African nation leaves its former French ties behind
From Fred Bridgland in Johannesburg

RWANDA, a former French- speaking colony, was this weekend making extraordinary effort to join the Commonwealth, arguing that the country has adopted cricket and that its people are now being taught English as the national language.

Paul Kagame, Rwanda's Tutsi president, is a guest at the three-day Common-wealth Heads of Government summit in Kampala, the capital of Uganda, which ends today.

Analysts expect the Rwandan application to be accepted, either today or in later negotiations. Rwanda, which suffered a 100-day ethnic genocide in 1994 during which 800,000 people were slaughtered, would become only the second country to join that did not have a colonial link with Britain or an administrative connection with a Commonwealth country Mozambique, a former Portuguese colony, joined in 1995 when Common-wealth leaders rewarded it for opposing white minority rule in neighbouring Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe.

While Kagame was putting the case in Kampala, back home in Rwanda the crack of ball on bat and cries of "Owzat!" could be heard as the country's cricketers played weekend fixtures.

Rwanda is the most improbable of all cricketing countries. Thirteen years ago it was securely one of 30 French-speaking, non-cricket-playing African countries. The small central-African country, known as the Land of a Thousand Hills, had minimal contact with Britain and almost no unused flat ground to support a cricket pitch.

Its adoption of cricket just seven years ago as the national sport is a clear and deliberate kick in the teeth for France, the main backer of Rwanda's pre-1994 Hutu-dominated government that planned and implemented the genocide.

Earlier this year Rwanda broke diplomatic relations with France after a French judge issued arrest warrants for nine Rwandan officials, including Kagame, accusing them of involvement in the 1994 assassination of Hutu president Juvenal Habyarimana, which triggered the genocide.

Rwanda retaliated by expelling all French diplomats and padlocking their embassy and Franco-Rwandan Cultural Cooperation Centre in Kigali, Rwanda's capital, while accusing Paris of covering up its role in training soldiers who carried out the genocide.

If the French had any remaining illusions that Rwanda was lost from their neo-colonial sphere of influence, they should have been banished this weekend by the sight of heavy home-made rollers - concrete-filled oil barrels - smoothing the wicket at the Kicukiro Oval, immediately next to a site outside Kigali where more than 2000 Tutsis were executed in 1994.

As Kagame left for Kampala, a 42-strong English cricket delegation also departed after a week of coaching sessions with up-and-coming Rwandan talent.

Meanwhile, the Kicukiro Oval was hosting the latest match in the five-club national championship before the national women's cricket team and the boys' under-15 team leave to play in the East African championships in Nairobi against Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda.

But, along with adopting cricket, Rwanda is abandoning the French language in favour of English, the ultimate insult to Paris which has sought to strengthen cultural, linguistic and economic ties with all French-speaking countries in Africa.

It is unclear, however, how Rwanda will pass the test for admission to the Commonwealth that Pakistan failed before it was suspended from the 53-member club last week. The main conditions set for Commonwealth membership are that states must embrace democracy, the rule of law and respect for opposition.

Post-genocide Rwanda is virtually a one-party state headed by the minority Tutsi community while exclusively Hutu parties are banned. It is heavily involved in the escalating civil war in the eastern Congo, where it supplies arms and advisers - despite official denials - to General Laurent Nkunda's rebel Tutsi forces.

For the time being, the international community turns a blind eye to many Rwandan shortcomings. Just as Glasgow University honoured Kagame this month with an honorary degree for good governance, the world concentrates on his powerful vision of Rwanda's future as a kind of Singapore for sub-Saharan Africa, a centre of medicine, banking and technology for the region's hundreds of millions, mostly impoverished people.