25th October 2013
I was checking the facebook page of a Johnny-come-lately member of a group of critics of the Rwandan government when I saw this sketchy but interesting cartoon on President Paul Kagame.
I looked up the page because a friend told me that the critic, a self confessed late bloomer, had commented on my write-up where I’d mentioned his name – through its ‘evolutions’ as it bent to the needs of his educational ‘blooming’! – among other names of self-exiled Rwandan critics of their government.
I’d reveal more home truths about my said brother critic that’d call his extravagantly proclaimed PhD in question but for the sake of his ‘declaration of a truce’, that of not appearing to bandy little personal ‘folly-and-fallacy’ foibles with individuals, and especially for the sake of some of his friends, I’ll hold my peace.
I say “especially for the sake of his friends” because one of them I hold in high regard, admiring as I am of his weekly opinion that’s a mentorship gem, which appears in a Ugandan daily. The other, though, who may go the way of the worries that he ‘drowns’ with much commitment, and his litany of fellow praise-singers, I wouldn’t want to engage.
If I am not being exactly clear, please forgive me, esteemed reader, but know that those to whom I talk understand. My wish is only that my brother critic blooms in the end; it hasn’t been glaringly in evidence, this far.
But the cartoon, remember? In it, President Kagame stands as a lone ranger, his hands hovering over trigger, even as he is pitted against a number of countries, in form of tanks, which want to do him in for his unbending stance on his convictions. In fact, the neophyte cartoonist must have rather unwittingly missed out the international subsystems: judicial, humanitarian, media, human rights – the horde of activists lined up against one man.
What’s interesting in the cartoon is that what it depicts is a possibility!
But, of course, what they all miss – cartoonist, countries, systems and all – is that Kagame personifies the Rwanda Patriotic Front (RPF) and, by extension, the government and all Rwandans (minus those critics, though, because they’ve chosen to abandon their Rwandanness). In short, Kagame represents the essence of being Rwandan. For, in the final analysis, this essence of being Rwandan is what the RPF set out to effect and it’s what is in evolution today.
The RPF came into being with one core programme that’s expressed in one crisp Kinyarwanda expression. Loosely translated, it’s thus said: a short banana stalk will have everybody picking its leaves. In other words, if you allow yourself to be easy prey, everybody will hunt you down or harass you. If you allow yourself to be a bin, you’ll be used for carrying trash. So, the programme is to reject being used and abused in any way by anybody.
It’s a call to go back to what a succession of generations has ingrained in the Rwandan psyche and culture. A call for self-assertion and the collective assertion of the dignity of Rwandans, at any cost and in the face of the most formidable enemy.
From the core programme of self-assertion sprang nine clarifications: unity; peace and security; democracy; no corruption; good living standard; country of no refugees; good relations with other countries and never again to Genocide. On the nine programmes have been built others that have served as clarifications and expansions as are in evidence today. Kagame or no Kagame, RPF or none, the Rwandan of this age will fight to defend this dignity.
In a word, that lone figure encircled by those tank muzzles; the figure with hands at the ready to flash to the trigger; that unflinching figure is Rwanda. And, of course, many an African country in her company.
That’s why, for example, it should not surprise anybody when they see that Rwanda is not alone among the leading voices of the African Union that have rejected the double standards of the International Criminal Court. If those voices had had their way, they’d have terminally severed the umbilical cord that still ties Africa to the ICC. Africans may not be speaking with one voice today but that that eventuality will definitely come is not in doubt.
For the moment, the African intelligentsia seems to have pinned its hopes on the ICC delivering justice to the abused people of this continent, with the exception of a few dissenters. But surely by now the wise men and women of this continent should have seen that assistance from out always comes after the rains, as Rwandans say.
When those benevolent caretakers of the West leave their threats of fire and brimstone and think of rescuing our peasants, floods of torture will have consumed this continent.
If, for instance, in that cartoon those tanks were to represent our elite leaders, we as citizens of this continent must know that we alone will stand against that tide of bombardment. Like that lone ranger, we must be prepared to challenge it. No Western benevolence will do it for us.
In 1994, Rwanda revealed the truism of this. That cartoon should inspire every African.
