a surprise that one of the first big policy decisions by RPF was to advocate for a new Republic of Rwanda instead of an attempt to restore the old monarchy. This decision was big as it run contrary to the dogma of all post-independence nationalistic leaning political views, yet RPF was claiming to be a patriotic political formation. RPF first political pragmatic decision was to redefine the sense of patriotism to fit Rwanda into the reality of post-colonial context.

RPF pragmatism is best illustrated in its original 8 point program outlining its policy objectives. It is a sober and pragmatic list of priorities deprived of any fanfare. The same spirit can be found in ceremonies around 4^th July, where the Chairman often asks why Rwanda had to be liberated in the first place instead of reminiscing the glorious days of the struggle.

RPF’s pragmatism played a big role in the security sector where RPF had unprecedented challenges related to absorbing armed forces who just committed genocide. For example, the army decided to integrate or demobilize combatants from the previous regime instead of marginalizing them. The result is the difference between Iraq and Rwanda today. Post-conflict nation building happened with only one yardstick: does it work?

The RPF does not require its cadres to recite norms of the party doctrine but they are required at any time to quantify their work. Measuring progress instead of indoctrination has led to un-conservative policy preferences. For example, if distributing condoms to Homosexual communities reduces the rate of HIV, then the Ministry of Health would do so, irrespective of the controversy around homosexuality. The RPF also decided not to criminalize but not to promote homosexuality as well. It would have been extremely tempting to indulge in the populism around homosexuality in Africa, yet the RPF decided pragmatically to stay in the middle ground. Another example is the introduction of incineration of bodies in a country with Christian majority or the use of marijuana for palliative care. Many of those programmatic policy choices involved strong engagement with the Christian and born again lobby, which arguably enjoys majority in parliament. The RPF was able to unite all confessions in the movement by skillfully balancing the rights of Christians, Muslims in the share of public holidays and appointments in public office. There is however a tension point between a pragmatic-consensus leading to conservative policy choices such as the penalization of adultery and the RPF doctrine which emphasizes structuralism and progressiveness.

Pragmatism has been the preferred policy tool when dealing with issues of discipline within RPF. Recently, a campaign against corruption led to the resignation seven mayors in less than three months because their numbers weren’t literally adding up.  Their membership card did not prevent them from accountability.

Unlike consensus building, pragmatic policy choices need championing cadres because they are more the result of boldness than consultations. When for example, RPF saw land management as the only way to achieve food-security; it had to take the courage of Paul Kagame to start redistributing land owned by Generals. Curiously, the same land grabbing generals are the ones we see today claiming to be bona fide opposition like Kayumba Nyamwasa.

We have seen how consensus drives RPF conservative policy options with the objective to unite all cadres, while pragmatism sometimes drives RPF at the edge of its doctrine, it often also drives conservatism at its edge.

II. Culture led innovation: The sweet taste of revenge

RPF the youth party reconciled with the old Rwandan culture through home-grown solutions (A) but adopted disruptive technologies to catch up with the future (B).

A. Home-Grown Innovations: Towards a sense of African Modernity

As patriotic party, culture has always played a big role within RPF especially with regards to mobilization. However, it’s consensual and pragmatic approach did not allow for culture to become a dogmatic source of policy. Rather culture served as fixation point on the map to enable orientation, without dictating the direction of policies. It is a firm belief within RPF that “Rwanda was independent and had its own culture, which was the uniting factor for all her people” before colonialism. But at first, RPF did not indulge in defining cultural cannons for fear of losing the main objective out of sight which wasn’t ideological purity but the recovery of sovereignty.

The exile had enabled cultural groups to be out of reach of the cultural revisionism of the parmehutu ideology, who at one time even forbid certain dances, redesigned the grammar and renamed regions. RPF’s pragmatism did not allow for rebirth of the old names, rather provinces were simply called North/South/West/East. Indeed, amongst RPF culture fans, it seemed like the pragmatism was becoming too much when RPF preferred dance troops composed of citizens to dance troops composed of professional dancers during events.

Culture, however, made a big come back when RPF realized it could use culturally inspired policies to effectively mobilize the population to solve daunting challenges such as the post-genocide accountability through Gacaca jurisdictions and the restoration of community mediators Abunzi. Under the banner of home-grown solutions, new policies were re-discovered by closely interacting with villagers who were still harboring a collective memory of ancient practices and institutions like the Ubudehe and Igihango at the origin of one cow per family program. RPF technocrats added some modern management tools to those policies and thereby created a sense of African modernity.

Culturally inspired institutions started in rural development policies but have now embraced urban areas through the Intore corporations. Intore concept can be compared to a guild organizing professional associations or citizen sharing a structural common interest. The Imihigo performance contracts have also been used to drive exports through joint imihigo with the private sector.

Over the years, cultural practitioners have seen their fate turning from marginalization to prominence. It is now possible to live comfortably from arts, the arts college in Nyundo was revamped and artists are present in every public function. Citizens across the country have revived the old art of Umuvugo, contemporary poems filled with humor and irony. The Chairman himself does not leave a major speech without reference to the Rwandan culture, especially at the beginning of the year during National Payer’s Breakfast or at Rwanda Days.

There are other culturally grounded policies such as constitutional empowerment of women. As the Chairman Paul Kagame often says, RPF was founded to fight injustice, he personally led the gender revolution first during the struggle then in government. The old memories of female Chiefs and Queen Mothers had been lost through colonial legislation and misogynic parmehutu ideology as evidenced by the infamous Hutu Power Ten Commandments which specifically targeted women.

Culture based policy making is now firmly anchored in RPF’s toolbox, as evidenced by the Article 11 of the new 2015 Constitution that consecrated culture as source of policy. Given the onslaught on culture by colonialism and subsequent governments, the coming back of culture is a miracle. It is fascinating to see that Rwanda, like Asian countries, is developing a unique style of government with culturally inspired political practices.  In doing so, RPF is looking East and not West for growth models which do not imply a total cultural alienation.

B. Technology led innovation: The indictment of complacency

Technology was so important to the current RPF’s chairman that he ordered during the campaign against genocide to quickly protect universities to the extent that the first students after genocide found intact notes and books in class rooms. Kigali’s most important military barrack was turned into Kigali Institute of Technology and the country was set on the path Information and Communication Technology at a time where internet was not a household name in the West.

Technology within RPF is seen as guarantee against the kind of complacency that led to the colonization of Rwanda, whereby people equipped with better technology were able to overrun the existing order, yet they were as human as Rwandans are. The use of technology goes hand in hand with a radical openness to the outside world, liberalized migration policy, and putting Rwanda in all major networks of the world. Chairman Kagame, who joined tweeter in May 2009, understood like no other Rwandan leader before him that Rwanda should no longer be taken by surprise. He has prevented RPF to become an inward looking liberation movement. This openness has triggered policies in the areas of competiveness such the doing business climate and e-government with information technology as enabler.

The focus on technology coupled with pragmatism, has enabled Rwanda to become a proof of concept country for innovations such as drone delivery of drugs or information systems to manage traffic, commodity prices and health applications. Nonetheless, unlike the Ethiopia’s EPRDF, RPF adopted only of recent a real interest into manufacturing. For a long time, RPF cadres considered manufacturing to be a lost cause given Rwanda’s landlocked-ness, market size and low supply of energy. This has changed and now manufacturing is considered as trailblazer for urbanization and structural economic transformation through the Made in Rwanda campaign.

In the adoption of modern policy tools, RPF has looked West for development aid, economic reforms and technology to the surprise of some analysts who see it as contradiction to self-determination. They label Rwanda as darling of the West. This would be however to forget that excellence should be embraced where it is found, Ivy League Universities are filled with students from the East, why should Africa do the contrary?

RPF is a political movement composed of people with different style and preferences united around the objective of restoring dignity to Rwandans. This self-esteem is deeply anchored in Rwanda’s self-perception, a country where God comes to sleep, according to its founding myth. The quest for dignity is a contestation of the prevailing balance of power and implies State capacity to back up this claim. In that sense, RPF accommodates different trends, fights injustices threatening social cohesion and promotes productivity with the core mission of self-determination. This coincides with the apolitical pre-requisite to nationhood. It bears the collective experience of Rwandans that human rights need a capable State to guarantee them. This explains the popularity of RPF as every Rwandan has experienced the consequences of State failure. Whoever wants to compete against RPF should bring better ideas on how best to increase State capacity for self-determination. Otherwise, Rwandans have a 1000 years collective memory of Statehood whose spirit withstood 60 years of colonization, 35 years of post-colonial errancy and genocide. This spirit is one of the most underestimated factors about Rwanda.

RPF has indicted complacency using innovation and technology but most importantly it has indicted the type of African dependency that runs contrary to human dignity. Looking at the amount of energy and thinking required to rise from refugee camp to world stage while turning the World’s worst humanitarian disaster into a success story, the bar set by RPF is so high that it is almost understandable to see critics preferring the shortcut of denial. But can Rwanda afford less?

 

Rwanda and the dangers of democracy: How Stephen Kinzer got it wrong

In a recent article in the Boston Globe, Rwanda and the dangers of democracy, Stephen Kinzer perfectly illustrated how even knowledgeable Western commentators consistently get it wrong on Rwanda. His line of argumentation follows a well-established path regarding Africa:

 

Muting African citizens as constituency:

The success achieved by Rwanda is depicted not as a result of the daily choices of Rwandans but an oppressive State. Yet it should be obvious for every man to realize that for health, agriculture, cleanliness, security to improve, every Rwandan must make the right choices every day. The idea of a passive citizenry oppressed into peace, that otherwise would fall against each other into an endless cycle of genocide, is an old avatar of a fundamental tenant of Western views on Africa: the African people are not citizens, they don’t have political interests, and they are absent minded like an animal in the zoo. As the famous poem by Rilke goes: As he paces in cramped circles, over and over, the movement of his powerful soft strides is like a ritual dance around a center in which a mighty will stands paralyzed.

 

Genocide as natural disaster:

Closely linked to the mindless state of Africans is to associate political events in Africa to the realm of nature. In all seriousness, Stephen Kinzer claims: “Kagame’s restrictions on free speech mean that the country’s two traditional ethnic groups, Hutu and Tutsi, cannot preach hatred of each other. If democracy means an end to these restrictions, the result could be another explosion of murderous violence”. First, hate speech is not an opinion but a crime in every society. Second, genocide is not ‘an explosion of murderous violence’ but, as my Professor in Constitutional Law used to say, the most rational crime. It is a State crime, a political project using State resources to plan and execute murder. Since it is a State crime, the State also uses the international order to its favor as we have seen in Rwanda, including geopolitical allies. The irony here is that even when Africans commit horrendous things such as genocide, their assumed mindlessness is used as absolution.

Sustainability and transfer of power:

Now commentators of Rwanda have found a new passion: political sustainability. Unfortunately, they don’t follow the intense debates about this topic that happened within the Rwanda Patriotic Front and the Rwandan society in general. The question on “how there can be change while ensuring continuity and stability” was intensely debated. At the end, Rwandans made a simple analysis: the real reason of our vulnerability is that we are in dependence. We therefore ought to achieve economic liberation for our democracy to be fully backed by our productivity. The real question therefore was not how fast we can change a leader but which leader can deliver economic liberation the fastest. The answer was clear; it is actually President Kagame who raised our horizon to that objective.

Stephen Kinzer ends his article by saying “If he can find a formula for political transition that is as successful as his anti-poverty formula has been, Rwanda will be a permanent model for the world”. But he misses again the point, the graduation from poverty is the political formula. Isn’t it obvious that there is no sustainable democracy, when a population cannot foot the bill of its political objectives? Again, the reason it is not obvious for a Western commentator is that for him, we may stay in dependency while there are other more urgent things to discuss.  Incidentally, those more urgent things to discuss, are part of a script written for us by people who derive their sense of entitlement from our economic weakness.

The transition of power is not an event that will be successful by a change of guard. The transition of power we want is power back to ourselves. It is a process whose success depends on the choices we make every day to end the intergenerational transfer of poverty. Whoever will prove him or herself on that front will gain the confidence of Rwandans. This is the political equation Africa needs.

Paul Kagame and the legitimacy question

Ever since Rwanda was discovered, western explorers raised the legitimacy question. Already then, the cohesion of Rwandans was labeled as anomaly.  Rwanda was discovered rather late when other African countries had been subjected to centuries of oppression. The reason why Rwanda raises such passionate debate is that in some sense it is the last bastion of African nation States.

Rwanda continues to defy the lenses through which Africans are categorized in Western inventories. The cohesion of one language, one culture renders ethnical division problematic. The enthusiasm and success towards nation building based on cultural norms brings to the fore African agency, while any positive development in Africa has necessarily to have an external source. President Kagame’s unmatched ability in nation building speaks of an ideological figure, yet western media would like us to believe that he is an ephemeral natural phenomenon. Ironically, they speak of limited democratic credentials, while at the same time casting into doubt the ability of Rwandans to be driven by ideas. Whenever they speak of President Kagame as oppressor, it means that his achievements were not driven by Rwandans who desire a better future instead the sacrifice, the forgiveness, the discipline and hard work are the result of oppression, read people without agency.

Against this background, however, facts are stubborn. President Paul Kagame has been chosen to champion reforms of the African Union by his peers, his speeches are intensely commented upon on his facebook and twitter pages, his popularity in Africa and beyond is without measure to the geographical size of Rwanda. According to the UN, no other country has improved human development in the last 25 years like Rwanda. Can the attempt to resist Paul Kagame as historical figure and Statesman hold?

To be fair, such attempts are championed by a minority group. The ideological onslaught against Rwanda has also evolved, albeit its basic denial of African agency remains constant. The lack of legitimacy has now evolved to an issue of lack of sustainability. It goes like: “Rwanda’s story is one man show, the population helplessly awaits for the system to collapse when Paul Kagame will no longer be President”. The lack of another alternative in 2017, they say, is proof that no alternative can emerge. Here, Rwandans are immature political agents who don’t think about the future of leadership in their country or suppress any attempt to do so. But where on earth did a population put so much thought into nation building that people forgave the killers of their families, distanced themselves from relatives with racial ideology, hold grassroots panels of restorative justice and commonly achieved behavioral development outcomes like in Rwanda? Compared with problems such a bankrupt country full of land mines, mass graves and millions of internally and externally displaced people, an insurgency by genocidal forces, the question of succession in leadership does not appear to be a Damocles sword hanging over Rwanda.

The real Damocles sword hanging over Rwanda is our status of development that gives mischievous or ignorant western actors a front seat to discuss how we are organized.  The terms of reference of our leader are to put an end to this situation that affects our dignity. Now every empirical study suggests that such transformation takes a generation of constant delivery in leadership.

In this context, is it that complicated to understand that Rwandans wished the transition of power to be generational in nature and not just electoral? Our political priority is actually to get rid of dependence and thereby putting the legitimacy debate where it belongs: in the historical dustbin.

Come August 4^th our choice is clear, the Statesman we have is not like Superman who leaves after heroic acts, the one we have actually stayed so that we can defend ourselves. His name is Paul Kagame.

Party within a State or State within a Party- Part I : The RPF and its opponents

Che Guevara once said: “The outcome of the struggle in Rwanda depended on the struggle in the Congo, since it involved greater confrontation with imperialism”.

The Rwandan Patriotic Front throes are to be found in the failure to confront colonialism and neo-colonialism within and outside Rwanda. The predominately young women and men who founded the RPF suffered from this common trauma: the loss of nationhood and the failure to recover it. This trauma has resulted into specific features of the current RPF which are themselves at the origin of some of the common misunderstandings about modern Rwanda. This paper aims at highlighting the path of the Rwandan Patriotic Front from a national liberation movement towards a political party. This path is marked by a dual legacy of a new State Doctrine as well as a set of diverse policies. The opponents of the RPF are not questioning its policies but the new State doctrine upon which the modern Rwandan State functions. The RNC/FDLR alliance wants to legitimize the State through ethnic balance of power while the RPF led coalition has established State legitimacy on the basis of service delivery.

A. From Liberation Movement to Political Party

The Rwandan Patriotic Front and its armed wing the Rwandan Patriotic Army were by nature more than just a political party. By virtue of their ambition and actions, they were a national liberation movement. The political consciousness of RPF cadres was first molded by old generations of Rwandans who used to praise the pre-colonial Rwanda as land of milk and honey, hadn’t there been the Belgians. This nostalgic narrative was supplemented by a short-lived flirt with communism, which proved to be a dead-end. Thus, the old generation of refuges had no ideological or practical means to mobilize all refuges as their dire situation dragged on for more than 4 decades.

It is important to understand the ideological disenchantment in the minds of Rwandans long before the fall of the Berlin Wall and the proclamation of the end of history by Fukuyama. For the future RPF founders this has resulted into a pragmatic world view where ideology is by no means an end in itself. In other words working methods of modern statehood were more important than ideological purity. Ultimately, politics without sovereignty was understood to have been the Achilles heel of modern African States and the restoration of the State became the outmost priority. This is why RPF founding cadres turned to liberation struggles in their host countries with the pragmatic goal of gaining battle experience.

This nationalistic origin is at the source of some misunderstandings in today’s Rwanda. How can a national liberation movement become a political party? In other words how can other political parties compete with a movement that pursues national liberation, since no political party can claim to be against national liberation without entering into the realm of a civil war?

The famous RPF 8 point program was indeed more a cure to State building than a political manifesto of a political party. The RPF had successfully mobilized other political parties around the State reform agenda and had gained major concessions through the Arusha Peace Agreement. Indeed, as western diplomats reported at that time, the regime of Habyarimana had successfully been sidelined. As a measure of last resort, the regime of Habyarimana applied the well tested politics of genocide, meaning the criminalization of political debates through ethnic mobilization. Some ill-informed commentators think that RPF was not winning the political game, yet RPF had gained all political concessions it could wish, the rest was a foreseeable exit of Habyariman’s clique.

Whereas the RPF had started a liberation campaign in 1990, by 1994 it was forced into a war of ending the genocide. In other words it was forced into an apolitical role of restoring law and order. The RPF had to substitute State Authority since the entire administration had collapsed. This of course isn’t new, students of history will recall that General Charles de Gaulle did the same: to avoid that the allies would fill the administrative void left by the Vichy regime, he asked members of his liberation army to present themselves as local government leaders. In a similar way General Charles de Gaulle is today a national symbol and not just the flag bearer of the French Right Wing Party.

In Africa, some of the most stable and economically prosperous countries are run by parties that came out of liberation movements: Mozambique, Botswana, Angola, South Africa, Uganda and Ethiopia. Let us now explore the presence of the RPF on the Rwandan political scene.

The RPF and its opponents: beyond a political space  

The RPF as we know it today cannot be easily branded. On the one hand it champions right-wing conservative politics such as self-reliance, national dignity and liberal economic policies and on the other hand it champions left-wing progressive policies such gender equality, liberal reproductive health and strict environmental protection.

There is another peculiar challenge posed by the RPF: its emphasis on working methods has resulted into dry political slogans focused on the know-how instead of a self-flattering revolutionary ideology. This radical pragmatism, as some are calling it, is difficult to sell in modern political debates that are narrowed down to a color (blue vs. red).

To be fair, the interests of Rwandans cannot be easily subdivided into trade unions vs. employers, the majority of Rwandans are subsistence farmers out of lack of better options. Land ownership has been democratized; everyone owns a land title and large land owners such as General Nyamwasa have been asked to give back to the community. Thus, there are no conflicts between large land owners vs. farmers like in Latin America. Land related conflicts are rather to be found within families.

The agenda of creating economic values that can become shared political interests is an agenda requiring more dedication. The tax base is limited and development aid is skewed towards dependency. It requires a turnaround strategy while using funds that are earmarked to maintaining the status quo. The agents of change (population) are unskilled and with enormous socio-economic challenges. Faced with the challenge of dedication, some have chosen the ethnic shortcut: mobilizing people alongside ethnical lines is cheap and doesn’t require neither political program nor experience. Everyone can be do ethnic politics. This is the line chosen by disfranchised large land owners such as the current champions of RNC. However, their opportunistic alliance with FDLR reveals a deeper trend in modern Rwandan political discourse: nihilism.

Nihilism in modern Rwandan political discourse

As stated earlier, it is important to understand the ideological disorientation in the minds of Rwandans long before the fall of the Berlin Wall and the proclamation of the end of history by Fukuyama. As for all black men, coping with the idea that older generations were not skilled enough for the modern world has produced a malaise. For the ruling elite within Rwanda, since 1959, their parent’s destitution has led them to negate anything related to ancient Rwanda. The ruling elite proclaimed to have a Catholic worldview but none of their action was marked by an adherence to Christianity, what had sat in is in reality a tropical Nihilism founded on self-degradation: Hutu power defined Hutus as people proud of poverty and base motives; the harsh reality of subsistence farming was romanticized and even elevated into the coats of arms; the President defined civic duty as committing all sorts of hateful crimes (Mukore!).

The self-denial and nihilism is also evident in the conduct and discourse of FDLR/RNC, currently the most vocal anti-RPF group. RNC denies the history of the genocide and frequently prophesize a terrible outbreak of violence in Rwanda. RNC actually confirms in its propaganda what it stands accused of: throwing grenades at public spaces. FDLR/RNC constantly proposes a return to point zero for Rwandans, according to them the past five decades since 1959 have not existed. In short, RNC/FDLR proposes another State doctrine whereby the State derives its legitimacy from an ethnic balance of power as opposed to service delivery (championed by RPF).

The modus operandi of the RNC

The RNC propaganda of a Rwanda on the brink of collapsing sounds bizarre to an objective observer: Rwandans enjoy an unheard off socio-economic progress and it is unlikely that what the RNC top figures have failed to achieve at the height of their might within the government can be achieved as refugees outside of it. However, the RNC has opted for a more sophisticated approach. In his instructive article “Somebody else’s civil war’’, Michael Scott Doran explained well the political modus operandi of terror. Terrorism is defined as “violence used in order to create fear; but it is aimed at creating fear in order that the fear, in turn, will lead somebody else — not the terrorist — to embark on some quite different program of action that will accomplish whatever it is that the terrorist really desires. When a terrorist kills, the goal is not murder itself but something else — for example, a police crackdown that will create a rift between government and society that the terrorist can then exploit for revolutionary purposes”.

In other words, the RNC is well aware of its material and ideological weaknesses but it intends to create a mood of fear and paranoia that would result into a rift amongst RPF cadres or between the RPF and the society. The same strategy is used at international level, where the RNC has deployed to create a bad mood between development partners and the government of Rwanda.

In a recent BBC documentary, the RNC has co-produced a self-indicting pamphlet that denies the existence of the genocide. The RNC/FDLR alliance is well aware of its inability to change historical facts and the gross allegations made in the documentary are easy to debunk. Thus its goal can’t be just bringing out an ‘untold story’. The aim of the RNC /FDLR is to keep Rwanda’s internal and external sphere at ransom. It hopes to destabilize Rwandan political actors and confuse parliamentarians of budget contributing countries to propel them into actions that RNC/FDLR will later qualify as indicators of their narrative of a Rwanda in decay. What does this have to do with the well-being of ordinary Rwandans? It doesn’t aim at proposing better ideas on how to reduce poverty and achieve a middle income status. On the long term such political moves only reinforce RPF’s stance on self-reliance

RNC-FDLR does not want to become an actor within the Rwandan political space, it aims at dismantling it. RNC-FDLR has positioned itself as opponents of the State and not the RPF. The question is then how the State will assert its constitutional order and what the RPF’s role will be.

II.  From State efficiency to Private Sector led Growth

A. Defining the political space

Who should organize political debates?

Given the political weight of the RPF, some have suggested that it would be good to have an alternative political movement for the sake of competition to power. Asked about this question the RPF Presidential Candidate, Paul Kagame, gave a clear answer: ‘I am not responsible for a strong opposition’. Indeed, there are plenty of countries where a staged democracy resulted into chaos. It would be a contradiction for a liberation party believing in people’s not agency to stage another party, nor is it the responsibility of the State to create political parties.

Informally, some western individuals have taken up the task of creating an opposition party to RPF as their holy mission. The problem is again that politics that are not home grown are a dead end.

The question is however whether progress is at all possible without dissent. The answer for anyone with experience in managing people is no. Therefore, since progress is taking place in Rwanda, we should assume that there is a competitive political debate, simply because good ideas have always come out of a competitive debate, even single sources of wisdom such as Oracle from Delphi had to be interpreted.

Granted, a homegrown way of organizing political debate through extensive consultations (inama) and direct participation of citizens may not appear attractive for international analysts who only value what they know.

What is clear is that there are two types of forces trying to reshape the political space in Rwanda: the first type is the grand RPF led coalition of political parties trying to deliver on Vision 2020 and thus shaping the political space around a debate on service delivery and poverty reduction; the second type is the one aimed at ethnic mobilization as structuring force of the political space and thus reigniting genocidal politics. This dichotomy is not influenced by different policies but different State doctrines; it is the attempted continuation of the Rwandan civil war. It is important to note that both State doctrines have been tested with different results, socio-economic growth at the one hand, genocide and poverty on the other. Thus, the Rwandan State will respond to this questioning of its Ordre Publique through police and if need be military action. This strategy is bound to fail since RNC-FDLR is challenging the most reformed and reliable institutions in Rwanda: the security organs. However, Rwanda is a country on the move and the forces that have shaped the Rwandan political space in the past are no longer constant variables.

The forces shaping the Rwandan political space

Regional Integration: One of the fundamental differences between RPF and the former regime is its pivot towards the East as opposed to Central Africa only. RPF has led Rwanda towards regional integration to a point of no return within the EAC but also within the pan-African context. Today, all Africans enter Rwanda without visa and EAC citizen are free to move and work in Rwanda. This has placed Rwanda’s future in the Indian Ocean basin away from being only defined as gateway to the Eastern DRC. It is true that some have recently tried to destabilize Rwanda within the region by raising ethnic tensions in Tanzania. It has resulted into the deportation of several thousands of Rwandophones by Tanzanian authorities. It is also true that the DRC will remain a headache for the foreseeable future, since there is well tested screen of fog consisting of expanding the political conditionality of Rwanda to the stability of the DRC. Lastly, it is also true that regional instability will increase if Alain Juppe makes it to the Elysee Palast. Nonetheless, the world is increasingly looking for regional stability as a way to halt the advance of Islamic terrorism. Indeed, Islamic terrorism is increasingly draining the West into asymmetrical and exhausting warfare which is eroding the power of the West to the benefit of China. It won’t be long until the USA realizes that European ethnic politics in Africa are a highway to nowhere. While the West is lost trying to define bedroom habits in Africa, the East led by China, is taking up all African ports as well as railway and pipelines. One can reasonably predict a geopolitical paradigm shift in favor of reforming African countries, since the world’s leading economies need a continent that is growing.

Demographics: Another force shaping Rwanda’s political space is the youth bulge. It is very amusing to see political figures like former Prime Minister Faustin Twagiramungu agitating politics of the 1960s whne the majority of Rwandans 4 decades are separating him from the majority of Rwandans. The RPF has always made a point of being youthful in its leadership and style. The constant generational renewal of its leadership has prevented entitlement amongst cadr, unlike so many political movements; there are no “originals” in RPF. It is not clear how the young generation will shape Rwanda’s political space. The current youth has already benefited from senior positions within the private and public sectors, openness to the world through fiber optic and more access to education. They now need more jobs and this will require further economic transformation and Urbanization. The political space in Rwanda needs to provide solutions of current and future challenges; it cannot be oriented towards the past.

 

B. A tale of the future

Rwanda has already successfully managed to leapfrog from a heavily indebted failed State to an efficient State whose Eurobond was 9times oversubscribed. However, the forces that have shaped this are not necessarily sufficient to shape Rwanda’s future. The big challenge for Rwanda is now to move from a public sector led growth towards a private sector led economy. Rwanda’s private sector is till narrow and dominated by micro enterprises. Thus, RPF stands again in front of the challenge to fundamentally transform the status quo.

The RPF has demonstrated an unparalleled ability of State efficiency in the post-1994 crisis management. This has given the RPF credentials to leverage on for future elections. Ironically, however, it has also resulted into the RPF being swallowed by the burden of incumbency which has added another layer of pragmatism to an identity already sobered by the genocide and pre-genocide ideological disenchantment. The current RPF cadre is less vocal in political slogans than in action plans (imihigo) to tackle post-harvest losses and quality of education. The risk at hand is to see RPF cadres adopting a civil servant mindset, which is marked by procedures and risk aversion, as opposed to a more revolutionary mindset aimed at turning around the economy.

A recent article in Foreign Affairs pointed at the importance of leadership in economic turn-around, indeed Ruchir Sharma demonstrates “Why Markets Now Use Politics to Predict Economics”. Leadership in achieving a private sector led growth will be the defining role of any political party in Rwanda. The RPF has started this journey, away from the international limelight, but some scholars have already studied it in a study published in 2012. Experiences from other developmental States show that the political scene can be dominated over decades by a party which is organizing competitive debates within party structures. While people debating about the future of Rwanda’s political scene are limiting the debate around the issue of a third term, what is important to note is a reasonable prediction that RPF will remain the major structuring political party.

There will always be attempt to destabilize an RPF led Rwanda. Ironically, the more unfair and arbitrary these threats will be, the stronger RPF stronger will emerge as guarantor of dignity. As the RPF Chairman recently said: “no one owes you a thing, you are on your own and you should own it. You should own your story, own everything about it, shape it the way you want and the way you deserve”. He further added: “With every challenge put on our way, we get stronger, not weaker”.

President Paul Kagame’s personality as General, Statesman and Philosopher of a new African Self-Assertion stands above party politics within Rwanda. Through his mind-shaping leadership, he has opened a new era and not just an agenda. This new era is unfolding with measurable veracity; the ferocity of some critics only confirms that Rwanda’s future is indeed not a fairy tale but a constant quest for freedom.