Amilcar Cabral, who was the secretary-general of the African Party for the Independence of Guinea and the Cape Verde Island, once said: “Always bear in mind that the people are not fighting for ideas, for the things in anyone’s head. They are fighting to win material benefits, to live better and in peace, to see their lives go forward, to guarantee the future of their children.”
To a person who has not internalised the words of Cabral, a consistently above 90% victory in an election is evidence of lack of democracy.The recent sweeping victory for President Paul Kagame of Rwanda at 99.18% has created a new term – poll dictatorship, although one wonders how you dictate a voter turn-out of 98.02% if not explained by the will of the people to affirm their choice of leadership. I proffer a different opinion as one who has looked at Rwanda through the lens of statistical evidence, having been a statistician-general of South Africa and worked quite closely with the National Institute of Statistics of Rwanda.
If you have lived under constant genocidal threat and ultimately, it materialises into the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi that in 100 days wiped out more than a tenth of the population, you have to ask yourself what could be worse – is there anything you can ever fear or be afraid of? Based on what Rwandans experienced, I would argue that it is impossible to intimidate them. Anyone threatening Rwandans by deception, coercion or other acts faces an uphill battle because for them, it cannot be worse than what they witnessed.
So, the results of the poll in Rwanda speak not to the fear of what others think of as a dictator, but the fearlessness of fear because what fear can be left in you when you saw and endured the worst? The poll, rather than reflect fear, speaks to and affirms what Rwandans experienced out of a condition that swept their country in a blink of an eye and what progressively and cumulatively restored their dignity in the past 30 years. Why would you gamble that dignity ever again? By Pali Lehohla, IOL
