Rwanda Needs To Succeed Spectacularly. And It Also Needs To Fail Dramatically

There are two countries that half the world seems to hate with great passion, and the other half loves and admires to high heavens; they are Israel and Rwanda.

We shall not go into the similarities of the painful history of the people of these two countries. However, according to a Gallup study (see table titled RWANDA; BEAUTIFUL IN ITS PEOPLES’S EYES, UGLY TO SOME FOREIGNERS ) – Rwanda has the widest gap between how citizens view their freedoms, and how foreigners judge the same freedoms.

Thus the 2010 Press Freedom Index suggests that Rwanda is one of the worst places for media freedom in the world, a modest improvement from 2007 when it was much further at the bottom. Most international human rights groups label Rwanda among the worst human rights abusers in Africa, and bringing Paul Kagame’s regime down has become a major preoccupation for some of them.

However, Rwanda is also rated the least corrupt country in East Africa; the best country for doing business, and so on. Gallup found Rwandese have the highest level of trust in their media in the world. The World Values Surveys also found that Rwandese rank in the world’s top in their trust of government institutions like the courts, and the Police.

One might argue that Rwanda is a police state, so people cannot speak freely to interviewers. However, they seem to have spoken freely in the surveys in other alleged police states, so Rwanda cannot be the exception.

The Rwanda capital Kigali, as anyone who has been visiting it over the years knows, has changed dramatically. It is, without doubt, among the most orderly and clean cities in Africa. In health and education, the Rwanda government has achieved nearly the impossible for a country with its modest resources.

However, for long Rwanda’s politics has been illiberal, and its press laws frightening. Thus while it has several independent newspapers and FM radio stations, they operate in an ecosystem that still drags down the country’s press freedom rankings. Part of Rwanda’s problem is that the country is still hostage to the sensitivities around the 1994 genocide in which one million people were slaughtered.

But there is something else at stake that doesn’t have much to do with what the actual situation on the ground is as far as freedoms go in Rwanda. And this might explain the disconnect between how Rwandese see their situation, and how the world views it. The Rwandese are looking to a regular existence; to put food on the table, pay their bills, get medical care, and place children in schools. The world’s human rights community, meanwhile, is involved in a big philosophical and ideological battle with Kigali.

If Rwanda, which is viewed as a dictatorship by critics continues to notch up social and economic successes and becomes a success model, it will change the whole approach to human rights elsewhere in Africa. So far, no country led by a strongman has been able to grow both rich and be politically stable in the long term (as Tunisia and Egypt have demonstrated). If Rwanda succeeds, then the democracy-before-development argument will fall flat on its face.
Part of the global human rights lobby will not allow that, if for nothing else because it puts them out of business. For Kigali (and other fledgling African democracies), success in what its critics say is an undemocratic order could be a pass that allows it to negotiate its way easily around the world without being embarrassed by bad press about its human rights record.

So, the world needs two things to happen to Rwanda. Rwanda needs to succeed spectacularly. And it also needs to fail dramatically.