When the loyal and skilled manpower in Bossman became fugitives

GEORGE KAGAME

Meneja, in the ambiance of a good office perched up on the fourth floor of the marble tiled building in downtown Citi swiveled in his custom made chair. The chair itself was one of the few changes at the workplace in recent days among other things at the office. The consignment of the new office furniture arrived after news of excellent performance from Banana Inc. The good ‘practices’ agricultural cooperative had impressive postings in recent statistics and was nowadays placed in good light with government authorities and crucially, donors.

Meneja whose real name is Mwamba Wa Kuku had coined his title to his name, he was an ambitious countryman in Bossman Republic who at some point in his life turned the village corner and set up shop in the high places of the Bossman's capital far away. He now made decisions that influenced people and events, he was a powerful man.
The cooperative, formed by a local government authority initiative aimed to assist small scale businessmen and farmers in Minazi Province to grow better quality seeds and, at harvest, have appropriate avenues from which to earn a good living, Meneja headed the cooperative.

Good living was a major component of programmes put in place and effectively demanded by the highest authorities in the land.
Meneja had himself benefitted from a recent decision by the authorities to identify, search, attract and employ competent and skilled Bossmans in strategic positions in the management of the good old country. Citizenship in Bossman was not by conventional methods as other countries in granting their residency. In Bossman citizenship was open, you stood a chance without much effort and documents to acquire it. As such Bossmans were a unique lot, they were brought together in this wonderful country by circumstances of mutual interest and worked hard to develop and uphold those interests.

A national skills audit-like that for Big Brother Africa was undertaken to attract Meneja’s kind. In fact a whole national commission was established to survey, analyze or determine which sectors in Bossman’s economy were lacking of skilled manpower. As a result it had not taken much for Meneja to climb the corporate ladder. The moment it was established that he could wear well pressed trousers and polyester shirts on top of a sprinkling of a few English sentences, he easily made the grade. But it also helped that he was related or was claimed to have been born on the same village with the Director of Finance in Banana Inc.

As Meneja turned in his chair analyzing a new report, his palms were sweaty. Somehow his fortunes had turned in the immediate past and he figured that he did not have long to be hanging out in his chair. He was not only due to vacate this sweet chair, he was also facing prospects of jail with details coming in, painfully slowly, that Banana Inc was marketed very properly on paper reports, but inside funds were being fleeced by Meneja and some of his trusted corporals in management.

As a result, Meneja, until recently a brilliant example of the success of programmes and policies of the government of Bossman and the province of Minazi, was now facing the possibility of being designated as one of its terrible failures. He was not alone, like him, many of the newly established officials as per the skills hunt were yesterday villagemen turned business executives today.
A bunch of his colleagues in other cooperatives, commissions, agencies and public offices were now undergoing a new drive to replace these 'skilled' individuals who had turned corrupt and swindled from the hand that fed them. This group was now being hunted down vociferously, not really to recover the funds they had fleeced but to show other Bossmans that being corrupt was not good, and if done by government and public officials it should not be seen to be done.

The performance of Banana Inc was itself achieved after a comprehensive research and grassroots survey carried out by the respected National Institute of Statistics of Bossman-NISB. However, in a sad turn of events, the director general of NISB was himself facing arrest and prosecution for corruption, therefore even the information contained in his his statistics or their lack of was disputable. Making the glow of Banana Inc a fake.

If anyone was caught in the business of corruption they faced a few nights in police custody, the humiliation of appearing in the media as the bad apple and they also stood a chance to be unemployed for a while. The punishments for being corrupt ranged from being out of the group that will bring good life to other Bossmans and living in the ‘wilderness’ like King nebuchadenezer. The authority would ultimately have the mercy to bring you back to the good life planning group in later stages, but the immediate effect of the arrest could swing several ways and so Meneja was right to be comprehensive in his choices.

In his wisdom Meneja schemed to find a way out, to run and escape the over zealous police pawns themselves eager to be part of good life. The cops were taking their sweet time deciding first to take his ‘file’ to the national prosecution office. The PO was very eloquent in its pursuit of those it deemed sabotaging the desire to achieve good life and would gladly issue the arrest warrant.
Meneja knew with conviction the sequence of events preceding and following the copy of paper and the information it had. He was ready to take a way out. Having been a member of good life project for a while, he was assured that in his passport their was a Visa that could take him to the safety of not just one country by several of them. And his escape plan depended on his passport being near his heart and wallet and yet far away from the zealous cops.

As events unfolded, it was discovered that the head of police along with his chief of spying was under unexplained circumstances also booted and rumours were presently doing the rounds that he also faced a stunt in jail. A city mayor and an esterwhile governor in the same province were also currently doing the police and prosecution dance with a possibility of detention cells serving as a dance floor.

The mayor in particular was an interesting case, the man that had supervised his rise to mayorship was now his boss, while his former boss who had risen to higher places and left him in the province and had then fallen back. Investigations were rife that as governor, the former boss was alleged to have let one eye close as funds were being fleeced. Bossman was undergoing a serious shift of gears, starting from skilled manpower who changed into corrupt and now they were turning fugitive.

The tune of police and prosecution was a loud one in recent days. It had started with the ministry in charge of administering and or regulating, supervising, envisioning and spying on local government authorities. Two senior officials in this ministry had withered, one ending up in jail and the other utilizing his well kept passport properly to escape the prying eyes of the cops. The cops had to be fast because even the ministry official that ended up in jail was arrested while attempting a Carlos Jackal at the airport.

To be continued.......

Meneja debuts at police while Chichi is chilling on holiday

GEORGE KAGAME

Last weekend, Meneja a hitherto man of influence in Bossman Republic-a successful country as far as modern post conflict management is concerned-was analyzing his options after receiving an assessment letter that highly questioned his style of work and the organization he headed Banana Inc.

There was no doubt that the former villageman cum blue eyed boy was headed to jail. The threat of jail was in fact made in a very eloquent manner when a summon from police and the prosecuting judges appeared simultaneously. The new Bossman managers never cared less for procedures.

As such he was due to face investigation, interrogation, quizzing, arrest, detention, prosecution and imprisonment in no particular order. By the beginning of this week he was some way in dealing with the menu listed above.
One evening after being arraigned in front of a judge-another one of the Bossman's eager crew to jump on the good life wagon and not only show that the judiciary was not corrupt like other departments but also that they were watching other Bossman whose bellies and car fleets were expanding at fast paces.

As Meneja was reflecting on the various episodes in his life recently that had led to the current precarious state of his affairs, he turned his large frame in this unfamiliar new place of abode, a 50 metre squared room which also served as his detention centre and was rueful at the speed with which his candle had turned from bright light to slow burning and finally extinction. This is about the time I ventured at the police post to answer a summon myself and hopefully check out Meneja.

While Meneja was still the round cheeked poster boy of the good things happening in Bossman, our paths crossed one time. I had been once an envoy of all witch-doctors and traditional healers in Bossman to Banana Inc. During our brief encounter he was the new breed of Bossmans, a busy and time conscious lot eager to get off work and head for sports activities in the afternoon. On the other hand, I was one of the several 'necessary evils' that he was supposed to deal with in the execution of his leadership duties head of Banana Inc. The duties of assisting farmers and Bossmans involved in the agriculture industry.

At the time I tried to get his attention and sympathy at how I had been mistreated by his secretary-you see he had a pretty faced lady who acted more as his bodyguard than administrative assistant. When I tried to get an appointment with Meneja to discuss my intention to start an NGO that I envisioned would develop a network, fellowship or scheme for all witch-doctors in the country, such that the witch-doctors would assist the farmers in terms of causing an early and long rainy season enabling a richer harvest. She dismissed my idea and in a very eloquent but rude manner said her boss, (to whom she was also rumoured to be a mistress) did not have time.

So as Chichi gave me a long tirade and ridicule of my idea, she was very much convinced that she was not overstepping her authority. Now as Meneja sat lonely in his cell, Chichi was very busy lining up a job in a major telecommunications firm. Rumours were rife that she was after-all a bait. She is said to have been a mole but it was not clear whether she worked for her own security organization or that of the higher authorities and as such she moved from the arms of one influential in Bossman as easily as she entered and occupied the most prestigious of offices in the country. She was much more concerned for her forthcoming trip to shop in Dubai than Meneja's current misfortune.

The assistant, Penelope Chichi was indeed highly educated but it was with no coincidence that she seemed to have a flair of changing high profile jobs and higher men. If you thought about her life for a while she seemed to be the subject of that Kanye West Song, Gold Digger, "......... I aint saying she a gold digger, but she aint messing with no broke man......he gonna make it to a Benz from that Datsun, watch him..stay by his side."
Because of this humiliation, my idea to connect the important and necessary services of witch-doctors to the need of farmers died and I never wanted to see Chichi's well manicured fingers and expertly made up face ever. I was bitter and now as I went to visit Meneja in his cell, a part of me was hoping that he'd stay in the 'commune' for a while, be starved, be in need of company and feel the powerlessness of being out of office in an agrarian country like Bossman.

For his part, Meneja wondered what was happening to all his former colleagues who had earlier dined with him in high restaurants in Citi-the capital of Bossman). He heard that his former old chum who had been an executive in the senate was detained as was the director of the influential national organiztion in charge of public investment and external finance. Another former colleague was also rumoured to have diverted a large proportion of the national health insurance fund and his file was also doing the police+prosecution dance. It was while Meneja was busy juggling these thoughts in his mind that I made a grand entry at the police post where he was being hosted. We were not happy to see each other again. Yet I was here to help him. The witch-doctors, who had not taken lightly their being snubbed from the funds of Banana Inc were in benevolent mood now and they had sent me as an emissary to Meneja.

They knew the demons that were currently sweeping through Bossman and were ready to come to the assistance of folks like Meneja 'if only' he could promise to peddle their case through the numerous layers of bureaucracy so as they could be welcomed on the Donor Dining Table. I also carried a special message of support from Chichi, (the witches that I represented had washed me with god waters and my heart was cleansed of all its hate and I was made so attractive that Chichi was very eager to speak with me this time.) She had recorded for him a couple of songs on CD from her recent visit to the Caribbeans with her latest boyfriend.

Me: Chichi sends you her greetings and says that she is working on that 'promise' you and her had to visit Italy one day. She believes that you are very strong and will get through this current misfortune and that though she is too busy to visit you, she sends you this music to relax your soul as you deal with the heartless police summons.
Meneja: She is a bitch that woman, she is a slut. I swear I'll slap her in public when I get out of here.

Emotion, ‘new media’ and journalism, an African threesome made in heaven

GEORGE KAGAME
In its December-31-1999 special edition titled Person of The Century, Time Magazine asked Steven Spielberg-am assuming you know of him-what issues and events would shape movies and the media in the new millennium.

Spielberg answered that people at the time were fed up with traditional movies. The ones about good/bad guys, morality, kick-ass etc and added that the audience would move towards reality television.

He elaborated that viewers were tired of being consumers, they wanted to be actors of their own lives and so the camera was coming to our homes from Hollywood.

Soon afterwards, Big Brother Africa made its debut in Johannesburg, and was a runaway hit to many Africans in urban areas. Later, it was Nigeria’s drama woven into substandard films which many Africans related to that became massively popular.

As ever, in the west it got even weirder. Women, with a touch of science started to give birth to six or eight babies at a go-normally featuring the use of fertility clinics. Octopulet mothers started surfacing and making their circumstances into sci-fi dramas.

In later years the reality show world moved from television to the internet and made the ICT highway accessible to many, both literally and virtually.

Thanks to the internet, politicians and mainstream media became more visible, and in Rwanda, where previously we had waited for the radio-if we were lucky enough to avoid the Kigali ‘routine’ of attending rallies organized by Local Government officials-we could sign on to our leaders’ pages on Facebook and have exclusive access to their speeches and “What they were doing.”

To many voyeuristic people the ICT highway offered a vanity wall where users stopped to look and admire themselves constantly and continue with their lives - which is snooping on what other people were up to.

And yet this confluence of ICT, man’s emotion and space made for a sumptuous threesome. On your profile, (depending on which ICT highway you belong to) the costume of the theatre that is society was thrown away, your innermost self was hoisted up on your ICT vanity wall.

Facebook for one, constantly asking you, “What’s on your mind?” It is while I was trying to figure out what was on my mind during this past week that I tried to first find out (voyeur and snoop not referring to me in this case-) what was on other people’s minds at the same time.

Ed Pacino, (Rwandan senior journalist, his real name protected for fellowship purposes) was asking the world: “do we have democracy and political tolerance in Rwanda???”

There were a couple of answers to his mind. But he was not satisfied with any and later, as if some answers from Transparency International did not please him, Pacino was very upset.

He adjusted the mirror to where the vanity wall was visible in all corners, Pacino wrote:

“The West has given us a mirror with a built-in ugly image and we have looked into that mirror and imagined the image is ourselves. We have let someone judge us wrongly as we watch him doing.

Africa has its democracy in its style. The west criticizes us just to get away (a way – Ed) of justifying their charity business am so pissed...never to consider western reports on transparency in Africa.”

Still on the E-sojourn another Rwandan, Usambara Mwenye’Chupa, a post graduate student in South Africa was stating: “.....Africa has to massively invest in education and healthcare. Everyone fools and undermines us because we are not educated and sick (sick and not educated –Ed).

Even investors fear dealing with illiterate people and with no healthcare. Lacking the two is a great component of poverty, conflicts and underdevelopment. Please, act now, our dear Presidents!!!!”

The president to whom, you can assume Mwenye’Chupa was addressing was himself busy in his hotel room in New York preparing to address a UN General Assembly.

He wrote an OpEd piece for The Washington Post where he was calling on a; “shift from an agriculture-based economy toward a knowledge-based economy, with a vibrant service sector.

We have enacted and consistently enforce a rule of law that counters corruption........” His piece was to be seen cruising on the E-highway as well.

The convergence of the three ideas from three different people that could be completely anonymous to each other-in thought-is what makes a dream threesome of a reporter. And yet, there’s still room to upgrade the ‘some’ to four.

Having missed his time for four decades, Muamar Gadaffi compensated himself. And ridicule him as you may, Gadaffi attempted to beat the record for most meandering train of thought from the occupant of The Hammock!

Ends

George Kagame: Kick the 'bigman syndrome' its an impediment to efficiency in the service sector

GEORGE KAGAME

The spirit of the Rwandan or African bigman was captured very well by Emma Kabanda in one of his Sunday Musings recently. Kabanda illustrated how his endeavors to get paid for his services to an unnamed company had taken him over two months. In one instance the boss of the company was not available to sign his pay slip, in another the accounts office had misplaced the slip.

This back and forth played itself out in over a month or so while the pay slip was doing the African administrative dance and finally the poor man forfeited his earnings out of frustration. While I shared this story with a European colleague he confided in me that his people have a joke that 'Africans have watches while Europeans have time.' This certainly made sense when I remembered that sheer size and price estimate of the watch on one of my boss' hand!

The musing was important because it tried to tackle all the crucial ideas that Rwanda has been striving to achieve in the past five years and even more important because many people in the country could relate to it. It pointed out our well elaborated desire to develop efficient customer care strategies across all sectors of the economy. Establishing and developing self sustaining institutions beyond the people that head them plus exposing the folly of the famous performance contracts. More important however, and why the pay slip is alluded to here, is the fact that the example is an embarrassment to the 'regional service hub' cliche going on in the country.

Writer after writer have come to remind The New Times readers over the years about the acute shortage of basic customer care traits in the country and their experiences/humiliation with this problem. Ahead of this campaign to illustrate our congenial client relationship problems is the Nyamirambo based American journalist Josh Kron, (speaking of Kron and the nature of Rwanda's relationship with customer care.) Onetime I shared a bus ride with the American from Bujumbura to Kigali at the beginning of this year.

Since we all speak one language in the country, it is easy to start a conversation in a public place and have everybody in the place participate, it is possible that one simplistic comment can become a public discourse. And so while the bus was leaving Akanyaru boarder post, Kron requested the bus driver to reduce the volume of a very loud and blurry sounding music system in the bus.

This seemed to be the only chance of the bus driver to feel some power over an American. He refused to reduce the volume and said some mambo jumbo to his passengers. The entire bus erupted in conversations about the protestations of the American against the clearly disturbing noise. Since indeed very few Rwandans have had the experience to travel to foreign places and suffer the humiliation of having people seated next you and speaking a strange language that they cannot understand, it is next to impossible to paraphrase the humiliation that Kron was going through in this situation.

Yet there's an upside to this complaining about the quality of service provision in Rwanda and that is that service providers can be excused for their lackluster efforts to the population, some of whom are used to different. If this is the kind of clientele (as the bus experience with the American illustrates) that public and private service providers in the country target.

It is less surprising that a journalist can wait for two months to get his pay, a visitor can be told off in the bank that he is a foreignor. It also gives credence to another New Times columnist LibanMugabo's serial argument that Rwandans must let loose all entry points to people from outside to come and run our affairs. Although South Africa's recent experiences make this only an academic option! If South Africans-with all the advances they are supposed to have in their society-kill fellow Africans on the basis of taking jobs, it is fair to say that Rwandans, who have Genocide on their resume can do worse. Although this is another debate altogether.

The problem of service in the country is routed in the belief of the bigman, no important person in this country can claim to have been treated with disdain at a bank, in a shop, pub, hotel and Moto riders because our culture has been construed that way. Where I grew up all the power was in the hands and legs of the husband of that family. Whenever we saw him coming in the compound we runaway and squeaked in dark corners. We also ensured that before he left the house each day we noted the shirt he was wearing such that on his return journey we'd easily notice the impending danger of his arrival back. If he left any instructions to be carried out while he was away, nothing else was supposed to be done before the tasks he assigned were completed. This arrangement did not even spare his wife.

This kind of arrangement is outplayed in today's service provision in the country. In the banks, there's a line for us, the mere mortals and then none or one for the bigman even he does not subscribe to VIP sections of the bank. When the bigman enters he is welcomed very properly by the cute smiling bank tellers, led to the a special corner and served immediately. Sometimes a modern bigman even feigns signs of embarrassment to other clients.
In the final analysis, before we eliminate the bigman culture, we will continue with our disillusionment about customer service in the country or until I become a bigman myself and change the rules of service.

ENDS

The Grand Inga project in DR Congo will be like the colonial train and road system

The Congo River (a Naza picture)

BY GEORGE KAGAME

The setting is perfect for a good development story for Africa; its script is worth any prestigious award. Africa has enormous capacity to increase the production of hydro electricity, and to supply it to more than 500 million people on the continent, or so documents state.

This reminder comes in the wake of two electricity deals whose negotiations were announced last week between major insurance and investment companies in Europe as well as several African countries, the World Bank and the African Development Bank.

According to the two deals, the increased power will be generated on the Grand Inga Dam project in Kinshasa, which is on the powerful falls of River Congo and is set to begin next year.

The other plan is in the Sahara desert where another project is to tap the solar extracted from the scorching heart of the sun to produce electricity.

The Grand Inga project was announced in 2008, but only then the information given at its launch indicated that it will significantly increase access to electricity by more Africans than ever before.

The Europeans were not mentioned as potential backers and customers of the new solution to Africa’s energy shortfall.

Figures representing the power distribution were dropped, and sufficient interest and alarm was raised.
In DR Congo for example where the new Grand Inga electricity project is to be established, only 8 percent of the population is and will remain connected to the power grid according to the World Energy Council even with the end of the project.

And while the country is currently grappling with several wars, the idea of electricity wars is likely to feature also.

The second deal is also equally important but not controversial; it is undertaken by Desertec a solar energy specialist in Morocco and Algeria.

The electricity generated from here as well as from the Grand Inga will mostly be exported to Europe.

The Grand Inga is most crucial as it can and will be connecting largely settled parts of the continent to the electricity grid and therefore lighting up Africa and increasing investment opportunities in Africa. While the later is ideal because it will be established in the very sparsely populated Sahara region.

That at least is the rule book of the African Development Bank and the World Bank.

Sadly, it is these two organizations that are the ones working on plans to generate the hydro electricity from DR Congo and export it to Europe.

The two institutions have in fact worked out a deal with Europe such that investors, can start on the Grand Inga as early as 2010, and then sell it to a market that can afford.

And these people are in Europe, they have proven credibility to be trusted to pay for the power and they have a negotiable currency with which to negotiate and pay.

The mistrust of Africans and the absence of any effective mechanism financial or administrative, with which to negotiate such a deal ensured that the only people worthy of ‘credit substance’ to satisfy investors are in Europe. And so African electricity will supply and light Europe.

At current numbers electricity supply in most African countries including giants like South Africa, is limited to only urban areas while the average 80 percent of Africans that live in rural areas have never had electricity.

This is what created the notion of the ‘dark continent,’ and the announcement in 2008 of the Grand dam, was seen by many as a good attempt at solving energy problems.

Sold as a possible success story for the public private partnerships, the new deal will most probably start from where the road construction and railway network system stopped at the helm of colonialism in Africa.

Where the railway and road system passed by human settlements and interconnected only minefields, government agencies and international exits.

People that discussed the business of the transportation networks were mainly visitors. Africans saw vans cruise by with visitors that never stopped, they never even spoke their language, and these visitors were in most cases government, colonial and investment officials.

But while the African leaders during the time of the colonial deals were easily hustled by humble men driven by greed and racial superiority, the Africans that discuss the new deals as the two power projects in the week are a smooth talking bunch of advisers, consultants, negotiators and experts.

The earlier generation of African hustlers came at their will and did as they willed; today’s hustlers are encouraged to come and asses Africa and then invite appropriate hustlers, kind of trouble-shooters.

It is difficult identifying between the fleecier and the fleeced. In Rwanda, the cost of sustaining their services in 2007 was Frw 73 billion, 4 percent of the entire GDP.

And the figure is not much different in other African countries. And they will not solve our problems. The bottom-line is that however well marketed the Grand Inga will be, it is not worth being given to the service and management of Europeans.

The rightly stated reason for transferring this otherwise crucial project to Europe-irrespective of the moral arguments Africans and our sympathizers will-is that Africans do not have a have viable creditability or mechanism to uphold commitment to pay for the investment.

To develop this credit history, there needs to be a private sector that is competitive, diverse and sizable.

It will help with the creation of a stable financial market and an efficient, peaceful and stable central government system.

So Africans now alongside microfinance need to start the process of learning about equity, shares, management of trading and investment institutions as well as moving from mere consumption to participation in the management of the economy.

This will involve at the start, a debate to move away from fighting for land to what we can use the land for. That is the challenge presented by the two deals in my simple opinion, not the arrogance of the Europeans to fleece away resources from Africa again.

The recent offer of Kenya’s Safaricom shares for East Africans to purchase was a right step.

Ends

FROM THE HAMMOCK:I promised the Mudugudu chief that I’d be more courteous

Share

Sunday, 09 August 2009 at 01:56 | Edit note | Delete
Health workers applaud President Kagame at the National Stadium recently

BY GEORGE KAGAME

The children in the community where I went to elementary school were normally warned against giving out information about our respective families to anybody, from neighbours that were not in the ‘friends’ circle of the family to government agencies.

In our communities, the name of your family simply stated whether you could be recruited to help government machinery and therefore join the table where the national cake was cut or you waited to clear that table at end of the feasts.

The authors of the rule to be uncooperative to government reasoned that it was not delivering any services in this community and therefore not speaking to it was only reciprocal.

But there were no services to speak of. The local governments never built schools in the locality, school age children walked the whole of 16 miles daily to and from school. And yet after seven years of making this trek even that school never had a registered examination centre.

So upon completing seven years at the local school we had to walk another 16 miles to the nearest primary school with an examination centre to be able to sit for the national primary leaving examinations.

One day at school a friend shoved me and I stepped on an old sharp nail that was pointed upwards protruding from broken furniture lying in the classroom. The nail pierced through my foot. There was no clinic at the school or nearby to help with stopping the bleeding.

If it had been there, my brother and I would not afford to pay the bill and there was no health scheme from which to benefit. Had the scheme been there, I would not be eligible to access it because there was no way of identifying who I was. Our people never had any identification documents.

So, with such a nature of things, our people never felt any need or desire to work with local government authorities and as a result governments continually ignored them. Only when one political force showed up and promised them this and that they got interested in government. But this relationship was usually short-lived.

Perhaps it was because at the time, local government institutions were mainly used as forums within which targets for benevolence and sheer cruel power of government was channelled.

Since my community had little chance to be invited to the government dining table they saw it prudent to close out.

In 2007 at the onset of Umurenge performance targets, I was watching a pirated music video when a Mudugudu official dropped in and handed me a piece of paper that had a list of items which the local authorities had promised the central government that they, the local leaders would encourage us, the dwellers to have in all our homes in a given period. The nature of my relationship with government was increasingly changing I observed.

The list included such items as radio sets-for sensitization, television, (in the hope that Rwanda Television would improve the quality of its programming or some merciful investor would introduce an affordable alternative,)-for entertainment, health insurance cover and whether we had a toilet and kitchen.

Looking at the list and my inbred mistrust of people that want information from me, in this case being the arm of government, I wanted to scream to the official and swear in the names of many cows that he gets the hell out of my house. But cooler instincts prevailed.

In comparison to when local government’s major function was to, and whether that individual was on ‘this’ or ‘that’ side and control who moved to Kigali local authorities today run their affairs differently.

My first place of abode in Kigali was in the outskirts of the famous Nyabugogo hub. Two days after moving in, it was demanded of me by my neighbour that I visit the Mudugudu chief to tell him, as Ugandan musician Bobi Wine sings that, “Wendi.”

Next I had to get a Mutuelle de santé cover card, Indangamuntu, and RAMA, the health insurance scheme for Rwandans in formal employment and so forth.

For many slightly arrogant visitors to Kigali and its aficionados -the Ipod kind-this sort of arrangement is too controlled and therefore boring. Added to the monthly Gacaca and Umuganda sessions and you have many cynics comparing the country to a catholic boarding school setting. Initially I belonged to this gang but I have come to learn that fences, strict rules are not limited to Rwanda alone.

The media stories this week tell of multi sectoral approach to achieving the various dreams of the government as enshrined in all programmes. The amalgamation of the CDF into a centrally managed fund, the entry of ICT buses-such that even the folks down in Gisagara can see and feel a computer following right in the footsteps of the One Lap Per Child Programme and finally the big meeting between Presidents Joseph Kabila and Paul Kagame.
These things come at the sacrifice of many things. Like my cooperation with the Mudugudu chief.

The commitment of all local and national health officials to increase coverage to 100 percent of all cases, their promise to encourage family planning with gusto, encouraging their patients to have a toilet in all their homesteads and importantly to discourage public spitting also make creating a healthy Rwanda possible in the medium term.

Soon, we’ll be heading to the Umurenge offices to ask whether they have received the phones that Kagame promised to give us on Monday.

Ends

Genocide Ideology in Rwanda:Three Bugesera pastors prefer to ride in Honda or Toyota

GEORGE KAGAME

A story is told in Bugesera of a wrangle between two or three Pentecostal clergymen that who, like many of their brethren in other parts of the country, involves a disagreement over-in no particular order and not limited to, a land title, management of funds and or ego rights.

As per usual, such stories have a similar rhyme, in many cases a visiting pastor in Kigali to preach the word of God, meets fellow men/women determined to serve Jesus. They agree amongst themselves to open a church. Soon, Believers with Hope Worship Kingdom Kinyinya opens. New converts are speedily attracted to the church, numbers swell.

After mass mobilization is undertaken to get new converts, a simple structure springs up, and city councils come around and threaten to raze the structure. A council member who could be among the new converts stands in for the church and the threat from council is temporarily deflected.

Meanwhile, a mass sensitization project ensures to get funds for a permanent structure. The foreign pastor goes back to his/her home country to converse for donor funds. His local partners also embark on an appeal to the church goers to build a better house of worship. The pastor returns after a while, the church goes up.

City council is sent with papers to shut up. Followers sing hosanna hallelujah on Sunday. After a while the church establishes itself as a prominent feature of that society, it attracts respect, admiration, more converts and in some cases more clout and revenue. It becomes complex to manage as the top leaders of the church get divided initially ideologically, or so the believers are told.

But their disagreements are kept between themselves.
However since the setting is a church, word gets around. The disagreements are contagious first among the wives of the pastors, then to their clubs, children, relatives and any other given in such a society.

Not long after this, believers are told that there’s a bank loan, a land title, grants, government support and revenue issues that are being discussed in church meeting at all levels. To this end, it is still an administrative hump but it is slowly developing into an epic script. The story gets thrilling with the podium setting a sweet background to the sometimes theatrical pastors. Many times it ends with each minister getting their own territory.

The script for the church in Bugesera could be quite different from the above, but no one can say there are no similarities with many Pentecostal churches in the country. Their metamorphosis differs as for example, Christian Life Assembly operates professionally, but many neighbourhood churches start in the above style.

Interesting when the Bugesera church started its natural growth, the news about disagreements between its one American and two Rwandan pastors about land titles, bragging rights, style of preaching and so forth could not be surprising. But hidden in its body, the story exposed that ugly evil that is genocide ideology raising its head, with new labels.
One of the pastors is alleged to have renamed the Tutsi and Hutu and branded them as Honda and Toyota. The story continues that he advised the Hondas not to be governed by the Toyotas, henceforth bringing a new dimension to the two famous ethnic tribes of Rwanda and their noted wars in automobile patent books.
The jury is out whether he used the simple analysis of first letters or he went further into differences in fuel consumption and comfort!

Yet this is the hi/story of our country, very few professional, personal, administrative and political issues are given their rightful place in our psyche. Whenever there have been disagreements in this country, they have been analyzed, debated and then standardized to fit into the two labels of Tutsi and Hutu.

That was certainly the case in the past; and we like to believe in the present. Today we have given it a name, a campaign, a structure and a name. It is Genocide Ideology. Every effort to help stop its spread is ‘eliminating Genocide Ideology’, and yet in schools, churches and at major universities we have failed.

These efforts-whether they are enforced or just thought about as the new ideology are suspect at closer examination. It is only two years ago that members of parliament, with the help of strange research techniques concluded that most secondary schools in the country were contaminated with genocide ideology. Their efforts led to the formation of a law specifically to deal with this ideology, a national commission was established later and we hoped-that the schools would be cleaned up.

Last year, the ideology reared its head in the students’ union politics of the National University of Rwanda, leading to the suspension of presidential elections in that institution altogether. Todate, the members of parliament have not yet carried out a follow up, so we cannot know the progress of the elimination process in schools. However, with stories from Bugesera, it is safe to suggest that the members need to carry out a new survey in the churches as well.

And the new ideology promoters must be braced because disagreements in church in Rwanda are of particular interest.
Rwandans, it can be safely argued, are deeply religious people. After all many don’t merely stop at believing that there’s a God. Rwandans go further than many Christians and believe that God actually has a job. He works during the day elsewhere and returns to sleep in the country at night. Somebody actually tried to convince me that he sleeps on top of one of the hills surrounding Rulindo district.

What happens in the church has a very powerful influence to what happens in Rwandan homes. The church is the cradle of all ideologies, the first step Christians, upon arriving in Rwanda-and they were first in Rwanda before other countries in the region-is to establish that there are two sides in Rwanda. And these two have never lived together peacefully. One has to eliminate the other for it to stay and the other, if it survives is expected to live in humiliation till the cycle returns.
Genocide ideology, it can be argued has been enshrined in that simplicity, and everybody that knows the country through newspapers and books believes this, especially the visitors.

It also safe to say that church does not have any power to eliminate the ideology anymore, even our alleged offer of God’s bedroom withstanding.
If one of the pastors in Bugesera that introduced the Honda and Toyota brands in the church was a visitor he was not being too cynical; he was only emphasizing what is popular. What many Rwandans have mistakenly accepted as normal. There are many other terms used by average Rwandans themselves daily. Toyota and Honda are just among a few that have been published.


So having concluded that the ideology is among us and we have accepted it to stay and continues to be used in defining our destiny what do we do?

Do we just lay back and hope that Jean De Diue Mucyo will send us a pamphlet with better trademarks and solutions? A Rwanda teacher prying his trade in North America who told me he actually drives a Honda recently said that every effort must start at elementary school through to university and let children find their own identities based on what the professionally trained teachers have taught them. Let parents keep driving their Hondas and Toyotas..