'Term limits cannot solve Africa's problems'

PAUL KAGAME INTERVIEW



Six Ugandan journalists visiting Rwanda on Thursday and Friday attended President Paul Kagame’s rallies in two remote districts. On their way back to Kigali they had a brief meeting with him at Karongi district headquarters. David Mukholi and Raziah Athman, who represented Vision Group, bring you excerpts of the interview.
 

President Paul Kagame with some of the Ugandan journalists

QUESTION: For the last two days when meeting people in Rutsiro and Karongi districts, people raised issues concerning them but prominent among them was the call that you run for president in 2017. How do you feel when such calls are passionately made?

ANSWER: What is more important to me (and maybe that is the reading people should have had) is not that people want something for the sake of it. It is because of the benefit. It is not about somebody’s good looks. This person maybe has delivered something. You saw the women and men talk about their journey in their lives. They tell you how it has happened. The question of how do I feel. First, of all I must tell you I did feel good about it from the sense all of us are part of this transformation that is happening.

It is not just me, because it can’t be me alone. The others who utilise the opportunities and resources and change their lives have to be there. It is not the good story that I have told them, not my presence and kinds of lectures I give them. In the end if they go back home and don’t do things themselves nothing will happen. We share credit across the board. Those who implement and realise the difference deserve the credit because they could choose to sleep and do nothing. It is a good feeling I think for everyone, including myself and the country. It is a question of how we contextualise it.

If you look at where Rwanda is vis-à-vis others, meaning developed and even middle-income countries you start wondering where we have been. We feel challenged and feel we want to do more. There is no doubt at one point I will be very clear myself where I stand and what I intend to do. There is no hurry, 2017 is slightly over two years to finish this mandate. What follows after is something that will come out sooner or later. It has a context; we will see. I have not allowed any pressure on me to say where I stand. Of all problems I have faced in my life this is not a very different one. I have had complicated ones. I have dealt with more complicated challenges than making a decision to pronounce myself on this.


Are term limits good for Africa?
 

There are too many things said about it; in my view many times, exaggerated. I don’t think the problems Africa faces have anything to do with one thing: term limits. I don’t think the problem can be solved by term limits, neither, I would I say term limits are a solution to Africa’s problems.

As you saw, when we were talking to the masses, the poverty, hunger they have and readiness to bring up solutions is not related to term limits. It may be related to politics but not to term limits or no term limits. It is related to politics, which politics can and do go wrong whether you have term limits or not. If we say no term limits, will you not find problems? What has to be done is completely different.

Have we managed to put in place institutions that define us and serve us beyond this single discussion of term limits? Creating rule of law, parliament that functions, civil society and private sector doing what they should do. Do we have government in places that are responsive to people’s needs beyond thinking about these term limits or no term limits? Term limits have nothing to do with democracy. Because the proponents of term limits argue that if you overstay you get drunk with power. Yes, that is part of the problem but not the main problem. Look at Singapore. Lee Kuan Yew was there for 32 years.

What he managed to do for his people is incredible – transforming his country from a third to first world. If term limits had been the solution, I don’t know. I am not sure. Even those who said all kinds of things about him when he passed away, they have good stories about him. When he was there he was being bashed all the time, I think he ignored it and concentrated on delivering; making sure transformation takes place.
 

In other places I have heard people saying, if I am elected for the second term I want to go for the third. But I will ask why? If limiting yourself is democracy, then why go for the second term why not finish the first and say I am done? If the shorter time you serve the better the legacy is, then why don’t people do that?

Let us look at Nelson Mandela, he was a wonderful person for different reasons. The question is, if he left after serving one term and if you want to emulate him, then even those with term limits shouldn’t have two terms they should go for one term and just serve and go. The arguments for term limits are sometimes confusing and convoluted. People put personal emotions than certain realities that are how things break away from the context.

We as African leaders should think about the people we lead. I have some kind of anger; we can’t continue to be under the load for all these decades with all the resources the content is endowed with. And just continue with the names of poverty, disease and conflict. Why should that happen; is it because people have not observed term limits? No. In some places in Africa, term limits are observed but has it helped? I don’t think so. So, therefore, what is the obsession with term limits? Even if it is a good thing, it is a good thing in combination with other things, it is not something that stands alone. The context and substance are important. Sometimes people are singing these songs from outside. Professors of democracy are good at being professors but not executing it.

Sometimes we want to appear like the West. The same people who shout about democracy don’t have term limits. You have kingdoms then you have prime ministers who can go on as long as their parties get elected. So what is this nonsense about? (laughs)...

But there could be and there are some merits in limiting terms of service in a flexible way to act as those things for checks and balance. But if you check and don’t balance you have a mess.


While addressing opinion leaders in Karongi district on Thursday night, you mentioned a country that is accusing Rwanda of stealing minerals; which is this?
 

It is not a matter of saying, which country.

It has been in the newspapers anyway. Some of the countries in question who talk about it are those neighbours who say we have exploited their resources. But then there are others who exploit those resources who also start saying this. You don’t know how much we have gone through to try to prove. For example, coltan is the mineral used against Rwanda for political reasons, saying we get it from Congo and we don’t have the mineral.

That is a fact. We have brought representatives of these countries and journalists to visit the mines where the coltan comes from. They found people making money from it but when they go back they accuse us of the same thing. Rwanda’s coltan is better quality than any in the region including the Democratic Republic of Congo. But because they want to write different stories they have framed a narrative about Rwanda. In Congo, it is not about FDR; forget that the international community created a force on that basis. One hand they say they are 20,000 then another that they don’t exist. They say these people are just there to exploit. They have now been exposed and people, if they continue with it, will get to see the truth and they will start losing their credibility.


You hinted at the gas in Lake Kivu and plans to generate power and considering starting the project?

We are launching it at the end of this month. We have a lot of methane gas but we have opted to convert it to power generation.

The process is complex. Methane gas is mixed with other gasses underwater. So, we shall extract all of them, separate them and retain the methane which we shall fire for electricity generation. Then return all the other gases into the water. Contour Global, the firm we have contracted, is trying to do this so as to keep the lake secure by avoiding any imbalances. We are going to have production starting with 25MW. This means, if we get it, then the technology is working; then it is a question of scaling up.


On the East Africa Community, especially the Northern Corridor infrastructure development. It seems Rwanda and Uganda are lagging behind as Kenya moves ahead.
 

I will not characterise it that way yet. Kenya had something existing, while between Uganda and Rwanda there was nothing existing so we have to create something from scratch in terms of railway and so on. The process is also complex involving mobilising resources, carrying out studies and organising significant amounts of money. Yet we are not about to invest in infrastructure and forget other areas. This is the challenge too. But I am happy that this whole thing started. It is a good step that we agreed to work together. It is something important.


As chairman of the Africa Union, President Robert Mugabe recently said African leaders put a yoke around their necks by having term limits and later trying to change them by justifying their actions. Its seems you are using the people to ask and not like your counterpart in Uganda?

Yes. I am not telling anybody to ask. If they asked me a different thing, I will respect. If many say you need to rest, I would say thank you so much. Let me argue for those others (not my case at least not yet); those others who put term limits in their constitutions and changed them because there is nothing that can’t change. Which part of the world has never tampered with the constitution?

We put something in the constitution because it served a purpose at the time. But every tampering is not correct because some can change because they want to serve some causes that are not justified, just for things that suit them. This should not be for every case. We can take case by case and see which some have changed for a bad reason and those for good reasons. It is also possible that for those who put term limits in the constitution maybe it was on a wrong premise, under influence or pressure. We live in a not so black and white world, things many times are grey. May be in the beginning when they put them in the constitution they didn’t think much about what they were doing. They were told what to do, whatever pressure, they just went with the fashion. Maybe they thought it was a good thing they tried and it served them for a time then released they need some adjustments when they found it unnecessary.


This President-public interaction: Why did you initiate it and how good is it? Given the history of this country, people are patriotic and they love their country. What have you done?
 

I will start with the second question. I don’t think patriotism is to be pushed down people’s throats. They become patriotic if they want to. We give them a message, we explain it around things they can do and benefit from. With these illustrations and explanations. Of course, things are being done that benefit them. Then out of the interaction the message goes down very well and patriotism becomes a reality. You must not ask people to become patriotic. It is a complex situation – interaction, illustrations sharing of lessons that people who want to make a difference; this amounts to a whole country changing for the better. It takes a time of its own. Only keep messaging to keep the fi re going.

The people then get together to fight anything that undermines the progress as a country. On accountability we are conscious, if we use the normal process from point A to F, a great amount of truth will be lost. Or so many things will be added to the truth, giving it a different colour. It is important to have this system running but support that with direct contact, interaction and interventions. Then you get to know what you have been feeding on is not always the truth. That is when you call people in the open to account.

The good thing about it is someone caught in it will not repeat it and others who are witnessing will not be involved. They leave not wanting to get involved because they know someone standing before a crowd shown how guilty he is, is a bigger punishment than sending people to prison for 10 months. Public accountability is a way of exposure. It is a good lesson, without hurting everybody. It is corrective as well as educative.


Where do you want to see Rwanda in 10 years from now?

Let me start from the other end.

A prosperous country where poverty is not something that is our main preoccupation to deal with but rather our children have gone to school and acquired skills, advanced in technology, part of our way of life, incomes of families, a middle-class that being the minimum for the majority of our population which is that of the middle class level.

Of course there will be nothing if society is not stable. Rule of law and security are paramount. We can’t make these gains without security. Twenty years from now I want to see GDP per capita as high as a couple of thousands. And Rwandans as happy as anyone wants to be. At least it is possible. I think some decent progress has taken place, which is good.

Can we do more? Of course, as the population increases, it brings with it more challenges. For every five or 10 years come challenges on top of the previous one, if they have not been addressed.

I foresee more challenges come when you have more tools to deal with them.