By Theogene Karenzi
DETERMINISM is a philosophical posit that: every events, state of affairs, human decisions and actions are inevitable offshoots of antecedent state of affairs. That they are necessary outcomes of what once were! In short, it is a fatalistic claim which hinges the present onto the past!
It therefore implies that “whatever will be, will be”.
What i am going to say herein will speak otherwise.
“Many have made trades of delusion, deceiving stupid multitude” – Leonardo da Vinci.
The deterministic position taken by the current government of Rwanda is a paragon of delusion. Its recourse is gotten from treacherous position pursued by the RPF ‘determinists’. The RPF government tells us to look back before 1994 in order to acknowledge that what they are doing today are necessary offshoots of what once were or else, attempts to avoid what were!
Upholding the view that the history of Rwanda has been very bad, the RPF has instituted a government that rules on terror. “If people are not made responsible, there is a risk of another genocide”. They say, “questioning the truth about people and life in Rwanda is part of genocide ideology”. This is the reason when Ingabire Umuhoza questioned why Hutus were not allowed to remember their loved ones who fell in the 1990s, she was dubbed a genocide denier.
Democracy is in crisis in Rwanda. When it is set up in their comic elections, it presents a moment of frustrations among the people. People are kidnapped on daily basis and many resurface corpses, journalists lose lives, critics are smashed and jails are filled beyond capacity.
Frankly speaking: election months in Rwanda spell the period of doom. Trepidation run higher and uncertainty becomes the order of the day. As a result, people simply sing “Kagame wacu, Kagame wacu” the same way children sing a bully to appease his hot blood! Kagame tighten his iron fists in the days such that in a country of eleven millions, people are afraid to give an aspiring lady – Diane Shima Rwigara – some 600 signatures to support her candidature.
The event of high concentration upon ensuring ‘Kagame wacu’ alone passes through or simply gets exposed to the weakest of competitors – along side many opposition parties fielding the same man as their choice is a sign of maladies so catastrophic. Again they say we know where he took us from, we know what he has done for us or Rwanda’s history needs a Kagame. Pure determinism. It means the country’s needs should be judged by the past.
Each and everything that takes place in Rwanda today is blamed on some distant past social, political or economic system. Majority of those systems are perceived or simply hypothetical! The story of tribal hatred and troubled past is so eloquently used to justify what RPF does today. So they choose to de-ethnicize and apply stringent rules today because they say the past was so and so. In reality, the past is in Rwanda the determiner of the future.
Colonialism has borne a blunt so unfairly. Being serious with issues is sometimes a very useful thing. Say, colonialism ran Rwanda roughly between 1890 (after the delimitation treaty) and 1960 (the year of Africa’s Independence). We are making all noises because colonialism lasted 70 years, right? Maybe we should think twice. Some evils we have – ethnic groups and identities for example, were with us before 1890s. It is a lie that colonialists brought them. Using them as deterministic is harmful and a lie.
Studies into RPF’s manner of handling issues and defining the nation reveals pathetic trend. The RPF does go back to the Kingdom of Rwanda’s manual. Being reactionary and reactive to what comes it way. Investing on lies! Cuddling divisionism through the use of past constructions, sadly.
Devoid in the RPF’S thought is that nations excel through reinventing and redefining their posture. Not conservation of the past failings?! Hence determinism!
While ‘nation others’ took their independence running to reshape themselves, our Rwanda has mostly been ruled by people who are “careful with the past’. So we have been so preoccupied with the past than we out to be.
All the times, it is futuristic ideas/progressive transformations that change things, not the cutting and pasting of the past that has made civilization possible. The past shouldn’t be made museums much less the skulls of the dead that Kagame exhibits to earn dollars of unsuspecting visitors.