“How do you survive there?” asked Mike, a well respected PR professional in Nairobi. ”I hear Kagame is a dictator,” he adds in a way that suggests he believes what he hears!
“Oh, do you?” is all I had asked him then.
But thanks to a freak accident involving a royal mix-up in a client’s production schedules and the application of massively misinterpret-able section of the Kenyan matrimonial law, my daughters and I had an early Christmas in Nairobi (November 25 to December 14th). After lighting our tree on the 9th, we had placed gifts under it and opened them at will – without those restrictions of waiting till the sighting of a moon or a star!.
That’s how I ended up spending Christmas in Kigali, with only a lap top, a mute television set and Jeffrey Archer’s Cat ‘O Nine Tales for company, which turned out to be a good thing, With most Kigalians having gone to church and back to their houses (Christmas is no big deal here; only the hyperactive Kenyans and Ugandans in Kigali take it too seriously by going back home to feast with their relatives) I was king of my hillside and could now turn to matters “political”.
Thus, I came up with a theory and a proposal, but first, let’s explore, shall we, the manifestations of alleged dictatorship. And having quietly followed the man’s career for a while now from the safety of my cave on a hillside in his city: having watched him trot the globe picking up Global Awards after another for this and that; having gawped with wonder at his three-vehicle, Benz-less motorcade; and sat uncomprehendingly at the national stadium in Nyanza during one or two of the nation’s celebrations; I feel singularly qualified for the job – without any reference to his spokespeople.
To begin, he is the only African president I know of who holds a monthly press conferences. In these conferences, he answers uncensored and unscripted questions from all sorts of journalists – including silly ones like “Why are so many high ranking Rwandan officials being arrested on corruption charges?”
He also holds a weekly cabinet meeting (probably to keep the ministers in line?) and, when it comes to corruption, he has a rather limited vocabulary, in which the word “sacred” never comes before “cow” that does not and has a strict zero tolerance to corruption policy.
For those unfamiliar with dictator speak, that means his zero tolerance to corruption means exactly that: going for the big fish too and making an example of them, as opposed to, say, where I come from, whereby it has, so far, only applied in the lop-sided way in which certain laws of colonial origin were designed to jail a chicken thief on circumstantial evidence but release a white-collar thief and scoundrel (who siphons millions) on a technicality.
Another factor of said dictatorship is most definitely His Excellency’s total focus and the way he has no time for sycophancy. Many an official tremble in his presence on account of the way he can put them in their place with a well timed bon mot or a serious barrage of vernacular invective that has leaves them in no doubt whatsoever on what’s expected of them. Only recently, the whole nation watched agape as he gave a wayward civic leader a serious piece of his mind at a televised meeting.
The lady had stood up to address the president during a regular meet-the-president briefing of civic leaders, the purpose of which is to brief the president on the progress or lack thereof of government and civic initiatives. But instead, unable to resist the temptation to score some brownie points with the head of state, she had launched into a long entreaty on how young men have been smoking “urumogi”, (a certain psychedelic weed available illegally throughout east Africa) on the streets near her place in Kyovu. And since Kyovu also happens to be the president’s neighbourhood, the lady felt it was her civic duty to register her concern that maybe, just maybe, the fumes also drift to his Excellency’s delicate nostrils while he slept at night.
Visibly annoyed, the head of state had adjusted his spectacles, looked helplessly around him as if to ask “is this one serious?” then looked up, and, using carefully selected vernacular words, reminded the lady what the meeting was about and told her exactly what he thought of her contribution.
With “strong men” like Kagame, who needs the likes of the snivelling, resource grabbing sell-outs that’s the stock of most other African leaders! Now that’s my theory and I am sticking with it. Consequently, I have no choice but to urge all African leaders to imitate him.
©Lloyd Igane, Kigali 2009
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