800,000 dead in 100 days
Guest post by Volker Seitz: Rwanda genocide began 30 years ago.
From April 7 to July 1994, members of the Hutu majority in Rwanda carried out massacres against the Tutsi minority and opposition Hutus. Under President Paul Kagame and his policy of reconstruction and reconciliation, the country has developed relatively well economically and socially since the mass murder.
Back then
Thirty years ago, on April 7, 1994, a genocide began in Rwanda with the still unsolved murder of Rwandan Hutu President Juvénal Habyarimana. In just under one hundred days, over 800,000 people were murdered in the "Land of a Thousand Hills". The genocide was committed by radical Hutu militias and large sections of the Hutu population against the Tutsi minority and opposition Hutu living in Rwanda under the direction of the army. The main weapons were machetes, which were distributed immediately before the genocide. The genocide was prepared by propaganda, e.g. by the state radio station Radio Television Libre des Mille Collins (RTML), which insulted the Tutsis and demanded that the country rid itself of them. There were daily calls to participate in the killing by reading out the names and addresses of Rwandans who fitted the station's image of the enemy.
As we know today, the import of machetes to Rwanda doubled as early as January 1993. A year later, the human rights organization Human Rights Watch published a report that documented further imports of weapons to Rwanda. When, four months before the murders began, an officer of the UN force stationed in Rwanda (UNAMIR) reported confidentially on the intensive preparation of assassination squads, this news fell on deaf ears in the offices of the United Nations in New York. Canadian General Roméo Dallaire, a high-ranking UN military officer, had also warned in vain of the dangers of a catastrophe. The instruction to do nothing came from the then Under-Secretary-General for UN Peacekeeping Operations, Kofi Annan.
The genocide was ended by the invasion of the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF). The founder and strong man of the RPF was Paul Kagame. After weeks of bloody fighting, the rebel army took the capital Kigali and ended the violence. In 2000, he also officially took power in Kigali. More than half of Paul Kagame's government is made up of Hutus. Hutu and Tutsi are now neighbors again. There appears to be little hatred and no feelings of revenge among the survivors of the genocide. Those responsible were punished and victims received material and symbolic compensation. The distinction between the Hutu and Tutsi ethnic groups, which was never a question of ethnicity but of social status, is no longer allowed to be discussed in public. Article 11 of the constitution states: "All Rwandans are born equal and remain equal in rights and duties" ("Tous les Rwandais naissent et demeurent libres et égaux en droits et en devoirs"). They are all Rwandans, plain and simple.
Today
Today, thirty years after the genocide, Rwanda offers its citizens peace, a flourishing economy with low unemployment and equal rights. Rwanda is not at all like the cliché of the hopeless continent. Today, the capital Kigali is considered the safest and cleanest city in Africa. The government banned plastic bags years ago. Under the leadership of Paul Kagame, it has become a model example of a country in Africa that is making progress, a rare ray of hope. Good governance has paid off for the benefit of the population. The young nation's economy is booming and life expectancy has doubled in the last two decades. The proportion of the population living below the poverty line has been significantly reduced. Africans I know regard Kagame as an exemplary modernizer and reconciler. They call him an "enlightened autocrat" in the style of Singapore. He is popular with the people as a guarantor of stability, modest prosperity and economic growth.
Conditions for democracy
Before a Western democracy can emerge in Rwanda, conditions worth living in must first be created. Under Kagame's leadership, Rwanda is one of the few countries in Africa to have achieved its poverty reduction targets. Tourism is the biggest foreign exchange earner because the government recognized the value of wildlife tourism in the untouched forests early on and cleverly marketed trips to the mountain gorillas. After Cape Town and Marrakech, Kigali is also an important destination for business tourism.
No less than 41 percent of national expenditure is spent on health and education. The country's leadership has understood how much a country's prosperity and quality of life depend on education. Access to primary education is guaranteed for boys and girls. Rwanda has a school enrolment rate of almost 100 percent.
The efforts are worthwhile. The level of education is a reliable indicator of the country's long-term prosperity and stability. It plays a pioneering role in good government management. It has a high-quality education infrastructure. Facilities and quality assurance are very good and the population benefits from this. Paul Kagame sees Singapore as his role model. All the successes that Singapore claims to have - the lack of corruption, efficient bureaucracy and economy, protection of the environment - are also among the goals of the Rwandan government.
Tightly governed in the name of the common good
The president has created a meritocracy, a functioning administration and thus a higher quality of life. He repeatedly travels through the provinces and listens to the concerns of the residents. Every mayor is personally obliged to the president to solve problems in his district within a year. Citizens are informed about their rights and laws, what government services they are entitled to and where they can obtain them.
Rwanda is tightly governed, but its leadership is an inspiration to the continent thanks to responsible policies that prioritize the common good, important reforms, wise use of foreign capital and development aid. It is an authoritarian system that has initiated social reforms and substantially improved the living standards of the masses. It is one of the few countries in Africa where homosexuality is considered a private matter.
Economic growth has averaged eight percent over the past decade. And the Rwandan government is trying to attract investors to the country. Anyone investing more than 10 million dollars pays no corporate taxes and setting up a company is relatively straightforward. The country is also considered relatively safe. Kagame's government is keen to ensure that management positions are primarily filled by locals. A special economic zone has been set up in Kigali. Anyone who manufactures products here and wants to export them abroad does not pay customs duties.
Great influence of women
Western observers like to describe Paul Kagame as "controversial". But hardly anyone doubts the positive results of his policies. Under his leadership, Rwanda has developed faster than any other African country over the past two decades. People who reject the president are harder to find than those who celebrate him, writes Swiss journalist Barbara Achermann in her book "Frauenwunderland" (Women's Wonderland), Reclam 2018, which is well worth reading. Child mortality has halved in this period and the number of primary school pupils has tripled.
In few other countries in the world do women have more influence than in Rwanda. They make up 64% of the delegates in parliament, hold 40% of ministerial posts and make up half of the judges on the Supreme Court. Women head the Foreign Office, the airline Air Rwanda and the largest bank, the Bank of Kigali. A quota stipulates that 30 percent of employees at all administrative levels must be women. Equal pay for men and women is not an issue in Rwanda. According to the World Economic Forum, Rwanda ranks fifth in terms of gender equality, ahead of Germany in twelfth place. Start-ups are supported and, with the help of foreign foundations, find office space tailored to their needs and financial backers for promising projects.
No brain drain and no oligarchy
More than 4,500 kilometers of fiber optic cable run through the country, which relies entirely on e-governance and efficiency. The exodus of trained doctors and nurses is also apparently the exception in Rwanda. The medical professions are not only respected in Rwanda, they are also paid above average. To date, Rwanda has trained 300 nurses per year. The number of training places at nursing schools has just been doubled. And the number of medical study places at universities has also been greatly increased.
Time and again, some notoriously know-it-all columnists try to disparage the policies of the "enlightened autocrat" Paul Kagame internationally and relativize the economic and social successes in Rwanda. But stability benefits all neighboring countries. There is a lack of basic freedoms such as freedom of the press and freedom of assembly. There is also no official opposition. But the positives outweigh the negatives, especially when you look at the situation in much richer countries such as Nigeria, Kenya, Cameroon, Angola, Mozambique, Gabon and the two Congos.
Rwanda has been recognized by the UN Refugee Commission as exemplary in its treatment of refugees. Almost 135,000 refugees are currently living in Rwanda. Most of them come from the neighboring countries of Burundi and Congo (Kinshasa). In Rwanda - as elsewhere - they do not have to live in camps, can move around freely, are allowed to work and set up businesses. Nevertheless, the British Supreme Court has raised concerns about the Rwandan asylum procedure. A model facility for refugees flown in from the UK was set up by Kigali. But nothing has been implemented yet because of the court case.
There is no oligarchy in Rwanda that controls all of the state's sources of income and pockets its own money. The quality of life has improved, which is why emigrants are rare. That is why criticism of Paul Kagame's government in the country and in Africa is limited. Africans in other countries that I know long for political and economic stability and would be prepared to give up some of their freedom in return. For many Africans, at least that is my impression, the authoritarian style of leadership is legitimized by the economic upswing. There are no Rwandans on the refugee boats that cross the Mediterranean to Europe. They fly in the opposite direction by plane.
This text was first published in German by Die Achse des Guten and translated into English by myself, Rebecca Hillauer.
Guest posts do not automatically reflect the opinion of the blog owner.