Opinion
Rwanda in focus, here’s the score
The world cup has meant that a football analogy can apply to everything. Having tried to explain the situation in Rwandan politics in so many ways, I have concluded that a football metaphor is the only way to get the point across. It is kind of like joining a game at the end, one team is leading 5-0 with minutes to go, and then you ask what happened. Then 89 minutes of drama is condensed into one minute. “Wow, we had three red cards, 2 injuries, 1 disallowed goal, so much drama, but the score is still the same.” So in essence not much has changed, there has been drama but the score-line is still the same.
Due to our 7 year presidential electoral cycle, Rwandan politics disappears from global view for seven years only to resurface again and people compress the news of the last 7 years into one story. That is what we in Rwanda are facing, several unrelated events that all combine to make a compound story. Another factor is that Rwanda has been only in the news for positive reasons until of late, now the international media want that negative story or stories. It is true that the media build you up only to knock you down, they build a reputation and just when it is tall and polished enough, they knock it down.
Rwanda’s reputation was built on solid facts not media praise, Rwanda sought to perfect the development model for a third world country, implementing policies, adapting them, measuring performance indicators and improving on them. In the process, the international press reported on the “miracle of Rwanda” of how a country that was bottom on every indicator in 1994 is now the best improved and still improving. Then comes the election and a change of perspective, in the western model – elections are about conflict, about a clash of forces.
One needs to create conflict if conflict isn’t there. So what has been a peaceful government of national unity is seen as an “oppressive one-party state.” Then all the news of the last seven years is compressed into one story, arrested generals, closed media houses, ministers resigning, journalist getting shot, generals getting shot, all of which happened but are all taken out of context and lumped together.
There is a classic video that shows the importance of context in journalism. It shows a young man walking casually, then a car pulls up and he runs, now it looks like the young man is being chased. Then from another angle the man is running towards an old frail man, now it looks like he is running to attack the old frail man. Then finally from a final perspective the old man has a car racing towards him and the young man jumps to push him out of the way and thus saves his life. From one view the young man was a victim, from another a criminal, from another he was saving a life. Whatever the story about Rwanda remember it can be explained in context. So the drama aside, the score is still the same – 5-0.
