The PANAFRICAN Review
just as uncompromising on matters of national sovereignty and interest , asserting its right to make its own choices . For the RPF , pursuit of self-reliance for Rwanda is a major principle and a central plank in its ideological positioning . Like the PFDJ and the EPRDF , securing policy space from outsiders that seek to push this or that idea or agenda is a key imperative . If in power all the three movements have presided over governments that strike observers as unusually militant , uncompromising and aggressive , it is because they have shown the unusual quality of not acting like others elsewhere that shrink before challenges , wherever they may come from .
And for this success , all three have paid a heavy price . They have had to weather unrelenting criticism , demonisation and harassment by media , academia , human rights groups and Western governments , on account of failure to measure up to ‘ international standards ’ in matters of politics , governance , and human rights . Here Eritrea is something of an outlier , having not held elections or changed leadership for the entire 30-years of its independence . Many claims are made by observers in trying to explain why this is . Internal challenges have combined with externally-generated existential threats to give the PFDJ sufficient grounds to not hold elections and risk destabilisation in a country which , for many years , has been under siege , buffeted by politically-motivated international sanctions and political and diplomatic pressures by regime-change-seeking forces . It would be easy for critics and sceptics to dismiss these arguments . What cannot be easily dismissed is that we shall never know what would have happened in the absence of external pressures and challenges .
Both Rwanda and Ethiopia have held multiple elections since the RPF and EPRDF took over power . However , they have been deemed to not measure up to the standards set by ‘ the international community ’ in terms of how free or fair or transparent they have been . Consequently , each country , not unlike Eritrea , has been landed with the ‘ dictatorship ’ label , and their governments or leaders ‘ authoritarian ’. And this , usually without regard to contextual factors that may have necessitated the making of the choices they made . Meanwhile in Ethiopia the choices were dictated by a history of misrule , accompanied by suppression of local group identities ; exclusion or marginalisation of whole groups or regions ; and political instability . In Rwanda the RPF was driven by a determination to overcome a history of the state using group identity as a tool for systematic marginalisation of whole groups and the privileging of sections of the population . This had created deep intra-societal fissures whose contribution to political instability is now well established .
In addition , the RPF sought to foster enduring political stability . In this , the party would have to be intentional in combatting poverty and striving for prosperity for all . These ambitions necessitated the avoidance approaches to governance that carry the potential to create divisions or deepen pre-existing ones . Specifically , they necessitated the organisation of politics in ways that maximised cooperation and collaboration among potentially adversarial political groups . This would minimise or rule out potentially disruptive contestations for power , which in much of Africa find expression in adversarial multi-party competition among weak political parties with narrow agendas .
Here the RPF in Rwanda has been more successful than the EPRDF was , in the sense that it managed to sell its vision of ‘ politics of consensus ’ to potential rivals that , almost 3 decades later , remain committed to working together rather than against in each , moreover in pursuit of similar ambitions , at the core of which is building a peaceful , stabile , united and prosperous Rwanda in which all Rwandans feel they have a stake .
To credit these three liberation movements with successful pursuit of their ambitions is not to disregard the massive challenges they have continued to face , both internally from local actors who seek to change the status quo , and from external actors , some of whom ae also motivated by regime change ambitions . Indeed , in Ethiopia the EPRDF is no more and , thanks to unresolved internal issues , the force behind its creation , the TPLF , has virtually been destroyed in a recent armed conflict with the federal government . In Eritrea , the PFDJ remains firmly in control . There are some indications that the country may be moving or may soon be moving , at its own pace , towards reform . It is expected that this will eventually see the veteran fighters who have held it together amidst great adversity over the last 3 decades retire and hand over to a new generation whose instincts and ambitions may or may not
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