President Kagame exercises close control of his government. Many, especially abroad, describe his style of governance as authoritarian in nature.

But others look at it and see a close resemblance to the Chinese model whereby you have a strong central state that at the same time grants citizens many freedoms (in China’s case the Communist government retains close control of political power and may even regulate people’s choices, for example how many children they may have; but the regime maintains a laissez faire attitude in other areas of life notably in business and commercial life).

Kagame maintains the Western world shouldn’t be so negative about the Chinese. “Even the Americans who are China’s biggest critics did not jump straight to where they are today; they underwent a lengthy process,” says the President.

“The Chinese too are achieving more individual freedoms; as they many of them become wealthier their money will give them leverage to demand even more freedoms for themselves but this will have been a homegrown process, not an order imposed from abroad.”

The government of Kagame has little time for pluralist politics. The opposition in this country can hardly be recognized as such though it has representatives in parliament who every now and then come down hard on poorly performing government appointees.

Mostly the activities of our political parties are regulated by the RPF under the Forum of Political Parties. The opposition works hand in hand with the ruling party on most policy issues and governance decisions.

Kagame sees no reason why anyone should find this arrangement wrong.

“We will devise the best means to govern ourselves; I am not a believer in this notion propagated for years that only ideas developed elsewhere work,” says the President. “All these people in Europe who preach their brand of democracy to the world, you will realize none of their systems are identical.”

Kagame uses the metaphor of an item of clothing to illustrate his point. “It is as if the Europeans and Americans have designed one suit for all Africans, regardless of whether different people have different heights and sizes and shapes, and expect that one suit they have designed to fit us all! Yet for themselves, they wear suits tailored to their different needs.”

He argues that you cannot expect to build a country by giving poor people such as Rwanda’s every imaginable freedom straight away. “In no time at all they will be abusing all these freedoms,” he remarks.

“Even the Americans, if you look at their history when they were starting out, the ordinary people—the majority of whom could not read or write or did not own property—were not allowed to vote.

“What they were doing was they were strengthening the center first, making it abuse proof, while at the same time the ordinary people’s lives were being improved. Only then could you have responsible pluralist democracy. It really beats me why anyone would expect the majority of our African people to take a path different from this.”

Our history since independence from Belgian colonialism in the early 60s amply buttresses Kagame’s argument. Multi party politics have taken on a tribal us-against-them identity whereby most poor, illiterate citizens have been led by demagogic politicians to internalize the thinking that to gain political power is a zero sum game during which all members of the other ethnic group have to be massacred.

“You can see what past politicians have done to this country,” Kagame says, slowly shaking his head at the thought. “Since 94 we have been picking up the pieces and trying to put everything back together and it is not by swallowing foreign ideas wholesale that we shall find a lasting solution to our problems.”

This President clearly won’t be deterred from pursuing the objective of finding homegrown solutions to homegrown problems and having a forum of political parties where the opposition works with the ruling party for the greater good of all Rwandans clearly is part of the experiment.