Thousand Hills: a work by Stephen Kinzer

¶ … Thousand Hills: Rwanda's Rebirth and the Man Who Dreamed it. Book report

Stephen Kinzer's book, a Thousand Hills, is the writing of a journalist who wanted to present the world with the story of Rwanda from the point-of-view of its president, Paul Kagame, under the scrutiny of his compatriots, the public at large, international powers and organizations and economic players. Everyone, writes Kinzer, is willing to see in the first contemporary African leader who is less corrupt and better intentioned than the rest, as the potential savior of his country and maybe, by extension and the power of example, of the entire African continent. Throughout the book, Kinzer proves to be one of those who saw in Kagame something different and maybe even Rwanda's deliverer, although he kept his impartiality sometimes and gave a chance to those who were seeing in Kagame nothing else but a dangerous leader hungry for power, too.

Kinzer writes as one who has obviously spent a great deal of time around his subject, Paul Kagame and who was thus both fortunate and unfortunate. Fortunate because he had access to the best primary sources a journalist and biography writer could have and unfortunate because the closeness to his subject made him only partially able to keep his objectivity.

The book is about Rwanda's destiny and especially its future, in the perspective of its leader's life and his actions in service of his country. Paul Kinzer uses a style that gives the reader the chance to find out about events take took place during Paul Kagame's life from primary sources, like Kagame's own words in interviews or public speeches, the opinions of his electorate, those of politicians, diplomats, businessmen, human rights activists etc. The personal point-of-view of the author is seeded among these primary sources, but it leaves plenty of room for interpretation and questions from the informed reader who is willing to doubt some of Kinzer's assumptions and predictions regarding Paul Kagame's actual role in the salvation and rebirth of Rwanda and the results of his efforts to take his country away from the common tragic destiny of many countries from the American continent and integrate it in the world of the well developed and stable countries.

Kinzer introduces the personality he is going to dedicate a whole book to with words that reveal his position in the subject of Paul Kagame's personality and role: "The central figure in Rwanda's rebirth, Paul Kagame, emerged during the first decade of the twenty-first century as one of the most intriguing leaders in Africa. He preaches a doctrine of security, guided reconciliation, honest governance, and, above all, self-reliance. Already, he has brought Rwanda much that was inconceivable in the wake of the 1994 genocide: law and order, the beginnings of economic growth and social transformation, a cooling of sectarian passion, and, most astonishing of all, a pulsating sense of enthusiasm and optimism"(Kinzer, 3). Kinzer's quest to find the truth about the fate of this tiny African country, no larger than the size of Maryland or Belgium (Kinzer, 3), starts from down there, in the streets of Rwanda. He asks commoners about their opinion on where the chance to find peace and economic development African countries like Kenya, Rwanda, Sudan and many others leys. The answer he gets is simple and frightening at the same time: "In the end," they told me, "it's all about leadership" (Kinzer, 3).

Who lets so much weight on one man? No one can play today the role of a savior, sent from heaven to deliver his people. The time for enlightened emperors has past centuries ago. While reading the book one cannot stop wandering if sometimes Kinzer himself has forgotten that one man cannot pretend to forget about the impossibility of acting alone as the leader of a country. One can only agree that a star player, the world agrees and is sympathetic with can only be a good sign for the country he rules, but he is good only when he assumes the role of representation and a whole team around him is coming up with the solutions and strategies the country needs. On the other hand, the circumstances after 1994 are exceptionable and maybe it is thus easier for anyone like Kagame to be accepted and encouraged worldwide. His appearance is also contributing to the whole picture: thin and having the air of someone who, as Kinzer points out in the book, is pushing himself almost until exhaustion and is wishes to have even more energy to push the whole countrymen to go beyond any barriers. This is the image of someone who has not only the qualities of a good leader, but who in the contemporary world is also fitting the image profile of a star political player.

After having taken the pulse of the street, Kinzer goes up and introduces the answers of some other key players, like those who are involved in foreign investment, or diplomats, or people from abroad involved in aid efforts. Most of them are saying the same thing. "Tim Schilling, agronomist from Texas who works with coffee farmers in southern Rwanda: "Kagame is the key. He is holding it all together. If Rwanda stays on track the way it's going now, this guy is really going to be the star of Africa" (Kinzer, 4).

Peter Schonherr, ambassador of the Netherlands: "What these people have achieved in the short time since the genocide is unbelievable... This is a terrific country. You can work with these people, they have drive. They want to get things done. it's not like countries where the government promises and nothing happens. They work very hard, they know what they are doing, and they are smart... "

After so much praise from people with different backgrounds and interests in the life of Rwanda, Kinzer feels the need to move on the other side and cast a doubt on the success of Kagame's enterprise: "The greatest enigma to those who wander about Rwanda's prospects is President Kagame himself. He is a visionary endowed with enormous energy and ambition. Yet he can also be an angry, vengeful authoritarian. Because he so totally dominates Rwandan life, his choices will decisively shape the country's future" (Kinzerr, 4-5). The question regarding Kinzer's opinion persists though. On one hand, he is concluding focusing on Kagame because his whole country is focusing on him and the international arena seems to rally at this opinion, on he other hand, there is no doubt that kagame as a president who sees himself as the best and only strategist and visionary in shaping his country's future is utopian and only lacking material support.

Kagame's story is that of other thousands and millions refugees all over Africa. He was forced to grow up in a foreign country, in a refugee camp, with his parents, brothers and sisters and he had to spend most of his childhood years looking for water and firewood (Kinzer, 11-12). The very beginning of Kagame's life story is a little bit surreal. But that may be only because the genocides and civil wars in Africa are surreal. One who was not there at some point or another or did not have the chance to hear a story about such events directly from those who were involved in the warfare or affected by it, is incapable to grasp the whole situation. Anyway, the story of Kagame's life is being presented in an incredible circumstance and it seems a bit like already on the track of setting the marks for the future president who will help save his country and create a small oasis of stability and flourishing life in the middle of big African countries torn apart by civil wars and seeing no light ahead, at least for the next decades. "Death squads that rampaged through the countryside during 1959 and 1960 were the vanguard of a new political movement that asserted "Hutu emancipation." One of its tactics was to terrorize the old Tutsi aristocracy, to which the Kagame family belonged. Both the Belgian colonial authorities and their Rwandan clients supported this bloody campaign...After each attack, more Tutsi fled their homeland" (Kinzer, 11-12). Kagame is already no commoner since he belongs to a family who was closely related to the family ruling over Rwanda back then. Kinzer is also telling the miraculous story of his family's salvation at the last minute from the hands of those who were coming to kill them. It becomes surreal because one cannot help wondering how unintentional such a story is in the context of presenting the personality of a leader who still has to prove his abilities and intentions of working toward the welfare of his country, escaping the fate of those African leaders who came to power in the same manner and with the same declarations and left their countries in a worse state than they found it. The story further unravels how Kagame came to live in an Ugandan refugee camp: "Tens of thousands sought refuge n Uganda, and there they ere caught up in a swirl of human misery. After they crossed the border, Ugandan officials rounded them up, packed them onto trucks, took them to remote regions, and dumped them" (Kinzer, 11-12).

During his first years in school, in Uganda, in the middle of nowhere and under circumstances closer to the prehistoric world, Kagame follows the path of many others who see in education the only way to escape camps and return to their homelands together with their families. "He applied himself single-mindedly to his studies and was so successful that in his final year of primary school, he won the highest grades of any student in the district. This was no easy feat. There were many Rwandan students there, and nearly everyone has been sent to school with the same challenge: study hard, because your generation must find a way to end our exile" (Kinzer, 14). He manages to be the first among them and to detach already from the mass. But his first years of academic successes are followed by a loss of interest in scholarly activities and Kinzer tells the story of a young man who is starting to meet people who will change the course of his life and the destiny of his country, writes Kinzer.