A few years ago I had a chat with a European academic and human rights activist, who wears her “leftist” credentials on her lapels. We met in Kampala. Both of us had left Rwanda a few days previously.

She fancies herself as something of a Rwanda expert. She visits the country every now and then and is usually consumed by the issue of rights.

Within the community — if there is such a thing — of Rwanda watchers there are two broad camps.

There is one that sees the country simply as a rights-allergic dictatorship. Some go as far as claiming it is “becoming increasingly authoritarian.” What this means is never specified. Nor is the point at which the “increase” began, let alone its indicators.

The other camp sees the country as a “democracy in the making,” whose evolution has to be aligned with efforts to manage the twin challenges of trying to overcome the legacies of years of political violence, systematic division, inequity and discrimination, while attempting to build a new society founded on consensus, unity, inclusion, and social cohesion.

The good lady belongs in the former camp. I belong to the latter.

Our chat centred on something the government of Rwanda had decided to do, to which local officials were dedicating time and effort: Encouraging Rwandans, especially in rural areas, to stop walking about barefoot, and to pay attention to their personal hygiene.

The idea behind the initiative was simple: Personal cleanliness is linked to good health and an enhanced sense of self-worth and personal dignity.

In their efforts to get the people they led to embrace the initiative, local leaders were using a range of methods, including sanctions. My interlocutor was angry.

The government, she said, was violating the right of ordinary people to decide whether they wanted to wear shoes or not, and to remain unwashed if they chose to.

She believed it was all about “Kagame’s obsession with looking good.” I found her anger rather amusing.

Unlike her, I felt the government had the responsibility to open its citizens’ eyes to what they needed to do to stay healthy.

It had important potential spin-offs. Healthy citizens would be in a position to do those things that enhance quality of life: Going to school, farming, and generally creating wealth.

Also, healthy citizens free a country’s healthcare system from expending resources on people suffering from preventable diseases.

Getting people to embrace wearing shoes as a habit and good personal hygiene are not the only measures the government of Rwanda has taken in favour of enhancing quality of life for the ordinary citizen.

It got rid of shambolic grass-thatched dwellings lived in by the poor in rural areas; encouraged, sometimes compelled, people living dangerously in poorly built, unplanned hillside dwellings on the fringes of the capital Kigali, to move to new housing in safe locations; introduced mandatory health insurance, and rounds up drug addicts for rehabilitation.

These measures have always stoked controversy and invited condemnation by Western media and rights activists, often eager to pose as champions or protectors of the voiceless.

I once discussed the criticism with a senior Rwandan official. His response was unapologetic. The role of any government, he said, included catalysing mindset change that is ultimately to the benefit of citizens who may wish to stick to harmful ways.

He mentioned laws in Europe that compel parents to send their young children to school regardless of their personal views.

These things came back to mind recently when news broke about the landslides that left hundreds of Sierra Leoneans dead and the country in mourning.

I listened to and read media stories, including interviews with officials and experts.

It became clear that one reason these people had perished was because the government of Sierra Leone had not bothered to enforce planning regulations that would have made it impossible for people to build houses on hillsides that might be swept away by landslides.

Nor, I suppose, had it bothered to compel those who were clearly at risk of falling victim to a possible calamity to move to safe zones. Law enforcement, it seems, is not one of its strengths.

Of course, the government of Sierra Leone is not alone in being guilty of neglecting its responsibility to do all that it takes to protect its citizens from predictable harm or to put in place and enforce measures designed to enhance their quality of life, however unpopular they may be.

One only has to travel across the African continent or even through East Africa to get a sense of the degree to which our governments sleep on the job as far as enforcing public health regulations, physical planning laws and even traffic regulations is concerned.

We have the laws on our statute books, some having been enacted by colonial governments. Once they left, we took to treating them as an inconvenience or not even thinking about them.

Meanwhile our leaders and their rivals spend a great deal of their time obsessing with procedural matters pertaining to how to get power and retain it, as we the citizens indulge them with our support and loyalty.

And whichever group takes power or retains it, we invariably get governments with little or no sense of their obligations to us.

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