Rwanda: Repression Across Borders | Human Rights Watch January 28, 2014 12:50PM EST Rwanda: Repression Across Borders Attacks and Threats Against Rwandan Opponents and Critics Abroad Languages Expand Seven Rwandan Victims of Attacks or Threats Abroad. Top row, from left to right: Kayumba Nyamwasa (victim of assassination attempt), Joël Mutabazi (forcibly returned), Patrick Karegeya (murdered). Bottom row, from left to right: René Mugenzi (victim of threats), Augustin Cyiza (disappeared), Charles Ingabire (murdered), Seth Sendashonga (murdered). © 2012 AP, Reuters, ISCID, Jerome Sharkey, Private. Since the genocide which devastated the country and claimed more than half a million lives in 1994, Rwanda has made great strides in rebuilding its infrastructure, developing its economy, and delivering public services. But civil and political rights remain severely curtailed, and freedom of expression is tightly restricted.

The government dominated by the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF)—a former rebel movement that ended the genocide—does not tolerate opposition, challenge, or criticism. In the 19 years since the RPF took power, Human Rights Watch has documented numerous cases of arbitrary arrests, detentions, prosecutions, killings, torture, enforced disappearances, threats, harassment, and intimidation against government opponents and critics. These abuses emerged in the immediate post-genocide period in the mid-1990s and have continued to this day. In addition to the repression of critical voices inside Rwanda, dissidents and real or perceived critics outside the country—in neighboring Uganda and Kenya, as well as farther afield in South Africa and Europe—have been victims of attacks and threats. This document highlights some of the cases involving attacks or threats against critics outside Rwanda since the late 1990s. This list is not exhaustive. Human Rights Watch has documented these cases or received reliable information indicating that the victims are likely to have been targeted because of their criticisms of the Rwandan government, the RPF or President Paul Kagame.

There have been other cases of Rwandans who were murdered, attacked, threatened, or who died in unclear circumstances in various countries, but are not included because of insufficient information surrounding these attacks. [1] Background on Attacks The victims of the attacks abroad have tended to be political opponents or outspoken critics of the Rwandan government or President Kagame himself. Former RPF officials who have turned against President Kagame and become opponents in exile have particularly been targets of attacks and threats. There are similarities between attacks in high-profile cases, for example, the assassinations of former Minister of Interior Seth Sendashonga in 1998 and former Head of External Intelligence Patrick Karegeya in 2014, and the attempted assassination of former army Chief of Staff Kayumba Nyamwasa in 2010, the former in Kenya, and the latter two in South Africa. A number of the victims had been granted refugee status in the country to which they had fled, in recognition of the risks they faced in Rwanda. The fact that even recognized refugees have fallen prey to such attacks has heightened fears among exiled Rwandans, who now believe that no one is out of reach.

The persistence of attacks on Rwandan government critics in exile, going back almost 20 years, is striking, with the latest such murder—that of Patrick Karegeya—taking place in January 2014. As critics or opponents of the government, the victims all share a certain profile; prior to these attacks many had been threatened by individuals who were part of, or close to, the Rwandan government. The fact that within Rwanda itself, many government opponents have also faced threats and attacks, and the context of the broader persecution of government critics, provide credibility to the allegation that these attacks were politically motivated. They also raise serious and plausible concerns about the possibility of official state collusion in, or tolerance of, these attacks. When there is an allegation or suggestion that there may have been collusion of state agents in a killing or an attack, international human rights law requires a prompt, public, independent, and effective investigation to examine the possibility of collusion, seriously and effectively. However, an issue of concern in almost all the cases cited in this document is the failure to make progress in effective investigations capable of identifying the perpetrators, particularly those who ordered the attacks, and bringing them to justice.

With the exception of the trial of six people accused of involvement in the attempted assassination of Kayumba Nyamwasa in South Africa in 2010, which was ongoing at the time of writing, there have been few arrests and even fewer prosecutions. Three men charged and tried in connection with the assassination of one of the most prominent victims, Seth Sendashonga, in Kenya in 1998, were acquitted. No one has been convicted of his murder. The Rwandan Government Response The Rwandan government has consistently denied any involvement in attacks and threats against its political opponents and critics, and reacted with indignation to allegations that these attacks may have been ordered or facilitated from Kigali. On occasion, Rwandan government officials have attempted to discredit or insult the victims soon after their death, especially when they have been outspoken government opponents. For example, reacting to allegations that the Rwandan government may have been behind the murder of journalist Charles Ingabire in Uganda in November 2011, President Kagame told journalists: “That is merely one of the assumptions and I don’t think we need to work on just one assumption and neglect the facts.

It is wrong, absolutely wrong.” Claiming that the Rwandan authorities had evidence that Ingabire had embezzled money before fleeing to Uganda, he said: “We have many cases like this in Rwanda of people committing crimes and claiming political persecution.” [2] More recently, following the murder of Patrick Karegeya in South Africa in January 2014, the Rwandan president, prime minister and ministers of foreign affairs and defence all publicly used strong language, branding Karegeya as a traitor and an enemy and implying that he got what he deserved. Minister of Foreign Affairs Louise Mushikiwabo wrote on Twitter on January 5, 2014: “It's not about how u start, it's how u finish. This man was a self-declared enemy of my Gov & my country, U expect pity?” The following day, Prime Minister Pierre Damien Habumuremyi tweeted: “Betraying citizens and their country that made you a man shall always bear consequences to you.” @ClaudeKabengera It's not about how u start, it's how u finish. This man was a self-declared enemy of my Gov & my country, U expect pity?

— Habumuremyi P.D (@HabumuremyiP) January 6, 2014 An article in News of Rwanda quoted Minister of Defence James Kabarebe saying, during a speech in Gisenyi on January 11, 2014: “Do not waste your time on reports that so and so was strangled with a rope on flat 7 in whatever country [3] …When you choose to be a dog, you die like a dog, and the cleaners will wipe away the trash so that it does not stink for them. Actually, such consequences are faced by those who have chosen such a path. There is nothing we can do about it, and we should not be interrogated over it.” [4] Most significantly, President Kagame came close to condoning Karegeya’s murder in a public speech on January 12, 2014, when he stated: “Whoever betrays the country will pay the price. I assure you. Letting down a country, wishing harm on people, you end up suffering the negative consequences.

Any person still alive who may be plotting against Rwanda, whoever they are, will pay the price…Whoever it is, it is a matter of time.” He added: “I hear some of our people saying: we are not the ones who did it. It’s true they were not the ones who did it, but that is not my concern, because you should be doing it… What is surprising is that you are not doing it. People who dare to betray, betray the country!” Kagame referenced a series of grenade attacks in Kigali, which the government had previously blamed on Karegeya and his collaborators, and said: “And we have to be apologetic about that?

Never!” [5] On the same day, the following tweet was posted from the official twitter account of the President’s office: “I do not have to be apologetic about people who forgot that Rwanda made them who they are and kill innocent people and children”; and “Those who criticize Rwanda know how far they go to protect their own nation.” President #Kagame :I do not have to be apologetic about people who forgot that #Rwanda made them who they are&kill innocent people&children — Presidency | Rwanda (@UrugwiroVillage) January 12, 2014 The Role of Foreign Governments In most cases, there is no suggestion that the host governments of the countries where the victims were living colluded in these attacks in any way. On the contrary, these incidents have at times strained diplomatic relations between Rwanda and some of its most important allies, such as Kenya, South Africa, and the United Kingdom. Uganda The situation in Uganda is less clear, mainly because there has been a lack of transparency in the Ugandan authorities’ efforts to investigate and bring to justice perpetrators of attacks on Rwandans in Uganda.

Human Rights Watch is not aware of evidence that Ugandan government authorities have been officially or directly involved in particular incidents, though in at least one case, a high-ranking Ugandan police officer facilitated the forcible return of a Rwandan refugee from Uganda to Rwanda. However, longstanding personal relationships between some Ugandan and Rwandan officials may obstruct access to information about possible collusion to facilitate the commission of these crimes. Many Rwandans initially flee to Uganda because of its proximity. However, it has become one of the least safe countries for Rwandans facing political persecution because of the close links between the police and intelligence services of the two countries. Diplomatic relations between Uganda and Rwanda have fluctuated over the years, but many senior Rwandan officials, particularly those who grew up in Uganda and served in the Ugandan security forces or intelligence services, retain close links in the country. Rwandan agents can therefore operate in Uganda with considerable ease.

In the past four years alone, numerous Rwandan refugees and asylum-seekers in Uganda have reported to Human Rights Watch a range of incidents, including personal threats by people they know or believe to be Rwandan, attacks on their homes, beatings, attempted abductions, and, in the most serious cases, killings or attempted killings. Some have also reported being threatened and intimidated by Rwandan diplomatic representatives in Uganda. Refugees or asylum-seekers who are known to be political opponents, critics, or outspoken journalists, are particularly at risk. For example, following the 2010 presidential elections in Rwanda, several members of Rwandan opposition parties and journalists who had fled Rwanda for their safety were personally threatened in Uganda. Most of them have since moved to other countries. Ugandan journalists who have investigated or reported on security threats against Rwandans in Uganda have also raised concerns for their own security, particularly in 2013.

Need for Action Human Rights Watch calls on governments of host countries to heighten protection of Rwandan refugees and asylum-seekers who may have well-founded fears for their security in exile, and to carry out thorough investigations into attacks and threats against Rwandan government opponents and critics on their territory, in order to bring those responsible to justice. The Rwandan government should cooperate fully with such investigations. Donors and foreign governments with links to Rwanda should press for thorough investigations into these incidents and for full cooperation by the Rwandan government with the authorities of the countries concerned. Attacks and Threats Against Rwandan Opponents and Critics Abroad: 1996—2014 Democracy and Reconfigured Power in Africa | Brookings Institution Democracy and Reconfigured Power in Africa Download the full paper In July 2009, President Barack Obama declared in Accra, Ghana, that Africa no longer needs strongmen—it needs strong institutions. Almost a year later, at a meeting of the African Union in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton contended that many African leaders seem more concerned with staying eternally in power than with ably serving their people.

In some cases, she said, democracy “as one election, one time” still prevails. How much do these views correspond with what is taking place in African countries? What patterns emerge in the configuration of political power? And finally, how do we assess Africa’s democratic prospects in light of global developments? Get daily updates from Brookings Enter Email As once impregnable autocracies fall in North Africa, the people of sub-Saharan Africa can reflect on two decades of political turmoil and change. Today most countries in the region are nominally democratic; that is, they hold regular elections, opposition parties compete for elective offices, and a wide range of opinions can be expressed. The 2010 survey by Freedom House, however, suggests that sub-Saharan Africa reflects a global trend in which political rights and civil liberties have deteriorated in recent years. Developments in Africa, according to Freedom House’s Arch Puddington, show “a continued pattern of volatility amid overall freedom decline,” with democratic backsliding exceeding advances. Samuel Huntington’s theory of waves of democracy, and of reverse waves, has been helpful in explaining this course of events.

The third wave of democracy did sweep across much of sub-Saharan Africa in the 1990s, but has now subsided, except for ripples and eddies. This is an appropriate moment, therefore, to step back from the volatility and try to understand the deeper dynamics of political change and continuity in the region. In this exercise, the perspective of Richard L. Sklar, a longtime student of African affairs and retired professor of political science at the University of California, Los Angeles, is helpful. Sklar has argued for the importance of studying power and the means by which it is acquired and exercised. He contends that all governmental systems are mixed, and everything that is good in governance may not necessarily be “democratic.” Sklar calls attention, for example, to the significance of oligarchic entities, such as the US Supreme Court or the British House of Lords, in capitalist democracies. Significant powers are often devolved to unelected institutions such as the US Federal Reserve.

Well before the post-Soviet transitions, Sklar claimed that Africa was a “workshop of democracy.” And he identified a unique African contribution to modern governance in “dual majesty”—that is, the persistence alongside Western-type political orders of traditional systems of authority such as chieftaincy institutions. Sklar’s studies alert us to the importance of understanding the contextual dynamics of power, authority, and institutions in Africa. A few other observations are pertinent as well. First, we should think of democratic and autocratic systems of power as being simultaneously in play in many African nations. Second, appropriate attention should be devoted to geopolitics and the impact of external forces. Cambridge University’s Christopher Clapham refers to the “extraversion” of African countries throughout the colonial and postcolonial periods: that is, the extent to which they have been, and continue to be, influenced by external powers. A third consideration in many African countries’ political development is the significance of armed struggle in installing long-surviving regimes and shaping their character.

Resilient Autocrats In an essay on the new authoritarianism in Russia, Ivan Krastev asks “why authoritarianism is surviving in the age of democratization.” He argues that students of democracy have been “blind to the resilience of authoritarianism.” However, a number of scholars have dealt with this issue in essays since 1991. To capture the tentative nature of these political processes, I argued in my 1998 edited book, State, Conflict, and Democracy in Africa, that many new regimes reflected a reconfiguration of power rather than a transition to constitutional democracy. Related William Partlett Friday, March 9, 2012 When we speak of autocracy and authoritarianism, we naturally think of the exercise of power. However, the same should be true of democracy, which derives from the Greek word, demokratia, meaning the power of the demos. A struggle to wrest power from autocratic systems and shift it to the people is evidently happening in North Africa and elsewhere in the Middle East.

Likewise, anyone who witnessed the villes mortes campaign in Cameroon in the early 1990s, when protesters shut down major cities, or many of the other uprisings and demonstrations of that period, would attest to this central feature. After popular upheavals, however, nations have to be governed. In restoring order, a reconfigured autocracy can be established, as happened in Russia under Vladimir Putin. In the journey from system overthrow to new political order, African countries are strewn along a continuum from the liberal democracy of Cape Verde to the hard autocracy of Eritrea, with many hybrid systems in between. The most prevalent political system in Africa today, notwithstanding important democratic advances, is the electoral authoritarian regime, which ranges from noncompetitive, as in the Republic of Congo (Brazzaville), to competitive, as in Uganda. At the top of the list of consolidated autocratic rule would be José Eduardo dos Santos, who succeeded Antonio Agostinho Neto as Angola’s president in September 1979.

Dos Santos and the ruling MPLA (People’s Movement for the Liberation of Angola) were confident enough of their hegemony to permit parliamentary elections in 2008, in which the party won 82 percent of the vote. It can be expected that this dominant party system, as with other post-liberation governments like Namibia’s SWAPO (South West Africa People’s Organization), will persist through several electoral cycles. The power and authority of the Angolan regime rest on decades of colonial and postcolonial armed struggle, enormous oil wealth, a petroleum industry that now competes globally, and the capacity to adjust to criticisms without ceding its extensive control of the state and economy. Another case of Marxism-Leninism reconfigured for the new global era, following the armed seizure of power, is the Ethiopian regime of Meles Zenawi and the EPRDF (Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front). Freedom House’s 2010 survey downgraded Ethiopia from “partly free” to “not free.” What impact will this demotion have? Not much, most likely. Ethiopia has been one of the world’s leading per capita recipients of overseas development aid, and will continue to receive such largesse.

The EPRDF regime rests on a minority ethnic base and operates a system carefully designed to enable it to dominate provincial governments. When the opposition improved its performance in 2005 elections, and the results were falsified, subsequent protests were brutally suppressed. The regime then tightened its preelection controls and significantly improved its “electoral” support in 2010. The Ethiopian regime knows that what really counts is not its democratic character but its capacity to project force, domestically and externally, and the country’s socioeconomic indicators. In alliance with the United States, Ethiopia has sent troops to fight Islamist insurgents in Somalia. When Sudan seemed on the verge of another outbreak of fighting over the disputed Abyei district and in south Kordofan, Ethiopia again obliged external powers by sending troops to help contain the threat. It is not easy to persuade a postliberation regime in a very diverse country of 90 million to serve as regional gendarme, permit humanitarian access to its impoverished communities, and also risk defeat in competitive elections.

Related Books Edited by Haroon Bhorat and Finn Tarp 2016 An even more direct challenge to democratic state building in Africa is the RPF (Rwandan Patriotic Front) led by Rwandan President Paul Kagame. Since the regime exercises draconian control over all forms of association and expression, elections can be regularly held with landslide victories regularly reported. The 1994 genocide has been used to justify resisting anything deemed a threat to peace and stability. Some governments and international agencies have implicated the RPF in mass killings during the Rwandan and Congolese wars of the 1990s, continuing cross-border interventions in Congo, and a raft of human rights abuses, but the regime counters these criticisms by citing the praise of its foreign admirers. And even more than Ethiopia, the Kagame regime can cite impressive socioeconomic achievements. These new and refurbished authoritarians fend off democratization by espousing a developmental ideology, by relying on militarized state power, and by insisting on being judged according to their liberation narratives. Who Decides? In a few instances, African heads of state have opted to lead their countries in opening up their political systems rather than pursue last-ditch stratagems to retain power.

The most notable of the various examples is that of Tanzanian President Julius Nyerere, who got ahead of both his party and the populace when he declared in February 1992 that the time had come to end the legal single-party system. Subsequently, Tanzania evolved, with the glaring exception of Zanzibar, into single-party dominance with significant democratic content. A more nuanced but equally significant case is that of Abdou Diouf, when he completed 19 years as president of Senegal in 2000. Presiding over a country with deep democratic roots, a vigorous civil society, and strong countervailing power in the form of Islamic brotherhoods, Diouf continued the process of gradual liberalization pursued by his predecessor, Léopold Sédar Senghor. Following disputed elections in 2000, rather than challenge the results as some party barons wanted, Diouf chose to cede power to his longtime challenger, Abdoulaye Wade, and the PDS (Senegalese Democratic Party).

Yet Wade, instead of carrying Senegal forward as anticipated to become one of the stalwarts of democracy building in Africa, has taken it backwards to a regime characterized by an expanded presidency, mismanagement, and nepotism. A perceptive statement by Robert Jackson and Carl Rosberg at the end of their influential 1984 Comparative Politics article, “Personal Rule: Theory and Practice in Africa,” helps put these cases in context: [D]emocracy can be promoted by inventive political practitioners as well as by favorable socioeconomic processes, and the former do not necessarily have to wait upon the latter. Statesmen are to political development what entrepreneurs are to economic development. Indeed, they may be more important insofar as political development is less dependent on material resources and consists essentially in appropriate inclinations and conduct. Author Nonresident Senior Fellow - Global Economy and Development Nyerere and Diouf demonstrated “appropriate inclinations and conduct” when they elected to move their countries toward a democratic opening. But the relative autonomy enjoyed by African leaders can also result in countries’ moving backwards. After Diouf led his nation toward greater democracy, his successor took it in another direction for personal rather than societal or structural reasons.

Zambia over two decades experienced four direction switches that could be attributed, in large part, to the predilections of the country’s head of state. Kenneth Kaunda’s 27-year rule might be described as a moderate autocracy. Although Kaunda stoutly resisted demands for multiparty democracy, once this concession was made, he allowed the process to proceed in a relatively salutary manner, and stepped aside following his defeat by Frederick Chiluba and the MMD (Movement for Multiparty Democracy) in 1991. However, to the consternation of the coalition of political, trade union, civic, and religious groups responsible for Chiluba’s victory, as well as a broad alliance of external donors, he then established a tawdry kleptocracy. The coalition that put him in power fortuitously reconstituted itself to block his attempt to remove a two-term constitutional limit to his presidency. Chiluba’s former vice president, Levy Mwanawasa, sharply shifted Zambia back onto a democratic course.

During a presidency tragically cut short by his death in August 2008, Mwanawasa showed principled leadership in having Chiluba brought to trial on corruption charges while he also stood up to the misrule of Robert Mugabe in neighboring Zimbabwe. Sadly, and again reflecting how dependent Africa’s emergent democracies can be on the inclinations of their leaders, Mwanawasa’s successor, President Rupiah Banda, reversed gears and even praised the unredeemable Chiluba. The veteran politician Michael Sata defeated Banda and ended 20 years of MMD rule in Zambia’s September 2011 elections, but we do not know yet what kind of president he will be. Will he prove a born-again kleptocrat like Chiluba, a commited democrat like Mwanawasa, or something else? The curriculum vitae of leaders can offer little guidance as to whether once in power they will follow the ideals they championed in opposition or just reinstate personalist and patrimonial systems.

The name Ellen Johnson Sirleaf is already etched on the plinth of state builders and democracy builders in Africa based on her achievements as Liberia’s president; she has pulled her country decisively away from the depravity of the Samuel Doe/Charles Taylor era. Will Alassane Ouattara establish a similar record in Ivory Coast? He conducted a principled struggle to secure an electoral mandate as president following a 2010 election, bringing an end to the tumultuous and destructive political gyrations his nation had experienced since the 1993 death of President Felix Houphouët-Boigny. What is so far true of the Liberian and Ivorian leaders, with their earlier careers respectively as a commercial banker and an International Monetary Fund official, has not been the case for their Malawian counterpart. Malawian President Bingu wa Mutharika, a former World Bank economist, experienced the obloquy of having the British government suspend aid to his country on July 14, 2011, while the United States suspended a $350 million aid compact from the Millennium Challenge Corporation on July 26. The reasons given were economic mismanagement and the brutal suppression of popular protests against his government.

Mutharika dissolved his cabinet and assumed all ministerial duties on August 20, 2011. He seems to be reading from the playbook of Niger’s former president, Mamadou Tandja, who suspended his government and opted to rule by decree in June 2009. In February 2010, Tandja was ousted by the military; new elections were conducted with international assistance in January 2011. The adage “power corrupts” reminds us of an unchanging human flaw. In Botswana, one of the jewels of African democratic governance, President Seretse Khama Ian Khama—despite his pedigree as the son of the country’s revered first leader, Seretse Khama—has been opting for autocratic and arrogant rule. Rather than in waves that follow one another, democracy and autocracy now appear to move in tandem in Africa, often depending on the character of whoever occupies the highest political office. Power Shifts A few regimes in Africa have weathered many changes in the political climate.

For example, since its independence in January 1960, Cameroon has been led by just two men, Ahmadou Ahidjo and his former deputy, Paul Biya. Will the winds of change now blowing southward because of the Arab Spring ruffle such governments? In some cases, an alliance between France and postcolonial rulers in Africa has afforded the latter a unique capacity to survive and thrive. The Bongo and Eyadema regimes in Gabon and Togo, for instance, not only have survived the deaths of their chieftains, but the autocrats’ sons (Ali Bongo and Faure Gnassingbé) have succeeded them. In Tunisia the Nicolas Sarkozy government, after taking the usual French stance of supporting an entrenched autocrat, shifted course and supported the ouster of Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali. France has since led the successful allied effort to dislodge Muammar el-Qaddafi in Libya. And its helicopter gunships evicted from his bunker Laurent Gbagbo, who refused to vacate his office after losing the Ivorian presidential election to Ouattara. This is not typical Gallic state behavior in postcolonial Africa.

Biya has served continuously in the government of Cameroon since 1964 and as its president since 1982. Cameroon is an oil-producing country that has known decades of peace and stability, so no one will bother his deeply implanted regime unless Cameroonians decide that the time for change has truly come. But three other countries, all potential economic powerhouses, are on the cusp of possibly significant transformations: Zimbabwe, Ivory Coast, and Kenya. In Zimbabwe, though it is surrounded by countries that underwent profound changes in the 1990s, Mugabe and his party, ZANU-PF (Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front), have maintained their dominance, albeit tempered by the creation of a government of national unity in February 2009. ZANU-PF has lost every vote in which Zimbabweans enjoyed a reasonable opportunity to express their views, beginning with a constitutional referendum in 2000. So the regime has only been able to retain power through force and its control of access to critical resources, whether sequestered land, foreign exchange, or diamonds. Zimbabwe’s ruler is old and ailing.

The regime has no geostrategic levers that can be pulled to ward off external pressures. To be sure, China is deeply engaged, as is the case wherever there are natural resources to be procured and profitable business can be done. As elsewhere in Africa, however, China’s opportunism enables it to adjust no matter where the political wind blows. ZANU-PF barons engage in a fierce struggle over the authoritarian succession, while domestic forces struggling against autocracy have done all that could be expected of them in the face of so brutalizing a regime. The prospects of a democratic transition in Zimbabwe now rest on the emergence of an international coalition, including some regional leaders and organizations, committed to shifting the balance of power to enable Zimbabweans to express their will in nonviolent elections. Once they can do so, and the results are enforced as in Ivory Coast, the long Zimbabwean nightmare will be brought to an end. In Ivory Coast, such a coalition of forces blocked the authoritarian succession that Gbagbo, abetted by his wife Simone, sought to engineer.

A transition to democratic rule in Ivory Coast would not have occurred without the coordinated actions of several entities: the African Union, ECOWAS (the Economic Community of West African States), the United Nations, France, the United States, an armed movement long in control of the north of the country, and political forces led by Ouattara. In this global era, the extraversion of African countries can work for the good of the people, as the case of Ivory Coast demonstrates and while that of Zimbabwe awaits consummation. Violence in Kenya following a disputed 2007 election was so gruesome that the international community was compelled to intervene. Although a series of high-level missions failed to break the logjam, one led by former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan had the tenacity, skill, and wide support to succeed. Its outcome included not only provisions for a power-sharing arrangement but also an agreement allowing the International Criminal Court to indict individuals responsible for instigating mass violence. Of signal importance, too, were steps leading to constitutional reforms approved in an August 2010 referendum. Kenya, given its ethnic polarization and pervasive corruption, still has a long way to go in achieving a stable democratic order.

Yet it has come a considerable distance since the bloodletting and forced displacements of 2008. Great political skill, and sustained international and domestic action, will be required to keep this pivotal country on a path of accelerated growth and democratic development. New Pyramids A new global era has begun with the reconfiguration of pyramids of power. There is a logic to the usual power pyramid, with a supreme leader at the top and resources flowing up and down. When popular upheavals occur, the pyramid is inverted. As exhilarating an experience as this may be, an inverted pyramid is unstable until a new political order is constituted. In some cases, the new order may simply be a refurbished version of the old one. It takes consummate skill to right the pyramid while also making the new leadership rule-bound and accountable. As Francis Fukuyama demonstrates in his extraordinary new book, The Origins of Political Order, at the heart of this difficult and uncertain process is institution building. In Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya, the pyramid of power has been inverted, somewhat ambiguously in the case of Egypt.

In Egypt the secular forces that drove the revolution quickly learned that the girders of the ancien régime (especially the army), and those formerly opposed to it (especially the Muslim Brotherhood), will play major roles in shaping the new order. While the composition of forces in post–Ben Ali Tunisia is not yet clear, to be reckoned with is a vast security apparatus, corporate groups that benefited economically from the Ben Ali era, the armed forces, and provincially based interests. Libya was much more bereft of national institutions, and of organized political and civil society groups outside the regime structures, than the two other countries. So a comprehensively new pyramid of power must be constructed there. How does sub-Saharan Africa look from this perspective? Since South Sudan gained its independence on July 9, 2011, the region has increased from 48 to 49 nominally sovereign countries. In the past two decades, the reconfiguration of power pyramids has ranged from minimal to maximal. Some, as in Mauritania, Niger, and Madagascar, have moved among democratic, authoritarian, and uncertain categories as a result of power struggles at the top.

Ghana, similarly to the Botswana of Ian Khama, requires probing beneath the veil of past democratic accomplishments. Popular support for the two major parties in Ghana is so finely balanced that the presidency can now be won or lost in just four years. But the wide discretion enjoyed by the president, persistent patrimonialism in the allocation of state resources, the ethno-regional nature of political coalitions, and the heightened incentive for gaining political office provided by new oil wealth put Ghana at risk of slippage in elections next year. International agencies have as important a role to play in helping such countries stay on track democratically as they do in bringing some back after derailments. It is not likely that new waves of democracy will wash through sub-Saharan Africa any time soon. The political context is too varied. A particular democratic advance, or a retreat, might differ from others even in neighboring countries, so the use of only statistical approaches to gauge democratic progress can obscure more than enlighten. In some cases, a significant advance can take the form of a reasonably fair election after several flawed contests, as in Nigeria in April 2011.

In others, as in South Africa, it could be a peaceful change in leadership through party structures, as in Jacob Zuma’s succession from Thabo Mbeki as head of the ANC (African National Congress) in September 2008—which effectively determined the country’s next president. Guinea, a mineral-rich nation devastated by predatory rulers for a half century—a country that was becoming a base for international drug trafficking— was able in 2010 to elect a civilian president and win a chance at a wholly new start. Or the advance might take the form of the Kenyan 2010 referendum to enact a new constitution— an outcome of negotiated compromises among political factions, a process conducted without the ugly interethnic clashes of 2008. These are steps of profound importance for the countries concerned even if they do not constitute a pattern across a vast continent. Claiming Democracy Federalism in certain cases could provide mechanisms for sharing and dispersing power within the “geographical entities” bequeathed by colonialism. Most countries now opt for centralized systems that respond to the need for order while increasing the risk of reconfigured autocracy. Nigeria today has the only true federation in Africa.

Several Nigerian states are taking advantage of the opportunity to construct pyramids of power that reflect Fukuyama’s core tenets: effective state capacity, law-based governance, and public accountability. Furthermore, these dispersed power centers can be Sklarian constructs with “the authoritative allocation of values” shared by traditional and religious authorities, professional and civic organizations, and governmental entities. Unfortunately, however, most Nigerian government units have not yet risen above what the Nigerian journalist Emeka Izeze calls “the mediocre level of petty roguery and money sharing.” The response to this challenge is what Michigan State University’s Michael Bratton and Carolyn Logan—in their chapter in my edited book, Smart Aid for African Development (2008)—have described as “claiming democracy.” Armed with innumerable cell phones, conventional and social media, and access to abundant civil society groups, Nigerians are becoming increasingly empowered. At the forefront internationally of “claiming democracy” is India, with experiments under way in several states to make government officials more accountable to local communities. This social movement has culminated in successful protests led by the activist Anna Hazare to compel India’s parliament to create a powerful new anticorruption agency. Everything that has motivated the Indian social movement is present in Nigeria.

While Nigeria’s Economic and Financial Crimes Commission has brought many office holders to account and has recovered substantial sums, it lacks the power and independence that India’s new anticorruption agency will possess. In Nigeria, terrorist acts and violent upheavals multiply the challenges confronting President Goodluck Jonathan’s government and the project of democracy building. Widespread poverty caused by decades of predatory governance has created pools of ready recruits for Islamic extremism. Around the city of Jos in the Middle Belt area, disputes over land, ethnicity, religion, and politics coalesce to produce riptides of mass slaughter. As Ben Ali flees, Mubarak is brought to trial in a cage, Gbagbo is driven from his bunker, and Qaddafi’s tyranny is extinguished, the writing is on the wall for Africa’s entrenched strongmen. But removing them is not enough. Just as daunting a task is establishing law-based states and political institutions that actually improve social welfare. Sustained progress in the region will depend on what Fukuyama calls “the long, costly, laborious, and difficult process of institution building.” And, as Sklar long ago advised, major institutions of governance will continue to have democratic, oligarchic, and autocratic features.

Understanding these configurations, and how they can be tilted toward empowering the demos, is a challenge to be met by political actors as well as by those who study these evolving systems. Related Topics Copyright 2017 The Brookings Institution The Brookings Institution San Francisco Bay View » Rwandan President Paul Kagame wants a safer Rwanda … safer for whom? Rwandan President Paul Kagame wants a safer Rwanda … safer for whom? by Godwin Agaba and Ann Garrison Introduction by San Francisco journalist Ann Garrison Godwin Agaba, Rwandan correspondent for the African Great Lakes regional outlet 256.com , is now in hiding, though still reporting. On March 9, I spoke to him for KPFA Radio regarding grenade attacks in Rwanda’s capital, Kigali, in the run up to this year’s presidential election, scheduled for Aug. 9: This week Godwin Agaba confirmed what I had concluded: that Rwanda’s presidential election is effectively closed; all the viable opposition has been excluded.

Many now fear that Bernard Ntaganda, the presidential candidate of the Parti Social-Imberakuri , may soon be in prison for “divisionism,” meaning political opposition to the ruling Rwandan Patriotic Front Party, and “genocide ideology,” a speech crime unique to Rwanda, which I described here in the Bay View, in “ Rwanda’s packed prisons and genocide ideology law .” Mr. Ntaganda himself says that he is in imminent danger of arrest and under constant surveillance, even in his own office, though he has managed to remain his party’s leader, despite RPF harassment and infiltration. Rwandan security is also investigating Victoire Ingabiré Umuhoza , presidential candidate of the FDU Inkingi Party , for the genocide ideology speech crime, and the government has announced that she will not be allowed to run for office until she is cleared – meaning that she will not be allowed to run. And the Democratic Green Party of Rwanda continues to be halted at military bureaucratic roadblocks and checkpoints, enduring meeting after meeting about whether they might have another meeting about the possibility of having yet another meeting to determine whether or not their party might finally be able to meet so as to register and field a presidential candidate.

On April 14, the government shut down the independent African language (Kinyarwanda) tabloid press for the next six months. Since 70 percent of the population speak only Kinyarwanda, not English or French, and only 3 percent have internet access, this means that most will have no information except that in state run newspapers from now until well after the Aug. 9 polls. European Union election monitors are scheduled to travel to Rwanda but there is nothing left to observe except the effective coronation of incumbent Rwandan President Paul Kagame . The election monitors should stay home in protest rather than validate this charade, unless by some miracle “donor nations,” most of all the U.S. and U.K., choose to heed the Feingold Statement on the Fragility of Democracy in Africa and make civil and political rights, and a real election, a condition of their ongoing support for Rwanda. Rwandans’ thwarted effort to contest the presidential election is also of great importance to the people of neighboring D.R.

Congo, where at least 6 million Congolese people have died in the Rwandan and Ugandan invasions and occupations of Congo since Kagame seized control of Rwanda during the 1994 Rwanda Genocide. The silence of the U.S. press about the loss of African life and U.S. Pentagon responsibility is deafening. Editorial by Rwandan journalist Godwin Agaba Godwin Agaba Anyone who has been following events in Rwanda over the last few weeks will agree with me that it is now clear what President Paul Kagame really wants. A safer Rwanda! A Rwanda where there is no political upheaval, no opposition politics, no sentimental politicians, no old friends, no dissent and, above all, no critical newspapers to report the prevailing “peace and tranquility.” Presidential elections will go ahead as planned in August and when the dust has settled in September, those still living will witness a sympathetic, loving and caring president, a head of state ready to forgive and forget as he embarks on another seven year term as head of state. How cool is that! Gen. Marcel Gatsinzi will be hauled to court to answer the genocide charges that continue to linger around his back before being thrown into jail. Lt.

Gen. Charles Kayonga will be sent to Rwanda’s Pentagon and given a few challenging but less empowering tasks and Gen. Kabarebe will most likely retire. Rwandans will have a newly elected leader and The New Times will struggle not to lead with the PK [Paul Kagame] rigs to set a new world record! The High Council of the Press will come up with yet another silly document which Patrice Mulama, posing in front of cameras, will read confirming that Umuseso and Umuvugizi newspapers have been reinstated. It will be business as usual and the international community will continue to pour money into Rwanda with the aim of ending poverty and fostering economic development. Right path? Don’t ask me for I really don’t know. What is clear though is that Paul Kagame, having commanded the forces that he says ended the genocide and helped restore order in chaotic Rwanda, has embarked on a self-destructing campaign. He will stop at nothing to make himself clear and louder to all that Rwanda belongs to him and only he knows what is good for the country.

He does not even appear bothered by the idea of ruling the country as if it is some family ranch, because according to what he knows, he is popular, charismatic and knows his country’s history better than anyone else. And who are we to challenge him? What exactly do we know? To him we are rejects who should either shut up or put up with whatever nonsense is being paraded as long as we rise up at the end of the day to toss to the monsieur – only this time, in English! Make no mistake: The president is in charge. When coup rumors went around a month ago, he was very stern as he was precise in his assurances to his audience that Rwanda will never have a coup. “A coup in Rwanda, never … not here,” he said. If that was a statement that lacked the marrow, he made certain a few days ago with impromptu changes in the army. Gen. Gatsinzi, the hitherto docile defense minister, was dropped for a close friend (former friend some will argue), Gen. James Kabarebe.

On April 14, President Kagame announced a six-month shutdown of these two newspapers, Rwanda’s only independent papers printed in Kinyarwanda, the only language spoken by 70 percent of the population. Since only 3 percent have access to the internet, that leaves most Rwandans with no other perspective on the news but that of the government-run media. Umuseso editor Didas Gasana is preparing for a lawsuit challenging the suspension of his newspaper. - Photo: KigaliWire1, Lt. Gen. Charles Kayonga, who many basing their conviction on local media reports thought was under house arrest, got in to replace Gen. Kabarebe. Some will argue this was a tactical move by the man in charge. Technically demote the popular Gen. Kabarebe by making him defense minister and bring Kayonga closer in a more demanding position where he can be checked on and made too busy to even think of a coup. I’m not very knowledgeable about the finer intricacies of army changes but speculation has never been my specialty either. It is very plausible though that it is much easier to look after and maintain an eye on a chief of defense forces than it is on someone who is head of land forces.

For the sake of the issue at hand, I will take what the official version is and leave the rest to you, my readers. Fortunately, there is no official version of the changes, just a routine reshuffle. Political temperatures in Kigali continue to rise. Kagame continues to impress. He seems very popular with the wanainchi [the people, citizens or masses] or at least it looks that way whenever he pays them visits. Opposition politics in Rwanda remains a far cry. Those who have dared to challenge the establishment now find themselves in limbo fearing not only for their lives but, at the moment, for their political parties as well. Victoire Ingabire has been summoned to the Criminal Investigations Department more times than she has been allowed to go to church unattended. She is religious, but the government would rather she was not. Religious people get to meet others when they go to church. And when you don’t want someone to mix with others for fear that they will talk about their political agenda, you so wish they were pagans. Those who have dared to challenge the establishment now find themselves in limbo fearing not only for their lives but, at the moment, for their political parties as well.

Frank Habineza, another of the political hopefuls, a former Rwandese Patriotic Front member who broke ranks to form the Democratic Green Party of Rwanda – a party whose registration seems to bother Kagame more than the poverty in the country – is not having it smooth either. He has on several occasions been in the news complaining about scary emails and intimidating phone calls from state agents who continue to threaten him unless he gets out of politics. Bernard Ntaganda, who until a week ago was party chairman for Rwanda’s only vocal political party, PS-Imberakuri, was successfully ousted by a party wrangle within his own party that many believe was orchestrated by the ruling Rwanda Patriotic Front. With these under control, in dissaray, under investigation or currently being accused of one or several offences, Kagame will definitely emerge as the one and only presidential candidate come August. He will achieve what he has set out to achieve – ruling Rwanda – forever. And as long as the elections are held at the hindsight of local and international observers, we will have no legal reason to believe that his victory was manipulated. The media, which in such an environment would have provided credible evidence as to the real situation on the ground, has been manipulated.

Those like Umuseso, who have not been so keen at accepting government tokens, have now been suspended. The six months suspension effectively rules out Umuseso in the media life of Rwandans until, well, after the elections. If that is not calculated, then I stand to be corrected as to whether Kagame is not preparing himself to be the father figure and self-appointed Lord of Rwanda he wishes and claims to be. Godwin Agaba was a Rwandan correspondent for Great Lakes regional outlet 256.com ; he is now in hiding but still publishing without his byline. On April 7, 2010, in his address at the Kigali Memorial Center, Rwandan President Paul Kagame blamed “you,” a conveniently flexible and expandable category, and all those calling for political space and press freedom for the 1994 Rwanda Genocide, in which a million Rwandans died. This is the English language section of his English and Kinyarwanda address particularly concerned with press freedom. For the entire English language section of the address, click here .

One week after this address, on April 14, 2010, Kagame’s “High Media Council” shut down the independent African language newspapers that most Rwandans depend on. -

Question: Name the long-standing Rwanda president in the news during 2010 after human rights criticisms?
Answer: Paul Kagame