The Independent Uganda: You get the Truth we Pay the Price
As Rice concluded her speech with her carefully rehearsed qualifications about the need for economic reform to be in tandem with political reform, I was lost. I asked myself what a poor country like Rwanda would do to protect itself against the recurrence of such a catastrophe. If media mobilised for genocide, what restrictions are justifiable to limit future abuses? If political parties appealed to ethnic extremism and were willing to commit genocide to gain power, what should be done to avoid this behaviour in future? Given my own predilection to its values, my first country of reference was America. However, as pointed out above, America is an example of what any nation should NOT do when under threat. If Rwanda behaved like the US, it would have turned into a prison with roadblocks in every village and torture chambers in every locality. Neither could I turn to Britain because it has not been much different from America.
I know that the political system in Rwanda and the civic space and the mass media have many limitations upon them. Many of the limitations are products of lack of human resource capacity, a factor that Rice ignored. Some are self imposed by individuals and groups because of their experiences, something many commentators ignore. And others are imposed on society by the state justifiably and sometimes unjustifiably. I also know that for every limitation on political freedoms by the state in Rwanda, there are contestations over them. Rwanda is not a static society. It is fairly vibrant with different forces vying for increasing state control and others for greater freedoms. This is healthy as, to quote that ancient Greek philosopher, Heracleitus, strength is generated by the tension between opposites.
Kwame Nkrumah – that great hero of the African peoples – once said that “Those who would merely judge us by the heights we have achieved would do better to remember the depth from which we started.” Any judgement of Rwanda therefore has to begin from this basis. Celebrated American political scientist, Robert Dahl, once argued that democracy has two aspects; one is contestation, the other is participation. Contestation refers to how freely the political opposition contest for power from those holding it. Participation inquires into how many groups participate in politics and determine who the rulers should be.
Let us look a Rwanda on these two scores. According to the 2003 Rwandan constitution, no political party – regardless of how many votes it gets – can hold more than 50 percent of cabinet positions. The constitution also says that the president of the country and the speaker of parliament cannot come from the same party. Although the constitution does not require the president of the senate to come from a different political party from that of the president of the country, over the last seven years, the president of the senate has always come from outside of the president’s party. The current president of the senate, Damacen Ntarikuriryayo was President Paul Kagame’s leading challenger in the last election. And it is also until two months ago that for the first time since 1994 that the prime minister of Rwanda comes from the same political party as the president.
This constitutional innovation and the accompanying political practices were shaped by the experience of the early 1990s. The opening up of political space in 1990 generated a high level of political contestation in Rwanda and as a result stimulated the emergence of extremist political parties. These factors led genocide. Many Rwandans think that these extreme political positions were born of the winner-take-all system that existed then. Therefore, the 2003 constitution innovated ways to stop control of government by one group. This has reduced the appetite for extremist political contestation because every party knows that regardless of its majority, it will have to work with other parties in cabinet. So it is not good to antagonise your potential allies through extremely polarised positions.
More importantly, Rwanda has a Political Parties’ Forum whose chairmanship rotates among the different parties every month regardless of their electoral strength. Political parties meet regularly through this forum and discuss and harmonise major policy positions before going public. Because of this forum, political parties in Rwanda are less polarised and policy contestation is less heated compared to elsewhere.
Many observers of Rwanda, ignorant of these political innovations and armed with a set of prejudices about politics in Africa think that there is no significant political contestation in that country. Indeed, it is their prejudice about Africa that makes them prey to misinformation from Rwandan dissidents many of whom are either genocidaires running from justice or corrupt former officials who cannot find space in the new society that is being built. Thus, sections of the international press, human rights organisations and particular sections of the academia that lost intellectual control over Rwanda after 1994 have made themselves spokesperson of these groups.
Political contestation among the major political parties in Rwanda is less polarised because of the aforementioned constitutional innovations and political practices. Any casual visit to Netherlands or Belgium, where no single party can command a governing majority will reflect the kind of political accommodation we see in Rwanda. Because for any party to rule in Belgium it has to mobilise not less than four to six coalition partners, political parties in that country are reluctant to adopt extremely hostile political positions to other parties lest they alienate potential allies. This makes their politics less polarised and more reconciliatory in their rhetoric.
This practice is very different from the US (and until recently the UK) where you have two dominant parties able to govern without need for coalition partners. Today, American politics is so polarised, it is difficult to build a consensus on anything unless and until there is a major security threat like 9/11.
As Ms Rice spoke, I wondered whether she knows the existence of over 60 newspapers and eleven radio stations with talk shows literally discussing anything under the sun in Rwanda. In fact the unethical and often blatantly criminal practices Rwandan journalists indulge would make News of the World seem like a very responsible newspaper. Yet News of the World was closed down by its own owner because of indulging in criminal and unethical conduct, something no Rwandan newspaper can suffer. Therefore, the absence of the kinds of restraints from shareholders, society and journalist associations that we see in Europe is the biggest challenge facing the mass media in Rwanda.
Again as Ms Rice called for more political accommodation in Rwanda, I asked myself who briefs her about the countries she visits. Listening to her was the commissioner general for correctional services, Paul Rwarakabije, the former overall commander of the FDLR, Rwanda’s leading rebel group and Jerome Ngendahimana, currently deputy commander of the reserve forces who was chief of intelligence in FDLR. In fact Ngendahimana’s, wife is a MP representing RPF in parliament. RPF has found the courage to reconcile with its enemies and work with them. Where America has been belligerent and uncompromising in its assassinations, arrests, torture and prosecution of its enemies, Rwanda has sought reconciliation, accommodation and moderation.
Can America accommodate any members of Al Qaeda if they surrendered and instead of jailing them in pursuit of justice integrate them into its democratic power structure? These questions kept racing in my head as I tried to establish the source of American hubris when it comes to lecturing others about best political practices. Who should have lecturing the other: America to Rwanda or vice versa?
