Dictator or saviour? The paradox of Paul Kagame
Open-door visa policies, full Internet access, the free flow of trade and information, a zero-tolerance policy for corruption, the abolition of the death penalty — these are not the actions one normally associates with a totalitarian regime. Yet this is precisely the criticism levelled at President Paul Kagame, that he is presiding over a ruthless dictatorship. And therein lies the Great Paradox of today’s Rwanda.
After the 1994 genocide against the Tutsis, Rwanda was, with no exaggeration, the worst place on Earth. An open-air abattoir, a failed state, a gutted nation, Rwanda was a land left in genocidal ruin. Today, across the board — in terms of child mortality, healthcare, education, Internet access, women’s rights, poverty reduction — it’s leading the way in Africa. The World Economic Forum places Rwanda among the best countries in the world when it comes to good governance, with accountability “built into the system.” But “good governance” is not the same as “democratic.”
The accusation that Paul Kagame of the Rwandan Patriotic Front party is running a dictatorship rests primarily on four pillars: freedom of the press, or lack thereof; the constraints placed on opposition parties; an intolerance for dissent, and most disturbingly, what appears to be the targeted assassination of political opponents both at home and abroad.
Human Rights Watch, a respected nonpartisan organization, may applaud Rwanda’s success, but it warns that progress in the social, health-care and eco- nomic realms has not been matched in the political arena, that freedom of expression and association are still too tightly controlled.
So effective is the RPF’s grip on the political sphere that Amnesty International has raised the alarm that Rwanda is in danger of becoming — in tone, if not in fact — a one-party state.
These are serious charges, yet Kagame has brushed them aside, saying, “If you don’t want to be criticized, say nothing, do nothing and be nothing. I have no desire of doing nothing.”
Love him or hate him, no one is neutral when it comes to Paul Kagame. His exiled former head of the military has denounced President Kagame as being “worse than (former Libyan leader Moammar) Gadhafi.” A former economic adviser, also in exile, describes the president as “no better than Stalin”— which seems a bit much, considering that Joseph Stalin was responsible for the death of 20 million people, while Paul Kagame led an army that ended a genocide. Even Human Rights Watch credits him with that. If nothing else, Kagame is an equalopportunity intimidator: Prominent Hutu and Tutsis alike have fallen out of favour with him and paid the price. The two men mentioned above? Both are Tutsi, both former RPF insiders. Excerpted from Road Trip Rwanda.