How a once shattered country has become a beacon of hope for the rest of Africa THE LAST WORD | ANDREW M.

MWENDA | Tuesday, April 7th Rwanda held commemorations marking 32 years since the beginning of the genocide that killed over a million of its Tutsi citizens.

It is a genocide where Rwandans turned on each other over fictitious distinctions within their one culture, Tutsi and Hutu.

These distinctions existed in precolonial Rwanda but were politicised with toxicity by Belgian colonialists.

The consequences of this will continue to haunt Rwanda for decades to come.

However, efforts by the government to contain them are bearing fruits.

They involve the reassertion of the shared and common Rwandan identity.

The first part has been to inculcate in every person the identity that “I am a Rwandan” (ndi’munyarwanda).

The second goes beyond this to assert prestige in every person: “I have dignity” (ndafite agaciro).

To be a Rwandan is to be self-respecting, to see yourself in nobler terms.

The third picks from the second and mobilizes people around a shared national vision: “I am rebuilding my country.” Everyone is called upon to contribute to this vision: as taxpayers, as government employees, as members of any community during Umuganda (community work), as businesspersons running private enterprises, as priests shepherding their flock, even as ordinary citizens walking on the street, etc.

Rwanda is far behind Uganda and most especially Kenya in terms of human capital development: the skills and experience to manage and build things.

But why does it achieve so much with so little while Uganda and Kenya achieve so little with so much? The answer is identity.

As I have stated above, Rwandans have been mobilized to see themselves first as one people, second as special and third as sharing a vision of their future – as individuals and as members of a community.

More than skills and pay, it is this identity that makes them achieve so much with so little.

So, the policeman on the street wants his/her conduct to reflect his/her identity as special; so does the nurse in a hospital, the cleaner on the street, a civil servant in an office and the teacher in a school.

Words alone cannot bring about reconciliation and a shared vision.

Actions do better.

The fortunes of the current prime minister of Rwanda, Justin Sengiyumva, epitomise this.

He was one of those people who fled to Congo after the 1994 genocide.

But RPF, through its policy of reconciliation, returned him to Rwanda in 1996.

He became director for internal and external trade and then a permanent secretary in the Ministry of Trade and later Education.

Then he fell out with the government, ran into exile and is alleged to have joined both FDLR and RNC.

Notwithstanding all this, the RPF convinced him to return home last year.

President Paul Kagame first appointed him deputy governor of the central bank of Rwanda in February, and in July he became prime minister.