Hungry for Truth, Peace and Justice

The Kagame’s dictatorship fallacy with women in governance

By Froduald Harelimana
Rwandan-American Youth
St. Louis, MO , USA
April 27, 2010

The Kagame’s dictatorship uses the quota of women in leadership to lie to the world at the same time using women as puppets for his own agenda. The Kagame regime blinds the world with women statistics but in reality this is an illusive women's participation in decision-making and without any purpose to impact conditions for women and their communities.

Here are some of the ways to see the real picture.

In the current Rwanda , many educated men have been killed or exiled, and obviously, women are more likely to be available for office. However, those women placed in higher administration are handpicked, and not selected for their proven competency but rather by personal relationship with the Kagame’s inner circle. They are chosen for being wife of, sister of, relative of someone who is ranked in the army or government. Their CVs remain out of reach.

Women are chosen to be reliable not to contradict the dictator. Commonly in Rwandan culture, women tend to be submissive and less argumentative. Kagame exploits that fact to nominate women in positions they fill in but are incapable to oppose his agenda. That’s how the dictator replaced men who opposed him and flee the country or jailed by women, for instances, in ministerial positions, parliament and regional government. In Rwanda , you will never hear of those high ranked women taking leadership in the daily decisions that affect the lives of their communities. Women Parliament Members, governors, mayors will never tell what their constituencies want but only impose to the population what has been decided by the president! You will never hear their voice on any emerging issue. Under those conditions, women play no role in decision-making, no room for influencing the decision-making process as they have to only echo the Chief.

Furthermore, women are more controllable in their activities than men. Mothers focus more on their domestic duties than men. After work, women rush home to care for their children and husbands, as well as their households. They do not have time to visit friends and discuss current events as men do in their friends’ homes, taverns or informal meetings. Those meetings may lead to ideas diverging with the dictator’s. At this point, women are safe to sort of blindly follow, and are safe for contradiction.

Another reason for Kagame to select women is that women are less risk takers than men who can suddenly leave all behind at short notice to escape a pending menace. It is hard for a woman to abruptly flee the country without her children, family and properties.

Are those women really elected for office?

Yes, the current Rwandan parliament has a high proportion of women. But, are they really representative of the population? It would be the ideal that parliament comprises a high proportion of women according to the dominant woman overall population. That is not the case in Kagame’s dictatorship. The elected women are scrupulously handpicked by the dictator and imposed to the population to vote for them. The outside world that is not well informed is then misled by statistics that women participate in governance while the dictator scores all points alone for himself.

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posted by Mamadou Kouyate @ 9:24 PM