Rwanda's first media-fueled scandal (and why it's a good thing).

I was planning on saving this post for when I needed a ready-to-go subject to break a bout of writer's block, but given current events in the US, I think it's particularly topical. 

Back on one day in February, a ripple of astonishment and twitterpation spread throughout Rwanda.  Everyone was on their phones, discussing and confirming the hottest piece of gossip to come out Kigali in...well, maybe ever.  In a country whose history is tainted with horrific violence, what could possibly have gotten everyone so riled up?  I had heard bombings, murder, and genocide-talk discussed with less comment.

The story was that a political blog named Le Prophete, run by Rwandan dissidents in France (or Belgium, maybe), had released a scathing rant against the Government of Rwanda.  Their extremely long tirade essentially accused Paul Kagame's government of becoming corrupted, out of tune with the people of Rwanda, and leading fancy, lavish lives.  Their proof?  Photos of the Minister of Youth and Sports, Joseph Habineza, cavorting with young girls, none of whom were his wife.

Minister Habineza ended up stepping down a day after the photos hit the net.  I found many things about this story extremely interesting from a number of perspectives.

•  First and foremost, the fact that this scandal spread via the internet - with people emailing the blog address back and forth, using Skype to send copies of the pictures to office mates and discussing it all in a flurry on Facebook - says a lot about technology's growing importance in Rwanda.

• The bloggers who released the photos said that they were taken in 2008.  Presumably, this means that the photos were kept secret for almost THREE years before they were released at what the dissidents thought were a perfect time to do the most political damage.  Possibly unrelated, but the Minister gave a speech not two weeks earlier on Heroes Day which focused on finding ways to emulated "Rwandan dignity". 

• The writers of the blog wrote the text in Kinyarwanda, even though I would imagine that the majority of people accessing internet in Rwanda speak either English or French (not to mention the writers themselves, who live in francophone Europe).  My guess is that the writers' choice of Kinyarwanda was very purposeful.  Not only to appeal to the less-educated populace, but because Kinyarwanda is famous for its insinuative nature.  The language often cloaks deeper meaning in metaphors, and I suspect there were some pretty interesting messages sent under the radar in the text of the blog post.  (In early 1994, pro-genocide radio stations starting broadcasting messages about "cutting down the tall trees", a reference to Tutsis, historically taller than Hutus.  This is not to imply that the writers were one ethnicity or the other, simply that the language is often metaphorical.)

•  Was this a setup?  In some of the pictures, one of the smiling girls looks particularly gleeful (the one in long cornrows on the left in the picture above right).  Do they know what they're doing, or are they just having fun flirting with a Minister, oblivious to the fallout which would occur years later?  If it wasn't a setup, who leaked the pictures to the dissidents living in Europe?  Also, WHY THE HELL did Habineza let someone so blatantly take damning photos of him?  

• Even though the Minister was clearly not on his best church behavior, the accusations of him living it up in lavish style are far fetched.  All of the articles mentioning the scandal mentioned a "well-appointed" party room.  Let's look at this party room in closer detail.  For sure, this room is lavish when compared to the dirt floor shacks of many Rwandan farmers.  But let's be serious, this ain't the Mandarin Oriental.  Those couches are straight from China fake leather and the last time I checked, Drostdy-Hof isn't Moet.  Not to mention, if I read a review for a hotel that described itself as lavish, and THOSE were the curtains hanging up when I checked in, I would demand my money back.

Ruminations on the "meaning" of the scandal aside, I was actually sort of relieved at its fallout.  The Minister resigned, the world moved on.  To me, the whole thing signified that the Rwandan government was growing up.  Instead of stories about government-sponsored rape, true corruption, or voter fraud, a politician was embroiled in the most classic of downfalls - a good old fashioned sex(-ish) scandal.  A new Youth and Sports minister was appointed (hopefully with a little less interest in connecting with the "youth" part of his title) and the government kept it moving.  

Oh, and Mr. Habineza, if you happen to read this, take my advice - don't join Twitter.  "Spend more time" with your family instead.  Unless your wife happens to be dying of incurable cancer.  In that case, she probably doesn't want your toxic ass around her in her precious final days anyway.