For one of our lectures, an advisor to President Kagame came to speak to us. It was actually one of the most interesting lectures, because he did feed us exactly the government line for the whole thing – but it was interesting to hear that line, straight from the horse’s mouth (more or less) and to know that we were hearing that line.
He was also good because there were some times where he made it clear that he didn’t really agree with the official line – for instance, when someone asked about the massive human rights abuses (some people suggest it may even have been genocide) conducted by government forces against Hutu interahamwe, FDLR rebels and civilians in the Democratic Republic of Congo. He said, “Well… I don’t know. The official line is that the refugees were told to come back. Some didn’t want to, so the RPF [Rwandan Patriotic Front, i.e. government forces] pursued them there. In the jungles of Congo, there was collateral damage, but many died of hunger and disease, not bullets. No one can say for sure who was killed by RPF.”
Naturally, he painted a glorious picture of Kagame’s government, as do most Rwandans I’ve spoken to. Personally, I’m still not really sure where I stand on the issue. On the one hand, I have so much respect and awe for the amazing recovery that Rwanda has made – Rwanda was a failed state after the genocide, everyone thought it would turn into another Somalia or something, because there was no law and order, no judiciary, no education system, no hospitals, and all the professionals had been killed or had fled. How do you even begin to think about recovering from that? And yet, fifteen years later, Kigali is immaculately clean, modern, and the country as a whole has been peaceful for I think about 6 years. So I have huge amounts of respect for that progress.
On the other hand, the evidence implicating the RPF in repression of freedom of speech and political opposition is very strong, and the Rwandan government doesn’t make much of an effort to hide it, instead excusing it as “necessary” to avoid ethnic divisionism and another genocide. I guess this gets to the heart of Plato’s Republic: is it better to have an authoritarian regime that does good for the people (as I genuinely believe the Rwandan government does) or a democratic regime elected by people who don’t know what’s best for them? But then who’s to say that the Rwandese people don’t know what’s best for them, and that we outsiders know any better? Maybe I’m wrong, but it seems to me that any argument that freedom of speech and political pluralism must be restricted for the good of the people hinges on the assumption that Rwandans are easily manipulated, obedient and docile people – who are either only supporting the RPF because they have been brainwashed, or who would quickly be led to support positions they do not believe in. I absolutely do not believe this to be the case, and in fact I think that restrictions on freedom of speech belittle the intelligence of the Rwandan people.
Plus, Kagame’s policies have generally been terrible for DRC, where most of Rwanda’s military problems have been exported to, exacerbating conflict in the region. That’s a whole separate issue.
Anyways, back to the presidential advisor. He talked a lot about development policy, to the point that the whole section on the government’s current and future goals was about development issues. Development has been very visible in Rwanda, and has contributed a lot to post-genocide recovery. Throughout the country, there’s a major emphasis on development – on TV, in public discourse, etc. I wonder in Rwanda is trying to focus on the problem of poverty to avoid thinking about other problems. Poverty is a “useful” issue in that it’s shared by both Hutu and Tutsi, creating a cross-cutting cleavage.
The policy that the lecturer described as Rwanda’s goals seemed to be taken directly from Jeffrey Sachs – I felt like I was taking notes for his class, “Challenges of Sustainable Development” again. The basic principle of Sachs’ argument (Daniel, you can check me on this) is that we need to give more aid to Africa to get it out of its current poverty trap, which is perpetuated by very high population growth (people have a lot of babies because they are a source of labor and there’s a high infant mortality rate, but then they can’t afford to feed and educate all of their children – something I saw a lot of in Gulu), and low levels of technology and human capital. The idea is that if Africans can spur economic growth through a sort of “Green Revolution,” improve access to healthcare and education, and decrease population growth, the third world will develop. Rwanda’s goals include increasing GDP and per capita income, decreasing population growth and density, and moving half the country’s subsistence farmers to paying jobs through mechanization and greater education.
Given that Sachs’ view of the world is currently informing the UN’s Millennium Development Goals, and is backed by several big name Western donors, articulating these particular policy goals seems like an ideal way to attract Western donors. Currently,
40% of Rwandan national budget is foreign aid, though the government is trying to reduce that amount. I wonder if governments/donors give Rwanda so much because of their guilt over doing absolutely nothing during the genocide? Is this also what allows the RF to get away with political repression, as scholars and NGOs like HRW argue? Or, do donors give a lot because Rwandan government is relatively responsible, if repressive?
These development theories also form the basis of the Millenium Village Project, which I learned about in Sachs’ class. (Actually here’s a cool link to a simulation of a village, in which you try to keep villagers alive and healthy, and avoid environmental degradation by allocating time and resources: link) So when our program director told us that we were going to go see the Millennium Village in Rwanda, I assumed that it would be sort of like the simulation – we would see the effects of upgrading technology, and learn about the challenges the village faces in terms of being sustainable. My understanding of the MV was that it acts as a test case to see if these policies can work, and that the UN hopes to see a ripple-effect to other villages in the area.
Then we got there, and discovered that it was just a tourist attraction. There was absolutely no information about the UN project or its goals/effects/etc. We met a farmer, who showed us how he farmed cassava and gave us a taste – but no sense of how his farming techniques have changed. We met women who did basketweaving and they let us do some, which was so cool (I love the basketweaving here!) but they were only there because we were there, and as soon as we left, they did too. It felt so staged, like it was just an opportunity for them to encourage us to buy their products. Finally we saw a “reconciliation village” – where genocidaires and genocide survivors were living together. There was a bunch of traditional dance, and then two people stood up to give speeches, but they felt so rehearsed [also I don’t like the way the genocidaire was a man and the victim was a woman]. The only really startling thing was that the “genocidaire” told us that when he and others like him came to the village, they assumed they would live with the victims for a short while and then finish the job they had started. Over time, however, they’ve apparently come to a mutual coexistence, and the killers no longer plan on murdering their neighbors.
At first, I was so turned off by the village, because it was so completely different from what I was expecting to see. But I began to wonder if it was maybe ok as a tourist attraction. On the upside, tourism does bring money to the villages, and the tourist cooperative that operates in the village was started by villagers on their own initiative, from what I understand. I was at first indignant that tourism is not “sustainable” – but then neither is development aid usually… Maybe an internal solution is better than an externally-imposed one.
However, I still object to the tourist aspect of the village because that is not the point of the project. This cannot be a model for other villages, because it isn’t widely replicable. The market for underdeveloped village attractions is not big enough to support every single village becoming one – and even if it was, we would still have Africa supported by rich Western tourists coming to look at the primitive beings. Somehow this does not seem to be the best solution. I’m also not entirely clear on why the UN should be pouring money into a tourist attraction…
Ultimately, I was just struck by the absurdity of us telling them how to live.
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