Advertisement

Rwandans don’t fear anyone, they’re singing and dancing

Wednesday July 26 2017
rpf

At each of Kagame’s rallies there were tens of thousands of visibly happy Rwandans, young, old, men and women, able-bodied and disabled, doing very little besides singing, dancing and cheering. PHOTO | URUGWIRO

By FREDRICK GOLOOBA-MUTEBI

I was in Kenya this past week, on one of several short visits in the past one year. Just over a year ago, I spent some time upcountry. Something struck me.

The election, which will take place in a matter of days, was still 14 months or so away. However, the country was already in campaign mode. County governors and other elected local officials were busy trying to “fight off” would-be rivals who were already traversing the countryside and priming voters to vote for them when the time came.

Questions kept popping into my mind.

One: How much time were the leaders who were politicking spending on working and addressing the concerns of ordinary citizens?

Two: How much disruption was the politicking causing in places where people should be farming and going about other activities from which they derive a livelihood?

Three: Why was it necessary to start campaigning so early for elections that were so far away?

Advertisement

Perhaps as significant was that some people in Nairobi and elsewhere, diplomats representing their countries in Kenya included, were talking about the likelihood of violence and wondering what needed to be done to prevent it.

Even today, on the eve of the polls, some people are talking of possible violence. I have endeavoured to understand what underlies all this talk. There are two likely scenarios, apparently.

One: The incumbent and his group rig the elections. The opposition rejects the results and calls upon its supporters to do the same and to ensure that they, “the real winners,” take power. Two: The opposition win and frighten the incumbent’s supporters into not accepting the outcome and trying to overturn it.

My knowledge of Kenya and its politics is not that deep. So if I repeat these claims, which may or may not have a solid basis, it is for the purposes of reporting what I have heard, not asserting what I can claim to know. But then I am not as brave as some of those who parachute in and out of places and go on to assert half-baked views as “instant experts” on matters of this kind, especially when it comes to Africa.

Before going to Kenya on my latest visit, I had been in Rwanda, where the presidential campaigns had just kicked off. I have spent a significant part of the past 17 years in and out of that country; I have been watching the environment as different political actors brace themselves for this year’s polls. Anyone visiting the country even a month before would have had difficulty believing the elections would take place.

Whether in Kigali or the countryside, ordinary people were busy going about whatever they do to earn a living. Politicians may have been thinking and talking about what they were going to do and how they were going to do it, but all that was mainly out of view, as campaigning for everybody is confined to only three weeks.

The only people talking of violence were the same foreign experts, journalists and rights activists who have been predicting it over and over again for the past 23 years the RPF has been in power, and possibly a few diplomats and expats for whom this is a favourite theme, for reasons that can only be guessed.

Reading the various reports talking of “a climate of fear” or even “rule by intimidation,” made me wonder, once again, what it is they see and hear that I don’t and that the ordinary and not-so-ordinary Rwandans I talk to, also do not.

When the campaigns kicked off, I made a point of attending some rallies. I attended the first four of President Paul Kagame and the Rwanda Patriotic Front. I observed many things and met many friends and acquaintances and complete strangers on the campaign trail. I spent most of my time riding with and talking to the owner of an independent media company whose knowledge of Rwanda is considerably deeper than mine.

At each of Kagame’s rallies there were tens of thousands of visibly happy Rwandans, young, old, men and women, able-bodied and disabled, doing very little besides singing, dancing and cheering.

In attendance were not only members and supporters of the incumbent and his party, but senior leaders and supporters of another eight political parties.

Remarkably, these other ones were resplendent in their party colours, clad in T-shirts bearing Kagame’s image and the slogan “Tora Kagame” (vote for Kagame) and “Dukomeze inzira y’iterimbere” (let’s continue walking the path of development).” So then where was “the fear” that experts and others were telling the world had “enveloped” Rwanda? My companion kept asking himself the same question.

Back in Kigali, I sought out my friend Dr Frank Habineza, leader of the Democratic Green Party of Rwanda and one of the other presidential candidates, to find out how he was faring.

He had encountered a few snags here and there, each time the responsible government organs responding promptly to sort them out. In his own words, “There is a lot of improvement since 2010.” It seems the mass fear some experts and commentators keep touting exists only in their imagination.

Frederick Golooba-Mutebi is a Kampala- and Kigali-based researcher and writer on politics and public affairs. E-mail: [email protected]

Advertisement