Rwanda has put the genocide behind it to become East Africa’s trailblazer

An ambitious recovery programme has seen Rwanda make major economic, political, and social strides in the past 15 years. Nation Correspondent KEZIO-MUSOKE DAVID reports from KIGALI

Although the official week of mourning to remember those who perished in the 1994 genocide in Rwanda has ended, there country will commemorate the event for 100 days.

During that period, which ends in June, Rwandans will reflect on the events that took place over a three-month period, during which close to a million people were murdered in a calculated move by a group of Hutu extremists to wipe out the country’s Tutsi population. Also killed were moderate fellow Hutus.

The victims were shot, hacked with machetes, bludgeoned on the streets, smashed against brick walls and in some cases, even blown to pieces with grenades in churches.

Speaking to the international media in the capital, Kigali, on Monday last week, President Paul Kagame said that, although there is still a deliberate attempt to downplay the number of casualties, official estimates after several expert counts put the figure at about 1.2 million. This means that on average, some 12,000 people were killed every day, which works out to 500 people every hour, and about eight every minute.

Today, survivors are taking stock of the indiscriminate slaughter, which was carried out by highly organised forces.

The attacks were planned by some Hutu politicians and carried out by the Interahamwe militia.

Last week, many Rwandans heard a survivor recall the horror of his experience on TV. “The killers had orders to take the identity cards of those they had killed, which were used to determine the number of people who had been killed,” said the man, who seemed remarkably composed.

“They would return after a day of killing and hand the victims’ IDs to their commander, saying their mission had been accomplished” he added.  

Identity cards

The identity cards, known as indangamuntu in Kinyarwanda and carte d’identité’ in French, were introduced in 1933 by the Belgian colonial government, mainly to distinguish the Tutsi from the Hutu. And as it turned out during the genocide, they facilitated the killings since the Interahamwe were able to identify their victims easily.  

By the end of June 1994, the genocide had been largely brought under control, thanks to the military intervention of the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), a rebel group founded by Rwandan exiles, with Kagame as commander. The RPF is widely acknowledged to have stopped the genocide with no external support whatsoever, not even from the UN peacekeeping mission, which had a presence in Kigali at that time.  

In 1996, two years after the genocide, the young but promising RPF government banned the use of the indangamuntu in an attempt to promote unity and reconciliation and also to bury the demons that have haunted Rwanda since the 1950s. The government also began a policy of downplaying the differences between the country’s two major ethnic groups.

Economic recovery

Since then, Rwanda has undergone a radical transformation, having embarked on an ambitious programme of social and economic recovery, even as it seeks to establish national unity. In fact, many former militia fighters who had fled to neighbouring Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) have returned to join reintegration camps. By 1998 the country was still reeling from the effects of the genocide, which had left 95,000 children orphaned. By 2004, there were 613,000 orphans aged 14 years and below.  

The years before the genocide, when Juvenal Habyarimana was president, Rwanda was in a bad state, with its economy in a shambles. Besides, then president Habyarimana had not created any credible institution of governance.

Rwanda has had its low moments since 1994 and is still haunted by some ghosts from the past. But the government has always stepped in to move the country forward. When the number of genocide suspects rose dramatically in 2001, for instance, it introduced the traditional Gacaca justice system, which has successfully handled about 1.5 million cases in about 14,300 courts.

Psychological trauma

Despite these positive measures, however, is not easy to measure the terrible psychological trauma suffered by the survivors who either experienced or witnessed unspeakable horrors. And 15 years later, many people still think of the genocide when Rwanda is mentioned.

However, government officials have repeatedly made it clear that the genocide is a thing of the past, which will “never again” be allowed to happen. They say Rwanda has put all that in the past and is now forward-looking, with a potential for growth that has not been fully explored.

Speaking to US magazine Fast Company recently, President Kagame said: “We will not forget the genocide, but we will not be defined by it either. Each year we use the memory of the genocide to convene a national discussion, and we use the discussion to talk about the future. We want to be known as a purpose-driven nation, a nation in which individual responsibility is in harmony with the collective good.

He went on to explain that the country would attract investment and enhance its ability to export high-quality products adding, “We know that if that past is never to happen again, we must grow our economy, create opportunities for higher wages, so that we create the conditions for tolerance, trust and optimism. That is Rwanda’s new brand identity.”

The president’s believes that economic growth is the key to preventing another genocide. For the 15 years he has been at the helm, Kagame has run Rwanda effectively, eased ethnic tensions and introduced a leadership style that is broad-based, decentralized and reflected at all levels.

A new constitution produced after the 2003 referendum sets a two-term limit for a sitting president and also institutionalized power-sharing. It also stipulates that the president and the Speaker should not come from the same party. One of the most distinctive features of the new constitution is that it forbids the president from appointing cabinet ministers from just one party.

As a result, Kagame has been obliged to appoint some cabinet ministers from other political parties. 

In the post-genocide era, great progress has also been made in the area of gender equality. Rwanda is now the only country in the world whose parliament is dominated by women. In addition, many key members of Kagame’s administration are women, including the ministers of Foreign Affairs, Information, Education and Infrastructure, as well as the Speaker. 

Today, Rwanda is a notable investment destination. The Kagame administration has upgraded the country’s infrastructure and attracted foreign aid.

Indeed, according to the Minister of Finance and Economic Planning, James Musoni, the country’s gross domestic product (GDP) grew by six per cent in 2008. The country has joined the East African Community (EAC), which has a combined population of about 130 million people. Meanwhile, its development strategy, outlined in its Vision 2020, embodies its aspiration to become a lower-middle-income economy with a per capita of $900 (Sh72,000) by that year.

The paper further outlines an ambitious plan to make Rwanda a technological hub in the region, with plans to build a countrywide fibre optic network connecting 30 districts by the end of this year.

A remarkable development is the transformation of Kigali. Once known as a major environment polluter, the city is now clean and well maintained, with readily available, high-speed Internet connection. It has been described by Habitat International as one of Africa’s cleanest and safest cities.

Great progress

Given its hilly landscape, Rwanda’s terrain is not suitable for intensive agriculture, but strategic investments in quality and efficiency have enabled the country to boost production and exports in recent years. Great progress has been made in the coffee and tea sectors. About 13 years after the genocide, Rwanda earned more than $67 million (Sh53.6bn) from agriculture.  

After extensive research, the country’s blue bourbon is now being rated among the world’s best coffee. About 25 percent of the country’s coffee has attracted Costco and Starbucks, the top buyers of the world’s special coffee beans. This year, the country expects to earn $75 million from coffee alone 

To boost revenues from the traditional tea and coffee exports, tourism has been developed and is now rated the fastest growing source of foreign currency. Figures from the Rwanda Development Board indicate that the industry earned the country an estimated $214 million (Sh17 bn) in 2008, which is estimated to grow to $224 million (Sh17.9b) this year. 

The driving force behind Rwanda’s progress is President Kagame. The Rwandan leader has been widely praised by the international community and enjoys the backing of prominent personalities like former US presidents Bill Clinton and George W Bush and former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, for his adoption of progressive economic and social reforms.

Kagame has also managed to rope in Rwandans in the diaspora as well as woo well placed, wealthy and powerful people including philanthropist Sir Tom Hunter of the Clinton and Hunter Foundation, the world renowned “purpose-driven” pastor, Rick Warren, RealNetworks founder and CEO Rob Glaser, Google CEO Eric Schmidt and OTF Group co-founder Michael Fairbanks. 

Think-tank

Ten members of his Presidential Advisory Council (PAC), a high-level think-tank, are non-Rwandans who meet twice a year, once in Kigali and once in the US.  

But not everyone thinks Kagame is doing a great job. Sceptics say that it the revision of the events that happened during the genocide that has provided the government with a cover for repression of a meaningful political opposition.

Some, including genocide “naysayers” and “revisionists” say the current government is using the past to justify having a de facto one-party state, a claim the opposition has dismissed as unfounded. 

And while Kagame has won praise for stamping out corruption and restoring stability, critics have raised questions about his regime’s involvement in the unrest in neighbouring DRC. Still, even his harshest critics acknowledge that the recovery and reconstruction that have taken place under his leadership has been impressive.