Running for parliament for women could have its frill but in Rwanda, it goes beyond the saying behind every successful man there is a woman.
This is why the upcoming election on September 16 for Rwanda Chamber of Deputies has dwarfed other issues for the time being, in this faraway country where women hold sway.
Count Rwanda in for blazing the trail for Africa along with Scandinavian countries where women power is well above the breast.
So far, women hold 45 out of the 80 parliamentary seats in the outgoing Chamber (the highest percentage in any legislature worldwide) but they are still casting their net for more. If the current mood in Rwanda holds, there is little reason why they would not get more.
As one Rwandan jokingly puts it, ”we men are slowly becoming a doomed race, slowly being shifted to the kitchen and dining table while our wives are being chaffeur-driven to parliament.
What has led Rwanda to walk mainly on the female path and President Paul Kigame’s dedication to the womanhood sector which leaders elsewhere have played the dodging act?
In a country where women are no longer the hewers of wood and drawers of water, the pay-off has been in a developed economic setting, improved living conditions and better health facilities making Kigale, the capital a smart and efficient city.
Visionaries are already imagining glittering other towns billed to swell up its population in the next five to ten years as women have been pacified becoming less troublesome to their male partners.
But like many revolutions, the success did not come overnight or that other issues had been cancelled as part of the political equation.
The first female legislator was elected in 1965 but up to the end of the civil war in 1994, women held not more than 18 percent of seats in the Assembly. But the boom time was recognized as October 2003 when women achieved a 50 percent representation.
Since then it has been a gallop and there was hardly a need to look back, analysts reflected.
The report revealed that the Chamber of Deputies which has now folded up ”reviewed” over 300 laws relating to the economy, governance and justice – all actively debated by women legislators.
The achievement made female Speaker Rose Mukantabana to boast, ”Rwanda continues to advance with women in leadership and if you don’t like it, better take a vacation.”
According to figures made available by the National Electoral Commission of Rwanda, 435 candidates will contest for the 80 Lower Chambers which means that winners would not just be a shoo in. There will also be women’s only seats of 24 elected by representatives of administrative councils from provincial to cell level. Two seats are reserved for youths and one seat reserved for persons with disabilities.
Rwandan authorities contend that it’s all in the game of making women relevant to the concept of nation building while the theme remains the same and the concept not different from the lottery of life.
“It simply giving women a window of opportunity,” one bureaucrat who quipped that ”faint heart would never win a fair lady.”
Many agree that women’s forward match in Rwanda is no longer an illusion. Not like the nurse who told the doctor, ”There’s an invisible man in the waiting room” and the doctor replying ”tell him I can’t see him now.”
In the quest of putting women forward in Rwanda forward, hardly a whisper of desperation had come from the men. This is not to start a running battle or stimulate a debate. From what has been said, men there have realized that social life as in politics is somewhat an American way to go up and down the ladder maybe several times in a life time.
That’s why few are heeding the warning, ”Bad dogs. Trespassers will be prosecuted if they survive.’’
August 19, 2013