Nigeria: Rwanda - a Country of Interest

24 December 2012
opinion

Rwanda today has been dubbed Africa's biggest success story. The first person to draw my attention to the country and its president Paul Kagame was Dr. Lillian Wong. That was about six years ago. Dr. Wong had served as the British high commissioner to Rwanda in the post-genocide era, and it was during that period that she came to know and admire President Kagame. Kagame was the commander of Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), which was formed principally to unite the whole of Rwanda. His army defeated the regime that encouraged the famous Rwandan genocide that shook the world in 1994.

To appreciate why Rwanda is today such an outstanding story, it will be important to go back a little into the country's recent history. Even though the country of about 11 million people speaks the same language, they are classified and divided into the majority Hutu (those who farmed the land) and the minority Tutsi (those who raised cattle). There is also another very small group who make up just about one per cent of the population called the Twa. Their Belgian colonial masters encouraged these divisions and classifications for their own interests and established the Tutsi as the aristocracy of the country. These divisions were subsequently exacerbated by the colonial church leaders who wanted to reverse the discrimination but ended up actually stocking it. This discrimination was at the root of the animosity that came to define the country's history of hatred and violence.

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