Hello and thank you for downloading the witness history podcast from the BBC World Service

with me, Rachel Nieler. Today I'm taking you back to when the

Rwandan government started Umaganda, a compulsory scheme where every Saturday citizens had to

help with projects like planting trees, cleaning the streets and building schools. I've been

speaking to a former minister who loved taking part. It's a Saturday morning in 1977.

John Marie Daggeti Manor has joined millions of Rwandans across the country to take part in his

first official Umaganda. I was really impressed. It was the only day where you could see ministers

with body 90 civil servants with the military officers, with the President Tabyari Manor and his

wife. Everybody would talk, discuss, laugh, do things together. It was wood.

But Umaganda was not a totally new concept of Rwandans, helping each other and working together

was already part of their culture. But it was introduced as a weekly nationwide event

by President juvenile Tabyari Manor in 1975. He'd seized power in a coup in 1973 and thought he

could harness Rwandan's community spirit to both unite his divided country and save money on

infrastructure. How when when? Umaganda meant when people came together to do common work,

for example, building houses or cultivating their land, community work was better than doing it

alone. It would take you maybe one month to build something where it could take you three days

with Umaganda. The Tabyari Manor was using it politically, but they did not create Umaganda. They

just made it a national event. Umaganda was considered a way to revive the national unity.

That was true, but it helped authorities to do projects which they would not find the

finance for that. Like what? There are many many schools which was constructed by Umaganda.

But it wasn't just schools. The initiative meant lots of community projects were completed

using free labor. Every Saturday from 7 a.m. until midday, Rwandans built roads between villages,

...