further enlarging the diplomatic frontier is for rwanda an inescapable must, mr. president paul kagame. bravo and proficiat! the survival of rwanda is essential at that cost. another thing youve got to be highly commended for, mr president, is the relentless public diplomacy effort youve steadily embarked on through your presidency. of note however is that rwandan foreign missions have not been taking your cue to carry on the public diplomacy endeavor across the world. public diplomacy, cultural diplomacy and economic diplomacy are relatively new brands of diplomacy that have a much greater impact than the traditional form of diplomacy that has cut across centuries: political diplomacy. it might well be of interest to steadily engage the first two new forms of diplomacy: public and cultural so as to enhance the operability of economic and political diplomacy. public diplomacy shot into existence in 1960. it was initiated by the US government, and it has formidably worked to foster the US foreign policies. rwandan-african young men and women joining government service in the diplomatic sector must be given exposure to all those new brands of diplomacy. rwandan-african foreign missions must be properly coached and be made to understand that they will not just relate with government officials of countries of their accreditation to present and exchange letters/mail emanating from topmost executives of governments, or just to ensure friendships and interests of first families (heads of state cum families) are just generously serviced at the expenses of national interests, thus abusing tax payers money. (...) rwandans, congolese and africans at large have an inexhaustible culture/art source from which they could draw to run a highly effective diplomacy: example: rwandan national ballet is always rated top first in international arenas of choreographic competitions: reference rome, madrid (2005 and 2006 respectively, if my memory serves me right) et al. the rwandan response to these great international feats has generallly been to to feel good, get together and fell alright, make merry, chant and danse--- just that! not bad to congratulate oneself for a job well done, quite alright, but...huh! we are dealing with the life and interests of nations: some other thngs must be done on top of self-congs! these major/grand international feats are things to be politically and diplomatically capitalized upon; they are such diplomatic levers to be operated in multiple ways. cultural attaches of rwandan embassies must for example be appointed based on their personal capability to understand the value and use of culture, art and sports as major instruments of diplomacy. embassies must for example have books, CDs of rwandan culture and art to disseminate across countries of their accreditation. multiple conferences must be run. cultural attaches must aggressively engage cross sections of the public in the country where they operate: universities, institutes of higher education, secondary schools, churches, youth groups and organizations, civil society organizations, corporate businesses, armed forces, police,.... trouble s you hardly ever see cultural attaches in african countries embassies abroad! why? africans hardly think they have anything cultural to offer! but the west craves for african art and artifact! the very best performances of art and culture -- madrid, rome et al in the case of rwanda,-- must be constantly be on display and be driven home to global citizenry. western nations and other are all out to seek cultural revivification! give it to them steady: the way to prop up countries image, service international friendships and interests must in actuality be predicated on human culture/art more than anything else. political diplomacy worked alone for centuries when world nations were essentially absolute monarchies. interactions between nations were restricted between throne, kings, princes, dukes. the ambassadors crisscrossed nations with just bills/letters containing political messages kings exchanged between them: THOSE BILL WERE CALLED DIPLOMAS: HENCE THE NOTION AND PRACTICE OF DIPLOMACY DERIVING THEREFROM. modern nations are general run through democratic institutions. when nations become democracies of constitutional monarchies, then the notion and practice of democracy engage another gear to become an privileged activity servicing friendships and interests of nations understood not just as “governments of those nations”, but as “governments and people”, the premium being put on “the people” , not on “the government”. National communities come into play, and they must relate to one another internationally through enlarged forms of diplomacy, tailored to suit the new configurations and new political paradigms: when you move from an absolute monarchy to a democracy, you operate a new political shift that entails paradigm shift in diplomacy, education, health, economy et al. lots of African democracies – modern African states issuing from erstwhile European colonies- have largely been run as absolute monarchies. Coming to mind is the 1984 president mobutu sese seko public and official utterance in Kinshasa, the capital city of defunct Zaire (which reverted to the earlier official designation: ‘the democratic republic of the congo): “L’Etat, c’est moi”, Mobutu gingerly said to an extraordinarily submissive and acquiescing Zairean national community. Mobutu meant that he as a person embodied the Zairean State. “I am the State”. I was then in Nigeria, lecturing in the university of Jos--: I had quit the country in march 1979, shortly after undergoing a sinister, psycho-neuro-pathological form of torture that is reserved for the very few critical politicians and university lecturers not willing to actively engage/support the one party state politicking/gimmicks. That torture was copied from the so-called eastern block countries: the USSR and affiliates of eastern Europe. The Mount Amba university campus “CNPP”- center fo neuro-psycho-psychiatrics – is the terrible place where you are made to suffer that extraordinary torture: you are made to undergo electroshocks 2 or 3 times per day. What’s an electroshock in this case? Well, it is a bombardment of your cerebral hemispheres. Cathodes and anodes are carefully applied onto both sides of your skull/head, by psychiatrists paid by intelligence services, and then a huge flow of electricity is allowed into your brain. Care is taken to stuff a piece of cloth into your mouth to ensure you do not slice your tongue with your teeth at the critical moment of the bombardment of your brain cells. Instant death ensues, which may be momentary or not. I suffered that torture regime for two good weeks. Forget that. I survived owing to my youth, oldies do not survive that. I was just 27 years old then- 1978. I am now 63. Bless mobutu the embodiment of Zaire. Pre- RPF driven Rwanda was also run like Mobutu’s Zaire. Rwandan diplomacy under president juvenal habyarimana’s tenure amounted to little more than, or indeed just, servicing relations between the Rwandan ruling family (the habyarimana family) and a few foreign countries’ ruling families like france’s and belgium’s. Christophe Mitterrand, son to president francois Mitterrand and jean pierre habyarimana, son to president habyarimana are noted as the bosses who run the diplomatic show on behalf of their fathers. The tossed about “their excellencies the ambassadors” the way you toss about your errand boys! Same was done over decades between Kinshasa and Paris, gabon and paris, Abidjan and paris…. Genocides erupting on the African continent are among other reasons caused by the glaring lack of proper diplomacy. Care must be exercised to prop up and cultivate genuine diplomatic practices based on sound notions and values - moral, cultural and political – to preclude genocidal and horrors in Africa. Talking of horrors, you may remember that seeing African heads of state being subjected to uncertain judicial processes of western nations, single or allied, with arrests warrants coming up every now and then dammit—that’s a terrible horror and malady that we must, as responsible government and people stand up as one to stop and pre-empt as the case may be. President was well advised to shoot his way into The Hague quite all right, and his legal case is certainly sealed and gone: no bird out there is going to open their beaks to ooze dirt with respect to uhuru Kenyatta, president or not president, but still, one wonders if really, legally, African heads of state must relinquish presidential duty to go submit to the ICC officials in the bloody Hague court! What are they? What is a head of state for goodness sake? People are going about saying that president Paul Kagame will not quit presidency come 2017, just because he would not strip himself off his presidential immunity that he has been opposing to the illegal arrest warrant issued against him in November 2006 by sinister judge jean Louis Bruguiere of good old france. Can you imagine that? And president Bashir of Sudan is holed in his Khartoum palace, brooding about his non-presidential existence looming ahead. For alleged genocide crimes in Darfur Bashir has been under international arrest warrant for about a decade, and he has been watching his steps. International law has been dangerously flawed and if care is not taken to reshuffle and correct errors that have been committed, by inadvertence or design, we may soon face intractable situations capable of generating a jolly world war! Let us laugh a bit at this juncture, ladies and gentlemen, and wish well to global humanity that is careering fast down a cliff, the bottom of which is not exactly abysmal. More later. Ntarugera deo koya Director Rufari International – Kigali office [email protected]
Posted on: Mon, 27 Oct 2014 09:39:56 +0000
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