The Kigali experiment for Georgetown

Jun 07, 2015 Countryman, Features / Columnists

---

COUNTRYMAN – Stories about life, in and out of Guyana, from a Guyanese perspective

By Dennis Nichols
I have never been to Kigali, the capital of the East African nation of Rwanda, but I can easily picture what that

city must have looked like 21 years ago in, let’s say, June 1994. (I’ll come back to that year, mostly for the benefit of younger readers who experience nightmares in dreams only)
So when I saw a recently-written article about the city as one of the cleanest and safest in the world, I did a double take, then I figured it had to be nationalistic  hyperbole, not unlike some of our tourist propaganda that still touts Georgetown as a Garden City.
I therefore did some research, and, to my astonishment, it may very well be true, if not in the world, then maybe in Africa. If so, it may be a good thing for Georgetown’s ‘city fathers’ to find out just what happened in Kigali over the past 20 years to transform it from a human abattoir of unmentionable cruelty to a simple but pristine city of order, safety and cleanliness.
Now this synopsis for younger readers who may know nothing about what transpired in Rwanda in 1994 – Ongoing civil unrest between the country’s two largest ethnic groups, the Hutus and the Tutsis, escalated in 1994 after the country’s Hutu president, Juvenal Habyarimana, was killed in a plane crash which some suspected was the work of the Tutsi Rwandan Patriotic Front, (RPF) led by Paul Kagame. The RPF had formerly been operating as a rebel group out of neighbouring Uganda, fighting against the Rwandan army, but later gained acceptance as part of a broad-based transitional government in Kigali.

Following the plane crash that killed Habyarimana, the Hutus, (mostly extremists) began to target and kill both Tutsi and Hutu opposition politicians and moderate leaders. Then they turned to the minority Tutsi population. In the space of three months, it is reported, these extremists, and also simple tribesmen, slaughtered over 800,000 Tutsis and some moderate Hutus, with guns, spears, machetes and kitchen knives. It was called ethnic cleansing. Some people know it better as genocide.
Two of the most frightening aspects of this butchery were (a) the speed with which the killings spread – from Kigali to the rest of the country, and (b) the call by local officials and government-sponsored radio stations for ordinary Rwandan citizens to attack and murder their neighbours.

(A survivor of the massacre, Immaculee Ilibagiza, has since travelled to several countries worldwide, detailing some of the 1994 atrocities, including how she spent those three months in a tiny closet hidden behind a wardrobe in a pastor’s house with seven other women, hiding from the killers. Her weight dropped from 120 pounds to a starvation 65 pounds)
RPF forces eventually seized power from the Rwandan army in early July 1994, thus ending a virtual holocaust. In the aftermath, two million Hutus fled to the Congo and other neighbouring countries as refugees, while the Tutsi-backed RPF formed a coalition government. Almost unbelievably, it made a Hutu, Pasteur Bizimungu, president, while its own leader, Paul Kagame, a Tutsi, became vice president. (Could that kind of ‘accommodation’ being made in a country like Guyana?) Not surprisingly however, Kagame was generally considered the country’s de facto leader, and was in fact also its defence minister.
The Rwanda genocide left in its wake, collapsing infrastructure, uninhabitable buildings, and an empty treasury. Forty percent of the country’s population had either been killed or had fled. Many of those who remained were traumatized by the loss of relatives, witness of killings, and in some cases, forced participation in those murders. It was under these circumstances that the reconstruction and transformation of Rwanda began, in Kigali.
Although reprisal fighting continued (mostly with revenge killings by Tutsis) the city and the country slowly began their journey back to a civilized state. Kagame, who was elected president in 2000, continued to be a strong, albeit somewhat authoritarian, leader.
With the international community providing little assistance, both during and after the events of 1994, the government started the prosecution of crimes committed during that period. A new constitution was adopted in 2003, which, among other things, sought to prevent Hutu or Tutsi hegemony over political power. (Incidentally, Rwanda is one of the very few countries in the world where female members of parliament outnumber males)
Although, reportedly, there are still authoritarian transgressions in the country, a twin venture of reconciliation and development has had several positive results, far too numerous to mention. Suffice it to say that there has been a crackdown on corruption, a health programme that insures every Rwandan, ‘only’ 45 % of the population existing below the poverty line, and an average annual economic growth rate of 8.2%. Transparency International rates Rwanda 49th out of 177 countries on its corruption index, and, according to the IMF, it has the 10th fastest growing economy in the world.
From all I have seen and read, the capital, Kigali, is Georgetown’s dream. Dirt tracks have become smooth, clean main roads, and there is a mandatory community clean-up day the last Saturday of each month, called Umuganda, reportedly led by Kagame himself. The manufacture and use of plastic bags have been banned by the government, and according to an online source, people simply do not litter. The need for cleanliness is actually taught in grassroots communities, schools and villages. All households are required to build waste disposal units and hygiene facilities, and dustbins and other disposal facilities are everywhere.
A recent visitor to Kigali noted that there is a plan for modern skyscrapers to fill the business district, markets to be transformed into shimmering shopping malls, and poor, informal settlements to be ‘reorganized’ into modern single-family homes.’ She noted that the attitude there toward development is reminiscent of a place like Singapore, or even Dubai. Now that’s some comparison!
Compare what she says with what a Rwandan filmmaker said about the city in 1994. “It was the apocalypse. We thought it was at least …bodies were scattered everywhere; blood was everywhere; social order was nonexistent. Kigali was a broken city; a dead city.”
Guyana is no Rwanda, and Georgetown at no time in its history could have come remotely close to what Kigali looked like 21 years ago. But there were some comparisons in terms of the natural beauty of both countries, the diversity of flora and fauna, the bewildering depravity of leadership incompetence, and the racial/ethnic division that threatened to destroy both countries.
Recently, Kigali received the UN Habitat Scroll of Honour Award for its transformation into ‘a place to which people come from all corners of the world to see and learn how they can replicate the Kigali modernization and urban conservation model at home’. In 2009, the Rwandan government commissioned two overseas-based firms to design a conceptual master plan (referred to earlier) for the city. The plan seeks to redesign, and expand pre-existing and new neighbourhoods, as well as create conservation land and areas for tourism and recreation.
Does the new administration have its own master plan for Georgetown, and the rest of Guyana? Judging from recent exercises and pronouncements, it would seem so. If this is true, it would probably be, as I said earlier, a good thing to look at the Kigali model, and maybe modify its most redeemable features to suit our capital city. To some of us this may seem like an experiment in utopian futility. To me it is an experiment worth whatever slim risk may be involved.

---

---