Critics of Rwanda’s President Paul Kagame say that he foments the war in Eastern Congo and suppresses opposition parties at home. These views prosper in the absence of facts.
The government of Rwanda has been accused of cracking down on so-called opposition newspapers.
On April 13, 2010, the government issued six-month suspensions to two Kinyarwanda-language newspapers, Umuvugizi and Umuseso, for publishing language such as the following:
“He who refuses a peaceful political revolution makes a bloody revolution.” (Umuseso)
These words reflected reality on Feb. 19 and March 4 of that year, when terrorists threw grenades into public establishments in Kigali and killed innocent civilians.
Rwanda knows a lot about freedom of speech and the role of the press. After all, the Hutu Power press helped ignite the 1994 genocide.
Today, Rwanda is a different place: growth has averaged almost 8 percent over the last decade, wages have increased by 30% in the key export sectors, street crime is almost unknown and corruption measures among the lowest in Africa.
Two weeks ago, Rwanda was named the third most competitive economy in all of Africa, after South Africa and Mauritius.
The secret to Rwanda’s success is that Kagame has built modern institutions on traditional values. In the aftermath of the genocide, modern courts were incapable of handling the hundreds of thousands of perpetrators.
International legal advisers were flummoxed. Kagame introduced the traditional Gacaca system to give the perpetrators of the genocide the opportunity to tell the truth and ask the community for forgiveness.
The National University of Rwanda found that 95% of the survivors and even 80% of the detainees viewed the system as more efficient than any other form of justice.
Kagame’s team rewrote the constitution such that his party could not have more than 50% of the seats in parliament. Though Kagame is from one ethnic group, his prime minister and 70% of his cabinet are from the other.
A world-leading 56% of parliament is now women. The country is secure and the World Bank’s Doing Business report recognized Rwanda as the greatest reforming nation in the world.
According to Gallup, 95% of Rwandans are confident in their national government.
77% of Rwandans are satisfied with their freedom of expression, belief, association and personal autonomy, and the same percentage considers their local area to be a good place for ethnic and racial minorities.
Confidence in the military and the judiciary is high, with approval ratings of 98% and 84%, respectively. And 86% of Rwandans believe the electoral process is fair and honest.
Rwanda now invests in biotech, software and communications. Young, highly qualified members of the Rwandan Diaspora are returning in droves; remittances from the same, knowledgeable Diaspora communities in northern Europe, the United Kingdom and the United States defy gravity and may be as much as US$1 billion per year.
Global leaders like Nestlé and Marriott are making huge investments in human capacity, plant and equipment.
This isn’t an authoritarian regime; it is just a poor, confident nation that defies conventional Western categories, and has found its own voice.
The Author is Co-Founder of the SEVEN Fund, a philanthropic foundation in Cambridge, Mass.
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