HERE IS WHAT RWANDA NEEDS.

In The Audacity of Hope, Barack Obama says he has always been troubled by the gap between the magnitude of America’s challenges and the smallness of its politics. This makes even more sense in Africa. Nothing demonstrates it better than presidential candidate Victoire Ingabire and those inside and outside Rwanda who support her.

Africa’s biggest post independence pitfall has been a failure of leadership. It is troubling to see how petty and short-sighted our leaders – both in government and in the opposition – are. What structural incentives propel mediocre people into leadership positions?

During the last election campaigns in the US, Obama’s pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Right, kicked off a storm with comments he had made years earlier on how America had committed mass murder when it nuked Hiroshima and Nagasaki; how it supported state terrorism in Palestine and South Africa; how it was founded on racism and is still run on racism; etc. True? Yes, in many ways! But what were the issues at stake?

White America has deep seated fears of black people based on both prejudice and experience. For a black man to win the presidency, he needed to reassure white voters. Both tactically and strategically, Obama positioned himself as a centrist; a person who understood white fears and black aspirations. It is in balancing these two that he was able to bridge the racial divide and build the necessary political consensus to get elected.

Another leader, Nelson Mandela: in prison, he observed that white people were filled with fear that majority rule would lead to revenge for the injustices of apartheid. Mandela understood that blacks needed to reassure the minority whites that majority rule would not doom them. This was vital to create the necessary confidence among white South Africans to accept a democratic transition.

So now come to Rwanda: in 1994, the Tutsi confronted the possibility of their mass extermination. Although the genocide was organised through the state, it was executed by masses of ordinary citizens. Stressed by battles, bullets and mortars, Tutsi soldiers advanced, many losing their colleagues. Every village they captured, they found their mothers, brothers, sisters, cousins, wives, sons and daughters – everyone – killed.

It is one of the biggest miracles of the 20th century that there was no counter genocide in Rwanda in 1994. It is a statement of extraordinary organisational discipline, coherence and leadership that RPF contained the rage of its own members. On many occasions, the RPF military court martial had to order the public execution of Tutsi soldiers in front of Tutsi soldiers for killing innocent Hutu civilians.

If Paul Kagame and his commanders had been European or North American, there would have been a million books written about the extraordinary levels of restraint they exercised in the moment of great military and psychological stress. Military experts and universities would be debating how RPF avoided the collapse of command and control in circumstances where its combatants – finding their own kith and kin dead – were controlled from revenge killings on a mass scale.

The ignorance and prejudice that informs most debate on Rwanda is baffling. In Africa, we look for extraordinary people and achievements elsewhere even when they are staring us in our eyes. What Kagame and RPF did in restraining themselves and their followers in the face of genocide in 1994 is a feat without precedent in human history.

I do recognise that individual RPF soldiers could have committed human rights violations and were not punished. But decisions at the level of a president have to be weighed against many other considerations. To ignore the extraordinary levels of restraint RPF exhibited is to undermine one of the most important things that can help Rwanda’s reconstruction and democratisation. It is naïve to expect that such a war could have been fought faultlessly; war is not a tea party.

Today, the most dominant influence in control of Rwanda is Tutsi. Put yourself in their shoes: what would be their major fears and temptations? Many would think that control of power is the only insurance against genocide. Therefore, any opposition politician who is Hutu needs to recognise this fear and craft a message that seeks to reassure them that loss of power will not lead to mass extermination.

To ignore such a fear is absurd. If I were a Tutsi, I would interpret Ingabire’s statements as a veiled appeal to the Hutu for genocide. This would tempt me to cling to power at all costs; it is better for me and my kin to be exterminated defending ourselves than hand ourselves over for mass murder in the name of democracy.

Ingabire’s claims are even more ridiculous because there are hundreds of thousands of Hutu who actively participated in the genocide and have not been punished for it. They live happily in Rwanda; some sit in cabinet, others in parliament, government agencies – everywhere. The RPF realised long, long ago that punishment through criminal prosecution cannot solve Rwanda’s problems. Political reconciliation will; and that is what it has been doing.

Are there problems and weaknesses with this process including Gacaca courts? You bet! If they were not there, that would not be a human process. However, Rwanda needs to begin a conversation about the future, not a quarrel over the past. There are one million claims and counter claims Rwandans on either side of the political/ethnic divide make against each other: some true, some false; some legitimate, others out of context.

However, finger pointing and digging up the last grievance will not help the country to heal. For Ingabire’s information, there are thousands of Tutsi bitter with Kagame and RPF for not punishing those who killed their relatives. If the debate in that country focused on these claims and counter claims, Rwanda would be bogged down in endless rancour. There is no solution that will please everyone.

The lesson is simple but powerful; decisions required to reconstruct Rwanda cannot be a simple dichotomy of what is morally right or wrong. Rather, they demand making extremely difficult tradeoffs. RPF has made many; the major opposition parties whom the media never covers have done their bit. Rwanda needs politicians who can appreciate its complexity. Sadly, Ingabire falls far short of this.

amwenda@independent.co.ug

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HERE IS WHAT RWANDA NEEDS>>

In The Audacity of Hope, Barack Obama says he has always been troubled by the gap between the magnitude of America’s challenges and the smallness of its politics. This makes even more sense in Africa. Nothing demonstrates it better than presidential candidate Victoire Ingabire and those inside and outside Rwanda who support her.

Africa’s biggest post independence pitfall has been a failure of leadership. It is troubling to see how petty and short-sighted our leaders – both in government and in the opposition – are. What structural incentives propel mediocre people into leadership positions?

During the last election campaigns in the US, Obama’s pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Right, kicked off a storm with comments he had made years earlier on how America had committed mass murder when it nuked Hiroshima and Nagasaki; how it supported state terrorism in Palestine and South Africa; how it was founded on racism and is still run on racism; etc. True? Yes, in many ways! But what were the issues at stake?

White America has deep seated fears of black people based on both prejudice and experience. For a black man to win the presidency, he needed to reassure white voters. Both tactically and strategically, Obama positioned himself as a centrist; a person who understood white fears and black aspirations. It is in balancing these two that he was able to bridge the racial divide and build the necessary political consensus to get elected.

Another leader, Nelson Mandela: in prison, he observed that white people were filled with fear that majority rule would lead to revenge for the injustices of apartheid. Mandela understood that blacks needed to reassure the minority whites that majority rule would not doom them. This was vital to create the necessary confidence among white South Africans to accept a democratic transition.

So now come to Rwanda: in 1994, the Tutsi confronted the possibility of their mass extermination. Although the genocide was organised through the state, it was executed by masses of ordinary citizens. Stressed by battles, bullets and mortars, Tutsi soldiers advanced, many losing their colleagues. Every village they captured, they found their mothers, brothers, sisters, cousins, wives, sons and daughters – everyone – killed.

It is one of the biggest miracles of the 20th century that there was no counter genocide in Rwanda in 1994. It is a statement of extraordinary organisational discipline, coherence and leadership that RPF contained the rage of its own members. On many occasions, the RPF military court martial had to order the public execution of Tutsi soldiers in front of Tutsi soldiers for killing innocent Hutu civilians.

If Paul Kagame and his commanders had been European or North American, there would have been a million books written about the extraordinary levels of restraint they exercised in the moment of great military and psychological stress. Military experts and universities would be debating how RPF avoided the collapse of command and control in circumstances where its combatants – finding their own kith and kin dead – were controlled from revenge killings on a mass scale.

The ignorance and prejudice that informs most debate on Rwanda is baffling. In Africa, we look for extraordinary people and achievements elsewhere even when they are staring us in our eyes. What Kagame and RPF did in restraining themselves and their followers in the face of genocide in 1994 is a feat without precedent in human history.

I do recognise that individual RPF soldiers could have committed human rights violations and were not punished. But decisions at the level of a president have to be weighed against many other considerations. To ignore the extraordinary levels of restraint RPF exhibited is to undermine one of the most important things that can help Rwanda’s reconstruction and democratisation. It is naïve to expect that such a war could have been fought faultlessly; war is not a tea party.

Today, the most dominant influence in control of Rwanda is Tutsi. Put yourself in their shoes: what would be their major fears and temptations? Many would think that control of power is the only insurance against genocide. Therefore, any opposition politician who is Hutu needs to recognise this fear and craft a message that seeks to reassure them that loss of power will not lead to mass extermination.

To ignore such a fear is absurd. If I were a Tutsi, I would interpret Ingabire’s statements as a veiled appeal to the Hutu for genocide. This would tempt me to cling to power at all costs; it is better for me and my kin to be exterminated defending ourselves than hand ourselves over for mass murder in the name of democracy.

Ingabire’s claims are even more ridiculous because there are hundreds of thousands of Hutu who actively participated in the genocide and have not been punished for it. They live happily in Rwanda; some sit in cabinet, others in parliament, government agencies – everywhere. The RPF realised long, long ago that punishment through criminal prosecution cannot solve Rwanda’s problems. Political reconciliation will; and that is what it has been doing.

Are there problems and weaknesses with this process including Gacaca courts? You bet! If they were not there, that would not be a human process. However, Rwanda needs to begin a conversation about the future, not a quarrel over the past. There are one million claims and counter claims Rwandans on either side of the political/ethnic divide make against each other: some true, some false; some legitimate, others out of context.

However, finger pointing and digging up the last grievance will not help the country to heal. For Ingabire’s information, there are thousands of Tutsi bitter with Kagame and RPF for not punishing those who killed their relatives. If the debate in that country focused on these claims and counter claims, Rwanda would be bogged down in endless rancour. There is no solution that will please everyone.

The lesson is simple but powerful; decisions required to reconstruct Rwanda cannot be a simple dichotomy of what is morally right or wrong. Rather, they demand making extremely difficult tradeoffs. RPF has made many; the major opposition parties whom the media never covers have done their bit. Rwanda needs politicians who can appreciate its complexity. Sadly, Ingabire falls far short of this.

amwenda@independent.co.ug

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Museveni's dance with the donors.

As Uganda heads towards the 2011 elections, we are seeing the creation of more districts. I had exaggerated in a 2003 article that in ten years, Uganda will have 100 districts. The NRM has beaten me again turning what I used as hyperbole into reality; in six years, we will have 104 districts.

Although the justification is “taking services closer to the people”, these new districts are ways through which the NRM takes care of its supporters and opponents. For every district created, many jobs are created both at the local and central government level.

Locally, you get the district chairman whose office has a secretary, a driver and a personal assistant (4 jobs). The chairman presides over a cabinet of six persons. The district also has a council of about 30 elected members who earn sitting and other allowances during the performance of their legislative functions.

According to the official structure, a district bureaucracy comprises: Office of the Chief Administration Officer (3 people), Department of Administration (24), Statutory Bodies (9), Finance Department (19), Education Department (10), Production and Marketing Department (16), District Agricultural Training and Information Centre (16), Works Department (19), Community Based Services Department (8), Natural Resources Department (18), Planning Unit (6), Internal Audit (6) and a Department of District Health Services (9). Total political and civil service jobs in a new district: 204.

There are also opportunities to hire teachers for primary schools and nurses, medical assistants and lab technicians for health centers. The district also comes with a budget; to buy books, to build or rehabilitate classrooms, feeder roads, bridges and health centers; to supply stationery, cars, fuel and cleaning services. These tenders and contracts are awarded by and to those who control local politics. Because it is Museveni/NRM that gives the new district, this bolsters their support among local elites who benefit from it.

Yet districts are not always created in pro NRM areas alone. Even regions dominated by the opposition like the north get a piece of the pie. It seems the legitimacy of new districts in Museveni strongholds depends on the NRM’s ability to project their creation as a national project, which explains their creation everywhere.

But these new districts serve another political purpose: Museveni wants to tighten his personal grip on power in Uganda. New districts subdivide big administrative units that can become strong and independent centers of power and even challenge the president. The new districts, small and non-viable, have no ability to survive on their own – hence the tendency to seek personal favors from the big man. For Museveni to rule for life, he needs a Uganda divided and subdivided into small and non-viable units he can easily control.

Another purpose served by many districts is to “decongest” the center. By throwing resources at local units, Museveni has succeeded in diverting elite attention from the center to the districts. This way, he and his allies can appropriate the public treasury in Kampala while allowing elites at the ethnic or clan level to do the same at the new district. This is a perfect bargain.

Museveni’s major triumph therefore has been to decentralise and democratise corruption. Through creating a plethora of institutions and multiple layers of local government largely enmeshed in NRM, his long arms offer patronage from the center to the village level. In return citizens reward him with loyalty.

Opposition is quashed by a combination of two things: firstly by simply refusing to fund projects and programs in their areas; secondly, through violence from the security services. As a result, one by one, we have witnessed opposition politicians cross over to the ruling party in order to get a road, bridge, school, dispensary or a power line to their area: Aggrey Awori, Steven Malinga, Omara Atubo, Ephraim Kamuntu, Philemon Mateke, Maria Mutagamba, the list goes on.

Corruption is not just an element of this system but is “the system”. Its most insidious form is patronage and nepotism which extends from the top levels of government and the ruling party right downwards as a reciprocal arrangement: politicians extend patronage through jobs and giving bribes to voters because they view the public not as citizens but as clients.

The public in return give them support because they realize that no one else but those already in power has the capacity to continue to offer them “something” – a project, a job, a clinic, a road etc. Therefore to stand in opposition to the NRM is to fall at the first hurdle: you cut yourself from the campaign financing and the circles of patronage that make it possible for public funds to reach your area. But you also suffer violence at the hands of the security services.

What is intriguing is that this system has always been partly financed by donors. Their apparent inability to either recognise what is happening, or, when they do, to do something about it should trouble every Ugandan. Donors are mostly western: they have a general belief in a couple of broad principles such as decentralisation of democracy and strengthening of institutions.

However, many donors know that the system in Uganda manipulates these principles to produce a highly personalised and corruption-ridden system of rule. How come that even in the face of this, they remain silent? The answer to this vexing question lies in how donors often structure their relations with governments especially ones that have initially been reform-oriented.

In Uganda’s case, donors were anxious to produce a success story in an otherwise distressful African continent. Museveni’s Uganda initially offered the promise of success. On the other hand, Museveni’s success at building this vast neo-patrimonial system was also predicated upon his ability to retain access to large and systematic foreign aid inflows to the treasury.

These factors led to the development of mutual dependence between donors and Museveni. Donors need Uganda to remain successful to show the fruits of their engagement; Museveni needs them for legitimacy and for money to service his patronage – until he gets oil. Mutual dependence has led to mutual vulnerability: If donors pulled out, their success story would collapse; without them, Museveni would find it difficult to finance his vast patronage. 

amwenda@independent.co.ug

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Why oil revenues will harm us

Over the last 50 years, public debate in Africa has been fixated on democracy or the lack of it as the primary cause of economic failure. Wars and elections have been fought over it; rebellions launched or quashed in its defence and coups have been carried out in its name. I have grown increasingly suspicious of the argument that it is the absence of democracy that explains corruption and incompetence in Africa.

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Why oil revenues will harm us

On October 16, 2009, Oxford’s Prof. Paul Collier gave a talk at Serena Hotel in Kampala on the prospects of an oil windfall in Uganda. Unlike in most of his work, this time Collier did not focus on how the international community (read the West) can help Uganda use its oil revenues well; his entire speech, though sounding like a primary school headmaster advising his pupils, was about what we Ugandans should and should not do with our oil revenues. It was vintage Collier ‘ frank, intelligent and insightful See story here.

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Give Afghan warlords a chance

In October 2001, the United States and its NATO allies invaded Afghanistan, overthrew the Taliban, sent Al Qaeda in disarray and established a largely pro-Western government. There was a lot of promise at the time that Afghanistan would become a peaceful, democratic and stable nation within a couple of years.

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What Uganda’s protests tell us

On March 16, 1989, the ultra modern subway system of South Korea’s capital Seoul came to a standstill. Six thousand workers went on strike; 3,000 of them defiantly occupied the roundhouse from which the locomotives dispatch. The president, Gen. Roh Tae Woo, ordered a crackdown: 6,000 policemen in full riot-gear surrounded the roundhouse arresting 2,300 of the striking workers. Within days, the strike was crushed and the subway resumed its impressive efficiency.

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