As I sat down to write this column, Rwandans were only hours away from the beginning of the presidential campaigns, as they awaited voting on August 3 and 4.

Rwandans in the diaspora will have the first taste of this year’s elections, on August 3, those present in the country having their turn the following day.

Being in Rwanda in the run-up to presidential elections is quite an experience. Those with firm views about how electoral processes in a “democracy” are supposed to be managed, keep wondering, some aloud: “Is there going to be an election here soon”? It is easy to understand why.

They come carrying a fair amount of baggage in their minds. You see, preparations for elections in the “democracies” they are used to or those about which they have learnt through textbooks, entail doing certain things: Pinning up candidates’ posters wherever there is space, including on street lamp posts, pavements and even the perimeter walls of private property; public displays of support for this or that candidate or political party, usually by paid “activists” and at least a few brawls among supporters of rival parties or candidates.

When the baggage carriers look around and fail to see any of this, conclusions come thick and fast: “There is no competition here”; “There is no freedom to organise.”

And when they solicit the views of ordinary Rwandans, who in many cases don’t treat politics as a sport in the same way people elsewhere tend to do, they decide they have discovered something really important: “People here are afraid to talk.”

It gets worse when they ask questions about President Kagame and people refuse to engage: “Kagame is such a dictator; people are scared even to mention his name.”

And then they try discussing ethnicity, asking people whether they are Hutu or Tutsi, and get the response “I am Rwandan.” They do not waste time reflecting on the reason why Rwandans who just over two decades had learnt to look at themselves in terms of these categories, now prefer to say they are “Rwandans.”

There is always a ready reason, which is recycled endlessly and glibly by some external media and some Rwanda experts: “Kagame has abolished ethnicity.” Those who are given to lecturing or offering unsolicited advice then start telling whoever cares to listen, “This is dangerous; you can’t abolish identity.”

If you live in Rwanda and endeavour to ask questions carefully with the necessary sensitivity in order to understand, rather than in a bid to validate a theory or satisfy your editorial instructions, you’ll find these experts at best amusing, at worst possibly irritating. Their conclusions are bogus. The reality is much more complex.

For example, no law prohibits Rwandans from saying that they are Hutu or Tutsi, or even Twa. And it is not true that Rwandans do not discuss these identities in reference to themselves or to others. One learns overtime that they are loath to respond to a question about their identities from total strangers whose motivations are unclear.

It is only recently that these same labels were the basis for determining whether one died or lived, and before that, how far one advanced in life. It shouldn’t surprise that today the tendency is to want to downplay them and to prefer the all-embracing Rwandan identity.

Is Kagame so scary? The longer you live in Rwanda the more you discover that he can be. For one thing, he’s famous for his iron discipline, quick temper, and for not suffering fools gladly.

And truth be told, history shows that leaders do not succeed at driving such radical transformation of a country in so short a time by being cuddly liberals and tolerating sloth, fecklessness and gratuitously disruptive behaviour.

Is this why Rwandans won’t discuss Kagame in a casual conversation with whosoever seeks to initiate it? It seems not.

There is a sense in which, over the past two decades, many Rwandans have come to see their president as a symbol of something deeply significant: The transformation of their country from one that evoked feelings of pity and revulsion just over a generation ago, to one that people in many parts of Africa and beyond, look to for inspiration.

If they are reluctant to make him the subject of tittle-tattle with unfamiliar foreigners, this, it seems to me, is the main reason.

As for political competition, there is a way one could frame it without jumping to conclusions: Competition is managed and kept within limits. This is the product of a hard-earned consensus among most of the country’s political parties, which to some critics is unfamiliar and questionable, because it does not fit what they have seen elsewhere or read about in books.

Perhaps the most interesting question about Rwanda is whether the gains it has made under Kagame’s leadership are sustainable and destined to outlast his presidency. Many experts argue forcefully that they are not. It is probably more prudent to reserve one’s judgement.

Thanks to what Rwandans call the “Rwanda spirit,” Rwanda has a well-developed capacity to surprise. Analysts who once staked their reputations on predicting doom know that only too well.

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