Rwanda – Rights and Wrong

In 2010 I worked in Rwanda as an Education Adviser for Voluntary Service Overseas. I was based in the town of Gitarama in Muhanga District, writes Ken Goodwin

.Most of the schools I visited were in remote rural areas, often in hilltop villages, where there was no water or electricity supply.   This was 16 years after the genocide in which nearly a million Tutsis were murdered by Hutu militia. The genocide had been ended by the Rwandan Patriotic Front, led by Paul Kagame.

One of the poorest countries in the world, Rwanda had undertaken a remarkable period of re-building, of economic growth. Astute management of news presented Rwanda as a story about hope and healing. No one was allowed to use the tribal terms ‘Tutsi’ or ‘Hutu’. Everyone was Rwandan now. Rwanda was ‘ the darling of the donors’, as the West , guilt-ridden over its complicity in the genocide poured aid into the country.

Just before I arrived in Rwanda, the government had decided that the language of instruction to be used in schools should be English, instead of French. An equivalent change in Scotland might have taken 15 to 20 years. In Rwanda it was to happen overnight.

“This is a country in a hurry” the Director of Education in Muhanga told me. It was quite extraordinary. I visited 87 different schools, mostly Primary Schools.  There were two shifts every day, in order to reduce class sizes to about 45. The teachers worked both shifts. There was a firm belief that education was the key to development. In many ways the experience was inspirational.

The children were wonderful. The teachers – knackered, poorly paid – did their best. I became very fond of Rwanda, and its people. They were kind, courteous (and sometimes embarrassingly deferential). And the land of a thousand hills is very beautiful.

In the company of friends from those VSO days I have returned to Rwanda on three occasions in the past decade. We saw remarkable progress. New roads have replaced the old red dirt tracks. (The Chinese supervisors watch the building work, with – dare I say it – inscrutable expressions.)

Kigali is one of the great African capital cities. Tourism is big business. Gitarama (now known as Muhanga) has changed so that I would hardly recognise it.  But out in the countryside, in these hilltop villages, change has been much slower. It is an old story but in Rwanda the rich have got richer, and the poor have not.

Something else has changed. The old narrative about Rwanda as a beacon of hope and healing has been undermined. It is now clear that Paul Kagame is an elected dictator who does not tolerate opposition. It is generally accepted that the RPF have been responsible for the massacre of Hutus in the Congo in the years after the genocide.  The government refused to acknowledge that many Hutus were also victim of the genocide. Having said that he would serve no more than two terms of President, Kagame held a referendum which has allowed him to serve further terms.

Meantime those who have opposed him are either in exile, prison, or their graves. Both Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have severely criticised Rwanda for its hostility to human rights.

I retain great fondness for the country and for the people whom we met and with whom we worked. It has saddened me to come to a better understanding of the sinister side of Rwandan politics. (I remember that in the run-up to the 2010  Presidential election, grenades went off near the bus station in Kigali. It was rumoured that these were set off by Kagame’s agents.)

I follow the news from Rwanda as best I can. I was non-plussed to read that this year’s Commonwealth conference is to be held in Rwanda – a country which was never colonised by the British. That’s politics for you.

When the story broke last week about the UK government’s plan to send asylum seekers to Rwanda, I was astonished. It seemed obvious that to send people who were seeking asylum because their rights were being trampled on in their homelands to a land whose human rights record is so bad is completely immoral.

A host of other considerations come into play as well as the issue of morality. Legality is one of these.

But perhaps I should not have been astonished. Since 2010 in the U.K. we have seen a growing attack on human rights which has gathered pace under the current administration. From the illegal treatment of the Windrush generation to the racist campaign in support of Brexit to the unlawful proroguing of parliament in 2019 to suspect awarding of contracts to cronies during the pandemic to the egregious breach of pandemic rules by those who made them, it is clear that the UK government does not care for human rights, or for the rule of law.

So perhaps it is not surprising that it should attempt to make a nasty deal with a government which does not care about the democratic rights of its citizens.

The pit into which the UK Government is sinking is apparently bottomless. I like to think that I will return to Rwanda one fine day. To enjoy goat brochettes and chips, washed down by a litre glass of Primus. To take a moto ride along a ridge looking out over some of the thousand hills. To sit by the shores of Lake Kivu and watch the fishermen take their boats out as the sun sets over the Congo and they sing their work songs, the sound drifting clearly over the water.  And to know that the democratic rights of our friends there are safe, and that they can express their views  openly.  Who knows?

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Dumbarton man Ken Goodwin with colleagues and friends in Rwanda.