Fortunately or unfortunately, those western so-called protectors of democracy did not send election monitors! Very strange! They were not barred, but their normal role is to come out with faults of 'what went wrong'. To them, there is no need to observe a perfect process.
But Africans turned out and observed elections. We had the African Union observers; we had COMESA the EAC observers etc. PERFECT! African elections observed by African institutions. In less than two months, the world superpower – the USA, will be having presidential elections.
No external monitors nor observers will monitor the US elections; despite the allegations by one of the presidential candidates that the last elections were stolen. Why don’t we have observers in the USA, despite these allegations? One may quip. As already indicated, in the case of Rwanda; it was the Africans themselves who observed their electoral processes.
The losing political party and the independent candidate, all accepted the results and even turned up for the swearing in of our newly elected president. No drama! To get 99% votes, the RPF candidate, unlike previous political parties that were in power before 1994, did not have to appeal to ethnic sentiments. It appealed to national sentiments ' ndi umunyarwanda' and its track record of economic emancipation and national unity.
Impressive ceremony
Following the ceremony, Chris Harahagazwe a Burundian human rights activist based in Nairobi, and who is a good friend of mine, and former colleague, texted me;
'Congratulations for the amazing inaugural ceremony. Few would believe such a mastery show of precision and beauty can be staged in Africa.
Let alone the impressive prestige of 22 heads of state and government attending from West Africa, to Eastern Africa, Southern and Central even Seychelles for God’s sake! I am not sure the AU summits can gather as many.'
Thank you Chris! Of course, Chris looked at heads of state and government, several other African countries that sent other heads of delegations, foreign affairs ministers and other ministers to attend the inauguration. As a result more than 30 countries were represented by their heads of state.
If my math serves me right, that would be about 56% of African countries represented, not to mention their continental and regional bodies like the African Union, COMESA and EAC etc… Another impressive presence is how many heads of states come from the SADC region: these are in their alphabetical order; Angola, Botswana, Eswatini, Madagascar, Mozambique, Seychelles, Tanzania and Zimbabwe heads of States attended. That is close to half the entire membership of the SADC region . Others like South Africa send high level representatives.
Besides attending the ceremony, at least twelve of the visiting heads of states and government used the visit to hold one-on-one with the Rwandan head of state to discuss bilateral cooperation. I can recall, in no particular order, Zimbabwe, Angola , Sudan, Swaziland, Somalia, Guinea, Congo, Senegal, Angola and Togo. Kagame was not just celebrating victory , work was still on.
Coming back to Chris’ description of the inauguration event, watching it brought in me pride, but also episodes of scary memories. When I watched our young men and women in uniform march elegantly, when I looked at helicopter gunships flying on top, I couldn’t help, but think of how far we have come.
I could remember the year 1991, in Gahinga volcanic mountains, when the then Major Paul Kagame had just re-assembled the demoralised soldiers, and was trying to rebuild the Rwandan Patriotic Army (RPA). How ill equipped the RPA soldiers were! I could remember how many soldiers suffered frostbite because they had no shoes, how many of our colleagues literally suffered and succumbed to pneumonia. There were days and months when we had more deaths from pneumonia than bullets!
I reflected on the most scary moments, when the enemy would attack and several combatants â” myself inclusive – had no rifles, and commanders were left with no option but to order withdrawal. The fear, desperation, of the soldier who has no gun, knowing very well that if the enemy was to face him he would simply surrender like a slaughtered sheep!
Oh my god! Looking at those soldiers with helmets and night vision cameras, I couldn’t help but remember how during the 'bush days' struggle, night vision was a major problem. Soldiers whose only one meal a day, if they got it at all, was made of dry maize and beans, no vegetables, no fruits; had developed night blindness.
Night blindness was so common RPF had to mobilise Vitamins, A, B6 and B12 tablets to mitigate the situation. I can remember how at night, the time when we operated most; one would fall down a cliff endlessly , just like we see in movies, or what happens in dreams. It happened to me more than once, and I can swear it happened to several foot soldiers many times over. The miracle was either by the law of gravity or instinct of survival , the luggage always went down first with the soldier falling. An AK 47, ammunition box weight was 20 kgs and a soldier would normally at least carry two of them; if one of them fell after him it was bound to either break his ribs or worse still his skull.
I don’t know and at my age may never know how night vision cameras operate, but my children and grandchildren, just like our soldiers that I watched in that parade, know; and unlike the RPA will not fall in cliffs if they have to fight.
Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. John 12:12.
I write about 1991, but that was not the worst. Those who had come before us in October 1990 had suffered even a worse situation. Their Achilles’ heel being that they hardly had any communication equipment! Imagine a war where battalions cannot communicate with each other! The only moving force being a just cause. They just believed they shall overcome not because they were many, nor that they were as well armed, but because theirs was a just cause!
And when the leadership was disseminated and the Habyarimana regime and its supporters rejoiced and celebrated victory; we were not deterred. The biblical wisdom quoted above applied to us. For any seed to germinate and bear fruits, it must first die. RPF/RPA seeds died, germinated and would certainly bear fruits.
As a result, this rag-tag army with no pecuniary benefits, from illiterate peasants to university graduates , all downgraded or upgraded to that he same outfit, for a common and just cause; determined , boys, girls ;men and women , teenager’s who had run out schools , fathers and mothers new volunteers civilians with jobs that reasonably catered for their families across the globe in Burundi, Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Canada, Belgium etc., decided that 'the dead are not dead.'
I am proud to say I was one of those who sacrificed my job and family for a greater cause; who had left wives and children to fight for what we believed in knowing very well that our children would never know their parents ! It happened to General Fred Rwigema, and other fallen heroes, like Majors Chris Bunyenyezi and Major Peter Bayingana to mention but a few; whose children never saw their fathers forever had survived to win the war against génocidaires supported by powerful African and western allies.
I looked at the show and felt confidence that my children and grandchildren were safe in the new Rwanda. It was not just a show. It was an assurance to all of us! As I reflect on the massive attendance of Africa leaders at the inauguration. I had this proud feeling that despite the geographical Rwandan size, the size of Belgium , the world appreciated that as the Rwandan says ' ubugabo si ubutumbi' one does not measure manhood based on the man’s size.
Rwandans voted for President Paul Kagame with more than 92%! For the first time, I didn’t hear any Western powers claiming that this win was not possible. When it came to voting for the Speaker of the National Assembly, a 59-year-old woman was elected as the Speaker of the Rwandan National Assembly.
The Rwandan Constitution rejects the usual political approach of 'the winner takes it all,' so despite the RPF winning an absolute majority in the just-ended elections, simply because Kagame is an RPF member (Chairman), RPF members of the National Assembly could not stand or be nominated for the other three important national positions. A member of the winning party CANNOT be the Speaker of the Senate or the Speaker of the National Assembly. Rwandans have learned over the years that it was 'the winner takes it all' that almost erased Rwanda from the planet Earth.
GertruKazarwa was voted by 73 out of 80 Members of the Chamber of Deputies, against a male candidate who collected only five votes. There were two invalid votes. This too says a lot about the new Rwanda, gender equality and women empowerment. I don’t want to claim that I am a prophet, but I would not be surprised if I were to live and witness a woman president in the not so far future.
There is a new down :There is no longer room for the powerful to impose their vision about how we ought to live.
More than six decades after many African countries got flag independence, we cannot continue to run our countries in copy and paste of former colonial masters or so called western civilisation. Africa is the cradle of humanity, and we were civilised thousands of years before westerners. We must come up with what works for us, and we have to create our own systems.
As a result I would like to go back to the speech made by President Kagame during his inauguration and I quote; 'There is no longer room for the powerful to impose their vision about how others ought to live, or to create narratives that falsify the truth. This must always be resisted, even when under pressure.
But there is also no possible excuse for injustice, wherever it occurs, whether committed against us as Africans, or inflicted by ourselves. Indeed, we Africans are people who have consistently fought injustice. We don’t need any lessons about how best to do so. And we must all humbly acknowledge the necessity to adapt our political and governance systems to our specific conditions, and the expectations of our citizens'.
I honestly believe that these thoughts that Paul Kagame dares express are indeed shared by many African leaders and that is why they came to Kigali in large numbers.
We have a continent that is tired of empty lectures that we must have our vision not visions imposed upon us and for me, it is a new dawn for Africa, where we can dare chart our own vision and implement it no matter what the Global North thinks or does. La luta Continua!
The writer,Mweusi Karake is a seasoned socio-political commentator based in Kigali. Previously, he served as the first president of Rwanda Association of Journalists (ARJ).
Mweusi Karake
