In his address to mark Kwibohora30, the 30th anniversary of Rwanda’s liberation, President Paul Kagame stressed to his audience, especially young Rwandans, the majority in that audience, that true liberation begins after the guns fall silent. An article published last Thursday, in the The Conversation, is as good a vindication of what he was saying, if any such vindication were needed.
The Conversation describes itself as an “independent news organisation dedicated to unlocking the knowledge of experts for the public good.” It has a section dedicated to Africa, The Conversation Africa. The site has published a number of articles on Rwanda of late, most of them, including this latest, rather than unlock the experts’ knowledge, may instead be an opportunity to unlock our knowledge, about the lack of theirs.
The article, titled, “Rwanda’s Tutsi Minority has been in power for 30 years – but study finds ethnicity doesn’t matter to people if their needs are met,” is authored by two researchers, Associate Professor Marijke Verpoorten, of the University of Antwerp, and her colleague, Associate Researcher, Réginas Ndayiragije.
The research we are told is based on data collected by Bert Ingelaere, a professor at the university, who sadly died unexpectedly in 2022. As well as collecting the data, he also led the writing of the first draft of a paper, from which the article is presumably drawn.
Three academics therefore, who it seems rather than research Rwanda under the leadership of the Rwanda Patriotic Front (RPF), began with a preconception, and proceeded to find justification for it. All we have in the way of research, seems to be the fruit of the search for the justification of the preconception.
To point out that the thesis of the article was conceived at a Belgian university, and that the two senior researchers were Belgian, may seem unkind, but it is of some relevance. Belgium is of course, the former colonial power, responsible for the cleaving of Rwanda along ethnic lines. It is a division to which the researchers cling like an article of faith, or perhaps, as an article of faith.
In a way, the article, comes at an opportune moment, just a few days after Rwanda completed the hundred days of Kwibuka, or remembrance of the over a million men, women and children, murdered during the 1994 Genocide Against the Tutsi. On 4th July 1994, the RPF forces captured the last stronghold of the genocidal forces, and delivered the nation from the hell into which it had been plunged.
As President Kagame, the then commander of the liberation forces, put it, with the guns quietened, if not completely silenced, as might have been wished, the liberation ideology could begin to be heard over that of the colonial divide and rule.
Had the researchers been able to hear that liberation ideology, over the colonial din ringing in their ears, they might have allowed themselves a chance to understand the true meaning of Kwibohora. That it was not only the saving of lives from genocidal forces, the physical liberation of those intended to be wiped out, overwhelmingly important as though that was, but that it was also the liberation of the entire nation, from the divisive policies that would lead to genocide.
It is not uncommon to hear Westerners claim that the RPF has “outlawed” ethnic designations, that Rwandans are obliged to call themselves that, and only that, Rwandans. The reality of course, is that not only is there no such law, there is no imposition of any kind.
Over the last thirty years, the RPF has merely invited Rwandans to look to their history and culture, before colonialism planted the malignant seed of hate and division that would grow into a genocide ideology.
Every Rwandan knows and understands the inescapable truth, they are united as one, as Rwandans, before all else. In a sense, in the light of Rwanda’s history and culture before colonialism, all the RPF has had to do is point to the absurdity of seeing Rwandans as anything other than one people. With this self-evident truth rationally understood, began the more painstaking liberation of mindsets. That liberation has happened steadily, because it is now no longer just a historical and cultural reality, but a fact of people’s day to day lives.
Since 4th July 1994, the governance of Rwanda, from the lowest rung of local government, to the very top of government, has been in the hands of Rwandans. Were they to be asked to which ethnic group this minister, that director, civil servant, or parliamentarian belongs, Rwandans would be bemused.
Today’s Rwanda, is a country that for the last thirty years, has been marching resolutely, to a Rwanda that was, before the colonially manufactured divisions. It is a Rwanda these researchers are either unable, or unwilling to grasp.
And they are of course, not alone. They are in fact part of what is quite a phenomenon. The West insists on seeing Rwanda as a colonial dream, which for Rwandans was a nightmare. The RPF, has led the deliverance of a nation, banishing the nightmare.
The West, however, is attached to their dream, and in that dream, it is they, not Rwandans, who determine what Rwanda is. Since the liberation, Kwibohora, Rwanda is governed by neither Tutsi, nor Hutu, it is governed by Rwandans. Understanding this, seems a bridge too far for Western commentators, from whatever sector, be it media, academia, or politics.
“We are researchers who study political representation in post conflict contexts. We recently sought to understand to what extent Rwanda has managed to overcome the fault lines that got it to a dark place in 1994…” the researchers inform us, “our findings show that the country’s Hutu majority have over time reported feeling more represented by the government. This is despite it being largely made up of a Tutsi ruling elite.”
They found, they say, that “the inter-ethnic gap in perceived political representation has narrowed over time. In other words, despite a concentration of power in the hands of a Tutsi elite, Hutu respondents experienced improved political representation over time.”
Any dispassionate scholarly work, that was unburdened by the almost religious belief in an idea of a divided Rwanda, as imagined by the colonialists, might have asked themselves whether the notion of a “Tutsi ruling elite,” might be in some way flawed, given the evidence contradicting its supposition. But rather than question, let alone abandon what seems more a belief than a political theory, the researchers contort the reality to make it fit their belief.
“This finding can come across as puzzling. But we found an answer to the puzzle in the respondents’ narratives, that is, their explanations for changes in their perceived political representation.”
“Our study found that the Tutsi regime in Rwanda boosts its legitimacy by adopting policies that appeal to both the Hutu majority and the Tutsi minority. These policies include the universal healthcare policy and improvements in public infrastructures.”
Because the authors would never even consider that it might be their dogma that needs reevaluating, it must be the simple Rwandans, who mistake something else for political representation. That something else, improvement in all aspects of their lives.
Like so many before it, and no doubt many that will follow, this article, and the research on which it is based, are rooted in a pernicious insistence to imprison Rwanda, into a divided people, a divided nation of the colonial imagination. It is at Kwibohora, that the tearing down of those prison walls began.