"Democracy in Africa: A Homegrown Evolution, Not a Western Imposition"
Kagame and Doumbouya are not sincere: Africans love democracy and want it to work. On September 19, Rwandan President Paul Kagame confirmed that he would run in his country's August 2024 presidential election and seek to win an unprecedented fourth term.
Kagame Rwandans President
“I am happy about the trust that Rwandans have placed in me. I will always serve them as long as I can,” said the 66-year-old in an interview with the French magazine Jeune Afrique.
It is no wonder that Kagame is preparing for another presidential election. Finally, it appears that over the years the Rwandan president has developed a successful plan to not only win elections but to do so with seemingly universal public acceptance. The former army general, who has ruled Rwanda since June 2000, won the 2010 and 2017 presidential elections with 93% and 98.6% of the vote, respectively. And before that, in his first presidential election in 2003, he received 95.05% support. Voters in Rwanda. Under constitutional changes approved in a December 2015 referendum, Kagame is entitled to a third seven-year term next year and then two additional five-year terms, meaning he could theoretically remain in power until 2034.
At first glance, running for another term seems a reasonable solution for a hugely popular and successful head of state. Rwanda has undoubtedly made significant socio-economic progress since the 1994 genocide in which at least 800,000 civilians, mostly ethnic Tutsis and moderate Hutus, were killed, and many observers have described the country as an African success story. However, this laudable progress does not erase the fact that Kagame is a ruthless despot and the main obstacle to true democratic progress. Indeed, from the outset, Rwanda's elections were marked by widespread government attacks on freedom of expression, independent media and the political opposition. It is also highly doubtful whether Kagame could have won the support of almost all Rwandan voters several times over the years had he faced his rivals in truly free and fair elections.
The Rwandan government, under Kagame's leadership, has long engaged in reprehensible illegal activities aimed at eliminating those who have attempted to challenge Kagame in elections. For example, authorities thwarted attempts by presidential candidates Victoire Ingabire Umuhoza and Diane Rwigara to oppose Kagame in 2010 and 2017, respectively.
Kigali also reportedly kidnapped and killed dissidents and opposition leaders at home and abroad. Suspected state agents are said to have murdered Patrick Karegeya, the former head of foreign intelligence and co-founder of the Rwandan National Congress, in South Africa in January 2014.
Therefore, as has been proven time and again, Kagame is not a true democrat. It is therefore impossible to say with certainty whether a significant percentage of Rwandans actually “trust” his leadership and want him to run again next year. After all, Rwanda is not a true democracy.
Of course, it has all the basic structures of a democracy and appears to be able to hold regular elections. However, beneath this democratic façade, Kagame actually runs Rwanda as his personal fiefdom. It is undoubtedly an authoritarian and anti-democratic regime, like many other despots in the region. For example, in April, when Kagame was invited for a two-day visit to Conakry, Guinean military leader Colonel Mamadi Doumbouya - who overthrew former President Alpha Condé in a military coup in September 2021 - expressed his great admiration for Kagame's dictatorship and even stated himself, that it was “inspired by the Rwandan model” and called it an “African reference” in a presidential statement. In light of September 21, it was no surprise when Doumbouya criticized democratic governance imposed by the West during the 78th United Nations General Assembly. “Africa is suffering from a model of government that is being imposed on it... a good and effective model for the West, but difficult to adapt to our reality, our customs and our environment,” he told assembled world leaders in New York.
This is an old cliché that Kagame himself has long used to distract from his poor human rights record. At his inauguration in September 2010, he sharply criticized “self-proclaimed critics of Rwanda” and declared that “lack of democracy” was not “Africa's biggest problem”.More than a decade later, Kagame is still in power and continues to insist that Africa has no real democracy problem. This is despite the fact that unelected military governments are in power in Sudan, Gabon, Niger, Mali, Burkina Faso and Guinea. And so-called “democratic leaders” like Kagame himself, who stay in power through rigged elections while presiding over many others.
Of course, it is the right and duty of every African leader to condemn and combat all colonial and neo-colonial crimes. This continent has already suffered enough from the demands of the West. But democracy is no longer exclusively a Western model and goal. This is not an imposition on the part of the West: in fact, Western powers currently seem to prefer negotiating with friendly dictators rather than with independent, democratically elected African leaders.
Today the West does not impose democracy on reluctant African nations. It is Africans themselves who strive for true democracy on the continent.
A poll published by Afrobarometer in January 2023 found that a majority of Africans – including 77% of Guineans – support democracy and would like to see stronger democratic institutions in their country. In the same poll, 74% said they opposed military rule and 82% expressed opposition to the strongman rule with a façade of democracy that Kagame has established in Rwanda.
This is the unspoken truth: Africans love democracy and want it to work. Of course, democracy is not a perfect model of government: no system is. Under these conditions, it is an ideal instrument for peaceful socio-economic development and Africans know this.
The large-scale introduction of democracy in Africa in the 20th century was essentially an indigenous response to the social injustices inflicted on Africans by colonial and settler regimes. However, this was not the case as Doumbouya insidiously attempted to make the UN understandable by relying solely on Western impositions.
Take the 1995 South African Freedom Charter: it advocated multiracial democracy as a remedy to the apartheid regime. African democracies are burdened by locally agreed norms that are also universally recognized values (PDF). These include principles that Kagame, Doumbouya and many other leaders have routinely violated: full citizen participation, equality, accountability, the rule of law, political tolerance, free and fair elections and human rights. Most Africans - myself included - have simply never experienced the true and far-reaching fabric of democracy because African leaders have largely refused to fully embrace or implement it. In this sense, Kagame's Rwanda is not an "African success story" or an "African milestone" ineffective governance, as Doumbouya hypocritically claimed, but a guide for newfound despots across the continent on how to create the illusion of democracy.
Africans and Rwandans deserve and demand better.
Kagame should reconsider his unwise decision to run again.
Rwanda can become a true African success story – a true benchmark for other African nations – but only if Kagame allows democracy to flourish.