America is unfair to Rwandan people

By Charles Okecha

The United States and other western governments have ridiculed the outcome of Rwanda's 2015 referendum that extended the tenure of incumbent President Paul Kagame beyond 2017.

In their view, the majority decision of 98.3% was manipulated and stage-managed through voter intimidation in favour of the president to enable him continue to enjoy the highest office in the land.

Unto them, four years are long enough for an elected president whose performance is continually evaluated like after the first 100 days, period of a year, mid-term and so forth. Which is healthy and enviable when a society is civilised and vigilant enough to freely elect leaders and hold them accountable.

However, it is important for such society to understand the differences in the demographic, cultural, social and economic terrains that dictate the way societies respond to democratic governance and thus respect their decisions.

We can vividly remember that in early 1990's during the build-up to the Rwandan genocide, the same Americans chose to retain and not impeach President Bill Clinton and the whole world respected their decision.

After some sordid scandals he was pilloried by the press having found his integrity compromised and wanting. Although some voters found this unacceptable in regard to ideals/standards of democracy, their voices where shouted down.

Notwithstanding some Americans like the former Director of CIA David Patreus who risked his life in the Taliban cauldron in Afghanistan was discontinued after a single scandal that was not widely published and disgraceful like the former's!

There is a distinctive difference between America and other countries.

Lately, the Obama administration refurbished Capitol which seats the presidency, the Senate and Congress that was built in 1800's.

While for Rwanda and Uganda, their presidents had to reconstruct the state house besides setting up other infrastructure the Americans have for centuries.

The year of their independence being 1776 gives the American government a numerical age of 240 years. Rwandan is just 22 years old and yet discovering more mass graves to add to the tally of hundreds of thousands of skulls in the museums.

So while Americans can choose to keep stockpiles of previous ballots cast just for the sake of historical archives, the sleep of Rwandans are still punctuated by the nightmares of the 1994 genocide.

The echoes of gunshots and cries of victims being hacked to death are not far from their memory. This has compelled them to appreciate President Paul Kagame who pioneered the era of reconciliation thereby extending his term indefinitely and failure to do so in regard to their conscience was tantamount to betrayal.

Majority of Americans do not even bother to know their past history like pre-independence north-south wars, discrimination on human/voting rights according to sex and race. They assume their society is too civilized yet apparently they are unable to observe laws on private gun ownership which had led to frequent shootouts and loss of innocent lives.

The Rwandan people understand better the root causes of post-election violence whose fuel is partisan politics and oxygen ethnic/tribal differences.

America is a country occupied by migrants of different colours and races who see political parties and as media that bring people with similar views together.

While in Africa there are different tribes with different dialects whose cultural covalence bonds are stronger than slogans of political parties. Some tribes like Rwanda's Tutsi and Uganda's Baganda, Batoro, Basoga and Acholi had well established kingdoms that worked in partnership with colonial powers.

The levels of socio-economic development vary from one region to another such that after independence, national equations regarding equal share of national income and role in governance remain very complicated.

The onus is therefore on Africa to resonate political diversity with ethnic differences without intimidation to foster peace and development the way they understand and find appropriate.

The writer works at St. Paul's College, Mbale.