The PANAFRICAN Review
tal , suppressive , coercive , and feared ? As noted above , repeatedly Rwandans rank them among the institutions they trust and are most satisfied with – above 85 % satisfaction . The RDF ’ s civil military affairs and the RNP ’ s community policing departments have been involved in streamlining the force to be “ community ” -oriented . Consequently , they have been involved in “ human security ” activities that include mobile hospitals where they have treated people ; they have built houses ; and have given out cows and mosquito nets . They have also been paying health insurance for the most vulnerable members of the community . Without exhausting these examples , the question to ask is this : Beyond liberal dogma , in what ways is Rwanda ’ s security sector militarized ?
I have been thinking about this and have come to the conclusion that the police and army are still conceived this way as a result of trauma . We all have a traumatic memory or memories tied to the armed forces , which we transpose and project on the RDF and RNP .
It ’ s our memory that is militarized . However , the RDF and RNP carry the burden of offloading this trauma from us , which they are doing through their community outreach and human security programmes . For this reason , I suggested that taking education to the security sector would accelerate this demilitarization of our minds and society . This way , a generation that is entirely unburdened with this trauma may emerge in the near future .
Criticism must be in context
I do agree with the critics in their general view that under normal circumstances the military should not have anything to do with education . Heck , even the government should not be in education . Ordinarily , the government should only participate in education in the sense of articulating its needs ; it ought to make some input because it needs a certain knowledge base to run society . It should not take ownership or charge of crafting education . In fact , the government is expected to fund it without owning it . However , the task of crafting education is entirely that of the intellectual class ; they debate ideas and come up with a consensus about certain fundamental ideas and ideals that should reflect and grow society .
This is the conventional sociology of education . However , there ’ s nothing conventional about our situation . Colonial and missionary systems of education have not allowed us , as a society , to know what its intellectuals think ; we are therefore unable to distill out who our best thinkers are , and allow them to articulate education . Even when they do , the ideas they express reflect the perpetuation of the colonial and missionary intent : our education system has not been able to create home-grown intellectuals in the real sense of it . As a result , the edifice of colonial thought and practice remains intact . The globally renowned African intellectual , Mahmood Mamdani , has noted that for Africa to get out of this maze , to find a cure , it must grow its own timber – nurture home-grown intellectuals . This deficiency is the reason my proposal replaces the process above with Urugwiro deliberations on education , as would be the case with any structural national emergency .
It is only out of necessity that the government finds itself deeply embedded in education ; it ’ s filling a void because it can ’ t afford to do nothing . However , it can only do so much . Which is why no structural transformation has taken place in the sector : the cart is pulling the horse because government is avoiding a necessary confrontation against forces that are invested and entrenched in the misdirecting Africa ’ s education – because it ’ s the real front-line in the struggle for real independence . This is the politics of education , which is closely linked to the economics of education but is entirely different from the sociology of education noted above .
If the aim is to fix education , then avoiding the confrontation is delaying the inevitable . A bandage approach can only stop the bleeding but can ’ t be a cure for the wound . When you apply a bandage to a wound , you must replace it – the recurrent changes . These changes show that at least this government is trying to grapple with the challenge . Others have entirely given up and have turned to prayers to heal the wound . A more reliable and stable education system that is only subjected to generational changes will only emerge when we are clear of the inbuilt contradictions .
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