Twenty years after: How Rwanda has fashioned a new, post-genocide narrative

Louise Mushikiwabo is Rwanda’s Minister of Foreign Affairs  

By Louise Mushikiwabo
2

In Summary

• Today, Rwanda stands with other countries on our continent at the vanguard of Africa’s long overdue renaissance. We do this as we navigate efforts at external manipulation that have never been in short supply in the past 20 years, as well as the internal challenges that inevitably follow a genocide that almost annihilated our country.

 

While the wounds of genocide from 20 years ago cut deep, the word Rwanda is more than shorthand for tragedy.

Since 1994, we have understood that only through meaningful engagement with the citizenry can we hope to build a functioning and stable society.  For recovery to be possible, for peace, security and freedom to take root, we as Rwandans must take full ownership of our destiny, and full responsibility for our lives.

However painful, we are bound to our history, but we are not bound to repeat it; it is by remembering that we honour the lives lost, express solidarity with those who survived.

In remembering we find powerful inspiration to build a strong, hopeful society capable of resisting the re-emergence of state-sponsored hatred, pernicious foreign influence and violence that all but destroyed us 20 years ago.

As the international community looked on, capable of intervention but unwilling to act, more than one million Tutsi and others who stood in the way of genocide were slaughtered between April 7 and July 4, 1994. As hate radio filled the airwaves, no place was safe or sacred.

In light of this history, Rwanda has become synonymous with a certain kind of preventable atrocity. World leaders and editorial writers routinely profess determination that “another Rwanda” must never occur again, whether in the Central African Republic, South Sudan or Syria.

In this way, the 1994 genocide looms as a warning against neglect and complacency in the face of unfolding or impending tragedy. And yet, the past two decades have seen Rwandans steadily lay claim to a new narrative.

There had to been a clean break with the past. Rwandans have sought to rebuild a sense of individual as well as collective dignity.

A man, woman, boy or girl who respects their fundamental humanity—and sees for themselves and their loved ones the possibility of a full and decent life — will reject even the most persuasive voices urging them to harm others.

To place value on one’s own life is to see value in the lives of others — and there is only despair and humiliation in being forced by one’s circumstances to have nothing to offer one’s children beyond more of the same, or worse.

The government of Rwanda has resolutely pursued economic growth not for its own sake, but because we understand that only by expanding opportunity can we build sustainable foundations for prosperity, peace and liberty.

As a result, our economy has grown at more than eight per cent for the past decade, more than one million Rwandans have lifted themselves above the poverty line since 2006 and life expectancy has risen twenty years since the genocide.

Transparency International calls Rwanda the least corrupt country in the region, but our policy of public probity was not designed to win international plaudits.

It was to ensure fair treatment for all and to optimise the utilisation of our meagre resources. This also extends to the way we view and use development aid — not as an undeserved reward for agreeing to external blueprints on how to drive Rwanda’s progress, but as transition to self-reliance.

We pursue this path because there is no self-respect in living off humanitarian rations or depending on the permanent generosity of well-meaning strangers.