Dear Colin, I read your letter regarding my views on the
President of Rwanda, Paul Kagame, with interest and disappointment. Although
you raise some legitimate issues, I was disappointed by its innuendoes and
insinuations where you accuse me of being “journalist of fortune” and of
‘selling my soul’ ‘ something uncharacteristic of you. However, I will not
stoop that low to trade false accusations but instead address the otherwise
legitimate issues you raised.
Throughout my debates with you and in newspaper articles and
radio shows over the last 15 years, I have always defended former President
Milton Obote whom you denounce as a dictator. Equally, I have been an ardent
admirer of Kwame Nkrumah (who jailed political opponents and shut down
newspapers), Thomas Jefferson (who was president of a country where black
people were slaves), Park Chung Hee, the dictator who transformed South Korea
etc. Yet in spite of this obvious contradiction, you still admired my writings.
Why then do you make Kagame an exception?
This contradiction should not be surprising at all.
Democratic France today celebrates the life and leadership of Napoleon
Bonaparte who was a dictator. In his dramatic closing remarks during his
treason trial, Nelson Mandela said that ‘a free and democratic society’ was an
ideal he was willing to die for. As president, he got close to Muammar Gadhaffi
of Libya and Fidel Castro of Cuba, both of whom are known despots. Many voices
especially in the USA began to point out this obvious contradiction. Mandela
insisted he got close to these leaders because of their role in assisting the
ANC fight Apartheid while the US supported it. In short, Mandela was saying it
is unfair to judge any leader on the basis of only one score – freedom.
It is with this background that I find your position on
Kagame dishonest. Your disregard of his government’s dedication to provide
public goods and services even to the poorest citizens amidst insurmountable
odds, both human and material, is shocking and sad. It takes a lot of time,
effort, resources, discipline and a genuine concern for the interests of
ordinary citizens to build institutions and put in place public policies that
can deliver such public goods and services. That Kagame has achieved that in
Rwanda would elicit admiration even from the most biased opponents.
For example, by 1994, Rwanda had only one surgeon. With
fewer doctors and nurses and no institutional traditions to lean on, that
country today offers far better medical and hospital services than Uganda ‘ a
country with a strong tradition of high quality public medical care in Africa.
Museveni used to claim that our dysfunctions were caused by Obote and Idi Amin.
He has been in power longer than their combined period yet the state of our
healthcare is a disaster. Yet within four years, Rwanda has built a national
medical insurance system so that even a poor peasant who needs it is flown to
South Africa or India for a kidney or heart transplant.
You know that ordinary Ugandans who need such expensive
treatment just die. The lucky ones get space in newspapers to appeal to good
Samaritans for assistance ‘ and few get it. Meanwhile, the president flies his
daughters in the presidential jet to Germany and Spain for small medical issues
such as delivery of babies. One public official recently spent over Shs 500
million on specialised medical treatment abroad at public expense as Mulago
Hospital lacks even the most basic things as gloves for nurses.
As mothers in Mulago die with their babies for lack of basic
medical attention and drugs, the residence of the president ‘ State House ‘
hosting one man and his wife and a few private secretaries, was this year
allocated Shs 90 billion. Mulago was allocated Shs 40 billion. How can you be
so blind to this blatant abuse of the public trust by our leadership? You claim
that these Ugandans have exit options when you know that since they are poor,
the only exit option is to go to witchdoctors i.e. back to the Stone Age.
How can you defend as democratic a regime that steals from
its own people, lets the vulnerable die of simple diseases as the powerful
indulge in excesses, send hooded gangs to invade courts of law, jail a
presidential candidate and try him in a military court on trumped up charges,
shut down radio stations and newspapers and blatantly give public money and
assets for free to their cronies?
Look, the total money spent on the health sector by the
Ugandan government and donors this financial year alone (Shs 1.3 trillion) is
over 85% of the total budget of the government of Rwanda (Shs 1.5 trillion).
Were Ugandans to have a government responsive to the needs of 90% of its people
as opposed to a handful of elites, this tragedy in our national healthcare system
would not happen.
In Rwanda, you can walk kilometres upon kilometres of road
with pedestrian walkways because the government there cares about the rights
and safety of ordinary citizens. In Uganda, roads are built without any
consideration for pedestrians because of the elite-driven attitude of the
state: those with cars matter, those who walk on foot can fall in ditches, get
knocked/injured or killed.
Colin, in Uganda, only a small group of elite students from
Gayaza, Namagunga and Budo pass well enough to get state sponsorship at
university. The children of the poor who in 1970 could go to any good school
and then to Makerere University cannot do so today. So they have no hope of
gaining a foothold at the ladder of self advancement. In Rwanda, every student
is entitled to a loan for university education. Scholarships to study abroad
are given by a board on a clearly laid out criteria. Scholarships to study
abroad in Uganda are given by State House on criteria no one knows.
Public officials who steal public funds in Rwanda are
arrested and tried. I was shocked that you are angry at Kagame for ‘sending
shivers down the spines’ of the corrupt. I want my president to do it in Uganda
yet he lets the thieves go scot free. This impunity of officialdom in Uganda
continues in the face of ‘free press and civic associations’ because these
institutions have largely been corrupted and co-opted by the regime. The vast
majority of Ugandans have no voice; they cannot speak through elections because
the regime blatantly steals their votes as it steals their money.
Clearly, power in Rwanda is being institutionalised while in
Uganda it is still personalised. To argue that Rwanda government’s investment
in improving the welfare of all its citizens is because ‘autocrats make things
happen through unilateral decrees and autocratic directives’ is absurd. You
know very well that the best public services in the world are found in
democracies while the worst are found in dictatorships.
My friend, autocratic decrees do not deliver services to the
ordinary citizen. They give privileges to the powerful. Indeed, unilateral
decrees and arbitrary directives are commonplace in Uganda ‘ witness how
Museveni dishes out public money, land and other vital public assets to his
cronies and shady investors ‘ Tri Star, UCB, Dairy Corporation, Shimoni Primary
School land, Mabira Forest, the list is endless. No such decree or directive
has been issued to save Makerere from rotting, Mulago from collapsing, schools
and markets from burning and roads from falling apart!
Colin, I hope during your time of service in the government
of Uganda you have not lost your soul. I know there are limited opportunities
for promotion on grounds of merit and probity. Instead, the government you
serve rewards sycophancy and theft. I hope you have not succumbed to this
structure of incentives and begin to praise a system that has launched our
country on the road to national destruction. Finally, I hope you have not
joined those who use the prerogatives of office to plunder public resources and
then use ‘voice’ i.e. access to media to justify their loot.
There is no doubt that Kagame has many weaknesses and
possibly makes a million mistakes per day. Aspects of his authoritarian style
worry even his most ardent admirers. His government’s attitude to press freedom
is disappointing as it is self defeating. As a reformer, Kagame has
demonstrated that individuals can make many things happen. But institutions
make things last. Unless his reforms are rooted in civic institutions
independent of the state, they remain vulnerable to reversal.
I understand that for any right or freedom to thrive, it
must be nourished by a country’s nutrient culture, history, experience and
traditions ‘ a factor you so easily ignore. I agree with many observers on
Rwanda that the country lacks traditions of free-wheeling debate as we see in
Uganda. I also know that the most dominant influence in the Rwandan state ‘ the
Tutsi ‘ have experienced press freedom not as an instrument of democracy but of
propagating their extermination.
The leadership in Rwanda confirms a local saying that one
who has been bitten by a snake is always terrified by a lizard. Indeed the
failure to appreciate this fact has created an unhealthy impasse between RPF
and its critics. Insisting on it to nurture press freedom is as hard as trying
to convince the US leadership about giving freedom to Jihads to form on
American soil. For most people in the Muslim world, Jihads are tools of
liberation; in the US, they are agents of terrorism.
Yet hard as it is for us to ask, I believe that those who
care about the future of freedom should keep reminding Kagame and the RPF that
they have a duty to transcend this ugly experience and make deliberate efforts
to nurture a free press because ultimately, only a free civic space can be the
guarantor of their achievements. Asking this with a clear appreciation of their
legitimate fears born of their experience will be critical.
But judging Kagame on a broad continuum of his leadership
record, he is one of the best presidents this continent has produced over the
last 60 years. For many Africans who have visited Rwanda, Kagame gives us
renewed hope that our continent is capable of self correction. His ability to
bring a country that had been written off as a failed state to one with the
most effective state in contemporary Africa is inspiring. His commitment to
openly fight corruption at great personal risk is a great plus. His efforts to
improve services to the citizen should be applauded.
Kagame’s commitment to Rwanda is extraordinary given the
leadership Africa has witnessed since independence. While most African leaders
are obsessed with personal power, Kagame places the interests of his country
above his personal interest. Initially, I thought this was a personal bias on
my part, and an obvious bias among many of my Rwandan friends. But as I
travelled around the world talking to international statesmen, academics and
some of the world’s leading businesspeople who have visited Rwanda and met him,
I realised that this view is widely shared.
It is not a surprise therefore, that the most enlightened
global statesmen of our time ‘ Tony Blair and Bill Clinton ‘ have both found in
Kagame a great leader. Blair has taken on the role of advisor while Clinton
appointed Kagame to the board of the Clinton Global Initiative. Some of the
wealthiest/respected business leaders in the world have taken roles as advisors
to Kagame ‘ some even abandoning their businesses worth billions of dollars to
go and serve in the Rwandan government pro bono.
From Singapore to South Korea, India to USA, Britain to
Australia, leaders of the world’s leading nations and companies are flocking to
Rwanda inspired by a president who is unique ‘ not just as an African leader ‘
but as a true global leader. In my interviews and discussions with all those
who have dealt with him, they say Kagame is honest, principled and cares deeply
about his country and its people.
This way, Kagame is very much like former Tanzanian
president, Julius Nyerere. Though authoritarian and socialist, Nyerere
projected a high level of honesty, integrity and simplicity. Therefore, in
spite of his anti-democratic credentials and the collapse of Tanzania’s economy
under his rule, he still enjoys a lot of followership and hero status including
in my heart. Tanzanians and foreigners forgive Nyerere’s mistakes because his
actions were not driven by a pecuniary motive but a genuine desire to build his
country. When he realised his mistake, he voluntarily resigned.
The rest of your arguments were sloganeering about the
complex question of democratic accountability. I had argued in my article that
on the face of it, all the elements that define a democracy ‘ a tradition of
free debate, an educated middleclass, political parties, vibrant civic
associations, a strong media etc are more developed in Uganda than Rwanda. Why
is Rwanda’s government more responsive to the needs of ordinary citizens while
the one in Uganda simply steals from them? To say this is because Uganda is
democratic and Rwanda autocratic is absurd. Colin, democracies do not rob their
own citizens the way we are witnessing in Uganda.
Historian Will Durant argued that philosophy begins when we
start to question our strongly held dogmas and beliefs. My article sought to
question the way we think about democracy. It seems to me the way it is
evolving in Uganda is injurious to the public good. I may be wrong, but my
article sought to provoke debate. Instead of seeking to address this critical
issue, you went on rampage regurgitating conventional explanations about
democracy and accountability where the evidence staring in our very eyes from
Rwanda and Uganda actually begs that question.
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