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Central Africa: Rwanda's Kagame Promises Fair Election, Cautious on Prospects for Peace in Great Lakes Region

Ofeibea Quist-Arcton

17 July 2003

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interview

Maputo, Mozambique — Rwandans go to the polls next month in the first presidential elections since the genocide in 1994, when between 800,000 and one million Tutsi and moderate Hutu were killed by Hutu extremists, most of them hacked to death with machetes.

A front runner in the August ballot is Rwanda’s leader for the past nine years, President Paul Kagame. Kagame led the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) and the army that swept to power almost a decade ago, triggering an exodus of Hutus across the borders into neighbouring Congo, blamed by Kagame for the mass murder in Rwanda.

Attending the African Union (AU) summit in the Mozambican capital, Maputo, last week, Kagame gave an in-depth interview to Nicholas Kotch of Reuters, the BBC’s Solomon Mugera and allAfrica’s Ofeibea Quist-Arcton.

He touched on strained relations between Rwanda and its neighbours and erstwhile allies in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Uganda and also offered his assessment of the resurgence of fighting across the border in Burundi and the overall security situation in the Great Lakes region.

The first presidential election in Rwanda since the 1994 genocide is scheduled next month. President Kagame, you are a candidate and clearly have considerable backing. But some of your one-time allies, and now political opponents, including Faustin Twagiramungu - your former prime minister - allege that they are not being treated fairly. They want those polls postponed. What is your response?

My response is that the same person, Faustin Twagiramungu, way back, some years back, was making a noise that we were delaying bringing about elections. So I’m surprised that when elections come that he starts asking for a postponement. So this is a contradiction in a sense.

But what we have tried to do is to spend a lot of time, the last two years, preparing the constitution which involved all Rwandans, including those living outside. And it was very clear that after the constitution we were going for elections. And we have been making it clear at every stage that we are heading for elections. Therefore the timing cannot really depend on Twagiramungu’s wishes. The timing should depend on the general views and wishes of the people of Rwanda and I think the people of Rwanda are happy that we are ending the transition and moving forward on a more firm democratic path.

But has there been a level playing field for all the political players in the run-up to the elections?

I believe it is going to be, because everything is in place. We are going to have the whole of August campaigning. Twagiramungu is already in the country and others are in the country. They have been there, free to do whatever they should be doing. Of course I’m sure that many of them are worried because they lost a lot of time staying outside Rwanda. And the fact that some of us stayed in Rwanda trying to solve the problems and putting measures in place to allow free and fair elections, means they may see us as having an advantage. But if there is an advantage in that, so be it. It’s not our fault that we stayed in the country and they went out of the country.

And you know, definitely in politics - it may not be so scientific, in a sense, but being elected also depends on whether you are appreciated for one reason and another. And if the people of Rwanda appreciate people for having stayed with them and having worked with them to resolve different problems, then I’m sure Twagiramungu would want to look at it that this is not a level playing field. But I believe it is and the rules are very clear and they are fair and if everyone plays by those rules, then we are supposed to have free and fair elections.

A nine-year transition is a long time, with you in power as an unelected leader. So coming up to the elections you definitely have an advantage, don’t you? You say others stayed out of the country and you remained in Rwanda, but perhaps they felt that they weren’t really welcome back home.

You see, you are putting us into a situation where you are damned if you do and damned if you don’t. Because if we had said let’s spend another five years carrying out a campaign, then for me it will be 9+5. And for somebody else it would be five, because he has just started. So in any case I would be ahead of someone who is just starting five in the country.

So there is no situation where you are going to have, in that type of analysis, a level playing field.

Are you confident of victory?

Well I am confident that the process will go very well and I’m confident that Rwandans are capable of making a good choice. I am a candidate and I have no reason to believe that Rwandans won’t appreciate what I have done for and with them.

Turning now to the situation in neighbouring Burundi. There has been an upsurge in fighting around the capital, Bujumbura, and bombardment of the city by some of the rebel factions. What’s your assessment of the situation, which had been declared as a conflict on the wane?

Well it’s unfortunate that there is more fighting going on at a time when people in Burundi should be settling down to have peace, building on the peace process that was concluded in Arusha. But that also means there is more work to be done. Everybody is concerned. I am sure, including those who have been helping them to settle down. The region is very concerned. I think there is more work for all of us, the neighbours and the sub-region that has been helping Burundi to get together to resolve their problems, their political problems.

But there are groups that have not come on board with the peace process all along and they are fighting a government, and a transition, that was put in place. So, the starting point for me ,I think, is to bring these sides together again and try to understand what grievances they have and then try to help them to move forward.

But how worried are you about the situation in Burundi? There are African Union troops in place, the South Africans in numbers and the Ethiopians and the Mozambicans, who have a mandate, I believe, to use force. But they don’t seem to be responding to disarm those who are bombarding Bujumbura. Why?

Well let me first say, yes, there are those forces - especially from South Africa. Other forces who are supposed to be on the ground haven’t fully deployed yet. They have only deployed advance parties to go and make assessments of what is happening on the ground. So there are not sufficient forces on the ground to deal with the situation yet. But they have indeed the mandate to sort out some of these problems in the manner you have just described.

Secondly, much as they have deployed into that situation, their intention and the sub-region’s intention is to try and calm things in Burundi and make the peace process work. It’s not to start by forcing it to work. It’s supposed to build on the efforts of [the] Barundi, first of all, who have agreed on a number of issues and how to resolve them.

So I believe soon there will be discussions going on to find out ways of moving forward, in the sense that some groups have continued to destabilise the situation. But the first stage is to bring a political solution. That was the intention. And if that can be backed up by military means, where some groups do not respect the peace process or sometimes endanger civilian lives, then these (AU) forces can be helpful.

Do you have any idea who is supplying the arms that have fuelled the current upsurge of fighting in Burundi?

Of late, I don’t know. But the fact is that you can see that these people have arms. If they spend the whole morning firing mortar shells in the capital, Bujumbura, certainly they must be having sources of these ammunitions and probably arms.

I don’t know who supplies that. There are countries like South Africa who have been helping in the situation. They should be having this information or the UN that is in some way associated with resolving the problem probably has the information, I don’t know.

South Africa is very active in the Great Lakes area. South African troops are guarding the VIPs in Burundi, as well as their peacekeeping duties, and they make up a third of the UN Monuc force in Congo. Does South Africa have your full support?

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