INTRODUCTION

“Democracy is not something we get without effort. We must always fight for  democracy, otherwise we lose it…..”  Paul Auster

Acquiring democracy is a slow and long process. It is not acquired at once; it is built over several generations. All the stakeholders, particularly the politicians, the civil society, and the people in general, have a role to play every day over a long period.

Since its independence, the political speeches of the Rwandan politicians and the international community insist on the need to set up an appropriate democratic system to solve governance problems in Rwanda. Half a century has gone by without any noticeable satisfactory improvement of the situation. All the regimes claimed always that they were democratic. Here, one could wonder if there are many types of democracies…

INTRODUCTION

L’économie rwandaise est dominée par le secteur agricole qui contribue à 43% du PIB et qui emploie 87.1% de la population active. Les cultures industrielles comme le café et le thé occupent la première place des exportations rwandaises. Le secteur industriel n’est pas développé et la plupart des industries existant au Rwanda ne valorisent pas les ressources locales. Elles importent près de 65% des matières premières pour pouvoir fonctionner. Elles ne contribuent pas à l’amélioration de la balance commerciale. De même, ces industries utilisent à peine 2.8% de la population active dont 1.2% est mobilisé par l’industrie de construction.

Bien que l’économie rwandaise soit largement agricole, l’agriculture pratiquée n’est pas moderne, elle reste
essentiellement de subsistance. En outre, la forte densité démographique entraîne des effets pervers sur le foncier. En effet, la population dense à la recherche de nouvelles habitations et de nouvelles exploitations agricoles exerce une forte pression sur les ressources naturelles et d’une façon particulière sur la terre. Celle-ci est devenue une source de disputes et de conflits car la demande ne cesse d’augmenter alors que la superficie reste limitée.

INTRODUCTION

“Within one hundred days, more than a million Tutsi were horribly massacred by their compatriots on behalf of Hutu. This period marked an enormous ru pture in the history of the social tissue and sunk Rwanda deeper into a whirlpool that no one can look at without shaking.

The facts that lead to the genocide were based on a racist ideology that considered Tutsi people to be Hutus‟ oppressors for generations, so they needed to be got rid of definitively. This ideology has its origins from racist theories that were already in fashion in western countries by the middle of the 19
the century and the beginning of the 20th
century. The same theories were the cause of anti-Semitism during the Third Reich, which ended in the Shoah.

INTRODUCTION

The history of Rwanda, like that of other colonized countries, has been wrongly interpreted and distorted by travelers, explorers, missionaries and historians who had little or no knowledge at all about the areas they were discovering. They were simply interpreting their newly found realities under the light of previous discoveries or in comparison with the situation in their own countries. For the colonizers, both Belgian and German, these interpretations were adopted as fundamental principles of their political system, especially the ‗divide and rule‘ principle that was adopted in Rwanda as the ideological ethnocentric basis upon which they gave simplistic explanations for the rather complex realities they found in the country. The leadership structure of the Rwandan social organization that they described was basically a reflection of the European system that they left at home. That is why the history of Rwanda, written and taught, played a significant role in the internal conflicts Rwanda endured.

The starting point was the theory on the origin of Rwandans, which was based on differences between the three groups making up the Rwandan society. First of all, the colonizers interpreted the socio-political system they found in terms of Batutsi, Bahutu and Batwa ethnic groups. They represented the Batutsi as a class of smart people that was naturally fit to rule. A chronological order of land occupation by the three ―ethnic‖ groups was later used as an intellectual basis for the exclusionist ideology and the denial of citizenship to Tutsis, which led, among others, to genocide.

INTRODUCTION

It is very important to organize a community in order to ensure the harmony of its members. The structures and the ways of organizing the community must take into account the citizens‟ welfare. The Government institutions should function in such a way that some established society norms are followed. Without these norms, there will be rivalries among people who consider their own interests in trying to get power at any cost; the country will end up becoming a jungle. There must be a hierarchy in these norms that operates in such a way that the power of every authority has limits. In other words, even the public administration must follow the law. The public administration can act while respecting a certain number of the laws and rules adopted by the citizens through their representatives or referendums.

In modern societies, human rights and freedoms are a cornerstone of power organization and management. They are included in the Constitution of every country. These rights and freedoms guarantee the Rule of Law. In the same way, the Constitution establishes the areas of intervention of various government organs and institutions in such a way that the above mentioned rights and freedoms arerespected. However, this was not the case in the traditional societies.