Thursday 4 feb. – A political update

Am starting to get settled at work now after a week of mostly introduction. I also feel like I’m starting to get to know my colleagues better and they all seem to be very nice. The spirit at the office is open and relaxed and very positive which I really like. We have started to discuss which specific programs and tasks I will be involved in and now I’m very excited to get started and start working on them. We have had a lot of problems with the electricity at the office during the week. It turns out that the electric company has been doing some kind of job in the area (without informing the people who might be affected by it) and that’s why we have had power cuts. Now our backup has been fixed however so it does not really matter if the power doesn’t work because we can continue working despite of it. Yesterday for example, before they fixed it, most people went home after three in the afternoon since there was very little we could do at the office anyway.

Today me and Malin had a meeting (or maybe interview is a better word) with a Norwegian student who is writing his thesis about civil society and democracy. It was very interesting because he asked a lot of questions that I wanted answers to as well. I felt like I got a much better picture of this country and the political situation here. A problem is that the articles and analyses you can find back home does not always give a very good picture of what is actually going on here. Also a lot of what I’ve read back home has been contradicting each other so that it is hard to know what to believe. The fact that my supervisor has been here for almost four year makes her a person whose judgement I trust better than most people’s. The local staff at the office is also a very good source of information about what is going on here.

In Rwanda there has been much talk about a woman whose name is Victoire Ingabire lately. She has just come back from exile in the Netherlands after being involved in the genocide. Now she is back and has started her own political party and will be a candidate in the presidential election in august. Many people here seem to think that she is trouble and she has made some questionable remarks regarding the genocide. Nothing very radical but since nobody here really talks about these things openly it has been a very big deal. Many people are surprised that she has been allowed to return to the country and register a political party and even more so that she has not been arrested on account of the statements she has made. There is a law in Rwanda that says that “divisionism”, which is what they call political statements about the genocide that does not follow the government’s agenda for national unity, is a grave offence which can result in imprisonment. A lot of people who have said less radical things than her have been arrested. The government has a high degree of control in such matters and does not allow anybody to speak along ethnic lines in public.

Today I heard that she was attacked, yesterday I think. She was going in to get her ID card and there was a lot of people around queuing and waiting for their turn. She just walked right past the queue and went straight in and came out with her new card. This is not at all unusual in this country so this could not have been the reason why people got upset. Anyway, she was attacked by the mob and they bit her! I mean actually bit her! I don’t know why they did that instead of anything else but I really think this is funny. On a more serious note, this shows that she is very controversial and that most Rwandans seem to be committed to reconciliation and keeping the peace. A positive sign I think! Everybody here is convinced that Paul Kagame (the sitting president) will win the presidential election without any real competition. He is very popular and seems to have a solid and wide support from the population. There are no credible alternatives that could replace him really.