How Rwanda can learn from Israel

 Naicisse Mitalli’s remarkable inspiration

BY GEORGE KAGAME&JOSH KRON

It had been a long journey. Through desert sands, visa lines, bus rides, and the pressing patience of waiting, Narcisse Mitali arrived at the gates to Zion. The young guitarist had taken the bus from Cairo, dusty and hard-skinned, a journey that had begun further south, near the heart of Africa.

“Like the old Israelites,” says Mr. Mitali, who goes popularly by Natty Dread in Rwanda, where he is one of the country’s most famous Rastafari musicians. “Right up to the border.”

On the other side was Africa’s first encounter with the West, and the road continuing onto Tel Aviv. While Israel is mystified in the Rastafari movement, it had special meaning for Mitali, an ethnic Tutsi. They believe Israel is a living, breathing ancestral brother – along with Ethiopia – where historians argue the Tutsi in Rwanda may have originally come from.

Entering how many from Africa had come before him, through Sinai, crossing the border for Mr. Mitali was more than just an opportunity; it was a baptism, a birthright. But it wasn’t yet ensured.

“They were asking me hot questions,” Mitali remembers. “The names of my friends in

Israel, their phone numbers, I started thinking they would deny me.”

It was 1983, and the world was looking dangerous. Israel had just gone to war with

Lebanon. The Americans were pushing the Soviets. Mr. Mitali was fleeing problems of his own. Tensions between Tutsi and the majority Hutu were surging in his tiny sundrenched home of Rwanda. His family had grown up as refugees in Uganda and his father, joining a nascent liberation movement that would eventually take power, encouraged Natty to join as well.

But Natty had his sights set elsewhere. As tremors of ethnic violence pulsed through his country, Mr. Mitali moved to nearby Kenya and soon applied for an Israeli visa.

“It was my destiny,” says Narcisse.

Things in Rwanda took a turn for the worse. The liberation group that Natty’s father had

 on the first day. The prolonged engagement triggered attacks against the Tutsi throughout the country. When the president’s plane was shot down in 1994 it sparked a genocide that, in three passionate, packed months, wiped out nearly 1 million Tutsi – and 18 members of Natty’s family alone.

From afar in Israel Narcisse grew up, toiling as a farmhand on kibbutzim and playing guitar at the Soweto Club on Frishman street. Those early days shaped him, a young man far from home, move in a society at once new and familiar. He met another Rastafari who introduced him to the community in Tel Aviv and got a job with working at a popular café called Back to Nature.

When there wasn’t enough money, he did like many, take to the land. Mitali says his time working on the kibbutzim throughout Israel – from Naan outside Jersulam to Amirim,

Engedi to Ahaziv, Sheyaim, where he met his first wife – gave him a sense of self, a sense of worth.

“Cleaning dishes, driving tractors, picking oranges, avocados,” says Mitali. “It was paradise.”

But more than anything else, he says, Mitali began to think about the land he had left far behind.

“Seeing people homeless, with no relations, no orientation, helpless in our present world where you must buy everything from morning to evening,” Natty says, “I felt that, the

Kibbutz-kind of solution was the answer to the suffering.”

It reminded Natty of what home could be like.

Now he’s come back, part of a cadre of Diaspora trying to build a new state of Rwanda on top ruins. They are the followers of President Paul Kagame, who through strong words and stern action has led a generation of Tutsi back home to live peacefully amongst enemies rather than seek revenge. It has transformed Rwanda into a shooting-star of the developing world, and Kagame to spokesman status.

With a reputation for security, seriousness and sense of urgency, the New Rwanda is soaring. Cranes tower over gleaming buildings. Fiber optics cables crisscross the rich, pregnant earth. Investors from Dubai to Korea to Israel are flying in. America is training the army. The Chinese are too.

Nestled deep on a thick lakeside corner of central Africa, where the renegade forests of the Congo end and the tiny, manicured land of Rwanda begins, Natty’s own contribution, he says, is modest.

Between banana plantations, goats herds and the hot setting sun, Raphael Mitali is building his own version of the kibbutz: seventy students, amongst them brought together in a school-turned-solidarity camp. In an admittedly Zionist – and Rastafari – fashion they will work, learn and live together, trying its best to live off the land.

“My time in Israel enlightened me,” he says. “Kibbutzim, collective farms, that’s how the state of Israel was born. We are in the same boat in many ways.”

On 16 hectares along the southern tip of Lake Kivu, including two islands, Mr. Mitali plans a thrum of cathartic exercise. From carpentry to farming, courses in ecological preservation and film-making, genocide studies, and of course music, Mr. Mitali is seeking to at once resuscitate life and both politically and economically help develop the country.

“Our primary target is school dropouts,” says Mitali. “Street boys and girls, battered kids, genocide survivors.”

Amahoro means ‘peace’ in local Kinyarwanda, and Natty envisions a sanctuary; topnotch facilities from a medical clinic to agricultural farms, basketball courts, to an ecolodge.

Students won’t just be taught in classrooms, they will receive vocational training, wherever their talent seems to shine.

“Now they will be engaged in other forms of competition; business, development. Our people must realize that we are the people of God; Rwandans, Africans, World citizens.”

While the school is still in the development stages – the district adminstration has donated land and architectural designs are being reviewed – it has caught the attention of many within Rwanda and foreigners as well.

“We are looking forward to it,” says Cyangugu district mayor Fabien Sindayiheba. “It will create employability for its graduates especially for the youth.”

In its bid to build a reputation, Natty says, the school will accept children from other districts and provinces as well, extending its scope nationally. “The district is kind of isolated,” says Natty. “So we wanted to build our center there. But after that we hope to expand.”

He’s been hitting campaign trail hard, meeting with local journalists and government leaders, receiving initial funding from contacts in Jamaica and the United States. Now he’s in Ethiopia, building connections with the Diaspora there. But investment, Natty says, can be hard to come by.

“Every new idea or initiative will always bump into troubles, when money is concerned,”

Natty says. “But it depends on the concept, and we want to sustain ourselves.”

Mr. Mitali has already contaced German and Canadian windmill manufacturers that will help build turbines providing the village and surrounding area with energy.

“We are also looking into the possibility of using solar energy and bio gas,” Natty says.

True to the Rastafari – and Rwandan – spirit not to depend on handouts, Natty argues, the school will be offering something to the outside. Students will spend time mastering nature conservation and eco-tourism, hallmarks of Rwanda’s national development strategy. Besides just the school, Amahoro will include a cultural village where crafts will be sold, a guesthouse and lodge on one of its islands in Lake Kivu.

“We are socialist on the inside and capitalist on the outside,” says Mr. Mitali. “The

Kibbutz will be a great weapon for fighting poverty.”

In many ways, Natty Dread, who wears his dreadlocks down to his waist and says Bob

Marley named him, is an embodiment of a spirit and identity that is pervasive through the

Tutsi Diaspora returning to, and rebuilding Rwanda. If in the world Israel has a surrogate sister, Rwanda would be it. Like Israel, Rwanda has become a ‘special country’ and lightning rod for American financial and military support.

Like Israel, miniature Rwanda sports an influence far superior to its size. Both are surrounded by hostile, resource-rich neighbours in an insecure region. For Rwanda too a premium on defense and security, and its armed forces are among the strongest in Africa.

For both land is precious, and to master it and diverge from it is a tool of survival, and

Natty knows this. Israel bakes, Rwanda pours. Israel’s flat, Rwanda’s hilled. Neither have minerals nor oil. Pursuing telecommunications has been at the forefront of Rwanda’s development strategy, to make its own people the country’s best resource.

And while both are strong allies of capitalism and American influence, Kagame’s

Rwanda sees streaks of socialism. On the last Saturday of every month – unless a penalty is paid – every Rwandan performs outdoor community work called Umuganda; the grassroots Gacaca courts try genocide suspects under the shade of Acacia trees; there is universal health insurance; a bulk of the country’s prisoners serve their sentences paving roads, laying fibre optic cables; upon completing secondary school, young boys attend

Ingando solidarity camps.

“My inspirations - from Kibbutzim and our old African way- is that people have collective farms, security, and responsibilities that make them strong,” says Natty.

It’s a concept that Rwanda as a whole has grown to appreciate, and taken cue from Israel.

For years, military, agricultural and medical experts have travelled between Kigali and

Tel Aviv. In 2007, Rwandan children needing heart transplants were taken to Israel. Just last month, an Israeli telecommunications firm announced it would be building a citywide

Wi-Fi zone over Kigali.

In 2008 President Paul Kagame visited Israel for the Facing Tomorrow conferences.

During his visit – which included customary face-to-faces with then-Prime Minister Peres Shimon and the military’s top brass – Kagame paid respects in the Halls of Remembrance at Yad Vashem. Upon his return to Kigali, the president called Israel a ‘model’ of a purpose-driven country; Rwanda’s unofficial anthem.

But the relationship goes far deeper than that.

According to historians, and the government website, the Tutsi have been the kings of

Rwanda – and the precolonial greater Lake Kivu region of Burundi and eastern Congo –since the 15th century, when they first arrived and swiftly administered control over the more populous Hutu.

During colonial times first the Germans, and later Belgians, differences between the two groups was polarizied. Noses and height were measured, skin-color assessed, and a racial policy was institutionalized in government. Philosophers such as Frederic Hegel claimed Africa was divided between ‘European Africa’ and ‘Africa Proper.’ One popular theory embraced by colonial-era scientists, known as the Hamitic Theory, is that the Tutsi originally came south from Ethiopia. According to many in Rwanda, the Jews – and Rastafari – also come from Ethiopia, and the three countries form a loose ethnic alliance.

While the government downplays colonial influence and racial science as causes of the genocide, many in the Tutsi community has taken to it.

“You’ll hear people talking about the Rwandan Black Jews,” says Mr. Mitali. “We are both small countries but with very strong peoples, dedicated to our existence.”

Natty isn’t the first to make, and use that connection.

In 2009, the Agahozo Shalom Youth Village, funded by Jewish Joint Distribution

Committee and the Yemin Orde Youth Village south of Haifa, was opened in Rwanda’s

Eastern Province. A sprawling complex of modern facilities including medical center, gymnasium, computer labs, wireless Internet and a sustainable farm. This past January, the first 125 students began classes.

Anne Heyman, a South African-born, New York-based lawyer, picked up on the idea in

2006 after meeting with Paul Rususabagina, the hotelier-savior who was the subject of the film Hotel Rwanda.

“When I first learned of the terrible orphan problem in Rwanda, and that it was a direct result of the genocide and its aftermath, it immediately occurred to me that after the

Second World War Israel had an influx of orphans and Israel today has no orphan problems,” says Mrs. Heyman.

According to estimates by survivor organizations in Rwanda, over 1.5 million children were orphaned during the genocide. The first to arrive at Agahozo Shalom will be schooled in two unique educational philosophies; Tikkun Halev, artistic therapy; and

Tikkun Olam, repairing the world through community service. While virtually all of the staff are Rwandan, the have been trained by Ethiopian Jews who themselves once lived at

Yemin Orde after being airlifted to Israel in the late-1980s.

“The fact that [genocide] is a human condition and not singular to you I think gives you strength to stand up and fight it, wherever you can – it is, in fact, empowering,” says

Heyman. “The fact that Israel was where Rwanda is 50 years ago is an inspiration for a country that is now dragging itself out of the ashes of a genocide. If Israel could do it, so can Rwanda.”

That’s the question. Rwanda differs from Israel in a most meaningful way. Some would call it an Israel ‘upside-down’; a land where minority victims rule over majority killers.

While Israel is made of a nation divorced from genocide, Rwanda lives amongst it. While the survivors of the Holocaust were given a homeland just to themselves, the situation in

Rwanda has been compared to as if Jews ruled over Germany in 1945.

“Each moment of life reminds us of the genocide,” said Domtilla Mukantaganzwa, director of the country’s grassroots Gacaca courts. “I organized the first burial after the genocide in this country. I have been here the whole time; people were killed on every square-metre.”

This asymmetric polity, further polarized by the concentration of Ugandan-raised Tutsi, calls for a peculiar potion of politics.

Though capital Kigali is known as one of the safest, cleanest cities in Africa, police regularly round up street children, beggars and undesirables, depositing them in extrajudicial detention centers for undetermined periods of time. While the ruling party preaches a healthy, vigorous multi-party democracy, critics say opposition parties are neutered and forced to tow government policy if they want to partake. Humanitarian watchdog Reporters Without Borders ranked the country 157th in press freedom (Israel dropped from 46th to 97th). At times, reconciliation resembles a tense coexistence, a restrained compromise to not kill back.

“We forgive them now, but let them try again,” says Bosco Hitimana, a DJ and former soldier who fought with President Kagame’s guerilla movement that took over the country.

It takes a special sort of politics, a message that is at once silent and also a reminder. The words Hutu and Tutsi are strictly banned from public use; to slander someone in such a way can put you in jail for decades. Yet in 2008 the constitution was amended to change the name of the genocide to the Genocide against the Tutsi. Now, the word drips down from radio stations, citywide billboards and newspaper headlines. The country is painted in national colors, patriotism is pop-culture, Kagame’s face hangs behind desks.

In the tightness of the atmosphere, the connection to Israel can prove a good euphemism to express one’s identity. The Israelis and the Palestinians. The Jews and the non-Jews.

Money-traders near the mosque downtown shout to nearby tourists on the street, or the occasional rabbi passing through. In conversation, when the topic of religion arises, a look of recognition will come over a face, a slight smile peaking through. “We are brothers you know. We are also Israeli.”

Jean-Claude Rudasingwa, another former soldier with Kagame’s guerilla movement, and later the Rwandan army, point the houses below. Candles flicker lonely through wooden empty windows in the darkness. “There, and there, and there. This is where the non-Jews live,” he says, flicking a cigarette. “I know them. They killed during the genocide.”

Jean-Claude has a strongman history that has fallen from grace. Unlike Bosco, Jean-

Claude clings to the past, reminiscing on ‘glory days’ that include hiding in the marshes of a national park, exacting revenge on his family’s killers, and marching through the Congo in pursuit of more. He talks in whispers, but enthusiastically, clutching an imaginary gun and cocking it, marching in place. “Israelis. This is how we did. All the way to Kinshasa.”

Like Israel, the Kagame administration has sought thirstily for those who committed genocide in the country in 1994. From the forests of the Congo to European capitals, the makers of the genocide bide their time. Through regional cooperation and direct military action, the Kagame administration has been picking them out one-by-one.

It’s a tall task. The region’s a mess. While Rwanda has maintained a quiet peace since genocide, across the border the after-effects play out vividly. United Nations-backed,

Rwanda-advised Congolese military hunt for the genocidal killers has thrown the Congo’s South Kivu province into a wild chaos. Reckless with life from their start in January, the operations have tallied staggering accounts of rape and internal displacement. After a consortium of watchdog groups reported that over 7,000 women had been raped in the first half of the year – mostly by the Congolese army – the United

Nations decided to pull partial support last month.

Mitali’s future youth village lies just nearby, across the border. While Rwanda remains tightly secure, the future hangs in an unsure balance. But Natty is fearless. “This a place where Jews or Israelis must feel free and secure in the world.”

“At this moment it’s a little bit difficult,” he says. “But every passing day it’s getting easier. We need to preach against the anti-Semitism and hatred. There are good people in the world and there are bad people. We are trying to be the good ones.”

Ends