June 1st 2016
I enjoyed reading comments in the media on Rwanda’s successful hosting of the World Economic Forum. I was particularly amused by the banter between some who, on one hand, opined that the country attracted world attention for playing proficient host, thanks to her “Agaciro”, and those who, on the other, saw such opinions as hollow Rwanda-praise.
I remember one snidely sneering: “……in fact, the world can’t trace Rwanda on the map!”
Come to think of it, has Agaciro focused the sting of world attention on Rwanda?
I wouldn’t hazard a guess but I know it for a fact that, in fact, Rwandans shun attention and attracting it is far from their desire. Their Agaciro is purely for their own consumption.
Unfortunately, when in 1994 they attracted attention for the wrong reasons, Agaciro had to do with it. And if today they attract it, it’s thanks to Agaciro.
How so, you may ask. A question, in answering which, we risk tying ourselves in knots for, first, we have to understand what Agaciro is. Because, as I understand it, it is not dignity as such, as some have posited. Agaciro cannot be translated into one single English word.
Agaciro is a set of choices. It embodies the positive values by which Rwandans choose to live. It means living harmoniously as a self-dependent society. It is freedom from subjugation, from want, disease, ignorance, from all ills.
It is uprightness, self-worth, self-respect, dignity, et al, and it involves giving other societies respect and, wherever possible, support. And deserving – yes, deserving – reciprocal respect and support.
You can choose to ‘live’ it or not, it will remain Agaciro. And, indeed, Rwandans have ever chosen not to live it.
Before the advent of colonialism, Rwandans lived Agaciro through the establishment of liaisons that bonded them together, building on the language, culture, etc, they shared, as a near-coherent society, overseen by their Imana y’u Rwanda.
This unity under one God was further elaborated through an extensive system of close and extended families that formed clans. Across clans where this biological brother/sisterhood did not exist, there were liaisons through marriage; ‘ukunywana’ (literal sharing of blood – blood brotherhood? So strong, such a brother followed me in exile in Congo Kinshasa, Uganda, Kenya and back!); exchange of gifts; et al.
Rwandans lived Agaciro but, save for neighbours, nobody else knew about their existence.
When colonialism came visiting at the close of the 1800s, it set about systematically destroying these bonds, to divide Rwandans and thus easily rule them.
Colonialists picked on the littlest differences and developed them into fissures, to present them as ‘natural’ antagonistic features of what first they called different races, later toned down to ethnic groups. Through cunning, coercion and brutal force, with the help of their administration and religion, they tore up Rwandans’ societal fabric and set them on a collision course that plunged them into the first “practice genocide” (so termed by experts), in 1959.
However, the world had seen slave trade, genocides, colonialism and other vices and was not necessarily shocked by this and subsequent practice genocides. (Yes, oppressed of the world, let’s not tire in harping on this history, or else we’ll be answering to the whims of the oppressor.)
When the close of the twentieth century imploded with the genocide against the Tutsi, the world was riveted by the horror and sat up in dismayed disbelief.
That’s how Rwanda burst onto the spot of world attention for losing Agaciro.
Of course, the world – of the oppressor, and some oppressed – expected, or maybe hoped, that this pull of attention would be momentary. Which it’d have been, had Rwanda sunk back into strife. But since the Rwandans who defeated the forces of genocide were guided by Agaciro, they were prepared to reclaim it for all and defend it.
They knew that the life of every single Rwandan depended on it, if Rwanda was going to claim its place among civilised nations.
And so here we are, a permanent magnet to world attention.
If the world does not want to know about a wonder traditional court system that tried and reconciled millions in no time, it’s about the most gender sensitive society. If not about the safest and most orderly country around, then the one registering most impressive economic growth.
If not about the only country milking electricity from methane gas, it’s about the only one daring to drone-deliver medicine. If not one with the biggest number of forums where the leadership and the citizenry meet to together chart out their future (show me a better form of democracy), then……..near-ad infinitum!
Seeing these leaders, together with representatives of all groups of our society, hunched over makeshift desks to brainstorm the restoration of Agaciro, in Urugwiro meetings of 1998 – 9, who would have guessed their resolutions would lead to an exciting journey?
Yesterday in the spotlight for seemingly unstoppably hurtling down the abyss, today for having turned daring doer after having performed a miraculous reversal that set this land on this journey of unique firsts.
Nay, I know it for a fact: Rwanda, wanting it or not, will always attract attention.
