East Africa was never on my list. A few years ago, when I put Southern Africa at the top of my list of places to see, East Africa wasn’t even in my mind. And yet East Africa has dominated my recent travels. Uganda, DRC in December/January, Kenya and Rwanda in March/April. The most recent East Africa trip has been a mixed experience: Kenya was a joy and a revelation. Rwanda was miserable.

It’s a terribly unfashionable thing to say it. Rwanda is voluntourist heaven. It is the place every hippie aid-volunteer wants to go to save poor helpless Africans, while fitting in a little gorilla trekking and ooh-ing and ah-ing over the history of the place (i.e. ’94 and nothing before). I know all that and it makes me sad because I really didn’t like the country.

Rwanda is South Korea. Except without the development or the thousand-year history. It is damp and hilly and nauseatingly green. I’m told the north is beautiful (where have I heard that before?) because it is all mountains and lakes. The East wasn’t anything particularly special. A lot like South Korea; a little like Uganda. Lots of cassava and bananas. The people could be South Korean, too, in their attitudes. The very poor are pretty desperately poor and wishing, humbly, for opportunities. Everyone else keeps telling you that no-one in Rwanda is desperately poor and going on and on and on about the goodness of the government. Every second building is NGO/Aid agency branded, but the government is given credit creating development, for stopping the people from starving and for saving Rwanda from that big bad unnamed threat that keeps everyone doing what they’re told. Everything bad is someone else’s fault and the great achievement of the Rwandan government is feeding a tiny population of 10 million in one of the most fertile countries in Africa.

The government controls everything. Every family has a “performance contract” with the local authorities. The government decides what will be grown (and where and how and how much). The government controls access to land and inputs, so people grow what they are told. Everyone is organised into government-mandated cooperatives, that belong to government-mandated unions, that feed into government-mandated federations, one for every sector. Everything is centrally planned. The government’s decisions appear to be driven more by pride and a fierce – if somewhat delusional – determination to be self-sufficient, than by reality. The government decides to create a dairy industry, so increases productivity dramatically by handing out high-quality dairy cows and building milk collection centres (MCCs), at significant cost, in a configuration that the market would never support (too many MCCs, each serving far too few suppliers), all paid for by international donors. “Now we have a dairy industry”, you are told proudly (by people who are not milk producers) but the market doesn’t exist. When you ask questions, you’re told that markets will be found or created (with a vague suggestions that the other countries will be expected to make this happen). Told with a frown because you haven’t show the requisite respect for the amazingness of the government.

And once a month, every Rwandan is required to perform forced labour – umuganda – to show his or her patriotism, with the added incentive of men-with-guns in case they’re not sufficiently patriotic. While commentators and analysts laud as amazing the development the West’s guilt money has succeeded in buying, poor farmers make do with mud, white-elephant development schemes and total government control.

In many ways, Rwanda is the exact opposite of South Africa. The new histories of the two countries began in exactly the same year – in Rwanda with a terrible genocide, in South Africa with a negotiated revolution. Over the past 18 years, Rwanda has built a little feudal system. In every small town in the country, you’ll see two shiny new buildings – the government offices and the Bank of Rwanda – while the people farm tiny plots on the hillsides. Most of the cars on the road are government officials going to check up on their subjects. We run into a team going out to assess the progress of farmers. The government officials are accompanied by an army guard, wearing camo and carrying a gun. Development imposed for the good of the people. Rwanda has a forced public health insurance scheme and it appears to be the norm to take contributions from even occasional wage-labourers without their consent or permission. It is unclear what happens to the many people who do not have an income. Everyone is expected to be grateful and pleased with the benevolence of the state and the president. Everyone is expected to give to others. Cooperatives build their own schools, instead of waiting for the government.

Rwanda is peaceful and secure and controlled. South Africa is not. South Africa is fractious and unsettled and argumentative. The country has a high crime rate and high inequality. Development is facilitated, not imposed, which results in endless disagreements and criticisms. The market system is regulated free market, so individuals can choose to grow or do what they like, even if the government thinks it’s a bad idea. Land, barring communal land (but even that is contested), is privately owned and controlled by individuals. The constitution firmly puts individual human rights before idealistic notions of “the good of the people”. The economy is booming. Construction happens everywhere. The government runs a social safety net programme using cash transfers to allow the poorest of the poor to protect their own interests and decide their own future, even when it’s not the future others think they should choose. Complaint and criticism is free. Taxpayer’s money is invested in public goods like roads and schools and hospitals. Unions argue with labour, civil society argues with everyone and the ANC argues with itself.

Equally striking is the difference between Rwanda and Kenya. I suppose, if I am completely honest, Rwanda was always going to be at a disadvantage on this trip because Kenya was so amazing. Apart from the obvious differences – Kenya is gorgeous grassland, Rwanda oppressive lush tropical hills – the attitudes are so different. With the exception of the very poor, who spoke hesitantly and were shut down or corrected as soon as they strayed from the party-line, the Rwandans I met exuded an uncomfortable mix of resentment and pride. They were prickly and unwelcoming. No questions could be asked, no challenges posed. Their interest in any country other than their own was only in showing how far superior (and independent) Rwanda is. The Kenyans I met were funny and honest and interested and interesting. They were more than happy to talk about what they were doing (and anything else that was asked) but in return they wanted to know about other. They were hungry for opportunities and saw possibilities everywhere. They were comfortable with difference and debate. The media in Kenya is critical and professional. Perhaps most importantly – and I’m starting to think the sign of a healthy democracy – satire and sarcasm and the ability to laugh at the folly of the powers that be, are alive and well in Kenya. If oil were discovered in Rwanda, I have no doubt there would be a decreed day of national celebration (possibly involving community members rebuilding roads and planting parks in honour of the government’s benevolence). In Kenya there was outrage, celebration, debate, discussion and an investigation into whether a government minister got rich off the deal.

I suppose, ultimately, my frustration with Rwanda comes down to differing approaches to life. Some people believe in security above all else and feel that the answer to conflict is to enforce a pretence that we all get along, possibly assuming that one day everyone will be so used to political correctness they no longer bother to question. They must love Rwanda. Like South Korea, it runs as directed and there is no need or room for fundamental questioning. I don’t believe it. Security in this context is a constraint, oppression. Time spent in places like this makes me long for freedom and dissent and the room to make mistakes. Those who hold up Rwanda as a model for Africa should keep that in mind. Rwanda’s security and peace and “perfection” are bought at the price of her people’s freedom. As the Arab Spring so clearly demonstrated, just like the former-soviet revolutions 30 years before and to some extent the end of Apartheid, that is a price not worth the prize for many, many people.