If you happen to be Kiswahilophone, you might associate panyarring with panya (rat). Don’t! Else, students of African history – and some of us who are history! – will have a field day, laughing at you. Panyarring has nothing to do with rats. It has everything to do with you and me.
Panyarring was the practice of seizing and holding persons pending the payment of a debt or the resolution of a dispute. It was a common practice along the West African Atlantic Ocean coast in the 18th and 19th centuries. Of course, history books will tell you that the practice was common among the natives of the area. But the fact alone that the word has its root in Portuguese (penhŏràr, to seize) should be revealing, as to who wrote the books.
Moreover, when the debt was not repaid or the dispute not resolved, those seized were sold into slavery. We all know those who practiced slavery and, if it was done by others, for whom it was practiced.
And so, you’ll ask, what does an ancient, primitive practice have to do with Rwanda?
Think about it. You, as a sovereign state, approach another sovereign state because you require a loan and the two of you enter into an agreement. The state gives you the loan and decides, of its own volition, to accompany it with aid. Again, you enter an agreement.
Then one morning the media breaks the news to you that the state has put a halt to everything. In time, the news filters to you that the state – or states, to be exact – did it following rumours that there were elements speaking your language, who were causing trouble to your neighbour, another sovereign state.
Your protests of innocence, and explanations as well as evidence that your language is spoken by many in your neighbourhood, all go unheeded. Your expectations of a gentleman’s word are given short shrift.
When you depend on such shifty agreements for your sustenance, haven’t you been seized? When your survival is dependent upon being the good boy as another wants, isn’t your soul being held captive? This, whether you ask me or not, is panyarring at its most vicious.
And, indeed, Rwanda saw it from the outset. For, even in their culture, Rwandans knew that a man (and that includes woman) was a man only when he could stand on his own feet, rely on his own means. And they knew that he could prosper and lead a dignified life only if he pooled his energies with the energies of others. The values of self-sustenance and community were strong.
Thus, when they got a leadership that awakened them to the reality of this panyarring, Rwandans rose in their totality and rallied together, as they’d done in their history before colonial interference. They came together to seek ways of eventually pulling themselves out of it. That’s how they quickly started to work on their unity and reconciliation. Only by working as one could they put into practice the policies of their government. And thus, the genesis of the dizzying progress they’ve been registering.
All Rwandans, within the country and without, rallied together to join their leadership in answering the call of self-advancement. And, as individual incomes of those inside the country grew, so did the remittances of those in the Diaspora swell. When the country got the rude awakening of aid-cut threats, they responded by setting up their own Agaciro Development Fund. Even if it could not totally replace donor funds, it could cushion the fall that such sudden cuts inevitably engender.
But Rwanda would not be the Rwanda Inc she has been dubbed if she didn’t totally go the way of other companies. And so, for the first time, she launched her treasury bond to test her debt worthiness in the investor community. The $400m Eurobond may have been small for a country, as some in the media have been quick to dismiss it. But, again as some in the media have been quick to point out, by its being over-subscribed it has demonstrated that the markets have endorsed Rwanda as truly “the ultimate turnaround”.
It’s not surprising, therefore, that countries that threatened aid-cuts seem to be doing a rethink. Maybe they were missing something that the markets have been seeing all along. Barring the seemingly now-ignored existence of the Forces Démocratiques de Libération du Rwanda (FDLR) problem in the jungles of D.R. Congo, Rwanda has no bone to pick with any neighbour – or anybody further afield; apparently, many out there are interested in them (FDLR).
Still, it must be clear that the grudge is not due to FDLR constituting a threat; the stability, transparency and future of this country are secure. Rather, the terrorist group is allowed to continue holding innocent women and youth hostage. These, together with others scattered in capital cities of the world because they are held captive to its misguided ideology, constitute hands that Rwanda badly needs.
When it comes to the war against panyarring, it must be all hands on deck. But, still, no amount of donor-turnaround or FDLR-ideology subscription can divert Rwanda from her sworn mission.
Rwanda will break free of this panyarring and investors know they can take that to the bank.
