Rama Isibo brilliant Rwandan writer

Tuesday, June 24, 2008
THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING ER(HO)NEST?
Our President Paul Kagame is a focussed modern African leader; low on rhetoric but seriously goal-orientated and seeing development as just a series of steps and goals along the way. Even though we receive a lot of aid, it is strictly for individually costed projects and he says he wants Rwanda off assistance within 5-10 years. It is a noble thought and shows ambition, it is true that seeing how rich Africa is in potential, we should be giving aid to the West and not in our present standing. I never understood what he meant till this week, Mum was around and we went around visiting relatives or “dishing out free money” as I like to call it. She can only afford to visit every 3 to 4 years, otherwise she’d be bankrupt; she causes waves of epidemics in our extended family, when medical practitioners hear of her impending arrival they clear wards for the emergencies. No one is spared; everyone suddenly contracts a plethora of symptoms, from Infections (inzoka) Congenital (Gifu) Degenerative (rubag’impande) indeed the variety is impressive.


I realised countries are like people or vice versa; we agree that national stereotypes are wrong and lead to discrimination. But on another level a national psyche is a fact of record, while character might differ from person to person, your physical situation dictates your outlook on life. For example Arabs and Israelis; the fact that one side is interred in camps like animals while the other justifiably fears for its existence. Two wrongs making a right; therefore each side has a given point of view due to their particular situation. Rich countries have a certain point of view; they want to help but on their terms and these terms will benefit them first. In many ways we are a manifestation of our national quandaries; for example when I was sitting in a car the other day and a person was begging. He had the customary posture, bent over double, head tilted, mouth agape; he must have been first in begging school. I say this because he was fully able, no disability, no nothing; I asked what was wrong with him (because I like to know what I am paying for) be it blindness, crippleness, old age, but he was fully fit and begging. He could have been fetching water or working fields, anything to pay the bills.


I come from a pretty financially secure family but at university I had to wash dishes for a bit of money, in England this was standard. But in Africa there is a dilemma; we need cash to solve our problems but what will actually save us is a change of mindset. I met a physically disabled manager the other day while able-bodied people beg, it is all in the mind; a cripple is only a cripple if he thinks he is. This manager had an assistant to do the things he couldn’t, I am not saying we are cripples but we need to see our selves as victors in daily life. So our mindset needs to change but this is hard, it is like receiving aid - we are addicted to it, because if it was cut then we’d go into convulsions. The West sends money that causes so many problems, as many problems as they try to save. It is mostly repatriated back, foreign expats benefit, local needs are never fully understood; for example if an NGO decides to put up a school when a clinic is more important.


Aid is like national heroin or morphine in a medical sense; we take it to ease the pain of poverty but it kills us slowly. Every addict or nation starts the same “I’ll just take it for a while, then I’ll get my affairs in line then I’ll get off.” but aid is like Hotel California ‘you can check out anytime you like but you can never leave’. It makes governments unaccountable as the masses don’t generate the GDP. I saw this first hand when I was asked to pitch a concept for a video for the celebration of 100 years of Kigali, I ran a standard bid about “celebrating the people of Kigali” with a typical vox-pop i.e. talking to various residents blah blah. I was swiftly warned that stop immediately and to focus on praising officials and aid-donors, that illustrates the scenario very well. In Europe the people would be the focus, not dull grey officials and bloated donors. Democracy will never develop in Africa as long as we are dependent on the West; as long as we are financially enslaved we will never be free. For no matter who I elect, they will never be able to overcome the global barriers to my true freedom, the best I can hope for I a leader who understands this and wants to make the best of a bad situation.


So we people are like our nations, and my extended family is a reflection of this; the global struggle is played out in our interaction. As a person who lived in Europe I am known as a Muzungu or white-man; so I play the part of the West and they are the poor Africans. We Africans have a saying “if you climb the wall then through a rope for others to follow” as refugees my mothers’ generation went from semi-naked cattle-herders to modern metropolitans through family ties. In those days the village would pay for a child to study so they could help them back and thus a system was born. It is hard because even though I am a tough-love kinda guy I have to indulge the ridiculous behaviour of relatives. I pay for “medical expenses” when I know the person is just going to drink the money away. I pay for “school fees” when I know it is for blowing on hookers, I pay for “Food for the kids” when I know he is going to buy more flashy clothes and leave his kids in rags. All because he will one day be telling the truth and his child will really have cancer and they’ll say I didn’t help him, so you give money in case. Walking around town is like an assault course, one wrong move can land you in brokenness. I had 50,000 and thought I was set for a week or two as I walked along Matteus avoiding one relative but bumped into another relation who had a well-rehearsed story and promptly relieved me of the cash so swiftly I was impressed.


When we were in England we used to always send money to my Mum’s family and even though my step-father is English he understood that when he married an African woman he had to support her family too. He is always perplexed when my Mum asks him to send money to “my second cousins brother-in-laws neighbours’ wife’s’ grandfather” but he just shrugs and sends. So my mother sends them money all the time, to the point that they are dependent, it is ridiculous; she sends money for food when they are sitting on several acres of unused fertile land. She sends money for milk when they own cows and there is also school fees and pocket money. She decided to pay a surprise visit Uganda and found them living in splendour; the horrors that follow are gruesome. My uncle with polio is a full-time drunk; buying a jerry can of liquor a day, having a selection or harem of the finest prostitutes in the area. The three oldest kids were not even in school even though they had been claiming school fees for the last three idle years. The kids had been buying report cards, the sheet read A in math but a senior 4 student didn’t know 3 x 4. The actual fees were 50,000 each but they claimed it was 500,000 and none of them had ever been truthful. So nearly £8,000 a year was wasted and not just our money, my aunties sent money as well so they had a combined income higher than our own.


Uganda is such a nation; its soul is so corroded with the filth of corruption that it has totally consumed my family. When my Mum was there she said it was in a boom but with 60% of the budget from Aid, I said all those big cars are tax-payers money. My family had become an illustration of our wider dilemma; those kids had no incentive to succeed, what ever they did their rich Auntie in England would always give them money. When he should have been learning 3x4 he didn’t have the need to remember; my Mum tells me of stories of when she was bare-foot with ragged clothes in school but miles ahead of the rich kids, now those rich kids are nowhere. They lived like they had a money tree that flowered once a month or whenever you wanted it; money with no accountability makes you an emotional cripple. Our African nations are the same, getting bloated on foreign aid till we forget the work ethic, getting our daily injection of heroin to keep us dazed in our poverty.


Nigeria receives aid though it is the 7th largest petroleum producer; Angola receives aid though it gets $40 billion from oil alone, not counting diamonds and gold. These are the healthy boys begging for money, still in the poverty mindset though they are now rich. I would love if the government sold off its fleet of 4x4’s; it is immoral to give gas-guzzlers to minor government officials in such a poor country. It makes me nauseous to see the obscene SUV’s, but any citizen wishing to complain about this wouldn’t have any moral authority because it isn’t taxes but foreign money. Much like my uncle lost moral authority in his family because he wasn’t providing, his kids needed nothing from him and because he had polio it made him a triple cripple; physically, emotionally and financially. This drove him to drink more and sleep around so he wouldn’t feel emasculated; so he’d get drunk and ravish the most expensive hookers and just for a moment forget he was a cripple but when he’d try to stand up then he was reminded of his true state.


I was furious with my mother for still giving them money after this, because she couldn’t deny her flesh and blood even if they were lying and cheating her. So she gives money hoping that at least some of it will go to good “throw enough money at the problem and it will be solved.” This is like Africans who want more aid and see solutions as coming from outside. When George visited Ghana the BBC interviewed locals, one said “He should fix the roads and the sewerage.” What was their own president for? You realise what the problem that Africans see themselves as semi-autonomous colonies and our presidents are just like district commissioners with no power. We need a revolution; not one where we go crazy and overthrow governments but a revolution in thinking. We are the problem but we are the solution as well, not America, not the EU, not the UN. The fact is that we would have been doing better if we were still colonised but Freedom is worth more the financial benefits. When will Africans realise their power? The reason the West gives us Aid to maintain the status quo, the world trade rules create the poverty we see and no amount of aid will change the situation.



My music - mp3 most played chart

She said – The Pharcyde
Sometimes – Nice and Smooth
Rumours – Timex social club
Slow down – Brand Nubian
Deep cover – Dr. Dre and Snoop
Angela – Saian Supa crew
Friends – Whodini
Get lifted (green-eyed mix) – Keith Murray
Maniac – Mike Sembello
Umi says – Mos def
Posted by Rama Isibo at 3:55 AM
2 comments:
LIFE IN FASHION said...
Hmm....I never made the connection of begging relatives et al and how it translates into permanent dependency as a national disposition....interesting..As for giving money to the relatives...im TOTALLY against it ...unless youre like really old or crippled.....i aint havin it.....you want school fees...tell me the school i send the check to.....erega nabaye groupie...why dont you and your brother start a publishing co. and do a mag or sumthin....youve got one customer already.




Monday, June 30, 2008
MEDIA IN RWANDA
One of the first things that strikes you about Africa is that it has a long way to go in fostering media as a force for good in society, people all want to use it for their own ends. The extremes are government media and anti-government media both want to manipulate the situation, silence the other side and at best smear their opponent. Rwanda is a different country to most of the world, this is the only country where the media killed, they were an instrumental pillar of the genocidal regime in spreading hate, mobilizing killers and maintaining the momentum of the killings which lead to a million dead. Therefore the present government is deeply suspicious of privately owned mass-media, with good reason I would say but this has its own problems. The government of Rwanda has one of the best reputations of all the African countries but this glowing image is slowly being tarnished by its caustic relations with private media.


We recently had a number of incidents which highlighted the rift between government and media. The best example was the “Umuvugizi” debacle; the paper produced a spurious article about the president where they compared him to Hitler, this was a calculated step to bait the government and sadly the government took the bait. So Bizumuremyi disappeared fearing for his life and so tarnished the lustre of this government’s image. I was appalled by the article but it raised a serious issue “Should we only give freedom of speech to people we agree with?” Other issues were where does freedom of speech end and incitement begin? Before all those questions are answered we have to address another issue, “Is it possible to criticize a government without negative consequences or physical harm befalling you?” Rwanda has a number of issues holding it back from developing a free and fair media which all agree is vital for development of democracy.


Firstly I would like to state that there is almost no such thing a free and fair media, for social, economic or political reasons the media is held back. Even in Europe media outlets have a stance or bias in some way, they are often owned or allied to a particular group or point of view. For example in the UK; The Telegraph is Conservative while The Guardian is Socialist, so you already know their angle before they start but that said they “give the devil his due” as in they give credit where it is due. These outlets have identified a section of society that agrees with their views and caters for this section providing specialised news and opinions. In Rwanda I will use the example of Umuseso; the bête noir of Rwandan media as they inspire both exasperation and a grudging admiration among the public. If umuseso and its leader Charles Kabonero were wise they would have been a multi-million dollar business by now but because they come from a background of pamphleteering and agitating, they couldn’t see the big picture. Umuseso speaks the language of the street; it is visceral, unflinching, and not bothered with detail or sources. They just spew whatever will get the biggest response and whatever will further their persecution complex.


Their writers or journalists are not formally trained so they do not know how to file a story, to quote sources for every fact no matter how self-evident and to generally play the game of courtship that is media i.e. knowing how to keep on basic good terms with people in case you need them one day. They burn every bridge as they go along, bite every hand that could potentially feed them and get up the noses of everyone. Umuseso fills a vacuum that has been left void by the State media; there is a saying that “he who pays the piper calls the tune” and the source of funding dictates the type of medium. There are 3 types of funding for media

Private funding – this is where a private citizen bankrolls a media outlet making it immune from bankruptcy, the outlet is subject to his/her whims like Rupert Murdoch at Newscorp.

Public funding – this is where a government funds the outlet, the New Times of Rwanda or the BBC are examples of this. This means the outlet is subject to government pressure, even the BBC saw this first hand during the start of the Iraq war when the Director-general had to resign due to anti-government bias.

Sales and advertising – this is the best source of income for a paper; it makes it responsive and accountable to its readership. It is the most honest appraisal of a newspaper but it is also the most dangerous as most newspaper barely make a profit.


In the absence of a vibrant private sector the government often has to step in to fund media, apart from Radio which is profitable but print, television and internet quite often have government funding. These government funded media are a good example why the state should not fund media; they are banal, uninspiring and crass. Starting with the New Times; there is never a hint of news to be found, just what the government wants you to hear, Rwanda is undergoing tremendous change at the moment but none of it is being documented because the outlets are run by bloated yes-men/women out to save their jobs. A typical story is “Minister lauds cooperatives” or “Minister calls for gender equality” I agree with these issues but there are better ways to address this. Media goes through an evolution as the public becomes more media-literate but Rwanda is stuck in a time-warp where media is concerned. When you have the opium of the masses that is TVR, you see the full extent of this malaise; the production values are so poor that the average laptop can make better programming than their output. The news is a dull roll call of the various conferences and symposia held in Kigali, a hurricane could hit Kigali and it wouldn’t get a mention.


What all this says is the government doesn’t want to explore the full potential of media as a means of changing lives for the better, it instead sees just the most immediate rewards. TVR should have its budget quadrupled or it should shut down because it doesn’t perform any valuable purpose. That sounds like idiocy in a country without enough schools and hospitals; why should we invest in TV? TV is a unique medium; it emerged in the post-war years as American GI’s were coming home and marrying, it grew with the aspirations and needs of the baby-boom society. No other medium has done more to promote consumerism and the modern lifestyle than TV. Radio cannot fully promote modern values which are more visual than audible. Seeing a car on TV makes you aspirational, hearing a car doesn’t, what Rwanda is suffering from is lack of ideas, lack of dreams, lack of knowhow. That is to say the high ambitions of the government are not matched by the subsistence lifestyle of the masses. It is one thing to turn on GTV and see white people living the modern lifestyle and another to see your own countrymen living that lifestyle. Most middle-class people live in gated communities far from the lower-classes and their only interaction is from their bubble of their air-condition 4x4 hence lower classes see the 4x4 and high wall as the only indicators of wealth.


I am fed up with screaming from the outside, I want to do something about it and have decided to write my own online magazine. It will most likely land me in hot water and will ultimately involve imprisonment and torture but that is a small sacrifice to end the banal crass garbage that passes for media here. I believe that in the long run a language for dialogue will be devised for the government and media to interact without friction. The problem is when you have to criticize individuals with power, quite often middle-ranking government officials who are leaching funds through corruption and don’t want to lose their pie. This government is bye and large; honest, committed, forward-thinking and hard-working but there is an element of corruption starting to creep into view. The gigantic 4x4’s and ludicrously huge houses are monument to this, but the question is can you criticize a part with offending the whole? A lot of these people are my extended family so it would be betrayal of sorts but the lie cannot outlive the truth and the truth will out.