The views expressed in this article are those of the author, Uwimana Abraham, an expert in journalism, communication and social development.
These days, there is hardly any other topic being widely discussed on the streets apart from the Government’s efforts to deal with people who dress indecently or rather, people who wear inappropriate clothing. More broadly, however, it appears to be an effort to completely eradicate what are considered bad behaviours, especially among young people. The campaign also targets the sources and promoters of such behaviours, including electronic devices and other things that, as some of our southern neighbours call them, confuse the mind.
Some issues may not have initially attracted much public attention, but when the matter of clothing arose, everyone suddenly became vocal. Now everyone has taken a position. Some say, “You are actually late in taking action,” while others ask, “How can you dictate to us how we should treat our own bodies?”
I had also been following the debate quietly, but someone encouraged me to stand up and express my views on the matter. That is the reason for this article, which presents my thoughts on this issue.
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The Government Is Addressing a Problem That Started Earlier
Whether one considers the Government’s actions good or bad, both sides have reasons for their opinions. However, from my perspective, this is like closing the stable after the horse has bolted, or trying to straighten a tree after it has already grown crooked and developed deep roots while we watched. That is why it appears that excessive effort is now being used. Under normal circumstances, if all institutions had fulfilled their responsibilities from the beginning, things would not have reached this stage.
But how did it happen that the responsibilities of families and other institutions responsible for providing moral education became the work of the Government? Do you not think that something has gone wrong? Although it is also the Government’s responsibility to ensure social order, some of these problems should have been addressed long before reaching this point.
Let Us Begin with the Family
Every child is first born into a family. Families have abandoned their responsibilities in an alarming manner. Article 18 of the Constitution of the Republic of Rwanda states that the family is the natural foundation of Rwandan society and is protected by the State. It further states that both parents have the right and responsibility to raise their children.
This is where the problem lies. Traditionally, the family was the place where a child grew up learning proper behaviour, values and taboos, good character and humanity. But today, this is no longer the case.
In the past although I am not from a very distant generation the family was where a child received the basic education and discipline that would guide them throughout their lives, even into old age. Children grew up under the authority of their parents and knew what was forbidden and what was acceptable.
Indeed, the writer of Proverbs in the Bible spoke the truth when he said: “Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it.”
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Parents Are Spending Less Time Raising Their Children
Today, however, things seem to have been reversed. Children have become uncontrollable, and in many cases, they are not entirely to blame. The main problem lies with parents who have abandoned their responsibilities. Some parents seem to believe that their only responsibility is to give birth and bring children into the world, leaving the children to find their own way through life.
It often begins with seemingly small things, but the consequences are eventually welcomed with surprise. Parents no longer make time for their children. They no longer discipline them or serve as role models. Children are now left to grow up without proper guidance.
Parents are busy trying to keep up with Rwanda’s fast pace of development. They give birth to children and leave them in the care of house helpers. Those who are fortunate may find caregivers who were themselves well raised and who can pass on some of the little moral education they received. But many children are raised by people who themselves need guidance and moral education.
A parent may return home and find that their child feels like a stranger. During the little time they spend together, children who have already developed questionable behaviour may pretend to be well behaved. Once the parents leave again, they return to whatever they were doing before. As a Swahili proverb says, “When the cat is away, the mice take control.”
Social Media Is Becoming Another Source of Moral Education
Even when parents make a little time for their children, they may be physically together but emotionally disconnected. A child begins watching television or using electronic devices, social media and the internet at an early age. As a result, children grow up being educated and influenced by what they see online.
And as we all know, social media has no limits. Let us then wait and see what kind of children will emerge from such an environment. Can children raised or rather, exposed in this way be expected to become people with the values and moral principles we expect from present and future generations of Rwandans? That would be like expecting milk from a bull.
Parents Have Also Become Weak in Exercising Authority
Another important issue is that even parents who genuinely want to raise their children have become weak in exercising their responsibilities.
In the past, children were guided, warned and disciplined not only by their own parents but also by other adults in the community because a child belonged to the wider community. No parent would see another person’s child misbehaving and simply ignore it. They would correct the child as if he or she were their own.
Children, in turn, respected all elders as parents.
But what is happening today? Correct a child, and you may find yourself being taken to court. Children have become people who insist on doing whatever they want. Whatever they demand, some parents give to them. Parents no longer have authority over their children.
Children’s Rights Should Not Mean Abandoning Parental Responsibility
The emphasis on respecting children’s rights is a good thing. However, some people have misunderstood it, and parents have used it as an excuse to abandon their responsibilities. As a result, children have become increasingly difficult to control.
Even when children grow older, many parents continue to neglect them. A parent may not know where their child spent the day or the night, what they ate or how they slept, simply because they believe, “He or she is already grown up.”
They do not know their children’s friends, the people they spend time with, their problems or the challenges they face. They believe that because they have paid school fees, their responsibilities have ended. But is that really enough?
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Children Can Be Exposed to Harmful Behaviours Without Parents Knowing
This is where the problem begins. A child may start consuming alcohol at a young age without the parents knowing. Peer groups may introduce them to drugs and smoking without the parents noticing. The child may spend an entire day locked in a bedroom, while the parents have no idea what they are doing. They may be online learning different harmful behaviours.
Then one day, when the child comes into conflict with the law, the parents are informed about what their child has done and respond: “No, my child cannot do that. The person you are talking about is not my child.”What a tragedy!
Young People Are Also Victims of Their Environment
However, I do not entirely blame children and young people. Although they are not completely innocent, many of them are victims of the environment in which they were raised. What they were given and what they were exposed to has become part of them. The people they saw and followed from childhood, especially on social media, became their role models, and they adopted their behaviours.
That is exactly what seems to have happened. If children no longer obey their parents or listen to elders, how did we expect them to behave in society? How did we expect them to conduct themselves as responsible members of the community? Families are now harvesting what they planted. We are harvesting what we ourselves sowed. Let us all admit it.
Religious Institutions Are Also Responsible
Let me now turn to another area where children receive moral guidance after the family: schools. But before that, let me first say something about religious institutions. I will particularly speak about Christians because Christianity is the faith I know best, as I am also a Christian.
The fact that the Government has now entered into the task of teaching people how to dress appropriately is a great embarrassment to us Christians and to religious institutions and churches in general. According to the Holy Scriptures, Christians should be teaching people to change their ways, abandon harmful behaviour and live lives that seek to please God. Religious institutions and churches should teach people to repent and turn away from sinful behaviour.
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The Church Has a Responsibility to Teach Good Behaviour
The writer of Galatians 5:19–21 wrote: “The acts of the flesh are obvious: sexual immorality, impurity and debauchery; idolatry and witchcraft; hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions and envy; drunkenness, orgies, and the like. I warn you, as I did before, that those who live like this will not inherit the kingdom of God.” Is that message not clear?
Christians should be preaching the Good News so that people can change and stop living according to harmful behaviours. Instead, today, the Government has had to rise and condemn behaviours that religious institutions should have been addressing.
The Bible clearly shows that one of the primary responsibilities of the Church is to teach people to stay away from evil practices. Ephesians 5:11 says: “Have nothing to do with the fruitless deeds of darkness, but rather expose them.”
How Did Religious Institutions Reach This Point?
So where did this failure come from? How did the Government, which already has many responsibilities, reach a point where it must perform duties that religious institutions and churches should have fulfilled? If religious institutions had done their work properly, they would have made the Government’s work easier by helping to build citizens who avoid immoral behaviour.
In my view, many religious institutions had abandoned their responsibilities long ago. In fact, the Government itself eventually found inappropriate practices in many of them and even closed some churches.
Some Churches Have Become Too Similar to Entertainment Venues
Today, one can enter a church and find little difference between it and an entertainment venue. From the clothing, the decorations and flashing lights to the music, dancing and singing, everything may resemble secular entertainment.
How can someone who had no desire to obey God, and who previously spent their time seeking entertainment elsewhere, enter a church and find exactly the same atmosphere? How can such a person experience genuine transformation?
Let us also consider the teachings being delivered. The Gospel of the Kingdom of God calls people to repent, believe in Jesus Christ and turn away from their evil ways. But in many places, such teachings are rarely heard.
Religious Leaders Must Examine Their Responsibilities
Instead, many teachings tell people what they want to hear. There are teachings focused mainly on money and prosperity without genuine transformation of the heart. In other places, so-called miracles have become opportunities for deception and exploiting people financially.
Can such practices exist alongside the genuine responsibility of calling people to turn away from sin?
Religious leaders have abandoned their responsibilities. That is why harmful behaviours continue to increase, while many religious institutions remain silent or even tolerate them for fear of losing followers. Such behaviours have become widespread and have even entered places of worship.
Young People Must Be Taught to Live According to Their Values
Young people in churches are not being trained to distinguish themselves from those who do not follow religious values. Instead, behaviours found outside religious life are being copied and brought into churches.
If we talk about inappropriate dressing today, are there only a few such people in churches? Certainly not. There are many, and some have been made comfortable in such behaviours.
Therefore, when the Government comes tomorrow to warn and correct them, do not complain that the Government has interfered. Religious institutions have failed in their responsibility to teach the Gospel and help people become new creations and responsible citizens.
When those who are supposed to fulfil their responsibilities fail to do so, the Government eventually steps in to solve the problem.
Government Authority Also Has a Role
As the Bible says in Romans 13:3–4: “For rulers hold no terror for those who do right, but for those who do wrong. Do you want to be free from fear of the one in authority? Then do what is right and you will be commended. For the one in authority is God’s servant for your good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for rulers do not bear the sword for no reason.”
Therefore, authorities do not exercise power without reason. They act to restrain wrongdoing. Meanwhile, churches and religious institutions should have already preached the Gospel to those involved in harmful behaviours so that they could believe in Jesus Christ, turn away from sin, become new creations and develop a commitment to doing good.
Religious Leaders Should Examine Themselves
So when people rise up and ask, “What is happening?” they should first ask those who abandoned their responsibilities and allowed the situation to reach this point. Religious leaders, let us examine ourselves. Those of us who call ourselves Christians must also examine ourselves.
We are supposed to be examples of good works, as the Bible teaches us. We should demonstrate good behaviour among those who do not know God so that they may also change. Instead, today we often seek to imitate the same harmful behaviours we are supposed to discourage. It is unfortunate.
President Kagame Previously Raised Similar Concerns
The President of the Republic himself previously raised these concerns while addressing religious leaders during the National Prayer Breakfast on January 19, 2025.
He reminded religious leaders of their responsibility to use religious teachings to reduce behaviours that negatively affect Rwandan society.
Speaking about clothing and young people, he expressed concern about children and young people appearing in public in inappropriate ways, including what they display on social media.
The President emphasized that such behaviour reflects deeper problems of values and thinking, rather than simply being a matter of clothing.
The reality is that religious institutions had already been reminded by the country’s leadership about their responsibilities, but many had not taken sufficient action to correct themselves.
What is happening today is therefore similar to the concerns the Head of State raised at that time when he questioned whether leaders were truly fulfilling their responsibilities and properly raising young people.
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Schools Are Not Innocent Either
Schools, from nursery and primary schools to institutions of higher learning, are also responsible. Teachers, school administrators and education policymakers cannot escape responsibility for this situation.
In the past, a child who did not receive proper moral education at home could go to school and find other adults who considered teaching and raising children a calling and a service to Rwanda.
Teachers would not simply focus on academic subjects. They would ask themselves what kind of person they wanted the child to become. They would correct the child when they behaved badly, just as they would correct their own children.
A child who did not fear their parents might at least respect a particular teacher and try to follow their guidance.
Therefore, even if parents had failed, a child could still grow into a responsible person because they encountered teachers who acted as additional parents and educators.
Teachers Must Go Beyond Academic Education
But what about today? Perhaps the sense of calling has fallen asleep.
A child comes to school, and the teacher simply gives them an equation to solve, and that is the end of the matter. Whether the child attends class or not is considered their own problem. Whether they learn or not is also considered their own responsibility.
The behaviour and moral development of students no longer seem to concern some educators.
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The Role of Discipline in Schools
I have even heard people say that teachers have been prohibited from disciplining students.
But can someone truly be forbidden from providing moral education when that is part of their responsibility? I doubt it.
If you speak to people who studied in earlier generations, when things were more disciplined, you will find many of them grateful to particular teachers or school mentors. They will tell you that those educators played an important role in making them the men and women they are today.
If you ask them further, they may tell you that they disliked those teachers at the time because they were strict and sometimes punished them.
But today, we increasingly hear stories of students attacking teachers, injuring them or assaulting school administrators.
We hear such stories repeatedly and gradually begin to consider them normal.
What Kind of Future Are We Creating?
But what kind of future are we creating? If a child can attack a teacher who has authority over them as an educator, do you think that child will easily respect public authorities and other institutions when they grow older?
A child who refuses to listen while wearing a school uniform will that child suddenly become obedient after leaving school and gaining complete freedom?
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Schools Must Also Address Inappropriate Behaviour
Even the current issue of inappropriate clothing, I believe, partly begins in schools.
Some schools reportedly require female students to shorten their skirts rather than wear them at an appropriate length. In other cases, students influenced by social media come to school wearing inappropriate clothing, yet school administrators do nothing about it.
The young people we are now struggling to convince to dress appropriately are, in many cases, people who were raised in this environment. That is what they were taught, and perhaps no one ever corrected them or told them it was inappropriate.
Some developed these habits when they were still young and in school. Now that they have grown up, society is struggling to change behaviour that should have been addressed earlier. They too are victims of the situation.
Educational Authorities Must Also Take Responsibility
However, because families and other institutions failed to instil discipline in them, the Government cannot simply sit back and watch the culture disappear.
We should not blame only ordinary teachers. Those who created policies that prevented children from being corrected or disciplined must also take responsibility.
Those who insisted that children should never be reprimanded, disciplined or suspended, even when they behaved arrogantly, should also reflect on the consequences of their decisions.
What they created has now come back to affect them and the entire country, and in many cases, it may be difficult to reverse the damage.
Previous generations were disciplined by teachers, and such discipline helped many of us become responsible citizens.
What did it achieve when we took away teachers’ authority and allowed the children they were raising to disrespect them?
Educational authorities must also examine themselves.
Talking About Problems Is Not the Same as Solving Them
All these issues, and many others, are why I said that what the Government is currently doing, although intended for the good of society, is like trying to close a stable after the horse has escaped.
A problem that is ignored at its beginning becomes difficult to solve later.
We watched all these issues develop and said nothing. They grew and established deep roots. Now excessive resources and energy are being used to address them resources that could have been used elsewhere.
There has been negligence, and I am not afraid to say it, among institutions responsible for families, education and culture.
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Everyone Must Fulfil Their Responsibility
The responsibility for building a disciplined and responsible society cannot rest with the Government alone.
Families must raise and guide their children. Religious institutions must provide moral and spiritual guidance. Schools must educate students academically while helping them develop discipline and responsible behaviour. Communities must also play their part in guiding young people.
The Government has a responsibility to maintain order and enforce the law, but it should not have to carry alone the responsibilities that families, religious institutions and schools should have fulfilled from the beginning.
Let us therefore all examine ourselves, acknowledge where we have failed and unite to fulfil our responsibilities. The future of Rwanda depends not only on Government action, but also on the values, discipline and guidance that we give to the next generation.
