By Fred Bridgland
News.scotsman.com
December 1, 2009
THE admission this week of Rwanda to the Commonwealth by heads of state at the club's summit in Trinidad and Tobago has elements of grand farce far more entertaining than mere politics.
The former German and Belgian colony, which after independence became tied culturally and linguistically to France, less than nine years ago improbably adopted cricket as the national sport, never before having played the quintessential game of Britain and Empire.
The cricket revolution, inspired by the country's near-dictatorial president, Paul Kagame, was a clear and deliberate kick in the teeth to France, the backer and mentor of Rwanda's pre-1994 Hutu-dominated government which planned and implemented the 100-day genocide of 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus.
Charles Haba, president of the Rwanda Cricket Association, administering schools, women's, under-15, under-19 and senior Rwandan national teams now playing in East African championships, has enjoyed sitting on the boundary at the Kicukiro Oval – on the outskirts of Kigali, Rwanda's capital – while regaling journalists, to the background click of bat on ball, with the prediction: "I think you can say we are batting our way into the Commonwealth."
Rwanda, in its bid to snub the French and suck up to Britain and its Commonwealth partners, also replaced French with English as the medium of instruction in schools and universities.
Not one leader at the summit this weekend seems to have objected to the embrace of Rwanda. But elsewhere there have been raised eyebrows.
The main conditions set for Commonwealth membership – apart from long-standing relationships with Britain via Empire – are that states must embrace democracy, the rule of law and respect for opposition. Failure on these scores is why Zimbabwe and Fiji are currently blackballed from the club.
The democratic credentials of post-genocide Rwanda are questionable. It is virtually a one-party state headed by the minority Tutsi community while exclusively Hutu parties are banned. True, there was an election held last year which was won by Kagame's Tutsi-dominated Rwandan Patriotic Front, but all the other parties participating were allied to the RPF.
Amnesty International, in its 2009 annual report, said there was a lack of real political debate prior to the election; that freedom of expression remains "extremely limited"; that Kagame's government reacts with hostility to any criticism; and that "donor governments are locked into a close relationship with the Rwandan authorities and do not for the most part challenge or criticise them openly."
The critics also accuse Kagame and his government of having systematically pillaged unstable and war-torn eastern Congo, on Rwanda's western border, of its rich reserves of gold, diamonds, tin and coltan, an expensive and essential ingredient of mobile phones and other electronics goods. A recent report by the South African Institute for Security Studies said Rwanda has scarcely any coltan reserves but that, nevertheless, it officially reported production of the mineral soaring nearly tenfold between 1999 and 2001, from 147 tonnes to 1,300 tonnes.
When Susan Rice, former US assistant secretary of state and now Barack Obama's ambassador to the United Nations, came back from her first trip to Rwanda, eastern Congo and Uganda, she said: "Museveni (Yoweri Museveni, Uganda's president] and Kagame agree that the basic problem in the Great Lakes (of eastern Congo and Rwanda] is the danger of a resurgence of genocide, and they know how to deal with that.
"The only thing we have to do is look the other way."
"Looking away" involves ignoring many mini and major massacres of Hutus – both those involved in the 1994 Tutsi genocide and those who were bystanders – who fled in their millions into the eastern Congo when Kagame's RPF fighters, dubbed the "Israelis of Africa", invaded from Uganda and drove out Rwanda's Hutu government.
It is, of course, easy to moralise from afar about conflicts as horrendous and complex as those of Rwanda and the eastern Congo. It is no great secret that Rwanda has won admission to the Commonwealth because it is perhaps the most efficiently run country in Africa. Britain's high commissioner to Rwanda, Nicholas Cannon, argues it is legitimate to admit Rwanda in order to help it strengthen its fledgling democratic institutions.
Few can expect the Tutsis, after what happened in 1994, to accept again easily the possibility of a Hutu-dominated government. But what will the Commonwealth say when, one future day, a new generation of post-genocide Hutus – still the overwhelming ethnic majority in Rwanda – demand and perhaps prepare to fight for equal democratic rights with the currently dominant Tutsis?
Related Materials:
Rwanda scores coup with Commonwealth entry, renewed France ties
Francophone Rwanda embraced by Commonwealth
Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative : Rwanda is the source of instability in region
The state of governance and human rights in Rwanda does not satisfy Commonwealth standards
What they don’t tell you about Rwanda
What Really Happened in Rwanda?
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