President Kagame’s Interview with Jeune Afrique - May 2012 (English translation)
PAUL KAGAME: YOU CAN NOT BUILD DEMOCRACY ON SAND
As the President of a small poor country whose economic and social progress is indisputable, the Head of State elaborates on his concept of good governance, and reveals the two sides of him: both democratic and authoritarian.
Power has not made Paul Kagame any heavier, literally and figuratively. One morning in the Eastern Province, a hundred kilometres from Kigali, in front of 50,000 people who descended from all the surrounding hills to attend his meeting, the President dressed in black jeans and blue shirt keenly listens to the voice of the people. Behind a microphone, a crowd of ordinary Rwandans form a procession to ask him questions: issues of cows, land, compensation, minor conflicts with the administration, lyrical poems chanted in Kinyarwanda, poorly healed wounds of the genocide ... Kagame responds when he does not call the Mayor, the deputy, Madame the Governor or the Minister concerned to answer in his place.
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