Rwanda. Africa's Past and Present?

David Cameron, leader of the British Conservative Party, is currently in Rwanda. Yesterday, he spoke to the Rwanda's Lower Chamber where he called for increased trade between "Rich" and "Poor" Countries (See, for example, http://allafrica.com/stories/200707250331.html). I won't even comment on this as his arguments for increased aid transparency and a reduction in conditionality not only ring hollow, but are also age-old. There is nothing new in his language. The standard critique applies: It really doesn't matter what politicians say they are going to do, it matters what effects their words have on the ground. Or, as I like to say, where does the rubber hit the pavement...? Cameron, who launched his parties' report on their global poverty policy, called on European and other "rich" nations to drop their trade barriers to "poorer" nations by 2013. As if....

The more interesting bit of Cameron's speech was when he said that Rwanda was the best place to launch his global poverty report because "it represents both the tragedy of Africa's past and hope for the future". What does he mean by this? Is he not aware that the state apparatus that allowed for the mass mobilisation of Hutu civilians to kill their Tutsi family, friends and neighbours is the same one that is forcibly 'asking' them to do so through new state practices of, for example, ingando (citizenship re-education) and gacaca (community-based courts). Has he stopped to notice that when a government goes from the decimation of genocide to a neat and well-ordered society that the power of the state is obviously behind such order? Would you not stop and think that the order might be forced, or even worse, oppressive?

I wonder also if he knows that Rwanda, lauded by Cameron and others, for its impressive return to the rule of law is aware of the increase in the death of detainees at the hands Rwanda prison authorities? (see, http://hrw.org/english/docs/2007/07/23/rwanda16455.htm). I hate to be the eternal pessimist here but when international figures like Cameron lend credibility to the self-legitimising practices of a repressive government in saying things like "Rwanda is representative of both Africa's past and present" based on little to no knowledge of that past, and only aspirational, and non-descript, hopes for the future, who wins and who loses?

I think those in state power 'win' while the population 'loses'....