Last week, I argued that President Paul Kagame faces two main
problems that will determine the sustainability of the development and
democratic path he has helped put in place.
The two
problems are how to stop external meddling in the country’s internal
politics and how to institutionalise power-sharing as the political
system that all political elites invest in.
The results
of these challenges is that they produce two competing stories: The
externally generated one that proposes there is no democracy or press
freedom in the country and the internal narrative that these freedoms do
exist.
Western narrative
The
Western-driven narrative is informed by a libertarian view of press
freedom and how democracy was applied in the country or how it should be
applied.
Libertarianism is a school of thought that
perceives all human beings as endowed with intellect. Promoters of this
thinking believe there shouldn’t be any limit on the press since
individuals have the capacity to discern good ideas from bad ones — with
the former carrying the day.
That’s partly why, for example, organisations like Freedom
House, which has persistently ranked Rwanda as “not free” last ranked
the country better in 1993.
At the time the country
was experiencing the worst hate propaganda with some media houses openly
calling for the extermination of Tutsis.
To believers
of unlimited free expression, what the Kagame-led government should have
done after the genocide is to simply open up and let everyone speak
without any limitations.
In practice, promoters of this
view cite self-censorship, alleged repression of journalists, legal
limits on freedom of expression as it pertains to ethnicity and
promotion of an ideology to justify the poor ranking of the country.
But,
talking to some leaders and listening to their speeches shows that they
believe individuals need guidance and protection from divisive ideas.
They
perceive the role of the media to be that of contributing to
development and maintaining a good name for the country, and not merely
freedom of expression.
The evidence these leaders give
to show there is press freedom are structural and relate to the
existence of many media houses, a number of journalism training schools,
a progressive media law and access to information Bill, etc.
However,
they fail to understand that media freedom is more than having many
media outlets. It includes freedom to say things even those in power
might not like.
On democracy, the Western narrative
seems to be driven by a strong belief in adversarial politics and
cut-throat competition between power contenders.
Since
Rwanda is historically inhabited by three ethnic groups with Hutus
constituting the majority, and since, it’s assumed citizens vote on the
basis of ethnicity such that democracy came to mean ethnic majority and
vice versa, Western observers don’t believe this logic can change.
In
other words, Western observers treat politics as uncreative and static
and therefore don’t believe in the power-sharing arrangement imagined
after the genocide.
This narrative can be seen in
questions some foreign journalists asked me during the presidential
campaign. One journalist asked me: “I have heard that the Green Party
candidate was allowed to stand as a facade to present the appearance of
democracy. What do you have to say?”
What came to mind
is how hard the Green Party candidate had worked hard to vie for
presidency and how he had even sought my advice before announcing his
candidature. I couldn’t understand what had informed the journalist’s
question.
What’s clear is that promoters of the Western
narrative don’t believe that political elites can share power or that
popular political support can be forged through service delivery rather
than on ethnicity.
Internal narrative
Meanwhile,
defenders of the RPF-led government portray their politics as the ideal
system. Yet, politics doesn’t work that way and consensual
power-sharing is an experiment with flaws that need fixing.
What
the two narratives fail to acknowledge is that the de-legitimisation of
ethnic politics represents a fundamental shift and institutionalising
politics of ideas oiled by power sharing will take time to take root.
Whether
or not the two stories eventually coalesce and Rwanda becomes a
fully-fledged democracy will depend less on what outsiders say but what
we do internally.
Christopher Kayumba, PhD. Senior
Lecturer, School of Journalism and Communication, UR; Lead consultant,
MGC Consult International Ltd. E-mail: ckayumba@yahoo.com; twitter account: @Ckayumba Website:www.mgcconsult.com
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