Looking at the unending journeys Rwandan officials are making to and from a litany of cities, one wonders why they are so agitated. If they are not in Kinshasa or Goma, they are in Addis Ababa, Kampala or New York. If they are not shouting themselves hoarse, they are burning their fingers on keyboards. All this is done to proclaim their innocence. Yet they know that these accusations of complicity in the eastern DRC problem are fabricated. And they know that their accusers know it too.
Why is Rwanda wasting her energy and resources – even depleting the aid that she should be conserving as the “donor community” threatens to cut it? Doesn’t it only serve to lend credence to these accusations? Why doesn’t she swallow her pride and avoid a faceoff with this “international community” which, as she knows, is the “donor community”, anyway?
She knows, after all, that that aid won’t be gone for long, if she keeps quiet. For, being among a few countries that use it well to produce results, she knows she will always be touted around as evidence that it is redeeming some souls in what they consider our cursed continent.
Why is Rwanda trying to bite the hand that feeds her? It’s odd, indeed.
But that’s exactly Rwanda for you – odd. Where you’d expect any other country to play the rat in the paws of a cat, she plays the cat instead. She does not try to take advantage of a temporary release to negotiate a longer reprieve. She rejects the release to face off with the cat.
I think I know Rwanda’s problem: her loathing of agasuzuguro. Everybody hates being despised but there is nothing that drives Rwandans up the wall like showing them agasuzuguro (denigration). This is because denigration and senseless provocation are an affront against their agaciro (self-worth, honour, dignity), something they cherish to a point bordering on mania. Which is why the word agaciro comes up in literally every utterance they make on personal or national matters. For Rwandans, without agaciro there is no life.
Therefore, a good whipping is good for Rwanda. It brings out the creative animal in Rwandans. Pushed against the wall, they will outdo themselves in ways that sometimes surpass their own expectations.
They’ll go to all lengths, delve into their tradition to explore ways in which they dealt with a situation similar to the one they are faced with. Then it’ll be a matter of adjusting the answer to the problem at hand. If such a way is not found, they’ll comb the histories and modern tool-kits of countries of the world and somehow squeeze out a permanent solution. All in rejection of agasuzuguro. All in defence of agaciro. And the history of this country is replete with examples.
To mention but two. Around the late 14th century and early 15th century, the powerful king of Bunyoro – in modern-day Uganda – twice led forays into Rwanda in search of her famed cattle. The first raid was halted at Gatsata, here in Kigali, and the invaders were given punishment that should have convinced them to stop picking on a mean customer. But Bunyoro was the bully of the region and it attacked again. When they heard Bunyoro’s King Cwa was advancing with his indomitable warriors, Rwandans retreated to the distant south-western fringes of Rwanda – in Bushi (later portioned off by colonialists to today’s DRC).
By the time Cwa’s men realised they were walking into a trap that was going to totally engulf them, they’d waded deep into south-western Rwanda and it was all they could do to rush back over the taxing hills of Rwanda and across the border to save their king. But they’d shown agasuzuguro and rubbed Rwanda the wrong way.
So, after some years of readying, Rwandan warriors pushed their way through Ankole towards Bunyoro. Luckily for Banyoro, they could not find their way around Rwicanzige (Lake Albert). But, anyway, the message had passed and that was the last of Banyoro warriors’ ill-advised adventures into Rwanda.
At the turn of the 20th century, however, the enemy that Rwanda was confronted with was a totally different cup of bile and she had to swallow her pride. For half a century, she lived under the thumb of colonialism and Catholicism and watched as these gun-and-Bible-toting forces messed up with her destiny. Many of her people resisted, yes, but many more were converted. By end of the mid-century, this group of misguided Rwandans had lost direction to a point where they could do what had never been done in the history of their society: kill fellow Rwandans. Apart from embracing this gasuzuguro, they taunted their compatriots with it.
Independence, when it came, did not help. The social fabric of Rwanda had been torn up.
Things had fallen apart. And it would take no less than 39 years and more than a million lives lost for a few braves to stitch together what remained of their values and rise to the challenge of bringing the destiny of their society back on course. It was a long journey and it’s a journey still in progress. Along the way, from tradition and modernity, innovative ways have been undertaken to erase for good that gasuzuguro. And to embolden Rwandans that they should forever proudly carry the banner of their gaciro.
1990, where it all began. How it all looks so distant, yet how it still haunts us to this day. We are still in a fight with past-and-modern-day ghosts, who all seem intent on never leaving us alone.
But yesteryear is not today (burya si buno). Colonialist cohorts, religious rangers, Francophonie phantoms, jungle judges, expert-groupie hoaxes, media mixers, rights-activist rompers, humanitarian humblers and all shades of bulldozers hooded in “international community” or working as its foot soldiers, Rwandans have seen them all.
Every pebble, stone, mud-ball, bungling boulder they throw, Rwanda will throw right back at them with the last ounce of her energy and last penny of her resources. For her, outside of exposing fraudulent forces, rejecting their agasuzuguro to defend her agaciro, there is no life. So, a luta continua….
And then ikibyimbye nigishaka kizameneke (and may the boil be lanced, if it will)!
