Paul Kagame is a nimble dictator. Unlike some leaders he does not hanker after a private zoo or a golden lavatory; unlike them he can conduct an informed hour-long conversation about health insurance for his citizens. The president of Rwanda does, however, hold himself indispensible to the nation and so, having already ruled for 23 years, is this week seeking yet another term in office. In theory, he could run the country until 2034.
In this ambition he reveals the true nature of his regime. A benign autocrat for those who pay him lipservice, but a ruthless settler of scores against those who oppose him. The West, and in particular Britain, choose to see the sunny Kagame and not the man in the shadows. That’s a cardinal error. The governance of Africa is of critical importance. In a few years Africa will account for a quarter of the world’s young people. Failed by their leaders, swamped by corruption, unable to find work, at war over water and borders and precious metals, the fit and young will join the swelling trek towards Europe.
Kagame’s Rwanda was supposed to be the model for modernising Africa, an example of intelligent state-building that would give citizens an incentive to stay put. Kagame came to power after the horrific 100-day orgy of genocidal violence waged by Hutu tribesmen against Tutsis in 1994. Almost a million were slaughtered. Typically, the feet of Tutsi farmers were chopped off before they saw their women raped. Kagame began as a military commander and in crushing Hutu forces ended up marching into Uganda and the Democratic Republic of Congo.
“One leading dissident was suffocated in a South African hotel
The West smiled on Kagame because he had done what the UN was incapable of doing: using force to end genocide. As a leader though he also showed himself capable of holding the country together and, so it seemed from the outside, knitting together the two warring communities and replacing ethnic politics with a code of patriotic citizenship. Giving him aid was more than guilt money, it was a sign of trust that with good government there could be a new Africa. Moreover, Kagame made it clear that he would try to turn Rwanda into the first African country to wean itself away from aid.
And so Paul Kagame became our darling. First a favourite of Tony Blair and then of successive generations of fast-lane Tories. A group of Conservative MPs and parliamentary candidates head out to Rwanda every summer recess to build a community centre, conduct workshops on common law and setting up businesses, teach Rwandans cricket. It’s a long rollcall: Justine Greening, Jeremy Hunt, Tobias Ellwood, Rob Halfon have all been out, Andrew Mitchell will be there next week, and it builds a party consensus around the 0.7 per cent of GDP aid target.
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It also bulks up the standing of Kagame in Westminster and beyond. They’re being hoodwinked. Yes, plastic bags are banned in Rwanda, streets are swept, the traffic police no longer trouser bribes as a matter of routine, more than half of the (rubberstamp) parliament are women. Growth is strong. High-speed internet is being expanded, drones are used to deliver blood to remote health centres. How cool is that?
Not very. Kagame is operating a secret machine that neutralises critics and opponents. Beggars are sent to re-education camps. Dissidents are hunted down abroad. One was suffocated in a hotel room in South Africa. I asked Louise Mushikiwabo, the Rwandan foreign minister, about that. “We didn’t do it,” she said, not altogether convincingly, “but we don’t regret that he’s dead.” One of Kagame’s putative rivals in Friday’s election, the formidable Diane Rwigara, was smeared by naked pictures of her sent across social media. The leader’s political vehicle, the Rwanda Patriotic Front, is more active in the economy, making a nonsense of Kagame’s sea-green incorruptibility.
Kagame rules by fear. Fear of police informers but also fear of what might happen if he ceased to rule and the Hutus again unsheathed their machetes. So he muzzles the press and has his critics arrested as genocide-deniers (a criminal offence) or as separatists. According to whistleblowers, to ensure that international aid continues to flow data are massaged to present a society that is steaming ahead on all the key indices from infant mortality to real poverty levels.
Britain is Rwanda’s second biggest donor after the US and to justify that has to present the country as one that responds well to its targeted aid. Yet as long as Kagame pursues his vainglorious project of ruling for ever, as long as he refuses to allow a system that could offer up strong rivals and possible successors, the western aid model will fail. As long as there is no clarity about what will happen after Kagame steps down foreign investors will shy away from Rwanda. His dependency on aid, instead of reducing, will deepen. “I have no problem with giving money to a dictator,” a diplomat told the writer Anjan Sundaram, who knows Rwanda well. “We will influence the government in the right direction.”
That is the heart of Britain’s self-delusion about Rwanda. It has been conned into believing Kagame can turn his country into the Singapore of Africa. All that is needed is more faith in the leader.
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Rwanda has done some things right but it is far from being a model for African development, and certainly is not an all-purpose cure for migration. Kagame runs his country as a general runs his regiment. He shouldn’t be surprised if one day his citizens stage a mutiny.