From an interview with Jeune Afrique

On March 23, President Paul Kagame sat down with Francois Soudan for an interview that first appeared in Jeune Afrique magazine on March 29. The following is a translated version of the interview:

A peasant woman publicly declares that she will commit suicide if he does not run for another term, a businessman says he will go into exile, soldiers threaten to desert and opinions in favour of him staying in power have increased on radios and newspapers in Kinyarwanda: there is no doubt, the campaign for the re-election of Paul Kagame in 2017 has begun. What is surprising, for an observer used to seeing these kinds of orchestrated and manipulated manoeuvers in other places, is that this one is not pretence. The “desire for Kagame” is really there; it does not matter if it takes changing the Constitution, which today forbids the incumbent President to run for a third term. The Reasons: the undeniable positive economic and social achievements in thanks to the man who has ruled with an iron fist for the last 15 years, but also and mostly because of the fear of the void for a country that is still traumatized by memories of genocide.

Life Insurance: It is rare to find such a big gap between what is said and written on the international scene about the Rwanda Government and what is the perception of the majority of the citizens of this country. The lack of political and civic rights highlighted by different NGOs and the trials of opposition members almost go unnoticed for those who see access to food, health care and education - meaning 90 per cent of 11 million of Rwandans, Hutus and Tutsis inclusive- as their ultimate priority. For them, Kagame is a life insurance that guarantees order and progress. Many of them think that if “Rwanda’s Lee Kuan Yew” leaves, it would mark the opening of a new season of machetes.

One might as well admit with near certainty that if the 57-year -old man request for another term in the next two years is faced with opposition, it will come mainly from outside and will slide onto the slopes of thousand hills just like water would on the feather of a heron in Akagera. “Strangers see only what they already know” a Rwandan proverb says. And in Kigali, the clean and safe capital of a country managed like a Japanese Kaisha, no one can picture Paul Kagame as a gentleman-farmer in his ranch at Lake Muhazi…

Jeune Afrique: On April 7, Rwanda will mark the 21st commemoration of the Genocide against the Tutsi. How do you reconcile this important tradition with the necessity of presenting another image: that of a country which is in the process of reconciliation and is also in the process of social and economic development?

Paul Kagame: These two options are not contradictory but complementary. One is about our country’s history and its collective memory, our duty to pay tribute to victims of these atrocities. The other one is about how we live our daily lives which tells another story deeply related to the previous one. At the heart of both, there are our people, their pain, resilience and success.

The debate on the amendment of the Constitution is now an open and public in Rwanda. Particularly Article 101, which currently limits Presidential terms to two, which rules out your candidacy in 2017. You say that you are not concerned but, as you know, everything revolves around one person: you.

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