21 September 2009

Nairobi — President Paul Kagame spoke to Michael Wakabi and Ali Zaidi on September 1 at the President's Office in Village Urugwiro, Kigali, about the challenges he is facing in his quest to build Rwanda from a war-ravaged country to a prosperous nation. Part II of the interview:

There is a widely held perception that there is no media freedom in Rwanda. In certain quarters, you have yourself been named enemy number one of the press. Given the burden of history on the media here and the capacity constraints on the industry, what is your strategy for seeing the emergence of a free and responsible press?

If somebody were accusing me, saying President Kagame is not doing enough as a president to finance or to promote the quick development of a vibrant press and media, I would say maybe he has a point.

Maybe there are some things I haven't done that I could have. But to accuse me of stifling the media or being anti-freedom of the press -- that is really absurd.

I think this is where the media or some members of the press indict themselves, raising the question of whether, after all, these are not all innocent people trying to the good work of exercising freedom of analysis; that maybe some of them have a different agenda.

If you look at the facts on the ground and still end up with such a conclusion, then there is something terribly wrong.

Prove your point: How does Kagame become number one enemy of the press, or even number 20? Where do you get that from? If you were saying can you do more to help the press; why not?

For me, the single point we should be talking about is lack of capacity. We have certainly been trying. We have financed a school of journalism at our national university.

Even when it comes to the media law here -- first of all, I was not involved, the government did not have a direct hand in it.

Most of it was formulated by the media practitioners themselves. In the end, I think in their discussions, they took a wrong turn, and they are the ones who went to parliament.

Then after that, they came to me saying that something had been slipped into the law that they didn't like. And I said, "Fine, I am not going to sign it; you go back and discuss it again and put in what works for you and works for everybody."

They went back, they tinkered with it and added whatever they wanted to add. I think they fell short of one or two clauses out of the many they had wanted, then it came back. This time I signed it because it was just going back and forth.

[This reputation for being anti-press] can't be because we have put journalists in prison or because we have hidden them somewhere. I have seen media people in the neighbourhood -- they are always in and out of prison.

Ever since 1994, when I came into government as vice president, I have never asked the police or anybody else to arrest a journalist. I have the authority to order the arrest of anybody, but I have never caused the arrest of a journalist or asked any other person to do it on my behalf.

Even when people have written in the papers insults on me and other people have become agitated and come to me, I have always told them, "Please ignore that fellow. It is me who is being insulted, and I have no problem with it because, after all, it does affect me. I remain me; I don't change into something else.

Let's talk about the role of the media in sensitive situations, especially in conflict situations...

If am annoyed with the media, I say it, I don't hide it. There were times when I got seriously annoyed with Ugandan journalists for fuelling conflict.

When we had problems with Uganda, it was as if they were enjoying the conflict.

Then we had a few people here who began doing the same thing and it became a war fuelled by journalists. Sometimes I would call our own people and ask them what benefit they saw in fuelling a war between two countries.

When I am not happy about something, I say so, there is no underhand dealing. I have quarrels with the media here but they are open quarrels, there is nothing under the table.

I also have the freedom to express my views. Whether I am right or wrong is a different matter, but I have the right to express those views.

That said, I think there is a lot of politics being played out in the media, either by journalists themselves or on behalf of others.

That is the only explanation I can find for some of these misrepresentations. On media and human rights, you will find that in the reports that Human Rights Watch writes about Rwanda, the story of 1995 is the same as that of 2009. They seem to see no difference between the Rwanda of 1995 and that of 2009.

So what do we do about it? We try to explain [our stand] because sometimes things are misrepresented merely because you have not explained them enough. But sometimes you are misrepresented because someone doesn't want to understand you, however much you try.

So what we do is explain as much as we can, and also concentrate on doing the right thing. In the end, the facts will speak for themselves. Interestingly, the very people who say there is no freedom of the press are the ones who have been here and enjoyed full access to everyone and exposure to everything that is happening.

Maybe they are trying to say the Rwandans don't allow their own people access to information?

The interesting thing here... is that we have wholeheartedly embraced information and communications technology precisely because it empowers people, including journalists. In fact, it turns ordinary citizens into journalists because you can blog, you can express yourself and send information to wherever.

That is how, even in tight situations, such as the elections in Iran and some cases in China, information was filtering out. Ordinary citizens acting as journalists were taking pictures with their cellphones and putting them online.

In other words, with our embrace of ICT, we are not only empowering the few journalists we have with unlimited means to express themselves, we are doing this for every citizen in the country.

As outlined in our Vision 2020, the key areas that we want to invest in are our people, their health, and their education. And specifically to create a knowledge-based economy because people are the main asset we have.

The Vision will be facilitated by modern infrastructure -- I emphasise the word modern because when it comes to information and communications technology, we want to reach the next generation.

This is one way of adding value to our main asset, the Rwandan people. ICT is a facilitator that eases progress in areas such as education and health, and adds value in other areas of knowledge.

We have put in place a national plan for laying out the broadband connectivity infrastructure on which we shall build many other things.

As we wait to be connected through either Mombasa or Dar es Salaam, we are doing our homework.

We already have a master plan for laying out a fibre-optic backbone internally and reaching every district so that every school, hospital and administrative centre is wired. We shall have reached every district by December this year.

Your ICT focus is indeed exciting; in the whole region, yours is perhaps the one country that is taking the new technologies with the seriousness they deserve. Assuming the leaders of the region get things right, what does the future hold for East Africa in let's say 10- 20 years?

In 20 years, East Africa should be one country -- I think that is not unattainable.

There are building blocks you need to put in place, but this is already happening -- the Customs Union, Common Market and later on a Monetary Union which should lead up to a Political Federation.

There will necessarily be obstacles, concerns and apprehension. These are natural, because people have different reasons for coming into the Community and they think differently -- so they may complain about one thing here and another there.

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