A tragedy may be unspeakable in nature, immeasurable in scale and inexpressibly unjust, yet it cannot freeze a people’s destiny or a nation’s future.
What this beautiful African country endured in 1994 is beyond human comprehension. It was a shattering trauma, an ordeal that would test the bravest of men and the most resilient of peoples.
The Rwandan people have overcome the most terrible ordeal a human community can face: confronting the most hideous face of humanity. They have risen from the abyss of the Genocide against the Tutsi, a crime beyond anything words can express.
Out of the hills that were the stage of this tragedy, they have made a lookout from which a nation can face the future with confidence, hope and determination.
No, this history must never be forgotten. But it can become a turning point towards another story: one of peace, prosperity and a shared will to succeed.
On closer inspection, the Rwandan tragedy appears almost as an extreme, and certainly emblematic, variation on the tragedy of the African continent as a whole.
There is one difference: the rest of the continent has yet to grasp that it, too, can write a different story, for itself and by itself.
This is the Rwanda I discovered.
My first evening in this country will remain forever etched on the hard drive of my memory. Seated at the table before dinner in an elegant restaurant overlooking the city, we had Kigali spread out before our eyes.
Night had fallen, and lights shimmered across the hills all the way to the horizon. I asked my companion a simple question: “What made you decide to come here?” His answer was just as simple and direct, and it reveals an ambition shared by far more young Africans than one might suspect: “When I see a leader who manages to achieve what I dream of for my own country, I don’t just admire him. I come here to learn, to feel at home, and to take part in the human adventure that it makes possible.”
It must be acknowledged, and as an African one can only rejoice in it: Rwanda should stand as a benchmark for a continent in search of a narrative of its own. It is a narrative that answers the long-stifled aspirations of its peoples and its youth.
Rwanda holds up to us the image of a community that has embraced the virtues of discipline. That discipline is found in every aspect and every sector of life. Here, civic cleanliness need not even be proclaimed, because it is lived every day.
It expresses the idea that the bond between every Rwandan, man or woman, and their national environment knows neither break nor interruption.
Everywhere in the city, construction sites can be seen, and there are many of them. Yet they have an air of control and cleanliness rarely found elsewhere on the continent. In many countries, construction sites go hand in hand with disorder and spill over into public spaces.
They then obstruct the flow of people and traffic, with disproportionate consequences. Nothing of the sort happens in Kigali: even in the midst of construction, the city remains orderly.
A country that elevates cleanliness to a sacred calling understands the dialectical relationship between the outer and the inner. Here, the inner goes far beyond the sheltered space of the home or the privacy behind bedroom curtains.
It is the heart, the mind and the soul. Human beings will always remain mysterious and, in many respects, ungovernable creatures. But their paths can be marked out to give them salutary direction and bring them closer to nirvana.
I need hardly mention the unique sense of safety one feels walking the streets of this city. It is a feeling one is sure to experience throughout Rwanda. It is the result of a choice, but also of the fierce commitment of a state that has resolved to meet the most demanding expectations of any society.
It is therefore no surprise that Rwandans arrive at work on time and honour their commitments. They favour whatever advances the common good rather than looking no further than the ends of their noses.
I experienced this first-hand at the meeting of the Senegal–Rwanda Joint Commission. The welcome, the availability of our counterparts, the professionalism and the focus on results were remarkable. Even getting around was perfectly organised.
Despite dense traffic and congestion, travel proceeded in an orderly fashion, without haste or tension. Everywhere, one sensed the same composure and serenity.
These discussions opened up enormous investment opportunities, particularly in tourism, textiles and agribusiness. These opportunities alone justify the trip and the work accomplished.
The “Visit Rwanda” slogan, then, carries far more than a simple invitation to stay in a country. It is a gateway to a whole world of possibilities, to what a community can offer humanity and the world.
It reveals the treasures and the immeasurable beauty that determined women and men, aware of the resources with which nature has endowed them, know how to showcase and bring to their full splendour. That is enough to make us love life all the more and feel blessed to be alive.
I am convinced that Africans are not the only ones who must, and can, learn from Rwanda. The whole world should. If the country’s authorities have built a strategy around “Visit Rwanda”, it is perhaps because every country in the world holds within it a part of Rwanda, often unsuspected and waiting to be discovered.
Behind this success lies leadership of exceptional quality: that of a leader who has known how to set a course and bring an entire people along with him.
We Africans therefore share a collective responsibility: never to let Rwanda change course. For this country teaches us that Africans can achieve extraordinary things. They seem extraordinary to us only because we have never achieved them before.
Of course, nothing is perfect. But the path has been charted. Every nation, drawing on its own identity, can find inspiration in the success of the women and men of the Land of a Thousand Hills.
And the peoples of the continent’s plains, savannahs and steppes can rejoice in seeing their brothers and sisters accomplish what, for them, still belongs to the realm of dreams.
Yet it would be incomplete not to recall one essential requirement: continuing to strengthen national cohesion. The work of reconciliation is never finished. It is, in a sense, the Rwandan version of the myth of Sisyphus: an effort to be taken up again every day, relentlessly.
But as Camus wrote, “One must imagine Sisyphus happy.” For it is through this patient renewal that a nation’s peace is built, day after day.
I leave this country certain that I want to return. I also leave with the unshakeable conviction that I will henceforth be one of its most ardent champions and promoters. For Rwanda has given me a new and different kind of hope: a hope born of an experience lived intensely, through the senses and through the mind.
Aziz FALL is an Expert in strategic communication and author
