H.E. :My proudest achievement will be to hand over power,

Photo: H.E. Paul Kagame

Source: Shyaka Kanuma, http://focus.rw

Rwanda: My Proudest Achievement Will Be to Hand Over Power, Kagame In an exclusive interview with Focus President Kagame reveals he already is thinking of succession to his presidency and he speaks out on a number of other issues including his style of governance, Congo issues and a few other problems such as tycoon Tribert Rujugiro and his business dealings.   The interview with the President was an exclusive that went on for almost three hours. The President's press secretary Yolanda Makolo was the only other person present in the ornately furnished boardroom of the state house where we sat down with Kagame for the interview. One of the more remarkable things he said was that his proudest achievement will be: "when I hand over power to some other Rwandan when my time to go comes; my proudest achievement will be this, plus seeing the continuity of my work in my successor." It is a truly remarkable statement when one puts it in the perspective of what the man already has achieved. Kagame is the individual who was at the head of a movement that led a people back home after three decades of exile-reversing a colossal injustice and stopping a genocide along the way. This is the individual under whose leadership a poorly equipped, undernourished and at one point highly demoralized guerilla army (equipped with enough ideological clarity though) could take the fight to Habyarimana (with his French political and military support) and claim an impossible historic victory. It is difficult to imagine anyone saying there is a prouder achievement than this. Yet there the President was, talking of the relatively easy business of handing over power to a successor as the moment he will be most proud of. On the other hand what Kagame may be weighing that future goal against is the tendency of African leaders to cling to power, and do so at all costs even long after their sell-by date. In the Sub-Saharan context it truly is an achievement for a leader to oversee a peaceful transfer of power and having done that for him to then retire from office. The sad history of this continent is that such leaders can be counted on the fingers. Perhaps Kagame has an eye on history, wanting to join the pantheon of the likes of Nelson Mandela, Julius Nyerere (and his successors), Seretse Khama and Quett Masire of Botswana and a few others? Time will tell. Kagame's first term as the elected president of this country ends in 2010. He is eligible to stand for another seven-year term. He is emphatic he will leave at the end of his constitutionally mandated time. The President plays it close to his chest however about whether he already is grooming a successor and who that might be or whether he has multiple candidates in mind and who those may be. He didn't get into that during the interview.   We can devise the best government for us   President Kagame exercises close control of his government. Many, especially abroad, describe his style of governance as authoritarian in nature. But others look at it and see a close resemblance to the Chinese model whereby you have a strong central state that at the same time grants citizens many freedoms (in China's case the Communist government retains close control of political power and may even regulate people's choices, for example how many children they may have; but the regime maintains a laissez faire attitude in other areas of life notably in business and commercial life). Kagame maintains the Western world shouldn't be so negative about the Chinese. "Even the Americans who are China's biggest critics did not jump straight to where they are today; they underwent a lengthy process," says the President. "The Chinese too are achieving more individual freedoms; as they many of them become wealthier their money will give them leverage to demand even more freedoms for themselves but this will have been a homegrown process, not an order imposed from abroad." The government of Kagame has little time for pluralist politics. The opposition in this country can hardly be recognized as such though it has representatives in parliament who every now and then come down hard on poorly performing government appointees. Mostly the activities of our political parties are regulated by the RPF under the Forum of Political Parties. The opposition works hand in hand with the ruling party on most policy issues and governance decisions. Kagame sees no reason why anyone should find this arrangement wrong. "We will devise the best means to govern ourselves; I am not a believer in this notion propagated for years that only ideas developed elsewhere work," says the President. "All these people in Europe who preach their brand of democracy to the world, you will realize none of their systems are identical." Kagame uses the metaphor of an item of clothing to illustrate his point. "It is as if the Europeans and Americans have designed one suit for all Africans, regardless of whether different people have different heights and sizes and shapes, and expect that one suit they have designed to fit us all! Yet for themselves, they wear suits tailored to their different needs." He argues that you cannot expect to build a country by giving poor people such as Rwanda's every imaginable freedom straight away. "In no time at all they will be abusing all these freedoms," he remarks. "Even the Americans, if you look at their history when they were starting out, the ordinary people-the majority of whom could not read or write or did not own property-were not allowed to vote. "What they were doing was they were strengthening the center first, making it abuse proof, while at the same time the ordinary people's lives were being improved. Only then could you have responsible pluralist democracy. It really beats me why anyone would expect the majority of our African people to take a path different from this." Our history since independence from Belgian colonialism in the early 60s amply buttresses Kagame's argument. Multi party politics have taken on a tribal us-against-them identity whereby most poor, illiterate citizens have been led by demagogic politicians to internalize the thinking that to gain political power is a zero sum game during which all members of the other ethnic group have to be massacred. "You can see what past politicians have done to this country," Kagame says, slowly shaking his head at the thought. "Since 94 we have been picking up the pieces and trying to put everything back together and it is not by swallowing foreign ideas wholesale that we shall find a lasting solution to our problems." This President clearly won't be deterred from pursuing the objective of finding homegrown solutions to homegrown problems and having a forum of political parties where the opposition works with the ruling party for the greater good of all Rwandans clearly is part of the experiment.   Closer cooperation with other Africans   If President Kagame had it his way, African countries would be doing much more to forge stronger political and economic regional blocs that speak with one voice than currently is the case. The obvious advantage he sees in this is that we simultaneously reduce our dependence on aid from rich countries and we do something about changing our situation from being perpetual supplicants to better respected partners in world affairs. "It is hard for people who always go to Western capitals to beg for aid to shake off the indignities heaped on them daily," remarks the President. He adds: "but if we have big regional blocs then you will have a situation where more businesses from rich countries come looking for opportunities, which direct investment means less reason to go looking for foreign aid. "This is why for instance we have to do more to strengthen our East African Community-it would be hard for anyone, either from the West or elsewhere to ignore this market and its opportunities." Kagame clearly is irked that, decades after independence, much of our relationship with the West still is a master/servant one. The President said: "don't be mistaken for even a moment, these rich countries still exercise control over us. Slave trade and Colonialism may be long gone. But all these human rights and media rights organizations and so on, their sole objective is to impose Western ideas and values on everyone and anyone who refuses to go along is blacklisted or something like that. If you reject even some of their suggestions or recommendations you pay for it. It doesn't matter either whether the suggestions aren't practical for us or can't fit our situation. "All this strengthens the case for closer cooperation between our countries." One issue Kagame was alluding to is the quarrel Rwanda currently is embroiled in with two European countries, France and Germany. Last month German police arrested Rose Kabuye the President's chief of protocol in Frankfurt on the strength of a warrant issued by a French judge, Jean Louis Bruguiere whose acts, Kigali contends, are purely politically motivated. The story has been making headlines and what has emerged is that Judge Bruguiere appears to have no case since his accusations against Kabuye (and President Kagame and seven other Rwanda government officials) that they planned the assassination of former president Juvenal Habyarimana aren't backed with any credible evidence. A man the French judge described as his principle witness, Abdul Ruzibiza, has even emerged to recant every allegation he ever made about Kagame's ordering the assassination. "You see, this kind of situation where Europeans give themselves the powers to arrest us and lock us up can only be sustained as long as this master/servant relationship is what defines our dealings with them," says Kagame clasping and unclasping his hands. "Today it is us. Tomorrow it will be another African elsewhere; in fact that already is the case as we speak now," The Rwandan president agrees that indeed some Africans commit crimes against humanity, but then asks, "Is it only the African involved in criminal activity?" He adds: "We have to fight this tendency for Europeans to always cast themselves in the role of judge and the African always as the guilty party. We have to fight it on all fronts." Today any judge in France or Spain or elsewhere in Europe can induct anyone, using the doctrine of universal jurisdiction-a controversial international law principle whereby states may claim criminal jurisdiction over people whose alleged crimes were committed outside the territory of the prosecuting state. This is regardless of whatever nationality the alleged perpetrator is from. So far Africans appear to have borne the brunt of the principle than any other people.   Nkunda and the Congo   Kagame also has strong views about the views most espoused in the West on the conflict in the neighbouring DR Congo. "Now Rwanda is being accused of assisting Laurent Nkunda (leader of the CNDP rebel group); now they are saying Nkunda is a Tutsi and so Kagame must be helping him, as if that is the entire logic of it!" Of all the subjects that exercise Kagame's capability to keep his emotions in check, the subject of the Congo without a doubt tops the list. The president will talk vehemently about it and his voice will tend to rise as he discusses the reasons, the vicissitudes, the historical factors and the human drama that always cause wars in the country. "Does it make Nkunda any less a Congolese because he is a Tutsi?" Kagame asks tightly clasping his hands together and staring at a point in front of him. " And in what way does it become our responsibility if the Congolese government cannot protect its people and you have a situation where groups who committed genocide here are busy committing atrocities over there, which makes Nkunda and others like him take up arms to defend themselves? In what way does that make Nkunda our responsibility?" Kagame repeats. The fact that Tutsis in Rwanda suffered genocide makes it look logical that Kigali indeed backs Nkunda and his fellow Congolese Tutsis. Nkunda and his forces assert daily that their people have increasingly become victims of massacres and other human rights abuses at the hands of the FDLR-the umbrella group of Interahamwe Hutu extremist militias and the former Rwanda armed forces (FAR) who fled to the DRC after massacring up to a million people in 1994. Congolese Tutsi refugees who have fled their country and now live in refugee camps in Rwanda say they have been targeted by Hutu extremist for no offence other than that they are Tutsis. But Kigali repeatedly denies being in any way involved in the current spate of conflicts in the Congo, maintaining that Nkunda is an internal Congolese problem that Congo should be "making a better effort to resolve." "By the way it always amazes me when all these international groups accuse us of causing trouble in the Congo but never come up with a single analysis of what happens when you have a government that isn't up to the responsibilities of ensuring law and order, and personal safety for its people," says President Kagame. He gestures around the room and continues: "you have all these people (local and international diplomats and statesmen and women) coming here and telling me to rein in Nkunda, as if I can do any such thing! Now, if I may ask, in that case who will rein in (Congolese President Joseph) Kabila, since the problem really is one to do with his government? I am waiting for someone to see issues that way but in vain.   Tribert Rujugiro   Our interview touches a number of other issues, notably that of Tribert Rujugiro, the Rwandan tycoon who is under arrest in London on charges of evasion of taxes in South Africa. Rujugiro has also been cited by a highly tendentious UN report on the conflict in the DRC that he is one of the financiers of Laurent Nkunda. "Really this is a difficult world," says the President shaking his head. "Now if Rujugiro happens to be a Rwandan who has relatives in the Congo, that becomes an offence that reflects on the Rwandan leadership! "They say, 'there you go, Rujugiro who is one of Kagame's advisers is giving Nkunda money and so Kigali must be backing the CNDP'; how simplistic can you get! Rujugiro is one of my many advisers; his single role in this government is to advise in ways how to develop the private sector of the country. Period. Rujugiro doesn't advise me how to run government or how to conduct politics and what he does with his time only he knows. "On the one hand you have this outside world preaching to us that we should grant citizens more freedoms-so are they now suggesting we turn into a police state monitoring each and every citizen's private financial transactions?" The interesting thing about Rujugiro's activities is that the tycoon has businesses and financial transactions even in Kinshasa. But, says Kagame, "No one is accusing Kabila of wrong doings because of that."

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Source: Shyaka Kanuma, http://focus.rw



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