Laetitia Bader from Human Rights Watch
accuses me of justifying restrictions imposed on independent media in Rwanda by
the RPF government. I do not know how she came to this conclusion. But I have a
fundamental philosophical difference with her. I believe that freedom is not a
gift to the governed from their rulers. It is, as Kwame Nkrumah wrote in Africa
Must Unite, the precious reward, the shining trophy of struggle and sacrifice. Freedom
of the press in Rwanda will not come from the magnanimity of the government but
from the struggle and sacrifice by its journalists.
I have always argued that the biggest
threat to press freedom in Uganda is not the state but the market. The media
grave yard is littered with newspapers that closed because readers gave them a
vote of no confidence using their wallets rather than because they were shut
down by the state. The inability of media institutions to recruit, harness and
retain talent has created an exodus of the best journalists from news
organisations to other businesses, NGOs, the government, and out of Uganda.
This coupled with a small private sector (for advertising) and lack of a large
educated middle class (for reading) has greatly undermined the cause of press
freedom.
The situation in Rwanda is worse
because its intellectual class there is even smaller. The intellectuals outside
of the state and the market i.e. in civil society are too few to support a
vibrant media. I argued that therefore, government actions against the media
should be seen as a consequence rather than a cause of the Rwandas democratic
deficit. The good news is the Rwanda government is investing in mass education
and is promoting private enterprise growth. This will inevitably produce the
middle class and a sizeable private sector to support democratic politics.
No where in my article that Bader was
responding to did I justify government actions against the press. I have raised
my concerns about the treatment of journalists and newspapers with Rwandan
leaders including President Paul Kagame. I have found the Rwandan leadership
extremely eager to listen to my views on why they should be tolerant even
though their journalists can be extremely atrocious. Bader referred to
Beneventura Bizimuremyi who wrote an article with a picture of Kagame next to
that of Adolf Hitler. He accused Kagame of committing genocide adding that the
Rwandan president will commit suicide like Hitler. When police summoned him, he
escaped to Uganda where he has been seeking a visa to be resettled in
Netherlands. Apparently, some Rwandan journalists have learnt how to exploit
their governments paranoia with the press to create an easy way to get asylum
abroad.
Bader knows that no media in the West
would do such a thing because they exercise maturity in reporting. In a
volatile situation like that of Rwanda, you need even greater care. It should
not therefore be surprising that police summoned him.
I am attracted to Rwanda because of its
accomplishments, well recognising that it has weaknesses. I know that most
outsiders are attracted to our failures rather than our accomplishments.
Increasingly, we as Africans have caught this disease. I focus my analysis on
Rwandas achievements because they can work as lessons for Uganda. But that does
not amount to justifying every wrong of its government.
Since 2000, Rwanda has developed the
best and most effective government Sub Sahara Africa has produced over the last
50 years. Anyone with knowledge of Africas failures would not fail to see how
the RPF government has set itself apart from the rest of the region in terms of
discipline, hard work, honesty and focus. For the first time in decades, an
African government is reconstructing a national vision.
It is not only me who sees this.
Leading personalities in politics (Bill Clinton, Tony Blair); academia (Michael
Porter, Paul Farmer, Michael Fairbanks); in business (Joe Richie, Bill Gates);
in religion (Rick Warren) are flocking to Rwanda. All these people have taken
its citizenship and also taken on the role of advisors to Kagame.
This poor and obscure landlocked
country had been written off as a failed state only 14 years ago. Today, it has
cofounded everybody by initiating one of the successful institutional and
economic turnarounds in living memory.
With these achievements to its credit,
news comes that a journalist has been arrested or a newspaper has been
shutdown. Sometimes, the journalist is a fake: one politician paid money to
defame his adversary. The paper printed 200 copies that were hardly read by
anyone. The injured politician leverages the state to take revenge on the
journalist. News spreads internationally that Rwanda is killing independent
media.
The costs on the governments reputation
far outweigh the benefits which accrue to the individual politician. It
therefore seems to me that it is not in the self interest of the Rwandan state
to arrest journalists.
Bader is hostile to Rwandas laws on genocide
and divisionism. A nations laws are shaped by its experience and history. If
you form a Jihad in Palestine or Afghanistan you would be seen as a liberation
fighter. If you formed a Jihad in New York, you would be smoked out by the FBI
as a terrorist. If you said that you wanted to commit suicide just before
boarding a plane at Entebbe, officials there would laugh at you. If you did so
in Los Angeles, you would be whisked off for questioning by the FBI.
Only 14 years ago, Rwanda lost nearly a
million people in genocide. The mobilisation for the genocide was conducted
using the mass media. The victims of the hate campaign were the Tutsi who now
lead the government in Rwanda. Their experience with the mass media is not as
an instrument of democracy but of extermination. It is that psychology that
shapes their stance on media freedom. To ignore this reality their experience would
be naive. In Uganda, the media has historically been an instrument of
democracy. That is why press freedom enjoys broad national support. Not so for
Rwanda because its experience is different.
amwenda@independent.co.ug
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