How human rights groups exploit Rwanda’s positive brand to build their own and what can be done about it
There has
been an intense contest over “Brand Rwanda” in the international sphere.
Many visitors to Rwanda are impressed by what they see. Physical
observations – clean and well paved streets, manicured flowers, working
street lights, mowed lawns, functional hospitals and schools and
well-constructed pedestrian sidewalks strike a visitor’s eye. However,
these visual observations tell of something profound about post genocide
Rwanda – the construction of a functional state and one which has a
strong commitment to serving the public good.
The first
group’s position is based on evidence – both visual and statistical –
that are difficult to deny. So Rwanda critics have created a safe
frontline on issues like human rights, freedom and democracy. It is a
“safe frontline” because democracy and human rights are abstract issues
where conjecture, prejudice and bias tend to work better. Thus, rumors,
hearsay, idle gossip or out-of-context accusations can easily mislead an
observer.
For
example, the death of a journalist or an alleged threat to assassinate
an opposition politician in exile immediately prompts human rights
groups to take on the issue and even without a whit of evidence accuse
the Rwanda government of being the perpetrator. The Rwanda government is
good in many things. But it is shambolic in public relations. In almost
all cases, human rights groups out-punch it, outmaneuver it and
out-talk it leaving it bruised.
One can
hate this group passionately but one also has to respect their ability
to succeed – even to distort obvious facts and win such a large
following in the international community. How did they achieve such a
feat? One reason is their campaign feeds into deeply entrenched
prejudices about governments in Africa and Africans generally. The other
part is that the government of Rwanda – and contrary to popular opinion
– does little or nothing to market its democracy credentials.
Nearly
every support the Kagame administration has gained in the international
system has been almost entirely predicated on its achievements on the
ground. This is something that is deeply held in the RPF and its
partners in government and epitomized in the beliefs of Kagame
personally. He believes Rwanda should be judged by the fruits of their
labors rather than the strength of its propaganda. Kagame in fact treats
PR with contempt – as a way of lying to people.
Of course
Kagame is partly right. Every product needs intrinsic value and quality
to market it. If you successfully market a bad product, you will at a
certain point hit a dead end when your customers realize that there is a
mismatch between promises and quality. But Kagame is wrong to believe
that a product, however good, can sell itself successfully in the market
purely on its intrinsic merit without branding.
Rwanda/Kagame
has been branded by its achievements as a successful case of post
conflict reconstruction. The more the positive Rwanda brand has grown,
the more it has attracted opportunistic groups that want to ride on it
to enhance their own brand. By attacking an attractive brand, you are
able to generate attention to your own brand. Human rights groups
therefore have little incentive to focus on some obscure – even though
murderous regime like Equatorial Guinea – because it will not make them
visible in the human rights advocacy market.
Assume you
have a consumer protection advocacy organization and you want to build
your global brand. It does not give you sufficient visibility if you
focus your campaign on some obscure company called Filiopa Cranta (what a
difficult name!) that manufactures drugs and sells them in the rural
areas of Papua New Guinea. However, if you can pitch your case against
GloxoSmithKline, Novartis or better still Microsoft or Apple, you are
likely to attract a lot of attention even if your case is weak.
In the
world of human rights, Rwanda is likely to attract a lot of
opportunistic brands trying to gain visibility by riding on it – not
because it has a bad record but because it has an excellent one. For
now, the solution to this crisis by the Rwanda government has been to
rubbish these groups as ignorant and biased (at best) and most of the
time to simply ignore them – a strategy akin to that of the ostrich –
burying one’s head in the sand.
Ignoring a
problem and despising its perpetrators in the hope that your own
achievements will one day help you overcome their campaign is not a
solution. In fact it has been the major reason behind the success of
these groups – selling prejudice to a prejudiced world. Rwanda needs to
take the war to these groups and consistently expose their lies, biases
and prejudices. It needs to engage them directly where it matters most –
in Rwanda.
Rwanda’s
greatest asset in this war is actually the people of Rwanda whom these
groups claim to speak for. In all opinion surveys by the most
respectable polling organizations like Gallup Poll and World Values
Survey, Rwandans say they feel free to speak, associate and express
themselves by a margin of 85% – as good as one finds in democracies like
Norway and Sweden. It will be humbling to see the advocates for freedom
in Rwanda being told by ordinary Rwandans that they are actually free.
To out-fox
its critics, Rwanda should be organizing conferences and inviting human
rights groups and media to discuss these issues in Rwanda rather than
in London and Paris. It also needs to invite hostile academics to Rwanda
to make their case there – in the presence of Rwandans. All these
people should be invited to attend the National Dialogue to see how
things work. It should challenge them openly on the specific allegations
they make. Incidentally, I believe many of these groups will begin to
question their prejudices. But who will sell this strategy in Rwanda?
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