My comment
Andrew Mwenda is a
typical neo-liberal intellectual hypocrite. For example he has propelled
a gullible view that, ‘’Most people I have met trust the UN `experts’
and international media when they claim that Rwanda and, most recently, Uganda,
are the ones supplying arms, ammunition and soldiers to the rebel movement…. Their claims of heavy weapons shipments from Rwanda are
naive. If Rwanda
moved weapons across the border, even amidst the darkest night, American
satellites in space would get clear pictures of it.’’ This fallacious view is based on the false assumption
that the USA
is a holy big brother and neutral player in the DR Congo conflict.
An honest intellectual should know that Rwanda
and Uganda are client states
of the USA and the
their armies are proxy armies that USA is using in its
neo-liberal imperialist agenda. It is naïve and idiotic to think that the USA would spy on its proxy Rwanda.
Every dirty that Rwanda is doing in the DR Congo has the full backing of
the USA and the USA wants confusion to continue in DR Congo because this
facilities the primitive accumulation of resources from the DRC .
Andrew Mwenda has also
shown how heartless and atheistic he is by arguing that,
‘’The best way to save DRC is to let
it burn. From the ashes of catastrophe lies the chance for a solution’’. In other words, the killing of innocent people, the raping
of women, the defiling of children, war crimes, genocide, crimes against
humanity and heinous human rights violations should be allowed in D.R.Congo as
best way to create order and good governance in the D. R. Congo of the future.
This sounds typically atheistic i.e order comes out of chaos just as the world
came out of a big bang. Haaa…Haaa… Woooo….Woooo!!!!
Andrew Mwenda’s
order by Chaos thesis is further solidified in his opining
that , ‘’To solve the problems of Congo, the United Nations and
other African countries may need to allow the belligerents to fight until one
secures a decisive military victory or all sides get exhausted by war and find
working together more attractive than further fighting’’. This view is also based on the flawed assumption that the
fighting of the belligerents in the Congo has no western or American
dialectic or catalysts. The truth is that America and her client western
allies have a neo-liberal capitalistic system that primitively accumulates
resources through disorder and chaos. This satanic system has
nothing to do with human rights and good governance. Therefore Andrew Mwenda’s
domestic thesis that the problem of the D.R Congo is a domestic one and should
be given a domestic solution is a fiction.
The confusing world
of Andrew Mwenda
Some times he
appears to be right on point in his
analysis
During his 2008
campaign, Obama gave three speeches where he denounced Museveni for stifling
democracy and promoting corruption. Shivers went down the spines of many at
State House in Entebbe.
Yet this week, Museveni travels to New York
for the United Nations General Assembly meetings from whence he will go to Washington DC
for meetings at the Pentagon, State Department and later meet Obama at the
White House. He will be feted and treated as a prince by US leaders. America will announce doubling its military
assistance to Uganda
– including giving lethal military assistance. What happened to Obama of 2008? America’s geostrategic interests in our region, and Museveni’s
pivotal role in them, demand that the
American president pampers his Ugandan
counterpart. The rest was election
idealism. Obama has just matured in office as Museveni did. Both now appreciate
reality with the humility of experience. Welcome
to the real world. (http://independent.co.ug/andrewmwenda/?p=571)
Other times he turns
out to be a confused confuser
This set the country on
a trajectory of entirely new politics that has set it apart from the rest of Africa. This factor, in the eyes of some, tends to
reinforce the view that Kagame runs an authoritarian state, a criticism that is partly true. However, the
“authoritarian” aspects of the government are necessary to liberate the state
from capture by a few elites so that it can serve ordinary people.
(http://independent.co.ug/andrewmwenda/?p=576
)
Don’t Save Congo
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/12/opinion/dont-save-congo.html?_r=0#h
By ANDREW M. MWENDA
Published: November 11, 2013
Kampala, Uganda — Last week, the Congolese Army defeated the rebel group, M23, with the help of United Nations forces and Tanzanian and South African troops.Many observers seem to believe that this victory promises to bring an end to the intractable conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Yet foreign intervention to help President Joseph Kabila secure a military victory against his opponents is treating the symptom but not the disease that ails Congo.
The M23 is a manifestation of a deeper crisis. The Congolese government lacks the rudimentary security and administrative infrastructure to ensure law and order, let alone providing public goods and services like roads, schools, hospitals, electricity and water. Its army is undisciplined, poorly trained and poorly paid (when it gets paid).
All too often, the army survives by scavenging on ordinary citizens whom it frequently loots, terrorizes and rapes. This creates incentives for rebellion against the government.
Worse still, most of Congolese society is polarized along ethnic lines. Without a viable state to mediate these conflicts or protect one community from attacks by another, Congolese civilians often form ethnic militias to defend their specific interests. Although the United Nations, human rights organizations and the media have focused on M23 (perhaps because it was the strongest) there are over 40 rebel movements in Congo, each fighting the central government or holding precariously to an uneasy peace.
These political divisions are accentuated by the natural endowments of the Congo. The eastern region, for example, is heavily forested, mountainous and endowed with rich minerals like gold, tantalite and diamonds. These physical conditions create opportunities for violent rebellion; forests offer sanctuary to rebels; the mountains make it difficult for Congo’s corrupt and incompetent army to use mechanized vehicles to attack their camps while rich minerals provide revenues to sustain the rebellion.
The state in Congo is mostly absent. And where it is present, it is rapacious and repressive. Hence, most Congolese citizens prefer to either fight or avoid the government. The United Nations intervention will not resolve the issues that make violent rebellion attractive for many Congolese citizens. The United Nations has simply taken one side in the conflict. And this is likely to accentuate rather than ease existing tensions.
Defeating M23 might provide the Congolese government with a temporary reprieve from its most formidable opponent. But a viable solution won’t come from outside actors. It will have to come because incentives force elites in Kinshasa to build a more effective state that can defend the country’s sovereignty and territorial integrity. The best incentive is a threat — and it has to be an existential threat.
If Mr. Kabila and his ruling allies in Kinshasa knew that they have to defeat rebel groups or otherwise face losing power or territory, that would be a powerful incentive on them to develop a state worthy of its name — one that can exercise a monopoly over the legitimate use of violence.
The only way to achieve this is to build an effective military and police force to ensure order and security across the country. This is unlikely to happen when the international community subsidizes Mr. Kabila’s incompetence and fights his wars.
In defeating M23 and establishing a semblance of peace, the international community has achieved a short-term humanitarian objective — an end to one rebellion. But it is a partial victory at best. It won’t end the myriad other rebellions raging across the country. And it hasn’t given Congolese elites any incentive to build a more robust state that defends its citizens against violent insurgents or seek political accommodation with them.
The defeat of M23 has created an artificial winner and an artificial loser. Mr. Kabila knows he has won because of external intervention. Fighters from M23 know they lost for a similar reason. In the future, Mr. Kabila will likely always seek to lean on his external benefactors to resolve internal conflicts. That, in turn, will make M23 and other groups wait for Mr. Kabila’s external benefactors to leave so that they can relaunch their rebellions.
Foreign intervention is helping Congolese leaders in Kinshasa look outside for a solution to a problem that can only be solved by internal political reform. It is liberating Mr. Kabila and his government from the necessary internal military and political bargains that can secure a lasting peace. And so Congo will remain a fragile state.
The most likely outcome will be to force the international community to continue babysitting the government in Kinshasa in the naïve hope that it will be able to defend itself against its internal competitors in the future. But as the experience of South Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan show, this is likely to become an open-ended commitment.
To solve the problems of Congo, the United Nations and other African countries may need to allow the belligerents to fight until one secures a decisive military victory or all sides get exhausted by war and find working together more attractive than further fighting.
Anyone with capacity to organize an army, mobilize resources and pacify the country should be given a chance to prove this on the battlefield. If no one can secure a military victory, they may then seek political accommodation. Indeed, this is the path Mr. Kabila had begun in 2009, when he co-opted various belligerents into the political process, thus turning enemies into strategic allies.
It could happen again, but not if the international community fights his wars for him.
Andrew M. Mwenda is the founding managing editor of The Independent, a Ugandan news magazine.
Corporate thieving in the DR Congo, Banro Gold fields
Also read:
How to save Congo from the UN
http://www.independent.co.ug/the-last-word/the-last-word/6939?task=viewJournalists who have been trained and paid to defend US proxies: Seeing through the hypocrisy of American New world order neo-liberal elites: Andrew Mwenda and his simplistic analysis of the DR Congo Crisis: Andrew Mwenda’s hypocritical defence of Dictator Paul Kagame.
http://watchmanafrica.blogspot.com/2012/12/seeing-through-hypocrisy-of-american.html
Asad Ismi ,
The Western Heart of Darkness: Mineral-rich Congo ravaged by genocide and
Western plunder
The curse of neo-liberal elitism : When American gloomed neo-liberal elites make obscurantist analyses aimed at disguising western and American tentacles to the DR Congo Conflict: According to athesit Andrew Mwenda, To solve the problems of Congo, the United Nations and other African countries may need to allow the belligerents to fight until one secures a decisive military victory
http://watchmanafrica.blogspot.com/2013/11/the-curse-of-neo-liberal-elitism-when.htmlEnd of the M23 Era but no end yet to USA and her clients’ looting of Congo resources : Kabila Congratulates Congo Army for Defeating M23 Rebels: FARDC captured Ugandan and Rwandan Nationals fighting alongside M23 Rebels
http://watchmanafrica.blogspot.com/2013/10/end-of-m23-era-but-no-end-yet-to-usa.html
Asad Ismi ,
The Ravaging of Africa, Western neo-colonialism fuels wars, plundering of
resources
CHRISTIANS IN AFRICA: AWAKE! America and the American Church Are Not Your Friends
http://www.antipasministries.com/html/file0000234.htm
THE THIRD WORLD AS A MODEL FOR
THE NEW WORLD ORDER
http://www.antipasministries.com/html/file0000156.htm
Inside Obama’s vision of Museveni
http://independent.co.ug/andrewmwenda/?p=571
How the US president has swallowed his
idealism and transformed from a critic of his Ugandan counterpart into an ally
Barack Obama’s election
as president of the United
States in 2008 was a moment of great hope.
It is difficult to recapture the emotional tone of that moment. But, to use the
words Robert Bates used on Africa’s
independence, “the depth of it, the fullness of it and the promise it offered”
left its mark on all those who followed his campaign up to his inauguration.
It
was presented as a new dawn, a rebirth. In Africa,
our chattering class saw in Obama a savior to liberate them from local
dictatorships and their corruption.
Obama projected himself
as a messiah sent by providence to liberate the world from the Bush-Cheney
“axis of evil”. He denounced George Bush and demonised Dick Cheney. He promised
to rebuild the economy at home and improve America’s standing abroad.
He said the things the
Bush administration had done in pursuit of the war on terror – detention
without trial, torture, foreign bombings and occupations, surveillance of
people abroad and citizens at home, the Patriot Act, the horrors of Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib – all went against
the grist of American values and decency.
So the first thing
Obama did upon entering the oval office was to sign an executive order closing Guantanamo Bay. He then promised transparency in
government activities especially in allocation of projects and the war on
terror, declared that he was going to repair America’s relations with Russia,
extend an open hand to Iran (both of which, he claimed, Bush had mishandled),
reconstruct the ties with Europe, improve relations with the Arab and Muslim
world and rebuild confidence in the image of America as the world’s savior.
At home, he promised to
rebuild roads and bridges, end the corruption and privileges of Washington DC,
promote transparency in government spending, curb political patronage
(Americans call it “pork-barrel” politics), push through healthcare reform,
invest in renewable energy, finance improved education, cut military spending
and end occupations abroad. He initiated the largest state-financed recovery –
pouring over $800 billion into the economy.
For many people in America
and the world, the hopes Obama built have given way to disillusionment. In
spite of his rhetoric, Obama has failed to stimulate serious economic recovery
at home or improve America’s
standing abroad. Instead, the man whom Colin Powell, perhaps in a moment of
unguarded optimism, suggested would become a “transformational figure,” has
turned out to be a transactional president, a mundane tactician.
He has not closed Guantanamo. He has not
ended illegal imprisonment and torture. He has not stopped foreign bombings. In
his first year, he threw more bombs against defenseless Afghan, Pakistani and
Yemeni civilians than Bush did in eight years. He has intensified security
surveillance of people abroad and citizens at home.
He has not cut the
defense budget. He has not improved relations with Russia, they have become worse. He
has achieved nothing with Iran.
He passed a watered down healthcare legislation.
Instead, Obama has
presided over growing governmental corruption and incompetence. Funds allocated
to finance research and investment in renewable energy went to companies owned
by his former campaign managers and financiers.
The number of
non-authorised surveillance of Americans has sky-rocketed, a sign of limited
transparency in pursuit of a “war on terror.” In short, Obama has failed in
almost every big and small initiative he has undertaken.
I wrote in my column
during his 2008 campaign that Obama’s idealism was going to confront American
reality. I think there is little in Obama’s personality, values, personal
managerial and leadership competences to explain his failures.
It has a lot to do with
the animal called the United
States of America. A US president,
however well intentioned, cannot change the way the system works. Rather than
change the system, they bend to its rules.
Obama’s predicament
reminded me of a conversation I had last week, over tea, with a top NRM
politician and close confidant of President Yoweri Museveni. He told me of how,
in 1986, Museveni/NRM thought enthusiastically that by 1990, they would have
put in place the necessary mechanisms for Uganda to transition to democracy.
They would then
handover power and go home. Wow!! This was the naivety with which our
revolutionaries came to Kampala.
But it was not going to last, reality checked them.
It is coming close to
30 years and there is not much of a fundamental change that Museveni has
brought. I am not saying there has been no change under Museveni. There has
been; but it has been change of a slow and incremental nature, not rapid
transformational change that he and his allies envisaged.
On the contrary, on
almost every issue where Museveni criticised Milton Obote (corruption,
tribalism, militarism, dictatorial tendencies, East African integration,
cronyism, etc), he has performed worse or the same and rarely better than the
man from Lango. What happened?
Like Obama, Museveni’s
idealism met Uganda’s
reality. Where he said he would leave power in four years, Museveni has clung
onto it for 27 and counting. Where he denounced corruption, it has become the
bedrock of his presidency.
Where he scorned
militarism, he has survived because of it. And where he criticised tribalism,
he can be accused of descending to sub tribe and family. Yet today I am
inclined to be more sympathetic to Museveni (or Obama) than I would have been a
decade ago, recognising that he is a mere cog in the wheel of history where he
thought he was the wheel itself.
During his 2008
campaign, Obama gave three speeches where he denounced Museveni for stifling
democracy and promoting corruption. Shivers went down the spines of many at
State House in Entebbe.
Yet this week, Museveni
travels to New York for the United Nations
General Assembly meetings from whence he will go to Washington DC
for meetings at the Pentagon, State Department and later meet Obama at the
White House. He will be feted and treated as a prince by US leaders. America will announce doubling its military
assistance to Uganda
– including giving lethal military assistance.
What happened to Obama
of 2008? America’s
geostrategic interests in our region, and Museveni’s pivotal role in them,
demand that the American president pampers his Ugandan counterpart. The rest
was election idealism. Obama has just matured in office as Museveni did. Both
now appreciate reality with the humility of experience. Welcome to the real
world.
Inside Africa’s politics of patronage
http://independent.co.ug/andrewmwenda/?p=576
How Rwanda
is defying the established mechanisms of organizing politics in Africa and why it is succeeding
Last week, we were at
the University of London’s School
of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS)
for a two-day conference on Rwanda.
It always amazes me how this small (geographically), poor (economically) and
geo-strategically unimportant country attracts attention far out of proportion
to its position.
Critics
and fans of President Paul Kagame battled each other over his legacy. Both
sides agreed that the country has registered rapid state reconfiguration and
economic reconstruction. For critics, however, the reasons that have made this
possible were incidentally the reasons for their attacks. This article seeks to
demonstrate this.
All governments (whether
democratic or authoritarian or anywhere in between) need and seek support of
various constituencies to consolidate and survive. Force and repression alone
cannot sustain a government for long. Support is important for legitimacy and
governments legitimise themselves through a variety of ways.
One strategy is
ideology; by articulating such ideals as democracy, patriotism, development,
poverty eradication, security, equality or human rights, governments can rally
their people behind the cause. The other could be cooptation of influential
traditional or modern elites through what is popularly known as patronage or
“pork” (as Americans call it). Another source of legitimacy is the government’s
delivery of public goods and services to ordinary citizens.
Governments don’t
always choose “either or” of these strategies. Often they use a combination of
all of them. The real question is the degree to which a particular government
or ruling coalition – political party, military or revolutionary group etc. relies
on any of these options as its “core” strategy. In most of Sub-Saharan Africa,
at the core of the regime consolidation project is patronage.
It involves co-opting
influential elites representing powerful constituencies – often ethnic or
religious – into the government through appointments to influential positions
in the government as ministers or ambassadors. It also involves creating
private sector opportunities for government tenders and contracts. These elites
then deliver the block (or wholesale) support of their co-ethnics.
In Kenya, for example, President Uhuru
Kenyatta (from the nation’s largest tribe, the Kikuyu) allied with William Ruto
(from the country’s third largest ethnic group, the Kalenjin) and made him his
vice presidential running mate. This created a formidable political force.
His opponent, Raila
Odinga (from Kenya’s
fourth largest ethnic group, the Luo) allied with Kalonzo Musyoka (from
nation’s fifth largest tribe, the Kamba). This ethnic mathematics put the
Raila-Musyoka ticket at considerable disadvantage. In the 2013 election, each
of these powerful men got over 90 percent of the “ethnic vote.” This, of
course, is a general outline. The real story is more nuanced.
Such alliances among
these powerful men and women are characterised by a trade in private goods. For
instance, the president (or ruling party) will offer a politically influential
or financially lucrative ministry to a pillar of pubic opinion from a given
ethnic or religious community.
The person so appointed
will have access to official salary and allowances and unofficial opportunities
to profit through corruption. Indeed, corruption becomes the way the system
works, not the way it fails. In exchange, this powerful individual will deliver
a significant block vote of his/her co-ethnics for the president and his party.
How does a man like
Ruto sustain his pre-eminent position among the Kalenjin? He must be able to
leverage his position to also provide private goods; jobs and lucrative
government tenders and contracts to other members of his community.
This way he cultivates
a large clientele of influential supporters. Meanwhile, each of these persons
appointed also uses their influence to secure jobs and contracts for the
political operators in their community. It cascades downwards in a reciprocal
arrangement, eroding the principle of merit from the center to the lowest unit
of local government.
Although the system may
be technically dysfunctional (it creates distributional inefficiencies because
of the personalised way it addresses problems), it is politically profitable.
In the context of agrarian values (I wrote about this last week), it helps
build and lubricate a network of political support.
At the lowest level,
peasants seeking assistance to treat a sick relative or to educate a child will
receive help from such rich patrons. Contrary to what many elites in Africa believe, a genuinely democratic system would tend
to reinforce rather than erode these informal practices.
If the president can
win a big share of the block vote of that community by merely coopting a few of
its influential members into his cabinet, that is a much more cost-efficient
strategy than delivering public goods and services to ordinary citizens.
It costs more money,
intellectual exertion, time and discipline to deliver public goods and
services. Thus democratic politics (multi party competition as currently
organised, like the one party state or military junta before it) tends to
reinforce the informalisation of power.
However, post genocide Rwanda
has defied this logic. The RPF-led government seeks legitimacy largely through
performance, not the distribution of favours among influential ethnic and
religious elites. This is not to say that the Kagame and the RPF are immune to
the politics of patronage.
Rather it is to say
that patronage, although it exits, plays a very small part in the government’s
strategy of legitimisation. The fount and matrix of the system is public sector
performance through the delivery of public goods and services to ordinary
citizens using impersonal institutions. The strategy is to win support of every
individual citizen through public service delivery i.e. by retail.
This is especially
intriguing because Rwanda
has a large rural population and a very low level of per capita income, both of
which would predict elite patronage as the fulcrum of politics. Indeed RPF
initially tried this system in the mid to late 1990s and failed.
This set the country on
a trajectory of entirely new politics that has set it apart from the rest of Africa. This factor, in the eyes of some, tends to
reinforce the view that Kagame runs an authoritarian state, a criticism that is
partly true. However, the “authoritarian” aspects of the government are
necessary to liberate the state from capture by a few elites so that it can
serve ordinary people.
When RPF captured power
in Rwanda in 1994, it
sought, like most governments in Africa, to
rely on the cooptation of influential ethnic elites from the Hutu community for
its legitimacy. In pursuit of this, it appointed a Hutu president, a Hutu prime
minister, a Hutu minister of this and that. This way, the RPF sought to rely on
these Hutu politicians to win over Hutu masses.
A problem soon emerged:
although formal power was vested in these Hutu faces, effective power remained
in the hands of the Tutsi elites who had fought the war. But these Hutu leaders
did not want ceremonial titles. They wanted to exercise real power and the
prerogatives and privileges that go with it. And they knew (or believed) that
the Tutsi-led (at that time even Tutsi-dominated) RPF could not survive without
them.
So the Hutu faces of
the regime and Tutsi power-holders behind it lacked a shared vision of national
reconstruction. The alternative to hostile stalemate in this ethnic coalition
government would have been a retreat to the exchange of material favours i.e.
corruption. By giving individual Hutu politicians a free reign at official
loot, Kagame/RPF would have kept them busy at self-enrichment.
But they would also
have accumulated sufficient evidence of theft. So if anyone of them tried to
challenge the system, they could be legitimately prosecuted for corruption. The
trick would have been to keep a tight grip on the military to counter-balance power.
Indeed, many African leaders, past and present, have successfully used this
approach.
It seems to me that
Kagame personally was either unable to appreciate the necessity of such a
bargain and/or was unwilling to accept it as a method of management. There is
something in his make-up, his personality that is incapable of such deals; a
puritanical streak that drives him to the adherence to certain
principles/values. This streak also gives him an authoritarian reputation.
Rather than trade corruption for loyalty, Kagame just allowed the tensions
between his Tutsi-led RPF and the Hutu leaders to escalate leading to a
divorce.
Throughout the 1990s
senior Hutu politicians fell out with the government. Always, they resigned and
ran into exile clearly knowing that in so doing they were stripping the regime
of legitimacy and strengthening the civil war then raging in the north east of
the country. Kagame’s first mission was to defeat rebellion militarily and
thereby demonstrate that a violent power-grab was impossible. This he achieved.
But he could not stop the tide of Hutu elites turning against him and his
government in droves.
As more and more Hutu
politicians fell out with the government, Kagame and his colleagues must have
realised that this strategy was not sustainable. The legitimacy of the
government depended on the goodwill of a few influential Hutu elites they could
not control. RPF needed a strategy where the cards of legitimacy were in its
hands. Rather than rely on unreliable Hutu elites, the RPF decided to work
directly with Hutu masses to win their hearts and minds.
There was not a single
moment when such a decision was taken. It evolved gradually and I think out of
necessity. But if there is a date to attach to it, it is when Kagame came out
of the closet and accepted to become president in place of Pasteur Bizimungu.
That decision set an entirely different tone in Rwanda. Initially the government
derived legitimacy from ending the genocide, establishing security, curbing
revenge killings (many Hutus had been told that an RPF power-grab would lead to
their mass murder) and returning the refugees.
The presence of Hutu
faces in top leadership positions also helped win over the hearts and minds of
Hutu masses. But as the situation stabilised and senior Hutu politicians (Seth
Sendashonga, Alex Rezinde, Pierre Rwigyema, Faustine Twagiramungu, Emmanuel
Habyarimana, Bizimungu, to mention only but a few) were resigning in quick
succession, the RPF began the delivery of public goods as the focal point of
its search for legitimacy.
The strategy to seek
performance-based legitimacy has had powerful implications on the organisation
and exercise of political power in Rwanda. For such a strategy to
work, the country had to build institutions on the basis of professional
competence so that the state can deliver on its promises.
Henceforth, recruitment
and promotion were to be based on merit. Yet many Hutu professionals had been
ringleaders of the genocide and were therefore in jail or exile, many others
had died defending Hutu power. The professionals available were the Tutsis
diaspora returning from exile where they had worked for international
organisations and foreign governments.
Insistence on merit
could easily be seen as a disguised form of consolidating Tutsi power. Yet
forging a semblance of ethnic accommodation by appointing every Hutu regardless
of merit would create institutional incompetence and undermine state
capabilities.
The RPF was no longer
for appearances anymore (how it would be seen) but for substance (how its rule
would be felt by ordinary people). As the government began to deliver, it
pulled the rug from under the feet of ethnic populists. Save for standing on
the platform of identity (Hutu power), critics of Kagame would find it
difficult to fight him over public policy.
To deliver public goods
and services effectively and efficiently, the RPF has had to make fighting
corruption a corner stone of its governance strategy. Kagame has rigorously
enforced an anti-corruption regime that has antagonised him with many sections
of the Tutsi elite who have been its largest victims.
But such fights only
win Kagame increasing admiration from many moderate and responsible Hutu
leaders and Rwandan masses. And unlike in most of Africa
where corruption charges are used to trim the wings of political rivals, Kagame
has used it to ensure a government that delivers.
This brings me to the
final lesson – democracy in Rwanda.
According to American political theoretician Robert Dahl, democracy has two
elements – participation and contestation. Participation refers to the ease
with which citizens can organise and place their demands on the national
political agenda.
The RPF has expanded
participation through such local institutions as councils, national dialogue
(umushikirano), farmers’ cooperatives and imihigo. Here, ordinary citizens can
and do influence public policy. Contestation refers to the easy with which
opponents of the government can organise to challenge its hold on power. Most
political contention in Rwanda
is over this issue.
There is limited
political contestation in Rwanda
especially the kind of adversarial competition we see elsewhere. One reason is
because the government has entrenched a system of power-sharing among political
parties. No political party, however popular, can take more than 50 percent of
cabinet seats. This makes political parties find it more profitable to
accommodate rather than to attack each other during elections. Although it has
taken heat out of the electoral process, it has stabilised the country.
The other reason is
government has closed space for anyone who seeks to use ethnic identity as the
basis for organising political support. Political parties and media that offer
a platform to this kind of politics get muzzled. These actions have armed
critics with ammunition to denounce Kagame as a despot. Yet every reasonable
person would agree these measures are absolutely necessary in Rwanda’s specific context of ethnic
polarisation causing genocide.
To reform the
power-structure in Rwanda
so that the state serves the ordinary citizens, Kagame/RPF found that
resistance is better if it is organised through the democratic process. It is
elites who organise and control political parties, own and write in newspapers
and appear on television and radio and who form “civil society” organisations.
They use these platforms to promote their interests. Ordinary citizens are
often integrated into these “democratic structures” – not as rights bearing members
– but as clients of powerful individuals.
This way, conventional
democratic processes tend to empower a few elites at the expense of the masses.
To liberate the state and the masses from the power of elites, Kagame/RPF found
themselves in the shoes of former Venezuela President, Hugo Chavez –
fighting institutions conventionally seen as democratic. As Rwanda’s
success has shown, that is a worthwhile battle in the war against the politics
of patronage.
amwenda@independent.co.ug
