Rwandan Youth that president Paul Kagame spoke to on 30 06 13.
“Your way of thinking; that is the first area; what are you putting in? Youth is groomed; children are groomed. When a child grows up without being groomed properly, without being provided with the right understanding, the right politics, understandably what comes out of him, you cannot know. What they can bring out can be what we have seen during the past years that you were referring to in your testimonies about the past. But now, we are talking of our country. We are talking of the country; we are talking of the youth, you. We are talking for you because we see in you the health of the country. You are not anymore single individuals so and so … Freddy, John, James …ahan…we have become Rwanda. When Freddy John and James haven’t understood that they are Rwanda, each one staying on their own separately, there comes a problem.
You learn. Youth. you go to schools and study. Those who are clever reach high levels of knowledge and get to know many things. Even all that knowledge is not enough. After that, you ask yourself what you will use the acquired knowledge for. The question is not only that one of thinking that you are going to get knowledge to get a salary, be paid, live a good life, or provide for my family, only, no, that is not where the issue stops. That is one of the issues. What you have learnt, when we take children to schools, they learn, as they can, those who go abroad, many things [we do], which are very important, even them getting on top levels of knowledge. After all that, me I can ask you, but hang on, all this, your intelligence you have fed to that point, what you have achieved, after them, what are you going to use them for? How are you going to go about it?
The reason I am asking this is very simple. Among those you heard who chopped/cut people, do you think all of them were uneducated? …hee…we heard about doctors, doctors, those doctors who operate on people, or doctors in other high subjects of knowledge,…hee…they went to roadblocks and cut [people]. Is this new for you, is it for you the first time you heard this? Don’t you know that? A doctor who goes to a roadblock and cuts [people] what did he learn? What has he learnt? OK…, perhaps he did medicine, but what about such medicine which takes him to the roadblock to cut [people]. Is it to cure people? [Slight laugh from the audience]. The one who goes to the roadblock to cut [people], has he learnt medicine? A doctor who did mathematics and has a PhD? Are there any mathematics at a roadblock? [Audience laughs]. At the roadblock what type of mathematics are they doing there?
Ask yourselves. That is the reason I say that to talk only of youth is not enough. Youth is strength. But strength/energy you use negatively they bring bad outcome. The one you use positively brings good results. For you not to use strength/energy so it does not bring a negative outcome, you get groomed/effectively brought up. You gain cultural values. You feed your intelligence so it gets in valuable stuffs. This is not related, not anywhere near, your religion, your ethnic group, whatever they might call you, nothing is related to this. This is related to the fact that you are a human being, a human being who thinks rationally. Even these [things] you are to talk about as Hutu, Tutsi, Twa, …hee… in every group you will find people who have in their mind good understanding, and others with bad understanding, be it Hutu or Tutsi.
I am speaking in general. That is how things are. There is no ethnic group where you will find that this one the way it has been created, in their intelligence, that there is only bad stuffs. That is not the case. All human beings as we are.”
