非洲的新加坡梦

为什么卢旺达总统将自己定位为李光耀的继承人。
https://foreignpolicy.com/2015/04/02/africas-singapore-dream-rwanda-kagame-lee-kuan-yew/

作者：《民主实验室》前编辑克里斯蒂安·卡里尔 (Christian Caryl)，由外交政策与列格坦研究所 (Legatum Institute) 合作出版。

卢旺达总统卡加梅7次痛斥西方新殖民主义 | 非洲新闻

2015 年 4 月 2 日下午 1:24

这些天卢旺达人对他们总统的未来非常想知道。 保罗·卡加梅（Paul Kagame）（如上图所示）的第二个任期即将结束，根据宪法，这意味着他将无法参加定于 2017 年举行的该国下一次全国选举。他是否会改变规则，允许 自己留下来吗？

这些天卢旺达人对他们总统的未来非常想知道。 保罗·卡加梅（Paul Kagame）（如上图所示）的第二个任期即将结束，根据宪法，这意味着他将无法参加定于 2017 年举行的该国下一次全国选举。他是否会改变规则，允许 自己留下来吗？

在最近的采访中，57 岁的卡加梅小心翼翼地避免透露自己的意图，并表示决定不取决于他：“我再说一遍，2017 年是人民的事。” 但最后有一个有趣的暗示，采访者谈到了最近去世的新加坡政治家李光耀，并询问卡加梅是否将李视为榜样：

显然，是一种灵感。 一个伟大的人，以伟大的原则为动力，以小国成就了伟大的事业。 李光耀改变了新加坡及其人民的生活。 这也是我们在卢旺达正在做的事情。

李作为该国最高政治家的任期非常长——首先担任总理（1959-1990），然后担任高级部长（1990-2004），最后担任部长导师（2004-2011）。 因此，卡加梅对这位新加坡人的盛赞高度暗示了他自己的意图。

然而卡加梅的言论也引发了一个更大的问题：为什么非洲领导人会以新加坡人为榜样？ 李为他的国家打造的僵化专制和自由市场资本主义的奇特结合通常被认为是东亚特有的东西。 李本人有时会提到他所谓的“亚洲价值观”的核心地位，这是一种基于尊重教育、企业家精神和权威的儒家思想。 从中国的邓小平到马来西亚的马哈蒂尔·穆罕默德，该地区的领导人都是他的铁杆粉丝。

卡加梅看起来并不是俱乐部的自然成员。 卢旺达坐落在中非山区，从表面上看，卢旺达与李将其打造为世界伟大商业强国之一的国家没有什么共同之处。 新加坡是世界上最繁忙的海上航道之一上的一个岛屿，其经济自然倾向于贸易； 卢旺达是一个偏远的内陆国家，几乎没有明显的自然优势。

尽管新加坡在 1965 年获得独立时面临着华人、印度人和马来人之间的一些严重紧张关系，但它从未遇到过像卢旺达 1994 年种族灭绝那样的问题，那次种族灭绝夺走了多达 100 万卢旺达人的生命，并摧毁了经济。 这种严峻的背景对于理解卡加梅的强硬外交政策至关重要，该政策毫不犹豫地使用军事手段来实现其目的。 卢旺达已在邻国刚果部署军队并赞助代理部队，并指责刚果窝藏参与种族灭绝的游击队。 相比之下，新加坡在与世界其他国家打交道时表现出非对抗性的态度。

然而，也有一些有趣的连续性。 两国都是相对较小的国家：卢旺达人口为 1200 万，略多于新加坡人口的两倍。 两者都是从低起点开始的。 1965 年独立时新加坡的人均 GDP 为 516 美元（根据当前美元价值调整）； 2013年，卢旺达的这一数字为638美元。 由于这两个国家都没有特别丰富的自然资源，因此重视贸易和服务是有道理的。

卡加梅多年来一直将两国进行比较。 他将卢旺达称为“非洲的新加坡”。 他培养了新加坡的专业知识，涉及从城市规划到警察的各个方面。 他甚至成功地复制了新加坡人对整洁的重视。 第一次来到首都基加利的游客总是会对这里一尘不染的道路、秩序井然的交通以及明显没有垃圾的情况感到惊讶。 （虽然卡加梅还没有遵守李的禁令，禁止随地吐痰或嚼口香糖，但他已经宣布塑料袋为非法。）

这些并不是唯一的相似之处。 卢旺达企业家和官员在宣扬该国的营商理念时，表现出了明显的新加坡式的支持精神。 尽管卢旺达从 1922 年到 1962 年一直处于比利时统治之下，但卡加梅已经放弃使用法语和英语。

拥抱英语。 他甚至推动自己的国家加入英联邦，使其成为该组织中仅有的两个不属于前英国属地的国家之一——是的，新加坡也是其成员。 （李在剑桥学习法律期间被称为“哈利·李”，即使在独立后仍保留了英国法律体系的许多方面。）

和李一样，卡加梅为他的国家制定了基于贸易、金融和服务业的严格发展战略。 和李一样，他一心一意地追求自己的计划，将有限的资源集中在教育、健康和信息技术上。 卡加梅的目标是利用网络空间来克服该国地理位置偏远的问题，他已经用光缆网络覆盖了该国。 2000年，根据政府统计，卢旺达的互联网用户数量约为5000人。 如今，这一数字已达 320 万，占总人口的四分之一。

卢旺达也追随新加坡的脚步，在遏制腐败和培育法治方面取得了成功——这与法院和法官名声不佳的邻国形成鲜明对比。 与许多其他表面上的非洲成功故事不同，卢旺达的进步似乎并不是以不平等加剧为代价的。 政府的政策带来了稳定的增长——2001 年至 2013 年间平均增长约 8%——这也让贫穷的卢旺达人受益。

这些成就使卡加梅成为一些非洲同行的尊敬对象，就像李受到东亚同事的尊敬一样。 不难看出原因。 李和他这一代人面临的问题与他们今天的非洲同行所面临的问题并没有太大不同。 后殖民时期的亚洲必须应对深刻的宗教和政治分歧、痛苦的种族冲突以及腐败和管理不善的削弱影响。 李的新加坡在处理这项工作时，毫不留情地专注于最大限度地发展； 对于李来说，意识形态（和人权）让位于经济效率。

卡加梅对新加坡模式的改编可能会在未来几年变得更加有影响力。 在许多观察家看来，非洲现在正准备实现经济高速增长，这可能会复制亚洲在过去五十年中的显着崛起。 根据一些预测，到本世纪中叶，非洲 GDP 总额（2013 年为 2.6 万亿美元）可能会增长十倍。

非洲能否成功实现经济稳健增长，很大程度上取决于治理质量。 亚洲人已经花了几十年的时间争论新加坡家长式模式的优点和缺点，这种模式强调廉洁政府，却以牺牲公民自由为代价。 今天的卢旺达也体现了同样的权衡，正在非洲人中引发类似的讨论。

关键问题之一是人格的作用。 专制君主通常不会因允许潜在对手崛起而闻名。 批评人士指出，卢旺达现任总统无情地清除了任何可能成为继任者的人。 今天，李在镕在许多方面受到崇拜，很大程度上是因为他是一个罕见的独裁者，他成功地建立了比他更长寿的制度。 卡加梅能否做出同样的主张？

Africa's Singapore Dream

Why Rwanda's president styles himself as the heir to Lee Kuan Yew.

https://foreignpolicy.com/2015/04/02/africas-singapore-dream-rwanda-kagame-lee-kuan-yew/

By Christian Caryl, the former editor of Democracy Lab, published by Foreign Policy in partnership with Legatum Institute.

kagame photo cropped

April 2, 2015, 1:24 PM

Rwandans are wondering a lot about their president’s future these days. Paul Kagame (shown above) is nearing the end of his second term in office, and according to the constitution that means he won’t be able to compete in the country’s next national election, scheduled for 2017. Will he bend the rules to allow himself to stay on?

Rwandans are wondering a lot about their president’s future these days. Paul Kagame (shown above) is nearing the end of his second term in office, and according to the constitution that means he won’t be able to compete in the country’s next national election, scheduled for 2017. Will he bend the rules to allow himself to stay on?

In his latest interview, the 57-year-old Kagame is careful to avoid revealing his intentions, saying that the decision is not up to him: “2017, I repeat, is the people’s business.” But there’s an intriguing hint right at the end, where the interviewer touches upon the recent death of Singaporean statesman Lee Kuan Yew, and asks Kagame whether he regards Lee as a model:

Evidently, an inspiration. A great man, driven by great principles and who achieved great things with a small country. Lee Kuan Yew has transformed Singapore and the lives of his people. This is also what we are doing in Rwanda.

Lee enjoyed an exceptionally long tenure as his country’s top politician — first as prime minister (1959-1990), then as senior minister (1990-2004), and finally as minister mentor (2004-2011). So Kagame’s fulsome praise for the Singaporean offers a highly suggestive hint about his own intentions.

Yet Kagame’s remark also begs a larger question: Why would an African leader seize upon a Singaporean as his model? The peculiar combination of rigid autocracy and free-market capitalism that Lee crafted for his country is often regarded as something deeply specific to East Asia. Lee himself sometimes alluded to the centrality of what he liked to call “Asian Values,” a Confucian-inflected mindset based on respect for education, entrepreneurship, and authority. Leaders from the region, ranging from China’s Deng Xiaoping to Malaysia’s Mahatir Mohamad, have been among his diehard fans.

Kagame doesn’t seem like a natural member of the club. Nestled in the mountains of Central Africa, on the surface Rwanda has little in common with the country that Lee turned into one of the world’s great business powerhouses. Singapore is an island on one of the world’s busiest sea lanes, its economy naturally predisposed to trade; Rwanda is a remote, land-locked state with little in the way of obvious natural advantages.

And though Singapore faced some serious tensions among its Chinese, Indian, and Malay citizens when it achieved independence in 1965, it never had to deal with anything like Rwanda’s 1994 genocide, which took the lives of up to 1 million Rwandans and devastated the economy. That grim background is crucial to understanding Kagame’s muscular foreign policy, which doesn’t hesitate to use military means to achieve its ends. Rwanda has deployed troops and sponsored proxy forces in neighboring Congo, which it accuses of harboring guerrillas complicit in the genocide. Singapore, by contrast, is ostentatiously non-confrontational in its dealings with the rest of the world.

Yet there are also intriguing continuities. Both are relatively small countries: Rwanda’s population of 12 million is a bit more than twice that of Singapore’s. Both have started from low bases. Singapore’s per capita GDP at independence in 1965 was $516 (adjusted for current dollar values); in 2013, the figure for Rwanda was $638. Since neither country is particularly well endowed with natural resources, an emphasis on trade and services makes sense.

Kagame has been drawing parallels between the two countries for years. He refers to Rwanda as the “Singapore of Africa.” He cultivates Singaporean expertise, on everything from urban planning to the police. And he has even managed to replicate the Singaporean emphasis on tidiness. First-time visitors to Kigali, the capital, are invariably surprised by the spotless roads, the carefully ordered traffic, and the conspicuous absence of trash. (While Kagame hasn’t gone so far as to follow Lee’s bans on spitting or chewing gum, he has outlawed plastic bags.)

Nor are these the only similarities. Rwandan entrepreneurs and officials display a distinctly Singaporean boosterism as they tout their country’s business-friendly philosophy. And though Rwanda was under Belgian rule from 1922 to 1962, Kagame has renounced the use of French and embraced English. He’s even pushed his country into membership in the Commonwealth, making it one of the only two states in the organization that aren’t former British possessions — and yes, Singapore, too, is a member. (Lee, who was known as “Harry Lee” during his time studying law at Cambridge, maintained many aspects of the British legal system even after independence.)

Like Lee, Kagame has laid out a rigorous development strategy for his country based on trade, finance, and services. And like Lee he has pursued his plan with extraordinary single-mindedness, focusing limited resources on education, health, and information technology. Kagame, who aims to leverage cyberspace to overcome his country’s physical remoteness, has covered the country with a network of fiber optic cables. In 2000, according to government statistics, the number of Internet users in Rwanda was around 5,000. Today the number is 3.2 million, a quarter of the population.

Rwanda also follows in Singapore’s footsteps with its success in curbing corruption and cultivating the rule of law — in stark contrast to its neighbors, where courts and judges have miserable reputations. And unlike many other ostensible African success stories, Rwanda doesn’t seem to have made its progress at the cost of widening inequality. The government’s policies have produced steady growth — averaging about 8 percent between 2001 and 2013 — that has also benefited poor Rwandans.

These achievements have made Kagame a figure of esteem among some of his African peers — just as Lee was venerated by his East Asian colleagues. And it’s not hard to see why. The problems that faced Lee and his generation weren’t all that different from what their African counterparts confront today. Post-colonial Asia had to cope with deep religious and political divides, traumatic ethnic conflicts, and the sapping effects of corruption and mismanagement. Lee’s Singapore tackled the job with a ruthless focus on maximizing development; for Lee, ideology (and human rights) took a back seat to economic efficiency.

Kagame’s adaptation of the Singapore model could become even more influential in the years ahead. Africa, in the view of many observers, is now poised for a surge of economic growth that could replicate Asia’s remarkable rise over the past fifty years. According to some predictions, total African GDP ($2.6 trillion in 2013) could increase tenfold by the middle of this century.

Whether Africa can succeed in achieving solid economic growth depends largely on the quality of governance. Asians have already spent decades arguing the virtues and drawbacks of Singapore’s paternalistic model, which stressed clean government at the expense of civil liberties. Today’s Rwanda, which exemplifies the same trade-offs, is prompting similar discussion among Africans.

One of the key questions turns on the role of personality. Despots aren’t generally known for allowing the rise of potential rivals to their power; critics note that Rwanda’s current president has relentlessly purged anyone who might figure as a possible successor. Lee is lionized in so many quarters today largely because he was the rare example of an autocrat who succeeded in building institutions that outlived him. Will Kagame be able to make the same claim?

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