The Marginalised in Genocide Narratives: Revisiting Genocide Narratives and Reconciliation Initiatives 9781138839908, 9781315733166, 1315733161, 9781317557142, 131755714X, 9781317557159, 1317557158

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The Marginalised in Genocide Narratives

The year 2019 marks the twenty-­fifth anniversary of the Rwanda genocide. This volume, the product of over 20 years of engagement with Rwanda and its diaspora, offers a timely reminder of the necessity of rethinking the genocide’s social history. Examining a range of marginal stories and using Rwanda as a case study, The Marginalised in Genocide Narratives’ analysis of the transformation of genocide into a powerful narrative of a nation establishes an innovative means of understanding the lived spaces of violence and its enduring legacy. In a distinctive approach to the social history of genocide, this book engages with the marginalised; foregrounds genocide’s untold stories; and uses the conceptual framework of the constellation of genocide narratives to create connections among multiple social actors and identify narrative themes that address the unequal power and interdependence of narratives. Adopting a multi-­level narrative methodology that addresses the value of multiple narrative framings for understanding genocides, The Marginalised in Genocide Narratives will appeal to students and researchers interested in sociology, conflict and peace studies, history, African studies and narrative research. It may also appeal to policy-­makers interested in genocide studies and contemporary social history. Giorgia Donà is Co-­director of the Centre for Migration, Refugees and Belonging at the University of East London, UK.

Routledge Advances in Sociology

260 The Human Rights City New York, San Francisco, Barcelona Michele Grigolo 261 Horizontal Europeanisation The Transnationalisation of Daily Life and Social Fields in Europe Edited by Prof. Dr. Martin Heindenreich 262 The Marginalised in Genocide Narratives Giorgia Donà 263 The Social Structures of Global Academia Edited by Fabian Cannizzo and Nick Osbaldiston 264 Citizenship in the Latin American Upper and Middle Classes Ethnographic Perspectives on Culture, Politics, and Consumption Edited by Fabian Cannizzo and Nick Osbaldiston 265 Youth and the Politics of the Present Constructing the Future Edited by Enzo Colombo and Paola Rebughini 266 Trade Unions and European Integration A Question of Optimism and Pessimism? Edited by Johannes M. Kiess and Martin Seeliger 267 Globalization, Modernity and the Rise of Religious Fundamentalism The Challenge of Religious Resurgence against the “End of History” (A Dialectical Kaleidoscopic Analysis) Dimitrios Methenitis For more information about this series, please visit: www.routledge.com/ Routledge-­A dvances-in-­S ociology/book-­s eries/SE0511

The Marginalised in Genocide Narratives

Giorgia Donà

First published 2019 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2019 Giorgia Donà The right of Giorgia Donà to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-­in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-­in-Publication Data A catalog record has been requested for this book ISBN: 978-1-138-83990-8 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-315-73316-6 (ebk) Typeset in Times New Roman by Wearset Ltd, Boldon, Tyne and Wear

This book is dedicated to the memory of Barbara Harrell-­B ond

Contents



List of figures Acknowledgements List of abbreviations

1

Introduction: narrating genocide and the genocide narrative

xii xiii xv 1

Introduction  1 Narrating genocides: victims, perpetrators and the marginalised others  3 The formation of the genocide master-­narrative  5 The constellation of genocide narratives  7 The Rwandan genocide and Rwanda Studies  11 Situating narratives methodologically  14 Conclusion  21 2

The formation of the foundational genocide master-­narrative Introduction  23 The formation of the master-­narrative of the Genocide against the Tutsi  24 The genocide as the foundational master-­narrative  35 The counter master-­narrative of war  36 The marginalised voices  41 Conclusion  42

23

x   Contents

3

Reframing culpability, shame and guilt: non-­perpetrator members of the perpetrator group

43

Introduction  43 Naming culpability, shame and guilt: non-­perpetrator members of the perpetrator group  45 Revisiting moral culpability through ordinary morality  48 The narrative of national unity and reconciliation: everyday relations and values  57 Conclusion  62 4

Revisiting the figure of the heroic rescuer: communal rescue, care and resistance

64

Introduction  64 Naming the public figure of the rescuer: individual, exceptional, heroic  66 From exceptional heroes to communities of care  68 The communal rescue narrative: care and resistance  73 The ambivalent legacy of rescuing  77 Revisiting the figure of the heroic saviour  78 Conclusion  81 5

Families of mixed ethnic backgrounds: the intimate burden of those caught in-­between the politics of ethnic identity

82

Introduction  82 The erasure of the ‘mixed’ constituent in public narratives  84 Rethinking the proxy categories of rescapé, génocidaire and orphelin du génocide  87 Caught in-­between: narrating the intimate burden of ‘mixed’ belonging  92 The narrative legacy of the genocide  94 Articulating and reclaiming the ‘mixed’  98 Conclusion  99 6

Marginalisation and survival of the other minority group Introduction  100 Naming the outside onlooker: the Twa  103 Questioning the onlooker narrative: the insider and the struggle for survival  105

100

Contents   xi

Post-­genocide narratives: from autochthones to historically marginalised  108 Decentring the genocide narrative: national progress, vulnerability and material survival  113 Conclusion  115 7

Civilian returnees: intra-­ethnic differences and continuities with the past and exile

116

Introduction  116 The Hamitic narrative: histories of mobility and belonging  120 The hegemony of the RPF-­led national narrative and the diverse stories of the civilian returnees  124 Revisiting the narrative of the ‘new’ Rwanda: continuities with the past and exile  130 Conclusion  135 8

The revised constellation of genocide narratives and the untold social history of genocides

136

Introduction  136 The marginalised voices in the revised constellation of genocide narratives  138 Narrative engagement: agency and dialogical strategies  141 Rewriting the social history of the genocide that took place in Rwanda  143 Expanding and applying the constellation of genocide narratives  150 Conclusion  150

Glossary References Index

152 153 169

Figures

1.1 The constellation of genocide narratives 8.1 The revised constellation of genocide narratives

8 139

Acknowledgements

The Marginalised in Genocide Narratives evolved over a period of more than 20 years. Throughout those years I became involved, in a personal and scholarly capacity, with Rwanda, as a country and its people, as well as the emerging field of Rwanda Studies. I would like to thank my friends and fellow scholars in Rwanda and its diaspora for their kindness and insight. The research and writing of this book would not have been possible without the gift of time provided by the support of the Leverhulme Trust and the University of East London. I would like to thank the Leverhulme Trust for their very generous funding and the University of East London for allowing me to take sabbatical leave. I would also like to express my gratitude to my friends and colleagues for the generosity of their informal input. I am grateful to Alice Bloch, for her sense of framing and forward momentum; the book’s title and approach, and its shift in emphasis from the study of bystanders to violence to that of marginal voices, owes much to our conversations over Indian cuisine. I am grateful also to Eftihia Voutira for the conceptual clarity of her comments on the manuscript in its earlier versions and her unstinting support throughout the process of writing and research; to the late Barbara Harrell-­Bond, for facilitating contact with Rwandans in the diaspora and her unerringly incisive analysis of the situation on the ground. I would like to thank Massimo De Angelis for the mentoring sessions that shaped the reconfiguration of the book, and George Shire for the political and intellectual acumen that constantly pushed me to explore interventions outside normative frames. Thanks also to Keith Piper for accepting the challenge to engage in the collaborative project that resulted in ‘Opacities’. Thanks to Edward George for his eloquent editing and proofreading. I would also like to thank Emily Briggs, Editor for Sociology and Elena Chiu, Senior Editorial Assistant at Routledge for constantly keeping me informed and patiently guiding me through the publishing process. Special gratitude goes to the research assistants who over the years helped me to access sensitive information, to Rwandan friends whose conversations helped me to shape my analysis, and who shall remain anonymous to ensure that they ‘do not get into trouble’, and the many Rwandans I met in the country and the

xiv   Acknowledgements

diaspora over the years, for being roles models of courage and determination amid great suffering. I am particularly indebted to my family and friends for their unswerving support and encouragement. To the many friends, including Michele Biancotto, Cristina Carli, Liz Egan, Anna Gobbo, Natale Possamai, Lorena and Valerio Marcassa, Eleanor Sioufi whose grace and conviviality I will always cherish. To my family, Carlo, Irene, Matteo and Meri and all the extended Gava family, to whom I cannot but give my most heartfelt gratitude for their foundational, ever-­ present love. A special word of thanks to Melanie Gibson, for being there.

Abbreviations

Communauté des Autochtones Rwandais/Community of Indigenous Rwandans CDR Coalition pour la Défense de la République/Coalition for the Defence of the Republic COPORWA Communauté des Potiers du Rwanda/Rwandese Community of Potters DRC Democratic Republic of Congo, formerly known as Zaïre. FAR Forces Armées Rwandaises/Rwandan Armed Forces. Rwandan National Army until July 1994 FARG Fonds National pour L’Assistance aux Rescapés du Genocide/ Genocide Survivors’ Assistance Fund. Fund established by the Government of National Unity in 1998 to provide education, health and housing assistance to genocide survivors FDLR Forces Démocratiques pour la Libération du Rwanda/Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda FPR Front Patriotique Rwandais is the French name of the Rwandan Patriotic Front (see below) HMP Historically Marginalised Population ICTR International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda. International tribunal created by the UN Security Council in 1994 to prosecute individuals who carried the highest responsibility for genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity that had been perpetrated in Rwanda and abroad in 1994 KGM Kigali Genocide Memorial NRM National Resistance Movement NURC National Unity and Reconciliation Commission created in 1999 by law with the objective of promoting and coordinating activities aimed at fostering national unity and reconciliation after the genocide RANU Rwandese Alliance for National Unity RPA Rwandan Patriotic Army. Armed wing of the former rebel movement and now ruling party Rwandan Patriotic Front (see below), CAURWA

xvi   Abbreviations

RPF

RTLM SNJG UNPO

turned into Rwanda’s national army after 1994. The army was renamed Rwandan Defence Forces (RDF ) in 2002 Rwandan Patriotic Front. The ruling political party led by President Paul Kagame that has governed the country since its armed wing ended the genocide in 1994. It was formed in 1987 by Rwandan refugees in Uganda Radio Télévision Libre des Mille Collines/Thousand Hills Free Radio and Television Service National des Juridictions Gacaca/National Service of the Gacaca Courts Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organization

Chapter 1

Introduction Narrating genocide and the genocide narrative

Introduction In 1944, Raphael Lemkin, an attorney and refugee scholar from Poland coined the term ‘genocide’. ‘Genocide’ combines the Greek genos for race or tribe with the Latin cide for killing. The term is also a storytelling device. ‘Genocide’ designates a narrative, tells a story, of violence carried out against a group on the basis of what they are rather than who they are. Lemkin’s personal story of persecution was a motivating force in expanding the term’s meaning and location from the geographically localised personal story to the globally resonant, political arena. As early as the 1930s, Lemkin had campaigned for an international convention to outlaw genocide. His persistence resulted in the United Nations Genocide Convention of 1948 and the creation of a new, powerful international narrative. The United Nations Genocide Convention provides a powerful narrative frame that structures our understanding of events and regulates actions, and has become a dominant master-­narrative whose power is prescriptive as well as descriptive. The ‘killing of a race’ is transformed into a narrative of responsibility, culpability and punishment that is articulated through a legal genre. Adopted by states, the Convention’s definition of genocide as the ‘intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group’ designates and sets in motion a narrative which has the power to save lives. Narratives matter. Lemkin’s story, which is private yet also political, shows the dialogical relationship between personal and official narratives, documents the creation of a new language that helps us rethink violence, and details the formation of a master-­narrative that has the power to change the world. Narratives, in the words of Anthony Kerby, are ‘a primary embodiment of our understanding of the world, of experience and ultimately of ourselves’ (Kerby, 1991: 3). In its simplest meaning, a narrative is a story, a spoken or written account of connected and interconnected events. Genocides are tragic events. Yet genocides are not genocides until they are recognised as such. The processes that lead to their being named, the ways in  which they are remembered and the manner in which they enter history

2   Introduction

illuminates the transformative power of narratives. When mass violence is given the name ‘genocide’, a narrative shift occurs in our collective imagination that reframes the meaning of violence and prompts interventions. The Marginalised in Genocide Narratives adopts a narrative approach to understand violent conflicts. The term ‘narrative’, which derives from the Latin verb narrate, ‘to tell’, functions in the book as a verb – to narrate genocidal violence, and as an adjective/noun – to examine the idea of the genocide narrative. The Marginalised in Genocide Narratives operates at two levels, that of historiography and that of representation. It examines genocide as an event and as a narrative. It offers new insights into the social history of genocides by introducing the conceptual framework of the constellation of genocide narratives. Used in the former connotation of a verb (to narrate), the book narrates genocide from the positionality of marginalised voices. The Marginalised in Genocide Narratives problematises dominant histories of violence that reproduce the dichotomy of victim and perpetrator, and shifts the focus of historiographical writing and research to the stories of social actors who are usually excluded or marginalised in the historiography of violence, and narrates social lives. The book does this by documenting individual and collective experiences of violent conflict and analysing the stories that the excluded and the marginalised tell and the ways in which they interpret violence. Drawing from the latter denotation of narrative as an adjective/noun, the book introduces a narrative framework to conceptualise genocides as discursive formations: the constellation of genocide narratives. The inclusion of marginalised voices reconfigures the dominance of certain narratives, introduces new narrative themes and reveals new dialogical connections. The Marginalised in Genocide Narratives engages with the case of the genocide that took place in Rwanda in 1994, one of the most dramatic instances of modern atrocities. The book engages with this tragic event in order to contribute to the increasing scholarship on the social history of the genocide by filling gaps, not only in the documentation of the experiences of violence by social actors whose stories continue to remain invisible, but also in the examination of these protagonists’ historical consciousness and narrative engagements with the national narrative of the violent past. Thus, the book aims to advance knowledge in conflict and genocide studies, narrative research and the social history of Rwanda. To this purpose, the book makes three main arguments. It argues first that the inclusion of marginal voices is critical to our understanding of genocides because marginalised voices offer an alternative viewpoint to that of almost totalising violence, and can reveal non-­antagonistic relationships and temporal continuities as individuals rely on the known and familiar to interpret and cope with violence. The book then argues that a comprehensive narrative framework is needed to integrate national and personal narratives. The book’s central conceptual contribution is its development of the constellation of genocide narratives that both

Introduction   3

speak to the unequal power of narratives and visualise their interdependence. Supportive narratives about marginalised social actors are instrumental in strengthening the national genocide narrative’s foundational trope of victim(s) and perpetrator(s). The inclusion of the personal narratives of the marginalised beside national narratives gives voice and power to the marginalised, through which they can reveal, as well as create, new narrative configurations and engagement strategies. The book’s third argument is that by filling an existing gap in the social history of Rwanda and the national representation of the genocide against the Tutsi through the voices of the marginalised we can better understand the ways in which narratives are appropriated and negotiated. The stories of Rwandans who fit uncomfortably within the national narrative because of their subject positionality reveal social and narrative continuities that disrupt national discourses of ruptures in time, between past (‘old’ pre-­genocide) and present (‘new’ post-­ genocide) Rwanda. These stories challenge the overlap of ethnicity with the social categories of victim and perpetrator by identifying other kinds of intersections that remain unofficial. They document the legacy of the genocide on both the narrative and social life of the nation and its people in post-­genocide Rwanda. This introductory chapter is structured in four main parts. The following sections set the context for examining marginalised voices, introduce the conceptual framework of the constellation of genocide narratives and provide an overview of the scholarship on Rwanda and the genocide. The chapter concludes by situating narratives methodologically, outlining my personal and narrative engagement with Rwanda and Rwandans and the multi-­level narrative methodology that informs the writing of the book. A brief summary of the chapters contained in the book is also presented.

Narrating genocides: victims, perpetrators and the marginalised others Sarbin writes that ‘human beings think, perceive, imagine, and make moral choices according to narrative structures’ (1986: 8). Narratives do not fully explain all phenomena, but they can work against fragmentation. While each genocide is unique, its discursive formation follows a similar pattern, and a significant feature is the relationship between victims and perpetrators. The genocide tells the story of the killing of victims by perpetrators, and in telling this story it constitutes actors’ identities – creating identities of genocide perpetrators (Clark, 2009) and victims (Bernath, 2015; Girelli, 2017) whose relationship is expressed through an intent or act to destroy. This basic configuration informs the development of the narrative of what Bloxham and Moses (2010: 4) refer to as the ideal type of genocide, the Holocaust in which six million Jews were exterminated at the hands of the Nazi regime. The Holocaust model guides the framing of other genocides, and the most well-­known are those instances that

4   Introduction

fit neatly into the canon: Armenia, Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge, the former Yugoslavia, Rwanda and now Darfur (Bloxham and Moses, 2010; Straus, 2015). In the aftermath of genocides, the trope of the victim–perpetrator binary continues to be visible in new genres of narratives, one of whose forms is the personal testimony. On the one hand, survivors are encouraged to speak about their personal experiences, to detail their survival, denounce the horrors of violence and embody a narrative of presence and overcoming. In the form of testimonies, diaries and (auto)biographies (e.g. Hatzfeld, 2007; Levi, 1996) a new narrative genre – the survivor testimony (Assmann, 2006) – functions as a reminder of the horrors of violence and its ‘never again’ imperative. On the other hand, intent to kill remains the key criteria in assessing genocide responsibility and this has led to the consolidation of the ‘perpetrator declaration’ narrative genre. Perpetrators’ accounts of violence, defence testimonies and acknowledgements of culpability are recorded during trials that take place in national courts and International Criminal Tribunals. Of course, the term victim or perpetrator is not without problematic limitations should its narrative function serve to convey the idea that individuals are simply one or the other, for it is not unusual for victims of wrongdoing to perpetrate on others (Card, 2018) and for roles of perpetrator, victim and bystander to shift depending on situations (Luft, 2015). Beyond the visible victim–perpetrator narrative binary, there are many other narratives, the personal stories of the invisible majority (Donà, 2013). It usually takes years and often decades after the end of violence for scholars to begin documenting the experiences of ‘members of society who are neither perpetrators nor victims, or outside individuals, organisations, and nations’ but whose ‘support, opposition, or indifference’ nonetheless largely shapes the course of events (Staub, 1989: 20). These experiences are usually brought together under the umbrella term ‘bystander’ in the visual trope of the atrocity triangle configured by the victim– perpetrator–bystander triage (Hilberg, 1992). While the term bystander implies passivity to the plight of others, it tends to be used as a generalised, catchall term (Barnett, 2017). For example, the experiences of bystanders such as rescuers, international agencies and foreign countries were documented several decades after the end the Holocaust (Cesarani and Levine, 2014; Fogelman, 1995; Hilberg, 1992; Monroe, 2008). On the other hand, few studies record the experiences of members of the perpetrator group who did not commit atrocities (Donà, 2018; Kayumba and Kimonyo, 2008), families of mixed ethnicity caught in the ethnic divide (Morokvasic-­Muller, 2004; Tammes, 2017), rescuers (Waldorf, 2009) and other minorities caught in genocidal violence (Thomson, 2009a). To date, experiences of social actors other than victims and perpetrators continue to be under-­researched, despite the fact that they too are participants and casualties of ethnic, religious or racial conflicts. The inclusion of these actors and their stories draws attention to a different range of narrative themes beyond that of the victim’s survival and perpetrator’s

Introduction   5

killing. For instance, collective guilt and shame are significant issues for members of the perpetrator group (Branscombe and Doosje, 2004) and their descendants (Parens, 2009), while erasure of the ‘mixed’ dimension, discrimination and stigmatisation are issues endured by families of mixed ethnic backgrounds during and after conflicts (Korac, 2006; Muldoon et al., 2007). Furthermore, research on social actors other than victims and perpetrators has the potential to challenge commonly held beliefs about the history of violence. This was evidenced through interviews with local populations living near concentration camps during the Holocaust that disproved the commonly held belief that Germans did not intervene because they were unaware that mass killings of Jews were happening around them (Barnett, 1999). The historian Eric Hobsbawm (1994) remarks that the twentieth century was the age of extremes, a time characterised by wars, ethnic conflicts, refugees, terrorism and natural disasters. It can also be described as the century of genocides (Smith, 2000). Beginning with Herero genocide in Southern Africa, considered the first genocide of the twentieth century (Cooper, 2006), soon followed by the contested Armenian genocide in the First World War and later the Holocaust in the Second World War, and ending with ethnic cleansing in the former Yugoslavia and the slaughter in Rwanda, genocides figure prominently in recent history. While it is imperative to document the suffering of the victims and record perpetrators’ motives and actions, any history writing that excludes the stories of less visibly present social actors is incomplete. The Marginalised in Genocide Narratives tells the stories of a diverse range of social actors whose experiences of genocide are shaped by their specific positionality in society: members of the perpetrator group who did not commit atrocities, families of mixed ethnic backgrounds, communities of rescuers, minorities and returnees. It offers an alternative viewpoint on the social history of ethnic violence from the perspective of those who are forgotten or consigned to the borders of this history, and in doing so it advocates for the mainstreaming of marginal stories in the social history of genocide. The Marginalised in Genocide Narratives is not an event history, nor exclusively a history of ethnic groups or political conflicts. It is mainly an analysis of narrative formations and the ways in which personal historical consciousness and national histories interconnect.

The formation of the genocide master-­n arrative Narrative is the telling of a story. Narratives serve ‘certain essential functions for human beings, such as organising a set of events according to chronology and tellability in order to facilitate the understanding of those events’ (Herman et al., 2005: 203). For Vinitzky-­Seroussi (2001), any narrative can be organised around three frames of meaning: the protagonist, the event and the socio-­political context. Narratives play a critical role in creating and recreating history – personal, communal and national history. Narratives are first and foremost discursive formations: they are neither static nor isolated; they do not exist

6   Introduction

independently but are created in the process of dialogical exchange. Narratives are not unchanging but evolve dynamically in relation to others. Subotić (2015) introduces the concept of ‘narratives-­in-dialogue’ to explain the dialogical relationship among narratives that are intertwined, contradictory yet mutually necessary. Using the example of the former Yugoslavia, Subotić shows that dialogical communication exists in and of itself, independently of the content of the relationship, so that even denial narratives of the existence of genocide are formulated in dialogue with international genocide narratives. The dialogical relationship among multiple storylines may unfold as a competition for dominance and primacy (Bakhtin, 1984). Different groups within society might espouse alternative narratives of events, and this is especially the case in contexts of ethnic violence as narratives of genocide are rarely uncontested (Parent, 2016). Groups in conflict routinely appropriate narratives to compete for status. The dominant or ruling groups usually put forward official narratives to serve their interests, as the content and feature of these narrative have the power to legitimate their claims (Edward, 2013). During this process, some narratives gain strength and hegemony while others become hidden (Zorbas, 2009) or go underground (Reyntjens, 2016). As narratives compete for attention and power, some of these stories co-­constitute to become dominant ones, hegemonic frames of references according to which courses of events can easily be plotted in ways that are culturally accepted (Bakhtin, 1984). While narratives are intrinsically partial, fragmented and contradictory, in post-­conflict societies political elites appropriate narratives to form a ‘single story’ (Bentrovato, 2016; Jessee, 2017) by enacting a process of inclusion and exclusion that authorises the visibility of certain stories in the public domain and, equally important, censors or relegates others outside the official space of narrativisation. The single story functions as the master-­narrative, a coherent frame of reference that is used to interpret the past, guide social action in the present and envision the future of the nation. An alternative view, realised through a consideration of interrelations and multiplicity rather than exclusion and singularity, is present in Strombom (2013). Strombom describes the dialogical relationship of multiple narratives through the positioning of dominant and counter-­narratives in a narrative constellation: The narrative constellation is an ever-­changing processual whole composed of relational parts, and contains a myriad of different concepts organized around narrative themes, which are all interrelated…. The dominant narratives in a narrative constellation are understood as its master narratives. On the margins of narrative constellations reside narratives that challenge their conventional wisdom. They are called counter-­narratives. (2013: 1) The narrative constellation offers an alternative viewpoint to the single story by showing that a national story, in the singular, can be understood as a network

Introduction   7

of narratives in which dominant narratives are positioned at the centre and challenging narratives are positioned at the margins. Conversely to the view of the single story as relatively static once developed, the constellation is an ever-­ changing whole in which relationships among parts are in constant motion, dialogue and renegotiation with one another. A limitation of Strombom’s constellation, however, is that it does not explain the workings of the constellation as a whole in shaping history, as the single story does. And while Strombom distinguishes master (dominant) and counter (challenging) narratives, the author’s constellation does not explain how dominant narratives congregate to transform into a coherent frame of reference for interpreting, guiding and imagining the world: how they become master-­narratives. This book reconceptualises the narrative constellation into a constellation of narratives that converge to form a master-­narrative. It adapts the general idea of the constellation to explain genocides, and their representation. The emergence, formation and consolidation of a genocide master-­narrative are contextual and relational. Like genocide events, genocide narratives are the product of processes rather than punctual facts (Bloxham and Moses, 2010). Different versions of genocide master-­narratives form and transform in the years after the end of violence, depending on contexts and dialogical engagements. The formation of the Holocaust master-­narrative was made possible by the defeat of the German regime by the Allied forces that brought an end to the war and the extermination of the Jews. The transformation of the Holocaust, as an event, into the ideal type of genocide master-­narrative was fostered by international efforts to document survivors’ oral, written and visual testimonies, acts of memorialisation and the recording of trials and confessions of its planners and executioners in the decades following the end of violence. If the Holocaust represents the ideal type of master-­narrative of genocide, the killing of the Armenians by the hands of the Ottomans during the First World War exemplifies the on-­going presence of contestation in the formation of master-­narratives, with the Turkish state, aware of the power of naming, continuing to reject the term genocide and referring to the tragedy as civil war in contrast to the Armenians who name the tragedy genocide. Conversely, the narrative of the genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda has become the foundational master­narrative for the post-­genocide nation, as a result of the victory of the Tutsi-­led Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF ) who won the war, stopped the genocide and gained political power in the country. What are the constitutive elements of such genocide master-­narratives? What are the processes through which competing narratives co-­constitute to become master-­narratives? And how are master-­ narratives in dialogue with personal narratives of ordinary citizens?

The constellation of genocide narratives Building upon existing knowledge about narratives in dialogue, The Marginalised in Genocide Narratives contributes to genocide studies by introducing a

8   Introduction

conceptual framework to systematise and integrate a range of genocide narratives. The constellation of genocide narratives approaches narratives as discursive formations that are relational and co-­constitutive. As presented in Figure 1.1 (the Venn diagram below), the genocide master-­narrative can be visualised according to protagonists (core and marginal) and narrative themes (of violence and its legacy). This version of the diagram pictures the master-­narrative of the genocide that is reproduced in national spaces. A revised version of this diagram is presented in Figure 8.1 in the last chapter in which new, different, other narrative themes are given visibility following the analysis and inclusion of the narratives of marginalised social actors. The legacy of the genocide is evident in the formation and reconfiguration of genocide-­related narratives in the post-­genocide period that are about the core protagonists. Naming the ‘genocide narrative’ spurs into visibility related narratives, of commemoration, justice, reconciliation and unity that converge to strengthen the constellation of the genocide master-­narrative in the aftermath of violence. These new narratives address questions about the presence of the past in the present. In doing so they rewrite the past: the naming narrative (one of inquiry: what happened and how should it be called?), the commemorative narrative (of memory: who do we remember and how?), justice narrative (of culpability and vengeance: who is responsible for the crimes and what punishment

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Figure 1.1  The constellation of genocide narratives.

Introduction   9

should they receive?) and the narratives of reconciliation (of unity: how can perpetrators and survivors, and society at large, reconcile and live together after violence?). The genocide master-­narrative is incomplete without the inclusion of a range of supporting narratives that connect other social actors to victims and perpetrators and that are instrumental in maintaining the cohesiveness of the genocide master-­narrative. These protagonists are distinctively relevant for the prevailing force within the national imagination of supporting narratives: the narrative of the attribution of collective shame and guilt to non-­perpetrator members of the perpetrator group for the actions carried out by killers within the group; the representation of the exceptionalism of the heroic rescuer; the narrative of mono­ethnicity that forces individuals from ethnically mixed backgrounds to identify with one group only; the theme of the forgotten Other that relegates minorities to the role of onlookers; and that of belonging and proxy victimhood of the returnees from the diaspora. The protagonists and their stories are interrelated in the constellation of genocide narratives that forms the master-­narrative of the national representation of the genocide. Ethnic conflicts and genocides are usually fought around rival narratives of history and national belonging. The formation of a master-­narrative is the product of the struggle and negotiation over the content, legitimacy and power of narratives. In the formation of the genocide master-­narrative, controversial, ambivalent or uncomfortable narratives that do not fit are partially regarded or wholly excluded. These narratives co-­constitute to form a counter master-­ narrative that similarly operates as a constellation of narratives in dialogue across domains, showing the potential for the adaptation of the framework to examine different types of master-­narratives. Genocides typically take place during armed conflicts (Straus, 2015) and there are links between genocides and other kinds of violence (Verdeja, 2012). Thus, the war master-­narrative is a key counter master-­narrative to the genocide narrative, advances opposite interpretations about the role of social actors (war takes place between enemies, with victims on both sides of the conflict) and narrative themes (killings and survival occur on both sides of the conflict). The constellation of war narratives too unfolds across different domains, challenging the content of the naming narrative (war instead of genocide), commemorative narrative (all victims should be remembered), justice narrative (all responsible for crimes should be punished) and reconciliation narrative ( justice and truth for all are the preconditions for reconciliation). As many narratives about different social actors intersect and struggle to form the constellations of genocide and war narratives, their relationship is more intricate than a simplistic representation of homogenous confrontation. Narratives within and across constellations are in dialogue, traversing, delineating and revealing porous boundaries. The genocide and war master-­narratives are not self-­sustaining but they are dialogically connected. I have thus far presented a framework to structure narratives of conflict as they appear in public or national settings to form the

10   Introduction

master-­narrative. Individuals and communities exercise agency in negotiating their place in society and in positioning personal narratives within the master-­ narrative of genocide and the counter master-­narrative of war. Examining narrative engagements Master-­narratives set the frame within which social actors place themselves and are placed. Bamberg (2004) distinguishes between ‘being positioned’ and ‘positioning oneself ’, which reflects two different agent–world relationships: the former with a world-­to-agent direction to fit and the latter with an agent-­to-world direction. Individuals are aware of their positioning in society, and move in and out of ‘troubled subject positions’ within the national constellation of narratives. Of particular relevance is the question of how dominant or powerful these master-­narratives are, and how locally situated narrative practices are either forced into complicity or are able to open new territories (Bamberg, 2004: 361). There is also the question of resistance to complicity and the presence, within societies of forceful normative pressures to subscribe to official discourses, of a refusal to accept elite narratives. What is often missing in approaches to narrative is a conception of agency or an account of how and why individuals appropriate narratives and memories (Cole, 2003). As individuals are exposed to multiple, sometimes competing narratives about history, identity and the meaning of social categories, they make decisions, conscious or otherwise, about which aspects of these narratives to appropriate and which to discard (Hammack and Cohler, 2009). Those stories, constructed or internalised, provide interpretive meaning-­making anchors for individuals to articulate their historic consciousness and navigate more than one political landscape. Among Israeli and Palestinian youths, the form, thematic content and ideological setting of personal narratives closely mirrors national narratives, of redemptive life or collective loss and failure to achieve independence (Hammack, 2010). Second-­generation Irish youth during the Troubles in Northern Ireland negotiate the ideological conflict through the appropriation and repudiation of some discourses over others (Ullah, 1990). Rwandans respond to political discourses about their social identities through complex and active negotiations that are influenced by their specific social contexts (Moss and Vollhardt, 2016). Personal narratives may overlap or fit with, but also resist and even subvert, official narratives (Hammack, 2010). The internalisation of a national master-­ narrative is not a given, nor is it linear. While the state and its actors might construct retrospective narratives to legitimise the presentation of a national configuration, this process of identification relies upon emotional and cognitive responses among subjects (Suny, 2001). This practice centres around the idea of narrative engagement – ‘that members of a society engage with collective stories of what is meant to inhabit a particular political entity, be it a nation-­state, a resistance movement or a political party’ (Hammack and Pilecki, 2012: 79).

Introduction   11

People inhabit a world of meanings they may uncritically reproduce, compellingly reject or form a response somewhere between the two. People in post-­ conflict societies face choices and constraints in the ways in which they engage with national narratives of the violent past and its legacy in the present. Critical events like the approval of a new law, the creation of a museum or the setting up of a new commission position and/or reposition citizens in the configuration of the national space. Narrative engagements detail the ways in which individuals appropriate, resist and transform narrative components of the genocide master-­narrative. Marginalised social actors develop narrative strategies to position themselves and to cope with being positioned in the national genocide master-­narrative that reframes their past and frames their historic consciousness in the everyday. These protagonists engage with dominant narratives in ways that reveal the agency of the positioned in negotiating autonomous movement across narratives and their capacity for integrating elements of converging and diverging narratives. In this book I deploy the case of the Rwandan genocide to illustrate the significance of narrative engagements within the constellation of genocide narratives (and to a lesser degree of the war narratives). I have chosen to use the Rwandan genocide because it has become a paradigmatic case of ethnic conflict (Straus, 2008) due to the widespread and intimate nature of ethnic violence, the social proximity between victims, perpetrators and other social actors in society and the national and international prominence given to the master-­narrative of the genocide against the Tutsi.

The Rwandan genocide and Rwanda Studies The genocide that took place between April and July 1994 in Rwanda resulted in the death of almost one million Tutsi and moderate Hutus by the hands of Hutu extremists. Given the ubiquitous use of communal violence in Rwanda, there is a widespread perception that the majority of the Rwandan population was involved in violence (Mamdani, 2001) either as victims or perpetrators. Yet, a closer examination of the estimated number of losses and killers presents a different picture. At the time of the genocide, the Rwandan population was estimated to be 7,157,551, of which 85 per cent were Hutu, 12–13 per cent were Tutsi and between 1 and 2 per cent were Twa (Government of Rwanda, 1991). Population loss during the genocide was estimated to be about one million. While there is no agreement on the exact numbers of Hutu who actively participated in the genocide, Straus (2006) estimates that the number of génocidaires (genocide perpetrators) ranged between 175,000 and 210,000, of which 90 per cent would have been non-­hardcore civilian perpetrators. This assessment converges with information on the number of individuals, around 130,000, arrested and placed in prison with accusations of genocide in the years following the end of violence (Brehm et al., 2014). At a closing ceremony in 2012, the National Service of the

12   Introduction

Gacaca Courts (SNJG), the government body overseeing the grass-­roots transitional justice process gacaca announced that 1,003,227 people stood trial (Center for Conflict Management, 2012). As an individual could be linked to multiple cases, it remains unclear how many were actually convicted and how many were counted multiple times, but estimates put the number of convicted suspects close to one million (Reyntjens, 2013). In summary, if out of a population of approximately seven million people, we learn that around one million people were killed and around one million suspects were prosecuted for genocide crimes, this means that about five million Rwandans do not fit the categorisation of genocide perpetrator nor victim. These individuals constitute the majority of the Rwandan population, and yet their presence is invisible and their stories are marginalised in the social history of the genocide (Donà, 2013). Since the end of the genocide, the number of publications on ethnic violence and the country more generally, has escalated to form a new field of Rwanda Studies, with its own scholarly narrative whose formation can be traced temporally. During the first decade after the end of genocide, scholars undertook two main tasks: to narrate events and to explain causes of violence. The experiences of different social actors were documented, starting with survivor testimonies (e.g. African Rights, 1994; Hatzfeld, 2007) and continuing with perpetrators (Fujii, 2004; McDoom, 2005; Straus, 2004), the controversial role of the Church (Gatwa, 1999) together with the lack of involvement of the international community (Barnett, 2003). With few exceptions, most notably Human Rights Watch’s Leave None to Tell the Story (1999), in the years soon after the end of genocide, ethnic conflict was documented mainly through the stories of the two antagonistic groups – Tutsi victims (Hatzfeld, 2007) and Hutu perpetrators (Hatzfeld, 2005; Straus, 2006) – contributing to define post-­genocide identities and relationships. In addition to documenting the genocide, researchers examined the historic and contemporary causes of the origin of violence and the factors that contributed to its onset. Some traced the history of ethnic relations in the Great Lakes region of Africa, placing violence in historic and geographical context (Hintjens, 2001; Human Rights Watch, 1999; Mamdani, 2001; Pruniér, 1995). Others explained the genocide through the ethnic hatred hypothesis as the outcome of a struggle for Hutu absolute power against Tutsi (Bromley, 2011; Schabas, 2000). Mamdani (2001) criticised those who shied away from the popular agency to write that it was fear that made the multitude respond to the call for Hutu power the closer the war came home. Others explained the widespread dissemination of violence with reference to the ‘culture of obedience’ on the basis that Rwandan society valued respect and followed a political tradition of systematic, centralised and unconditional obedience to authority (Fujii, 2011a). Contributing factors at national and international levels were also examined to assess their role in the genocide. These included the role of structural adjustment programmes (Storey, 2001), international aid (Uvin, 1998, 2001) and the media (Pottier, 2002; Verwimp, 2000), among others.

Introduction   13

The transition from the first to the second decade was marked by an increased focus on the legacy of genocide in legal, political and social domains. Researchers documented the activities of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) (Kamatali, 2003), national commemorations (Caplan, 2007; Newbury and Newbury, 1999; Vidal, 2004) and reconciliation initiatives (Zorbas, 2004a), among others. In the post-­genocide landscape, victims and perpetrators continued to be at the forefront of post-­genocide justice and reconciliation narratives under the new categories génocidaire (those who committed the genocide) and rescapé (survivors of the genocide). Eltringham (2004) wrote that as pre-­genocide hate propaganda relied on polarised discourses of ‘Us’ – Hutu victims – and ‘Them’ – Tutsi enemy and their collaborators, there is a danger that the contrasting images of génocidaires and rescapés may replace previous categories and divide the country into guilty and innocents. If genocide ended in July 1994, the reverberations of violence continued inside the country and in the region. To a lesser degree, academics documented the activities of the insurgents in the north-­west of the country where low intensity violence continued (Jackson, 2004) and the actions of the government inside the country and across the region (Adelman and Suhrke, 1999; Reyntjens, 2004). In 2004, on the occasion of the tenth anniversary of the genocide, Longman wrote that, ‘what is most needed today is detailed analysis of specific topics and sectors of society and communities rather than global analyses’ (2004: 42–43). The second decade saw an increase in scholarly texts that spoke to and of the complexity of genocidal violence. Research shed light on the processes that led some individuals to turn into perpetrators (Fletcher, 2007; Fujii, 2011a), identified other social actors (Chakravarty, 2014; Kayumba and Kimonyo, 2008) and examined in greater detail the role of the international community (Grünfeld and Huijboom, 2007; White, 2015). However, the legacy of genocide on post-­ genocide Rwanda was the focus of attention, and especially the newly created transitional justice system called gacaca (Brehm et al., 2014; Center for Conflict Management, 2012; Clark, 2010; de Brouwer and Ruvebana, 2013; Kanyangara et al., 2007). As justice was heralded to be the pre-­condition for reconciliation, processes of and challenges to reconciliation were also studied (Buckley-­Zistel, 2006; Thomson, 2009b). The second decade also saw scholars analysing national discourses. They identified discrepancies in post-­genocide debates (Eltringham, 2004), tensions in the government discourse on reconciliation and its fight against divisionism (Waldorf, 2009) and the politics of memory and history (Brehm and Fox, 2017; Jessee, 2017; Selimovic, 2017), which highlighted the silencing of the experiences of a variety of social actors in the national narrative of the genocide against the Tutsi (Jessee, 2017; King, 2010). As the twenty-­fifth anniversary of the genocide against the Tutsi approaches in 2019, we see the rise of reflective analyses of the field of Rwanda Studies itself, of its polarised and complex landscape in which researchers position themselves or are being positioned in the

14   Introduction

role of supporters or opponents of a national master-­narrative of events. The victim–perpetrator narrative, as a proxy for ethnic affiliations, appears to have generated its own scholarly binary of supporters and opponents. And yet, as generations of genocide scholars study the country’s recent history, we can also observe that narrative engagements with Rwanda Studies are more complex, nuanced and differentiated than the polarised ‘Us’ and ‘Them’ differentiation would imply. An examination of the construction of knowledge in and on Rwanda reveals that it is rife with contradictory assertions and images, and that there is a discrepancy between image and reality (Ingelaere, 2010). Reflecting on the rise of research about Rwanda, Fisher (2015) highlights a crisis in contemporary Rwanda Studies, which combines methodological (how can we write about Rwanda?) and epistemological (how should we write about Rwanda?) uncertainty against a backdrop of highly polarised, partisan and sometimes personalised research agendas. There is a need, in so complex a scholarly environment, for researchers and observers to reveal the social and historical contexts for the knowledge being generated and to distance themselves, physically and mentally, from the centre of power: to adopt a bottom-­up perspective that captures the voices of ordinary people (Ingelaere, 2010). Amid the growing number of publications in Rwanda Studies, The Marginalised in Genocide Narratives attempts to revisit the history of the genocide specifically from the positionality of those whose voices have been consigned to the margins of national history.

Situating narratives methodologically This book traces my personal, social and narrative engagement with Rwanda over almost a quarter of a century: with the country and its national project, with Rwandans I have met inside the country and within the diaspora, and with Rwanda as a scholarly field of study. In February 1996 I landed in the country’s capital, Kigali. I worked and lived there for four years, returning in subsequent periods. I witnessed the formation, transformation and consolidation of a national narrative centred around the genocide that had taken place in 1994, less than two years prior to my first arrival. In my professional capacity I conducted research on the effects of violence on displaced and separated children and their families in partnership with the government and non-­governmental agencies (1996, 1997, 2000) and provided technical assistance to the Rwandan Ministry of Youth, Sport and Culture (1998–1999) on the social (re)integration of children and young people (Donà et al., 1999; Veale and Donà, 2003). My research fitted within the national framework that viewed children to be the future of the country and saw their place to be with the family and community. Within this framework a collaborative approach facilitated access to participants and the dissemination of findings (Donà, 2011). While living in Rwanda, I attended national ceremonies, policy meetings and court hearings during which I witnessed the formation and transformation of

Introduction   15

public narratives of the genocide, national unity, justice and reconciliation. I also participated in informal gatherings, naming ceremonies, marriages and funerals and I engaged in regular conversations with Rwandans professionally and socially. I observed the ways in which citizens responded to these national discourses and how they positioned themselves in relation to them. Tutsi returnees would openly speak about the losses of family members and relatives inside the country and to a lesser degree of those who had died while fighting with the RPF. They spoke regularly of the positive feelings related to their return to the home country and being at home. Rescapés would narrate their survival stories almost hesitantly, making visible their on-­going trauma and vulnerability, recalling their resignation and the belief that they would be killed, and realising that their survival came with having to mourn the loss of loved ones while rebuilding fractured lives. Other citizens were more reticent to narrate their stories because of the ethnic associations with those who came to be known with the French term génocidaires. They would not mention their flight to refugee camps to avoid being associated with the extremists still operating from across the border in Eastern Congo or the details of their participation in re-­education programmes after their return. They would speak only indirectly of those who were in prison and would not volunteer details of the reintegration of those who had been released apart from saying that they had been innocently accused. Nevertheless, they would reveal their position indirectly by speaking of the ‘moderates’ (Pruniér, 1995) and through the language of war and massacres. During that time, I was aware that certain stories were more easily communicable and visible while others were marginalised by pressure or choice. However, I was not aware of the standardisation that was taking place in the articulation of public voices, nor of the differences in experiences of those whose claims to veracity were held in doubt. In 2000 I moved to the United Kingdom, where I continued to participate in official memorialisation events and unofficial gatherings. Interviews conducted with Rwandans in the diaspora in Europe (Belgium and the United Kingdom) and Africa (Uganda and Togo) indicate greater openness about the violent past and the present than those expressed by citizens residing in Rwanda (Kuradusenge, 2016). An increased demarcation between two different views of the country’s history of violence, which can be summarised as the war narrative and the genocide narrative, was noticeable (Eltringham, 2004; Waldorf, 2009). These two main versions mostly coexisted in diasporic spaces but occasionally political and social allegiances formed that transcended ethnic and narrative divisions. Furthermore, diasporic experiences were not the same: Rwandans residing in Europe felt relatively safe, while refugees living in Uganda experienced insecurity due to the proximity of the border and the past relationship between Uganda and Rwanda’s political leaders. Between 2000 and 2011, I also returned to Rwanda to conduct research on families (2000, 2001, 2009, 2011), expanding the range of voices and narrative themes (Donà, 2001, 2012). Of particular relevance was a fieldtrip conducted in

16   Introduction

2009, on the occasion of the fifteenth anniversary of the genocide. The impact of a consolidated genocide narrative on ordinary Rwandans was visible in the sensitivity that previously accessible observations and commentaries acquired and which was attributed to the introduction of the law against divisionism and the implementation of the transitional justice system called gacaca. When I explained to a Rwandan friend that I wanted to collect life histories of Rwandan families, the reply was that 75 per cent of somebody’s life history would be missing. The friend went on to explain that interviewees would not want to talk about their experiences in Eastern Congo, a sensitive topic because of its association with the pre-­genocide regime, they would not tell me if they had been in prison or had relatives in detention because of shame, and they would not want to discuss their ethnicity because of the criminal repercussions. Stories of victims and rescapés that converged with the genocide narrative were told and retold in public while stories that sat less comfortably within these national discourses were marginalised or became taboo topics (Donà, 2011). Collecting less visible stories was more challenging and was made possible thanks to trusted connections and the assistance of Rwandans who understood the significance of recording the variety of marginalised perspectives, often because their own stories did not fit the mainstream representation captured by the rescapé and génocidaire binary. Sensitive information was given indirectly and often prefaced by the phrase ‘let me take one case, let me give you an example’. Certain stories are political and politically sensitive. Collecting and publishing testimonies that do not conform with the official script is likely to lead to accusation of genocide denial, ideology or ethnic divisionism, which are punishable with imprisonment and fines in Rwanda. To give voice to the marginalised means to take a political stance. I have taken the decision to include controversial quotes and to make explicit the names of the three ethnic groups when this information is useful to clarify or argue a point. The price for this choice is that I may be unable to return safely to Rwanda. It is in the awareness of these risks that I can only express deep gratitude to the many who assisted in many different ways and who will remain unnamed because, to paraphrase them, I do not want them to ‘get into trouble’. While in the late 1990s multiple kinds of violence – ethnic, political, social – were spoken about, the sensitivity of this information increased as the consolidation of the national master-­narrative of the genocide against the Tutsi strengthened. Conversations about the past also became more standardised. Memory plays a role in how people talk about the past. People may forget some details, misremember others, rearrange chronologies and give greater weight to certain events. They also develop consensus versions of events as a function of the external environment and current political conditions (Donà, 2011; Fujii, 2008). Years after the end of the genocide, I observed that accounts of violence were less detailed than the ones I heard when I lived in the country. In contrast, narratives of the impact of gacaca and other aspects of the recent past were more

Introduction   17

relevant to ordinary Rwandans and were narrated in greater detail. I also noticed that stories of the genocidal past followed a more standardised format than those I had heard in the years immediately after the genocide. I collected first-­hand testimonies published closer to the time of violence by Human Rights Watch and African Rights, among others, to document the detail and diversity of stories that I had heard in the period soon after the end of the genocide but which I had not recorded systematically. In recent years, academics conducting research in Rwanda have described the methodological, ethical and practical challenges encountered when conducting research in highly politicised research settings like Rwanda which often develop a ‘culture of secrecy’ (Lundy and McGovern, 2006: 78) and where the fieldwork process is further impeded by fear and self-­censorship (Beswick, 2010). In post-­ conflict sites where suspicion of others, particularly outsiders, can run very high (Peritore, 1990) it is important to create personal relationships and build rapport and trust with respondents, local research assistants and partners (Thomson, 2010). My experience of conducting research in Rwanda shows the relevance of thinking about research methodology in the context of long-­term social transformations. Similarly to the ways in which research gaps can be revealing of societal functioning where problems such as historical memory, selective telling and skewed participant demographics illuminate political structures, group relations and societal cleavages (King, 2009), a reflective analysis of research conducted at different points in time, on different themes and with different partners can be revealing of the ways in which shifting national landscapes and research methodologies intersect to reconfigure the boundaries of the sites of research and re-­ articulate its topic. Narrative methodology in post-­c onflict contexts Conducting research in politicised post-­conflict societies calls for an understanding of the power of narratives as research data and as a method of investigation and analysis. Narratives can be modes of resistance to existing structures of power (Hydén, 2013). Some of the current popularity of the narrative method derives from its potential to give voice to previously marginalised or silenced people. This tendency may involve collecting the oral histories of discriminated groups, and understanding how such groups interpret the conditions of their own lived, subjective place within power relations. Fujii writes that in politically charged environments trustworthiness of narratives did not depend on the accuracy or truthfulness of their answers but on the shared meanings and logics contained in them. The goal was not to test hypotheses about specific variables but to uncover the subjective and inter-­subjective meanings that people used to explain what they had lived through, survived, participated in, or witnessed. (2008: 578)

18   Introduction

The Marginalised in Genocide Narratives attempts to look behind the apparent monopoly of knowledge construction in Rwanda to reveal subaltern voices that illustrate a dialectical process between above and below from an experience-­ centred perspective. The narrative methodology adopted in this book follows Hammack and Pilecki’s (2012) call for a multi-­level narrative approach that considers different kinds of stories in order to integrate primary and secondary sources that connect the personal and the national, inclusive of: • • • •

official policies and legal documents for the period 1990–2018. published personal testimonies collected in the period close to the end of the genocide. interviews, group discussions and participant observation in Rwanda (1996–1999, 2000, 2001, 2009, 2011). interviews and participant observation in the diaspora, and more specifically in the UK (2000–present), Uganda (2011), Togo (2009) and Belgium (2010).

Narrative interviews conducted with more than 60 Rwandans in the country and the diaspora about their family histories before, during and after the genocide are used extensively in the book because they specifically speak from the perspective of marginalised subject positions (families of mixed ethnicity, non-­ perpetrators, rescuers, minorities and returnees) resulting in an intimate ‘view from below’ (Jessee and Watkins, 2014: 44). Similarly to Zorbas (2009) I used a strategy which deliberately privileged depth over scope given the delicate nature of the topic, the sensitivity of information and the specificities of the Rwandan context in which silence and emulation of the public discourse are strategies to avoid ‘getting into trouble’. The voices narrated in The Marginalised in Genocide Narratives are not representative of the experiences of all Rwandans nor do they give voice to the multitude of social actors whose stories are marginalised. The aim is to give visibility to some stories, and from them, it aims to infer something conceptual. In conclusion, in tracing the continuities and shifts in my positionality over more than two decades, I attempt to explain the long gestation that precedes the completion of the book. This process stems from an initial sense of uneasiness felt while living in post-­genocide Rwanda that I could not articulate, and that developed as an aspiration to reach out to listen to other stories while witnessing the national narrative being consolidated, and sensing that those stories were being further removed. It took me more than a decade for the project of collection of testimonies of marginalised social actors to materialise in the form of a planned undertaking. Bringing these stories in dialogue within a theoretical framework proved challenging not only intellectually but also emotionally, as I struggled to go back to the material whose content continues to bring back memories of my life in the country (Donà, 2014). The Marginalised in Genocide Narratives is the product of long-­term reflections on the same subjects that were

Introduction   19

sparked by the experience of living in a society undergoing major transformations. It is a project that would not have been possible without the assistance, advice and support of Rwandans in the country and the diaspora. Overview of the book The book is organised into eight chapters. Chapter 1 sets the central questions and outlines some of the general issues that are discussed in the literature on genocides, narratives and Rwanda. It also introduces the concept of the constellation of genocide narratives and describes protagonists and narrative themes that are visible in national discourses of the genocide. The chapter draws on available research to elucidate the centrality of narratives for understanding genocide and seeks to illuminate the role of marginalised voices for rethinking the social history of conflicts. It also outlines the trajectory of my narrative positionality with Rwanda and Rwandans as well as with the scholarly field of Rwanda Studies, and describes the multi-­level narrative methodology that informs the writing of the book. Chapter 2 delves into the case study of Rwanda by tracing the formation, transformation and consolidation of the national master-­narrative of the genocide against the Tutsi to show the processes through which it has become the foundational narrative for imagining the nation in the post-­genocide period. Focusing on the core protagonists of the constellation, the victims and perpetrators, the chapter details the on-­going significance of their reconfigured designation as rescapés and génocidaires, and the centrality of the antagonist narrative themes of survival and killing, in the articulation of post-­genocide interrelated national narratives, specifically naming, commemorative, justice, reconciliation and unity. It also sketches the dialogical relationship of the master-­narrative of the genocide against the Tutsi with the counter master-­narrative of war, showing that this too can be understood through the idea of the constellation of genocide narratives. The chapter sets the context for the subsequent examination of a range of marginalised subjectivities and their different engagements with the master-­narrative of the genocide against the Tutsi, and to a lesser degree the master-­narrative of war, in the following chapters. Chapters 3, 4, 5, 6 and 7 form the substantial part of the book as they centre the perspectives that have largely remained at the margins of the social history of the genocide. The structure of each one of these chapters follows a similar format. The first part exposes the public narrative themes that have come to define the representation of each social group in the national imagination, and whose supportive role is instrumental in strengthening the cohesiveness of the genocide master-­narrative. The chapters then draw attention to the variety of experiences and perspectives that have largely remained invisible in the national space, and proceeds to create connections between the personal and the national. They do this through an investigation of narrative engagements with specific supporting narratives that are relevant for each social group, and to a lesser

20   Introduction

degree with those of other social groups. In each chapter, the connections between the genocide past and the post-­genocide present are also investigated to ascertain the legacy of the genocide on the social and narrative lives of the marginalised in the historical trajectory of the nation. Chapter 3 introduces the uneasy predicament of non-­perpetrator members of the perpetrator group, who constitute the majority of the Rwandan population. The public narrative of moral culpability that leads to collective guilt and shame imposed on this social category places them in an unenviable position in the genocide master-­narrative. Their narratives contrast and resist this national representation. Non-­perpetrators distance themselves from the world view of the génocidaires and break down the correspondence of (Hutu) ethnicity with génocidaire to reveal other identities and relationships that are expressed through the image of the ordinary, honest and caring individuals, who rely on peacetime social relations and norms to interpret and cope with the chaos of violence and reposition themselves in the post-­genocide landscape. Chapter 4 begins with an analysis of the celebrated yet ambivalent public image of the heroic rescuer, which gives prominence to individual heroes rather than communities, construes their actions as exceptional and thus an exception to the norm, and removes them from their cultural and social milieu. The emphasis on heroic rescuers obscures the existence of communal protection and marginalises the role of helpers in rescue and resistance efforts. Collective rescue challenges divisive ideologies to reveal narrative themes of care and solidarity. An analysis of narrative engagements indicates that individuals reframe heroes as ordinary people and rescuing actions as common-­sense behaviours that are embedded within existing values and cultural traditions. Chapter 5 investigates the complex positionality of families of mixed ethnic backgrounds whose members belong to both the rescapé and génocidaire groups. The public narrative renders invisible the ‘mixed’ dimension of their identity and forces them into one group or the other. The public erasure of the ‘mixed’ element of such familial identities marks a contrast with the stories of inter-­ethnic individuals and families by showing that these protagonists are profoundly marked by the national politics of ethnicity and, as a consequence, bear a burden that affects their intimate personal and family lives. Members of families of mixed ethnicity engage with the public narrative of the invisibility of their ‘mixed’ affiliation and forced identification with one group by reclaiming elements of their ‘mixed’ identity. Chapter 6 explores the attribution of ‘onlooker’ to genocide that is applied to Rwanda’s foundational Other, the Twa. From their lower subject positionality and its derivation from their historic marginalisation, the Twa minority constitute a notable, core presence within the Rwandan nation as its original inhabitants, and as such were involved in different roles in the genocide and suffered disproportionately the consequences of conflict. Notable also is the reconfiguration of this minority group’s survival in the post-­genocide period through a narrative of indigenous survival that is distinct to that of the genocide survivor. The

Introduction   21

Twa’s historical experience of discrimination, vulnerability and lack of progress, all of which were features that were exacerbated by genocide losses, war, exile and poverty, signal temporal continuities between the past and the present. Chapter 7 brings to the fore the variety of experiences and viewpoints of Tutsi civilian returnees against the backdrop of the official discourse of the foundational genocide master-­narrative promoted by the Tutsi political elites in which the Tutsi civilian is present as victim by proxy. As most of these civilians were abroad when the genocide took place and returned to Rwanda after its end, their narratives engage with the legacy of the genocide and also introduce new themes of historic mobility and belonging, exile and home, return and adaptation. The ‘new’ Rwanda that they inhabit and continue to shape borrows, transforms and re-­adapts elements of national tradition and exile. By bringing ‘back’ new religions, languages and norms learned abroad, civilian returnees shape the trajectory of the ‘new’ Rwanda through continuity with their refugee past. Chapter 8 concludes with a discussion of the main findings and draws generalisations beyond the case study of Rwanda. Importantly, it presents a revised version of the constellation of genocide narratives, which also features the main themes that emerged from the inclusion of marginal voices. In addition to specific narrative themes outlined in distinct chapters, shared themes are also identified, connecting personal stories together to tell another story. The publicly untold narrative speaks of ‘continuity, embeddedness and the everyday’. It can be summarised as follows: individuals rely on continuities with the ordinary, everyday past and on pre-­genocide norms, values and relationships that are embedded in socio-­cultural contexts to interpret and guide their actions during violence and make sense of their reconfigured subject positionalities in the post-­ conflict period. In the specific context of Rwanda, the narratives of the marginalised problematise ruptures between the ‘old’ (pre-­genocide) and ‘new’ (post-­genocide) Rwanda by identifying social and narrative continuities, ­challenge the overlap of ethnic and social identities of victim and perpetrator by identifying other intersectional subject positions, and record the complex legacy of the genocide, as an event and as narrative, on the social and narrative lives of the nation and its people.

Conclusion This chapter has set the theoretical context for advancing knowledge in conflict and genocide studies, narrative research and the social history of Rwanda. Shifting between historiography and narratology, it speaks to and about the power of narratives and narrative approaches in order to understand genocides. To this purpose, narratives of the marginalised offer a key contribution because they offer an alternative viewpoint to that of almost totalising violence upheld by the antagonistic relationship of victims and perpetrators. New insights into the social history of genocides can be gained by adopting a comprehensive framework like the constellation of genocide narratives through which historic consciousness

22   Introduction

can be noticed in narrative engagements of the personal with the national. Thus, the chapter has elucidated the centrality of narratives for understanding genocides and shed light on the role of marginalised voices for rethinking the social history of conflicts. The next chapter delves into the case study of Rwanda by documenting the formation of the master-­narrative of the genocide against the Tutsi. Note: I use pseudonyms throughout this book, in tandem with the withholding of personal information that can identify individuals, to protect research participants’ confidentiality and research assistants’ anonymity.

Chapter 2

The formation of the foundational genocide master-­narrative

Introduction There was chaos after April, everything was unrecognisable … everyone was just trying to save themselves. (Rose, Hutu refugee) Sitting in her living room in Brussels, Rose recounts the chaos that reigned as violence unfolded in her native country, Rwanda, in April 1994. Narratives play a critical role in creating and recreating history – at the level of the individual, the community and the nation. As time passed, the chaos experienced by those affected by violence was named genocide and later renamed the ‘Genocide against the Tutsi’. The telling of a story became the narration of the history of ethnic violence, marked by a beginning and an end. On 7 April the plane carrying President Habyarimana was shot down as it was landing in Kigali, the capital of Rwanda. Killings began the following day and extreme violence continued until 4 July when the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF ) entered the capital Kigali. Signalling the temporal boundaries of genocidal violence are two public holidays established in post-­genocide Rwanda: the ‘Genocide against the Tutsi Memorial Day’ on 7 April and ‘Liberation Day’ on 4 July. The personal story of chaos is transformed into the national history of the genocide, which in turn defines the space for the recognition of stories that fit the genocide narrative and the marginalisation of those that belong to other narratives, of war, massacres, political conflict or personal opportunism. What are the processes that transform the chaos of violence in Rwanda into the forceful narrative called the ‘Genocide against the Tutsi’? This chapter traces the formation, transformation and consolidation of the genocide master-­narrative in Rwanda through the conceptual lens of the narrative constellation. More specifically, it examines the ways in which key events, nationally and internationally, enable the formation of public narratives that converge to form the master-­narrative. As visualised in the Venn diagram presented in Chapter 1, the victims and perpetrators are the core protagonists of the

24   Formation of the genocide master-narrative

genocide master-­narrative, and this chapter shows how their personal stories are appropriated to produce and reproduce a national history in the post-­genocide period. The narrative legacy of the genocide is evident in the formation and reconfiguration of genocide-­related narratives about rescapés and génocidaires that are in dialogical relationship in the constellation. Naming the ‘genocide narrative’ spurs into visibility related narratives, most notably the commemorative, justice, reconciliation and unity narratives, also outlined at the centre of the diagram, that converge to strengthen the master-­narrative after the end of violence. In post-­conflict societies, political elites form truth and reconciliation commissions, organise commemorative events and set up justice mechanisms, among other initiatives, to redress the impact of the violent past in the social life of the country. In doing so, they rely upon and forge stories that appropriate history, provide interpretive frameworks for the present and have the power to shape the trajectory of the nation in the future. These interpretations delineate what happened and how it should be called, forming what I call the naming narrative; who should be remembered and in what ways, forging the commemorative narrative; who is responsible for the crimes and what punishment should follow, establishing the justice narrative; what processes can enable the coexistence of perpetrators and survivors, and society at large, modelling the reconciliation and unity narrative. The chapter examines these main narratives (naming, commemorative, justice, reconciliation and unity), traces their changes over time and their convergence to consolidate and strengthen the genocide master-­narrative. The chapter also examines the dialogical relationship of the genocide master-­ narrative with the counter master-­narrative of war, showing that this too is constituted by a constellation of narratives in dialogue across mirroring domains. The chapter argues that while the master-­narrative of the genocide against the Tutsi has become the new foundational narrative for imagining the nation in contemporary Rwanda, this discourse is limited in that it does not capture the experiences and historic consciousness of violence of the majority of Rwandans, and thus sets the context for the examination of a range of marginalised subjectivities, and their different engagements with the genocide master-­narrative, which takes place in the following chapters.

The formation of the master-­n arrative of the Genocide against the Tutsi The Genocide against the Tutsi is the name currently given to the Rwandan national narrative of its recent tragedy, which has become a public narrative in the sense that it is attached to cultural and institutional formations, and to inter-­ subjective networks or institutions larger than the single individual (Somers, 1994). Its appearance is that of a single story, monolithic in its succinct yet well-­ defined formulation, powerfully situated in the present as if it had always existed

Formation of the genocide master-narrative   25

in its current configuration and consolidated as a self-­standing historic fact that is unchangeable. In reality, the genocide against the Tutsi is a narrative in dialogue, an outcome of negotiations across time and space. National and international social actors were instrumental in naming, validating and giving prominence to the version of history that is captured by the designation of the Genocide against the Tutsi. The naming narrative of the Genocide against the Tutsi In the years immediately following the end of the genocide in Rwanda, the Government of National Unity was confronted with the immense task of reconstructing the country physically, economically, politically, socially and also imaginatively. This task also involved finding a language to give meaning to violence, its impact and consequences. When I arrived in the country at the beginning of 1996, Rwandans used different words to refer to the recent violent past. They would use phrases like ‘les événements de 1994’ (the events of 1994), the ‘Rwandan genocide’, the ‘Rwanda war and genocide’, the ‘genocide and massacres’ or the ‘Rwanda genocide of Tutsi and moderate Hutus’. Two decades later, the phrase ‘the Genocide against the Tutsi’ has become the official terminology to describe les événements de 1994. A change in language from the genocide in Rwanda to the Genocide against the Tutsi becomes the signifier of significant social and political transformations. The chronology of national and international key events that marked the narrative trajectory from the Rwandan genocide and its variations, to the Genocide against the Tutsi, can be traced back to the time of violence. On 1 July 1994, the United Nations Security Council adopted Resolution 935 to set up a Commission of Experts to investigate violations of international humanitarian law pertaining to ‘the situation in Rwanda’ (p. 1). In the Resolution grave concerns were raised at the Commission’s claim that ‘systematic, widespread and flagrant violations of international humanitarian law, including acts of genocide, have been committed in Rwanda’ (United Nations Security Council, 1994a: 1). The Secretary General report S/1994/640 of 31 May had named the tragedy genocide in its statement that, ‘on the basis of the evidence that has emerged, there can be little doubt that it constitutes genocide, since there has been large scale killings of communities and families belonging to a particular ethnic group’ (United Nations Security Council, 1994b: 11). The conclusions to the report of the Security Council (S/1994/1405) dated 9 December 1994 included the observations that ‘there exists overwhelming evidence to prove that acts of genocide against the Tutsi group were committed’ and that Hutu and others who opposed the genocide while it was being committed were also killed (United Nations Security Council, 1994c: 2). The United Nations Security Council Resolution 924 of 3 August 1994 also used the term ‘civil war’ to describe the events which ‘led to country-­wide massacres of the Hutu opposition and intelligentsia, as well as members of the Tutsi minority and other RPF supporters’ (United

26   Formation of the genocide master-narrative

Nations Security Council, 1994d: 1–2). The Security Council definition differentiates acts of genocide, whose target was the Tutsi group, from the civil conflict more broadly during which Hutu and others opposed to the government were killed. Almost ten years later, on 23 December 2003, the United Nations General Assembly adopted Resolution A/RES/58/234, which designated 7 April, the date when genocidal violence began, as the International Day of Reflection on the Genocide in Rwanda. In the space of a decade, the genocide in Rwanda has acquired such international significance to deserve its own day of reflection, and to become a symbol of genocides worldwide. A further decade later, on the occasion of the twentieth anniversary of the genocide in 2014, the United Nations Security Council adopted Resolution 2150 which officially renamed the tragedy as the ‘1994 genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda, during which Hutu and others who opposed the genocide were also killed’ (United Nations Security Council, 2014: 2). This follows the Rwandan Parliament’s official renaming of the genocide, from the 1994 Rwandan genocide to the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi (Begley, 2016), and a shift from a less restricted understanding of the genocide in Rwanda in which those who opposed it, the so-­called ‘moderate Hutus’, could also be considered genocide victims, to a broader understanding of the genocide in which ethnicity became the exclusive signifier of the genocide victim. This accomplishment was the outcome of years of articulate lobbying by the Rwandan Government in dialogue with a guilt-­ridden international community. It promotes an international discourse on the genocide that positions the  Tutsi at the centre stage and also situates the genocide at centre stage internationally. The recognition of the ‘Genocide against the Tutsi’ as the official national and international historic narrative emerges in dialogue with converging narratives of ethnic violence inside the country. In the course of two decades, these narratives reconfigured the national landscape. In addition to the naming narrative outlined above, the commemorative narrative defines and redefines genocide victims through acts of memorialisation of les événements de 1994; the justice narrative constitutes the category of the genocide perpetrator; and the reconciliation and unity narrative calls for victims and perpetrators, and the population as a whole, to live together and embrace the national narrative. The commemorative narrative and the rescapé Whereas the politically precise, official terminology that names the Genocide against the Tutsi in international treaties and policy documents functions as a means of conferring and distributing power, the value of the commemorative narrative resides in its affective character. Rescapés’ personal testimonies of endurance and suffering, which follow in the survivor testimony genre (Assmann, 2006), resonate profoundly across the national landscape. In the process of social history writing, the narrative as experience – the telling of the

Formation of the genocide master-narrative   27

human story of suffering – gives form and substance to the narrative as social history. The memory of genocide is kept alive in the words of the survivors and it is visible in the exposed remains of the dead that are exhibited in memorial sites across the country. The formation of the commemorative narrative that is part of the national narrative (Laycock, 2015) can be traced to a series of Government initiatives, which began soon after the end of the genocide. The first commemorative project came from the Ministry of Social Affairs, when Pio Mugabo, himself a survivor, organised the logistical support for mass burials at Rebero on 7 April 1995. A few coffins, wrapped in purple sheets, buried in graves dug directly into the ground and topped with a simple Catholic wooden cross, held the remains of politicians killed during the initial days of the genocide (Dumas and Korman, 2011). In October 1995, the Memorial Commission on Genocide and Massacres in Rwanda was created, and it played a significant role in the genealogical evolution of national memorial policies and narratives. At that time, the words genocide and massacres were juxtaposed side by side in public speeches and even the names given to public institutions like the Commission. In February 1996, the Memorial Commission submitted a report, which listed the information to be recorded for each municipality as follows: major massacre sites, estimated number of victims based on a cursory review of mass graves and dates, key organisers of the massacres and a list of ‘national heroes’ who opposed the genocide (Government of Rwanda, 1996). This archival record shows that the project of historic memory that was in formation considered victims of massacres (and genocide rather than genocide massacres), to be the Tutsi and regarded those who died together with the Tutsi as having been opposed to the genocide. In April 1996, a few months after my arrival in Kigali, national genocide commemorations were held across the country. The festivities of Easter, which symbolise resurrection and renewal, had been abolished and replaced with a month of national mourning. During this time, rescapés gave testimonies about their tribulations, suffering, survival and losses. Years later, Chantal, a Tutsi woman survivor in an ethnically mixed marriage still recalled that ‘during the genocide, we lost our own people. Everything went wrong, we thought we were a monster, we suffered.’ Rescapés keep alive the memory of the tragedy and become the living bearers of the open wound inflicted by violence. The rescapés are the main characters in the genocide narrative of remembrance; their personal stories of the ordeal and survival fit with the national narrative of the genocide as an historic event; and their painful personal experiences become political stories that are instrumental in developing a shared and authorised memory of the recent past. The month of April continues to be a time of national mourning, during which events that keep the memory of the genocide alive mark the tone and pace of social life. Commemorative speeches can be heard on the radio and watched on television; remembrance slogans are visible on posters; commemorative ribbons can be seen hanging at the entrance of villages; lists with the names of the dead can be

28   Formation of the genocide master-narrative

read on billboards in public spaces; and memorial services are held in the national stadium, churches and memorial sites. For the Government of National Unity, institutionalising ceremonies and commemorations are a way to promote reparation for the victims in symbolic ways. This is in addition to the tangible fund to support genocide survivors through Organic Law No. 2 of 10 January 1998, whose Article 14 defines ‘rescapé’ as someone who survived genocide and massacres perpetrated in Rwanda between 1 October 1990 and 12 December 1994. For the rescapés, remembering their survival is often accompanied by the trauma of the events and the memory of their losses. Agnes, a child at the time of the genocide remembers that: When the war started I was still a child, I was only six, but I had learned that the Tutsi had to be killed. I escaped separately from my family. I was told that many people were killed in my family, but I did not know that my father had been killed too, as my mother remarried immediately. The new father behaved with us, me and my older sister, as our own father. One day, we dug up the bones of a gentleman and my mother explained to us that this gentleman was our father. Since then, I have always been afraid of his shadow, especially in times of national mourning. I imagine what he would do for me, if he was still alive! The memory of the genocide is kept alive not only through the testimonial narratives of the survivors but also through the embodied narratives of the dead that are engraved in memorial sites, museums, shrines and burial sites. These locations are public spaces of memory and futurity: they house and contain memories of the violent past while sustaining the genocide narrative in the present and also producing a narrative that incorporates the legacy of the genocide for the future. The Kigali Genocide Memorial (KGM) was officially inaugurated in April 2004, on the occasion of the tenth anniversary commemoration of the genocide. Nearly 250,000 bodies were exhumed in various districts and jointly buried there. The museum has been performing memorial, museum and educational functions, and in this process of remembering, the history of the violent past is written, rewritten, categorised and re-­arranged. In 2012, the virtual site of the Kigali Genocide Memorial described the genocide as follows: In 100 days, more than 1,000,000 people were murdered. But the génocidaires did not kill a million people. They killed one, then another, then another … day after day, hour after hour, minute by minute. Every minute of the day, someone, somewhere, was being murdered, screaming for mercy, and receiving none. (Kigali Genocide Memorial site, 2018 [this excerpt from 2012]) A sense of the genocide’s acceleration through time and its expansion in scale, an evocation of the place and presence of the dead through the remembrance of

Formation of the genocide master-narrative   29

the living, are both rendered in the KGM by locating the violence of the genocide in a narrative of the body in its singularity and interrelatedness (one, then another), and its ambiguity and anonymity (someone). This nuanced sensibility distinguishes KGM’s tonality of remembrance from the succinct account of genocide inscribed in policy and legal documents. This collective memorial narrative delivers momentum: it conveys the pace for the killing, day by day; it recounts what happens during the period rather than simply marking its beginning and end; it reports the magnitude of the losses; and it speaks from the positionality of the dead victims, who screamed for mercy and received none. In 2018, however, the Kigali Genocide Memorial virtual site portrayed a revised narrative, which is not about the genocide itself but its place in the social history of the country. The first part ‘gives an outline of Rwandan society before colonisation including the unifying features and the harmony that existed before colonisation’; the second part details ‘the planned nature and horror of the Genocide against the Tutsi, as well as stories of survival, rescue and from those who stopped the slaughter’; and the third part brings the genocide into the present by providing ‘details of the post-­genocide reconstruction that has taken place in Rwanda and how justice and reconciliation has been fostered’ (Kigali Genocide Memorial site, 2018). The public narrative of the memorial site reflects changes in national discourses around genocide, and confirms the consolidation of the central role of the genocide against the Tutsi in the country’s past history and present social life. In addition to the KGM, there are eight official memorial sites across the country (Dumas and Korman, 2011; Tumwebaze, 2017) where the remains of the dead are preserved and where the skulls and bones of those who perished are arranged and exhibited. Less known is the fact that the Rwandan hills are also home to other memorial spaces that have been created as a result of individual or family initiatives. These smaller-­sized monuments are usually located along bends in the roads through Rwanda’s countryside and comprise significant material and living testaments of the past. The shift from the personal to the national commemorative narrative is accomplished through an exercise in standardisation, monitoring and regulation that operates to make diverse and specific stories converge into a bigger story captured and framed by the genocide master-­ narrative. On 23 March 2009 the Government approved the Rwandan Law Governing Memorial Sites and Cemeteries of Victims of Genocide against Tutsi in Rwanda (10/09-2008). Article 2 defines memorial sites as places where victims are buried and which have a ‘special history’ in the planning and execution of the genocide. Article 11 defines the elements of the aesthetic narrative of spaces of remembrance (Government of Rwanda, 2009). Each site should include a reception area where the Rwandan history before the genocide is found; objects and human remains of the victims and their curriculum vitae; tools of perpetrators and names; archives of films; a trauma room containing the names and photos of heroic characters; an acceptance of a diversity of remembrance; and the promotion

30   Formation of the genocide master-narrative

of tolerance and equality among victims (The Rwandan, 2015). Diverging from the 1996 Memorial Commission report, the guidelines contained in Article 11 require not only the documentation of genocidal violence but also call for the genocide to be situated in history, to be remembered in the revised national history, and to be placed in time, through the acknowledgement of the traumatic legacy of extreme violence in the present. The Article also constructs a hierarchical representation of lives worth remembering, by calling for the inclusion of the names and the curriculum vitae of the victims, the names and photos of heroic characters and the names (and tools) of the perpetrators. Through a process of memorialisation, individual testimonies become national stories and bodily remains are converted into material traces of the tragedy. As sites of memory become known and official, they tend to homogenise varied local stories into a standardised narrative of genocide remembrance. This law was replaced by Law No. 15/2016 of 02/05/2016 Governing Ceremonies to Commemorate the Genocide against the Tutsi, Organisation and Management of Memorial Sites, which further regulated the process (Tumwebaze, 2017). The centrality of the genocide narrative becomes visible through ‘lieu de mémoire’ (Nora and Kritzman, 1996). These are significant entities, whether material or non-­material in nature, which become a symbolic element of the memorial heritage of any community. Certain narrative features are instrumental in the creation, consolidation and prominence of a specific genocide narrative. These include: the compelling manner in which survivor’s personal stories are continually recounted during commemorations; the way in which these testimonies follow a script of suffering, survival and salvation; and the way in which they are juxtapositioned to other accounts of culpability, heroic actions and non-­ intervention. Through a process of telling and retelling, the commemorative story of the genocide victims (dead and alive) has transformed into a standardised public narrative in the constellation of narratives, which converges with other narratives to form the genocide against the Tutsi master-­narrative. Among these narratives, a significant role is played by the justice narrative, which revolves around the other main actor of the victim–perpetrator binary, the génocidaire. The justice narrative and the génocidaire On the basis that unless a ‘culture of impunity’ was once and for all ended, the vicious cycle of violence would never end (Uvin, 2001), a series of justice initiatives were implemented in post-­genocide Rwanda. These drew from contemporary and, most importantly, traditional practices of conflict resolution, namely gacaca, which sought to reinvent tradition to fit with the needs of the present. In this process, a new national narrative of justice developed, nationally and internationally, which defined the category of génocidaire to be prosecuted and delineated the genocide crimes to be punished. On 8 November 1994, at the

Formation of the genocide master-narrative   31

behest of the Rwandan Government, the United Nations Security Council passed Resolution 955, which established the creation of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) for the sole purpose of prosecuting persons responsible for genocide and other serious violations of international humanitarian law committed in the territory of Rwanda and Rwandan citizens responsible for genocide and other such violations committed in the territory of neighbouring States, between 1 January 1994 and 31 December 1994. (United Nations Security Council, 1994e: 2) Unlike the commemorative narrative, the justice narrative adopts an expanded temporal interval which it uses to define genocide that lasts the full year and includes the planning phase as well as the period of low intensity warfare that followed the entry of the RPF into Kigali and the flight across the border of members of the previous regime and the population at large. The Resolution also expands the spatial borders of the genocide from the national space of Rwanda to that of neighbouring states where refugees fled. The discrepancy between the memorialisation and justice narratives reveals the complexity of the task of differentiating genocide from war related crimes. Most controversially, the ICTR only prosecutes those responsible for genocide, excluding those who perpetrated massacres and crimes against humanity, and in doing so validates the definition of the category of genocide perpetrator as a distinct identity from that of the war criminal. As the main planners and implementers were indicted in the ICTR, others were prosecuted inside the country. In September 1996 the Rwandan Government passed the Organic Law of the Organisation of Prosecutions for Offences constituting the Crime of Genocide or Crimes against Humanity. The task of the national criminal courts was to prosecute on genocide charges detainees whose number exceeded 120,000 (Longman, 2009). In light of the fact that this task would take decades to complete, the Government launched a transitional justice system of local courts called gacaca in 2001. Organic Law No. 40/2000 states that the mission of the traditional gacaca jurisdictions is to make known the truth on what happened during the genocide, speed up genocide processes, eradicate a culture of impunity, reinforce unity and reconciliation among Rwandans, to prove Rwandans’ capacity to solve their problems and to rebuild relations at Rwandan community level in order to build the psycho-­ social fabric torn up by the genocide and massacres of 1994. (Government of Rwanda, 2001a: 12) Between 2002 and 2012, gacaca community courts prosecuted 400,000 genocide suspects in around 1 million cases in 11,000 jurisdictions overseen by

32   Formation of the genocide master-narrative

locally elected lay judges called inyangamugayo – wise men – (Clark, 2014). Gacaca trials saw rescapés and génocidaires confronting each other in public as the community witnessed, testified and sat through the proceedings. The courts were chaired by inyangamugayo who listened and judged perpetrators, survivors and witnesses’ public testimonies. The confessional narrative saw perpetrators confessing their crimes and asking for forgiveness or proclaiming their innocence. Court hearings also provided a means for victims to learn the truth about the death of their family members and relatives. In the gacaca setting for the public storytelling of past events, Rwandans are cast into the following pre-­scripted roles: prisoners who confessed to acts of genocide, prisoners who did not confess, survivors, citizen spectators, witnesses and judges (Brehm et al., 2014; de Brouwer and Ruvebana, 2013; NURC (National Unity and Reconciliation Commission), 2003). The narrative theme is broader than that found in the judicial theme of ‘crime and punishment’ to incorporate truth finding. Yet, a ‘conspiracy of silence’ to defend relatives and friends as a reaction against gacaca’s discriminatory character and resistance to a regime many do not consider legitimate means that the truth is neither complete nor comprehensive (Gahima, 2013). Gacaca’s aim to promote reconciliation was challenged by tensions that arose among Hutu who confessed and their families, and the fact that gacaca did not address atrocities committed against Hutu moderates and human rights violations against the Hutu community at large (Gahima, 2013). The judicial narrative found in the ICTR, national courts and gacaca consolidated the presence of the crime of genocide as distinct and separate from other crimes, and the only crime to be prosecuted. In doing so, judicial processes converged with the national narratives of naming and remembrance to give centrality, distinctiveness and exceptionalism to the genocide and strengthen the hegemony of the genocide master-­narrative. The narrative of reconciliation and national unity of the Banyarwanda As the commemorative narrative revolves primarily around the stories of the rescapés and the justice narrative is addressed at the génocidaires, the narrative of reconciliation and national unity calls for the victims and perpetrators to reconcile and for the population as a whole to overcome their differences and unite. The word ‘reconciliation’ in Kinyarwanda is ubwiyunge; it derives from the same root used to describe setting a broken bone, and refers to bringing together people whose relations have been ruptured, when the two parties renew their social relations as before (Bayisenge, 2016). The reconciliation narrative works at two levels: the individual and the national. At the personal level, stories of reconciliation among rescapés and génocidaires centred around the theme of the giving and receiving of forgiveness (Thomson, 2014) and at the national level served to overcome ethnic divisionism.

Formation of the genocide master-narrative   33

Similarly to the naming, commemorative and justice narratives of the constellation of genocide narratives, the reconciliation narrative is codified in official language, inscribed in legal and policy documents and implemented through governmental and non-­governmental mechanisms. The NURC was created by Law No. 03/99 of 12 March 1999 with the aim of eradicating the devastating consequences of the policies of discrimination and exclusion that had characterised the successive repressive regimes of Rwanda (Government of Rwanda, 1999: 1). The Commission was assigned a range of responsibilities for establishing, promoting, educating, sensitising and mobilising around unity and reconciliation. Its key task was to propose measures for the eradication of divisionism and the denunciation of actions, publications and utterances that promoted any kind of division and discrimination, intolerance and xenophobia. Since its inception, NURC has organised conferences and held seminars for segments of the population, including ‘civic re-­education’ or ‘solidarity camps’ (ingandos) for released prisoners and demobilised soldiers (from the national army, ex-­FAR (Forces Armées Rwandaises – Rwandan Armed Forces) and repatriated interahamwe combatants repatriated from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC)) (Zorbas, 2004b). However, grass-­root initiatives differ from and go beyond the national rhetoric of reconciliation in their emphasis on intra-­ national care and concern through organisation of forgiveness and trauma healing workshops, forums and trauma healing. Over 300 reconciliation groups emerged in Rwanda in the form of community organising associations, farming or livestock co-­ops or reconciliation projects, and approximately 60 of these bottom-­up initiatives have been linked financially and logistically to NURC for the purposes of national unity and reconciliation (Breed, 2006). Churches also have a strong institutional presence in Rwandan communities. They also support reconciliation, and provide an alternative to the state rhetoric on unity and reconciliation (Amstutz, 2006). The narrative of reconciliation and national unity is articulated through intersecting thematic storylines – of history, identity and ideology – that converge to strengthen the centrality of the genocide narrative in imagining the post-­genocide nation. The history of the country’s past is reimagined as a story marked by three distinct periods: pre-­colonial; colonial, leading to genocide; and the post-­ genocide time of unity. The pre-­colonial period is traced to the time around the sixteenth century when the regional inhabitants had organised into a number of kingdoms. The colonial period is traced to its beginnings with the German occupation in 1885 and subsequent Belgian control in 1923; colonialism’s terminus is designated by Rwanda’s independence in 1962. A history of pre-­colonial harmony among groups was followed by colonialism that fixed ethnic identities, fuelled ethnic hatred that resulted in genocide and was succeeded by the post-­ genocide national unity (Buckley-­Zistel, 2009). The centrality of the genocide narrative in redefining the country’s history is visible in the ways in which the genocide has become the marker of a period (as in pre- and post-­genocide) and each phase is associated with specific features, respectively harmony in the

34   Formation of the genocide master-narrative

distant past, genocide hatred in the recent past and post-­genocide unity in the present. National identities are reconfigured to promote a narrative of national unity. The project of ethnic coexistence that I encountered when I arrived in Rwanda was replaced by a new discourse around ‘Rwandanicity’ or ‘Rwandanness’, showing that national narratives continue to evolve behind the static and homogenous slogans. Within this new discourse, references to ethnic affiliations are replaced with a shared super-­ordinate Rwandan identity, that of the Banyarwanda (those who come from Rwanda). Narratives are intrinsically social and they presuppose the existence of a legal and social system that sustains them and authorises them. Numerous social programmes emphasise the Rwandan national identity, a sense of togetherness and instil the approved narratives (Straus and Waldorf, 2011). These include: ingando (a programme of peace education which aims to clarify Rwandan history and the origins of division among the population, and promotes patriotism); Itorero (teaching traditional Rwandan values and history, to both children and adults); Gacaca (the traditional justice mechanism dealing with the genocide crimes); Umuganda (monthly obligatory community work, focused on citizens building Rwanda); and re-­education camps for former guerrilla soldiers and prisoners. The prohibition to refer to ethnicity creates a national narrative turn, a movement from a way of thinking, speaking and relating to another one. Articles 1 and 8 of the Criminal Law of 2002 stress the need to remove differences based on ethnicity: Article 33 of the revised Constitution of 2003 made public references to ethnic identity illegal (Amnesty International, 2010). Three main arguments are used to legitimise this change: ethnic identities are illegitimate and alien, (i.e.  constructed by colonisers); they can be politically manipulated and mobilised; and identities are socially construed and can be forsaken (Moss, 2014). Those who use Hutu/Tutsi identities outside the context of the genocide are considered génocidaire sympathisers and negationists who are responsible for spreading divisionism (Begley, 2016). The appropriation and reinvention of the history and the abolition of ethnicity from everyday life, on the grounds that ethnicity led to genocide, has opened the door for the transformation of a narrative of national unity across ethnic differences based on ethnic coexistence into one of national unity predicated on civic identity as a people rooted to an area, the Banyarwanda. The narrative of national unity and reconciliation is also predicated on the fight against divisionism. Article 1 of the Law No. 47/2001 on Prevention, Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Discrimination and Sectarianism defines discrimination as ‘any speech, writing, or actions based on ethnicity, region or country of origin, the colour of the skin, physical features, sex, language, religion or ideas aimed at depriving a person or group of persons of their rights’ (Government of Rwanda, 2001b: 1) while sectarianism refers to the ‘use of any speech, written statement or action that divides people, that is likely to

Formation of the genocide master-narrative   35

spark conflicts among people, or that causes an uprising which might degenerate into strife among people based on discrimination’ (Government of Rwanda, 2001b: 1). This transition took place through both a reinterpretation of ethnicity, in which the concept emerged as the single cause of genocide, and the argument that the removal of ethnicity from public or private domains would function as a source of unity. Equally important, the centrality of the genocide in post-­ genocide Rwandan social life is evident in the creation of a new language in the form of the ‘fight against genocide ideology’. Article 2 of the Law No. 18/2008 of 23/07/2008 Relating to the Punishment of the Crime of Genocide Ideology defines ‘genocide ideology’ as an aggregate of thoughts characterized by conduct, speeches, documents and other acts aiming at exterminating or inciting others to exterminate people based on ethnic group, origin, nationality, region, colour, physical appearance, sex, language, religion or political opinion, committed in normal periods or during war. (Government of Rwanda, 2008: 1) Under the Rwandan Constitution, revisionism, negationism and trivialisation of genocide are thus criminal offences (Muscara, 2010). The Government has played an important role in leading the formation and transformation of a narrative of national unity that rests on the centrality of the genocide narrative. This leadership is characterised by measures that include the abolition of references to ethnic membership (as leading to genocide), laws against divisionism (mentioning violence other than genocide) and the fight against genocide ideology. The legal and policy revisions that have taken place since the beginning of this century have increased the significance of the genocide as the foundational story for the country and consolidated the prominence of the genocide legacy in the conceptualisation of unity. By linking genocide to unity, political elites have succeeded in extending criminal responsibility for genocide, not only with reference to the actual actions that took place in 1994, but also to thoughts and speeches in the present. They have expanded the realm of culpability from the perpetrators to the population as a whole for their thoughts, speeches and acts, and extended culpability for genocide-­related crimes from the past to the present.

The genocide as the foundational master-­n arrative Straus writes that genocides are based on specific foundational narratives around group claims to citizenship at the expense of other groups. Straus explains that ‘pre-­existing ideological frameworks, what I call “founding narratives” – shape how elites understand and respond to threats in acute crises especially wars’ (2015: 11). Political elites create founding narratives whose value is their role as reference points through which elites can attribute belonging and power to a

36   Formation of the genocide master-narrative

s­ pecific group of the population which, in the view of the elites, generate ‘exclusionary narratives’ which, in turn, lead elites to perceive excluded groups as dangerous and subordinate. These narratives are ideological frames that are used by political elites to define their strategies, yet may nonetheless ferment conflict. This chapter has shown that the converse phenomenon is at play: that conflict itself can become the foundational narrative around which national claims to belonging are made to forge a new country, nation and people in post-­genocide Rwanda (Turner, 2015). The emergence, transformation and consolidation of the genocide against the Tutsi master-­narrative as the foundational story for imagining the nation was made possible through the development and intersection of thematic narratives in the legal, political, social and cultural fields revolving around main characters: the rescapés in memorialisation, the génocidaires in the justice system and the survivors and perpetrators as well as the population as a whole in reconciliation and unity. To place the genocide against the Tutsi master-­narrative at the core of national discourses provides legitimacy and moral standing. The national hegemonic master-­narrative of the genocide is maintained by engaging in internal and external dialogues, which often include the marginalisation of antagonistic narratives that congregate to form a counter master-­ narrative of war.

The counter master-­n arrative of war Violent conflicts are often fought over irreconcilable narratives of power, politics, identity and belonging. The formation of a master-­narrative is the product of negotiation, competition and appropriation over the content, legitimacy and power of narratives. As the holders of power try to strengthen a specific narrative of the past and unity, they also try to contain, discredit and undermine conflicting narratives. These other narratives converge to form a counter-­masternarrative of war that challenges the authority of the master-­narrative of the ­genocide. The master-­narrative of war too can be conceptualised as a constellation of narratives that mirror the ones found in the genocide master-­narrative: the naming, commemorative, justice and (dis-)unity narratives. Naming the war, the massacres and the victims The naming of the events of 1994 through the language of war reframes the tragedy as a conflict between opposing armies, the Rwandan Armed Forces (ex-­ FAR) and other groups including the interahamwe militants on one side and the RPF on the other side. Supporters of the war narrative interpret the conflict as a political one and explain it by making reference to a narrative of historical victimisation (Chakravarty, 2014). Contrary to the ‘no difference’ perspective that all Rwandans are the same, which is associated with the Tutsi power, the ‘distinct difference’ perspective that Tutsi are foreign invaders is associated with Hutu power (Mamdani, 200: 15).

Formation of the genocide master-narrative   37

The war narrative’s concept of time differs from that of the genocide narrative in its consideration of a different and longer period of duration of the conflict. The proximal beginning is traced to October 1990, when the RPF led by Tutsi exiles invaded the northern part of the country, leading to population displacements and increased insecurity. The assassination of the Hutu President Habyarimana in April 1994 is a catalyst for the escalation of war in which the enemy is the RPF and their accomplices inside the country – Tutsi and ‘moderate’ Hutus who opposed the divisive ideology. According to the war master-­narrative, there are victors and losers in the war. As the arrival of the RPF in Kigali marked the end of the political and civil war that had lasted for four years, low intensity conflict continued in the north-­west of the country and the region. Incursions took place during the war of the abacengezi (insurgents) between 1997 and 2000 (Ingelaere, 2009), as did regional conflict across the border where Rwandans continued to fight during the Congo wars from 1996 to 2003 (Adelman and Suhrke, 1999; Pruniér, 2008). The signing of a peace agreement in 2002 marked the withdrawal of foreign troops from Congo, but violence among various rebel groups continued. On 30 September 2000, Rwandan Hutu refugees in Eastern Congo launched the new, armed rebel group called the Forces Démocratiques pour la Libération du Rwanda (FDLR, Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda), whose narrative is that of liberation of the country, and whose members include planners and followers of the previous government, who committed genocide acts (Buchanan, 2015). Thus, supporters of the master-­narrative of war develop a naming narrative of past violence that places genocide within a longer historic trajectory of victimisation. There are variations in positions reflected by the use of terms like ‘war’, ‘invasion’ and ‘liberation’ that deny or subsume the genocide within war and others like ‘genocide and war’ and ‘genocide and massacres’ that acknowledge that genocide took place side by side with war. Immediate contexts shape the ways in which the naming narrative is articulated. In Rwanda, narrative closure (Buckley-­Zistel, 2009) designates a censoring effect, an almost all-­pervasive national refusal, or inability, to speak, in which, as experiences that fall foul of the official script of Hutu génocidaires and Tutsi rescapés are side-­lined, the majority of the population is unable to discuss, openly and publicly, elements of the counter master-­narrative of war. To suggest, for example, that ethnic Hutu may have died before, during or after the genocide is to risk being accused of either genocide denial or revisionism, and is certainly not part of the official ‘truth’ (Thomson, 2014). Thus, there is acknowledgement that the genocide took place, but solely within the context of war and other massacres. The most notable example of the transformation of a war narrative to include genocide is shown by opposition party leader Victoire Ingabire, who upon her return to Kigali from Europe in 2010 gave a public speech in which she acknowledged that the genocide had taken place but added that massacres had also occurred. She was arrested and imprisoned for denying the genocide and conspiracy to undermine the established government. Contrary

38   Formation of the genocide master-narrative

to the centrality of genocide as an isolated event, the war narrative construes the genocide in a continuum of violence; genocide is not the exclusive legitimate violence but it is one type of violence alongside war and massacres. Rather than the ‘new beginning’ foundational narrative of the genocide, a ‘continuity’ narrative prevails and situates genocidal violence in the temporal space of wars that preceded and followed it. The commemorative narrative and the innocents Remembering those who perished during war can be painful and complex as it means acknowledging how victims died, who killed them and the reasons for the killings. The difference between the national genocide commemorative narrative and the commemorative counter narrative could be said to reside in how inculpability and its variations are conceptualised, acknowledged and orbited. Whereas the national genocide commemorative narrative revolves around survivors and their stories of suffering and endurance, the commemorative counter narrative revolves around the concept of collective victimisation and innocence. Antoine, a Hutu man who lost his pregnant wife and five children during the massacres committed by the RPF speaks of shared victimhood and innocence: ‘Everyone lost. There were a lot of victims’ and ‘One day, history will avenge the innocents from all sides!’ The absence of official commemorations of the war deaths inside Rwanda means that for many, genocide memorialisation is not part of their history because it does not recognise their losses or suffering. The commemorative narrative for war victims is personal and unofficial. The remembrance of the Hutu who died is less likely to be housed within museums, memorial sites or other public spaces of commemoration, than within the anonymity of non-­specific sites of remembrance, such as cemeteries, or by fragile constructions, such as small makeshift roadside shrines and burial sites, rendered doubly vulnerable by inclement weather and hazardous locations. Memorialisation also takes place at different times than those endorsed yearly by political elites. Family and friends remember their loved ones lost in war through informal ceremonies held commemorating massacres and low-­key religious functions carried out to pray for the dead at the time when they were killed. During an informal conversation, Adeline told me that she was going to be away from the capital for a few days: she was attending a small religious ceremony to remember her family who perished in the massacres. She also added that June was the commemorative month for part of her family because it was in June that their members were slain. In the Rwandan diaspora, remembering the events of 1994 can be personal and public, with commemorations taking place on different dates from the official ones marking the beginning of the genocide. In London for instance, alternative commemorations were held during the month of April to remember the massacre of Kibeho that took place on the 22 April 1995, during which at least 4,000 people were killed in a camp for the

Formation of the genocide master-narrative   39

internally displaced under the protection of the United Nations Assistance Mission for Rwanda. In July 2011 Rwandan refugees whom I met in Kampala, Uganda, told me that a few days earlier they had held a memorial service for their co-­nationals who had been killed in an attack outside the capital, which they connected to the past violence and its legacy. Genocide and war commemorative narratives are not completely separate or discrete, and the following example that includes war and genocide in commemorations indicates that there are points of conjuncture. In 2018 the organisation Jambo invited any person (Rwandan or not) ‘to have a special thought for all the victims of all the crimes according to a program which ensures no victim or survivor is forgotten’. The organisation proceeds to detail a weekly plan of remembrance as follows: Week from 1 to 6 April: Victims and survivors of political killings; Week from 7 to 13 April: Victims and survivors of the genocide against the Tutsi; Week from 14 to 20 April: Victims and survivors of war crimes; and Week from 21 to 27 April: Victims and survivors of crimes against humanity (or genocide) against Hutu. (Jambo, 2018) The commemorative narrative embodied in this remembrance plan describes multiple categories of victims and survivors; acknowledges that the two ethnic groups have been subjected to different crimes, respectively the genocide against the Tutsi and crimes against humanity against the Hutu, while also suggesting that these crimes may be named genocide; categorises victims according to crimes committed against them, thus linking the memorialisation and justice narratives; and considers the genocide crime to be one type of crime to be punished among a broader range of crimes to be prosecuted. The (unjust) justice narrative and the perpetrators of all crimes Supporters of the war master-­narrative challenge the mainstream justice narrative focused on genocide only to proclaim that all crimes committed during war by both parties should be brought to justice. There are three main instances of RPF crimes that have gone unpunished: immediately after the end of the civil war, during the period of the civil war and violence in the north-­west of the country, and as a matter of general routine, crimes against the opponents of the regime (Uvin, 2001). The entire justice system, and its narrative, is considered to be partial because it focuses only on the genocide against the Tutsi; a hierarchy of responsibility for genocide spanning from the ‘hauts responsables’ (senior officials) to the ‘bas people’ (low people) is identified and supporters of the war narrative also attribute some responsibility for the genocide to the RPF, who are themselves part of the ‘hauts responsables’ (Zorbas, 2009).

40   Formation of the genocide master-narrative

The implementation of justice through gacaca is also challenged through the narrative of ‘unjust justice’ as Valentine, a Hutu woman whose older brother was accused of genocide and imprisoned for 19 years, explains: He was the victim of a plot even though he was innocent. The suffering is double. The real génocidaires are free, while an innocent lingers in prison. He is being struck twice: by the blows of the dishonest militia and the unjust justice ruled by the country’s high authorities. Reymond goes further to speak of how unsettling the generalisation of these forms of injustice are and differentiates the various ways in which injustice is done: Many innocent people lie in prison, and there are even some who have died in prison. There are some who are released after a dozen years without trial! This gives reason to the wrongdoers who have decimated our families! The gacaca turned into account settlements and internal trials. This is unjust justice! I do not even dare to sue those who have decimated my maternal family, so I am frustrated! I have no more confidence in this justice! The (dis-)unity narrative: divisionism and authoritarianism Justice is considered to be a pre-­condition for reconciliation. Supporters of the war master-­narrative criticise the genocide narrative of reconciliation for expelling war victims from commemorations, implementing inequitable justice, rewriting history through the lens of the war victor and suppressing alternative voices. Narrative closure leaves no space for the expression of historic consciousness and identity narratives that deviate from the official narrative and that could lead to accusations of divisionism or of harbouring the genocide ideology. Such a climate is not conducive to reconciliation. Furthermore, the negation of ethnic positions and the constant reference to the genocide is criticised as a ploy to disguise authoritarian policies and the monopolisation of power by Ugandan former exiles (Hintjens, 2001). Authoritarian governance undermines democracy and freedom, as Celestin, a Hutu man in an ethnically mixed marriage explains: ‘one day we will understand that what we have is not the freedom nor good governance that is being proclaimed all the time! This is the century’s (biggest) hypocrisy.’ The narrative of unity and reconciliation proclaimed by the proponents of the  genocide master-­narrative is countered by a discourse of on-­going ethnic divisionism, discrimination and authoritarianism among the supporters of the  war master-­narrative. So far, this chapter has identified a range of relevant narratives, such as naming, commemorative, justice and (dis-)unity, that converge to form and give strength to a master-­narrative of genocide and a counter

Formation of the genocide master-narrative   41

master-­narrative of war, which are in competition for legitimacy. Rescapés and génocidaires have centre stage in the master-­narrative of genocide and their prominence is questioned in the master-­narrative of war.

The marginalised voices Master-­narratives develop to form a relatively coherent story, which is articulated around key terms (genocide and war), main protagonists (rescapés and génocidaires and war victims and offenders) and themes that fit the core master-­ narrative. Core narratives in the constellation of genocide narratives focus on the victims and perpetrators, and their antagonistic relationship in the past, while also inviting the population as a whole to remember the genocide, participate in the remembrance of the victims and bring the perpetrators to justice to promote unity and reconciliation in the post-­genocide present. The naming, commemorative, justice and unity narratives connect the genocide past and its legacy to the post-­genocide present. They place victims and perpetrators at centre stage in the narrative of the nation by revisiting their past relationship to the genocide and reconfiguring their past and present existence in legal, social and cultural domains. Yet, a focus on rescapés and génocidaires only partially explains neither the power of the genocide master-­narrative for the population as a whole or its strength for particular social groups. Supporting narratives that connect other social actors to victims’ stories of survival and perpetrators’ accounts of killing are important to maintaining and strengthening the cohesiveness of the genocide master-­narrative. These supporting narratives can be glimpsed in the naming narratives of the national heroes, guilty bystanders, saviours; in the commemorative narratives of the moderate Hutus who died and of those who opposed or resisted, the lost saviours, the innocents; in the justice narrative of the inyangamugayo, the witnesses and the community; in the reconciliation and unity narrative that invites all to reconcile and belong to the new nation. The reconciliation process that aims to forge the new Banyarwanda is a process of denying differences rather than acknowledging that there are more of them. Beyond rescapés and génocidaires, the marginalised majority is not a homogenous people but a congregation of individuals whose personal stories and historic consciousness of the past violence and its legacy depend on their position in society and their positionality in genocide and war master-­narratives. National supporting narratives connect rescapés and génocidaires by attributing moral responsibility to non-­perpetrator members of the perpetrator group for the actions carried out by the killers, resulting in collective shame and guilt while positioning the heroic rescuer in the category of the exceptional individual who stands out from the majority. Supportive narratives also consolidate the genocide master-­narrative by simplifying complex positionalities under the appearance of mono-­ethnic identities for ethnically mixed individuals and families who are forced into belonging to one group only. Supporting narratives also omit the stories, losses and actions of the minority Twa and place those of the

42   Formation of the genocide master-narrative

returnees from the diaspora into the multiple category of victim by proxy, saviour and victor. Inherent to the formation of the master-­narrative of genocide and that of war is the existence of a process of exclusion and marginalisation: of protagonists and storylines that do not fit neatly within its constellation. Controversial, ambivalent or uncomfortable narratives are disregarded, accorded nominal significance, partially incorporated or excluded. They become marginalised. For instance, both the genocide and war master-­narratives essentialise the complex stories of families of mixed ethnicity, express a degree of ambivalence towards rescuers and ignore the plight of the minority group Twa. How do individuals who are neither victims nor perpetrators articulate their historic consciousness by engaging with the supporting national narratives that are most relevant to them, relating to the core narratives of the victims and perpetrators as well as to those of other social actors, and situate themselves within the genocide against the Tutsi master-­narrative and to a lesser degree in the war master-­narrative? Marginalised social actors show agency in the ways in which they develop narrative strategies to position themselves and to cope with being positioned in the constellation of narratives that form the genocide master-narrative, and to a lesser degree in the constellation of narratives that form the war masternarrative. The analysis of marginal social actors, and their narrative engagements, addresses the following questions: Can competing narratives be of equal worth? How is historic consciousness articulated in personal narratives of the everyday? Is narrative reconciliation possible? What is the role of personal stories of violence in narrating the social history of the genocide?

Conclusion The chapter has traced the emergence, formation and consolidation of the genocide against the Tutsi master-­narrative that is constituted by a constellation of public narratives that I refer to as naming, commemorative, justice, reconciliation and unity narratives. Through a process of appropriation and narrative convergence, the narrative of the Rwandan genocide has been transformed into the master-­narrative of the genocide against the Tutsi, which has become the foundational narrative for imagining the nation in post-­genocide Rwanda. This outcome is achieved through internal dialogue among narratives of the genocide constellation and through external engagement with the counter master-­narrative of war, which is also constituted by a constellation of similar narratives in dialogue. I have argued that rescapés and génocidaires have centre stage in the master-­ narrative of the genocide and their prominence is questioned in the master-­ narrative of war, and also that this discourse is limited in that it does not capture the narrative of genocide of the majority of Rwandans. The chapter sets the context for the examination in the following chapters of a range of marginalised subjectivities and their different engagements with the master-­narrative of the genocide against the Tutsi and, to a lesser degree, the master-­narrative of war.

Chapter 3

Reframing culpability, shame and guilt Non-­p erpetrator members of the perpetrator group

Introduction For a people to co-­exist one group has to own up the wrongs committed on the other on behalf of those who committed them. (President Paul Kagame quoted in Mbaraga, 2013) For the time being, we are called génocidaires even though we have not played any role. (Fidele, Hutu man) At the opening of the Youth Connect conference in the Rwandan capital Kigali in June 2013, President Paul Kagame invited all members of the perpetrator’s group, especially young people, to apologise publicly on behalf of their parents and relatives for crimes committed during the genocide against the Tutsi in 1994. While the remembrance narrative focuses on the genocide victims, the justice narrative addresses the perpetrators and the unity and reconciliation narrative extends to the population as a whole, the president’s call for an apology is directed at a specific sector of the Rwandan people: non-­perpetrator members of the perpetrator group ‘on behalf of whom’ crimes were committed. They belong to the majority ethnic group who also constitute the majority of the Rwandan population. Yet, as the quote by Fidele indicates, members of the majority group distance themselves from attributions of responsibility for violence. What are the processes that form and sustain a narrative of moral culpability and how do non-­perpetrators respond to the shame and guilt that they are subjected to by the public attribution of collective responsibility for the genocide? In the previous chapter, I described the formation of the master-­narrative of the genocide against the Tutsi and the dialogical relationship with the counter master-­narrative of war by which it becomes the foundational narrative for imagining the nation in post-­genocide Rwanda. I also outlined the role that core narratives about the survival of genocide victims and the killing by the perpetrators perform in the constellation of genocide narratives as well as the on-­going

44   Reframing culpability, shame and guilt

significance of the narratives of rescapés and génocidaires as they are reconfigured in legal, social and cultural domains in post-­genocide Rwanda. Narratives are co-­constitutive and dialogical. The master-­narrative of the genocide against the Tutsi is incomplete if its constellation is formed solely by narratives of victims and perpetrators, because other social protagonists inhabit the same spaces of violence. They too are part of the social history of violence. This chapter argues that it is the relationship of core narratives of rescapés and génocidaires with supporting public narratives about less visible yet significant social actors, such as non-­perpetrator members of the perpetrator group, that sustains and gives strength to the master-­narrative of the genocide against the Tutsi. The narrative themes of survival and killing are consolidated through the inclusion of complementary themes of moral culpability, guilt and shame in the constellation of genocide narratives. Shame and guilt – a brief overview While this chapter examines the Rwandan case, it contributes to the general understanding of moral responsibility, as collective guilt and shame are significant issues for collaborators (Temes, 2016, members of the perpetrator group (Branscombe and Doosje, 2004; O’Donnell, 2005) and their descendants (Parens, 2009). In her analysis of guilt and shame for the persecuted and the persecutors of Holocaust crimes committed by the Nazis, Fulbrook (2016) observes that while the perpetrator community tended to deny responsibility and to reject collective guilt, subsequent generations of communities connected with the perpetrators showed vicarious shame and identification with the victims in addition to denial. Similarly, various and changing perspectives took place among Nazi collaborators, who coped with the legacy of their actions through denial of guilt and shame as well as withdrawal, silence and religious conversions. However, their legacies became more elaborate as decades passed, moving from conformity with a dominant narrative about ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ in the Second World War towards expressions of a shared feeling of shame about the past (Temes, 2016). In the context of Rwanda, a study on the relation of emotional climate to participation in gacaca indicated that emotions such as sadness, fear, disgust, anxiety and shame, increased after participation in gacaca for both survivors and perpetrators, while guilt increased for the prisoners but not for the survivors (Kanyangara et al., 2007). Assessing the prospects for reconciliation and comparing shame and guilt, Drumbl (2000) writes that the highly interdependent yet dualistic nature of Rwandan society, together with the widespread level of participation in and victimisation by the genocide, creates a situation where accountability for the violence can be pursued more effectively through the restorative cultivation of shame rather than through the retributive imposition of guilt. This chapter examines attributions of guilt and shame in the social and narrative lives of Rwandans. It traces the formation of the public narrative of moral

Reframing culpability, shame and guilt   45

culpability addressed to members of the perpetrator group that leads to collective guilt and shame, and examines how non-­perpetrators engage with that narrative and also with the general constellation of genocide narratives, and war narratives to a lesser extent. The chapter simultaneously addresses the two connotations of the term ‘narrative’, as adjective and verb: it unpacks the culpability/shame/guilt narrative and it narrates genocidal violence from the perspective of non-­ perpetrator members of the perpetrator group whose experiences continue to be under-­researched in the social history of genocides.

Naming culpability, shame and guilt: non-­p erpetrator members of the perpetrator group Although violence is frequently framed as being between two ethnic groups, it is easily overlooked that it is usually a subset of the group’s members who in fact plan and participate in violence. In Rwanda, the ideologues, planners and most of the implementers of genocidal violence belong to the majority Hutu ethnic group. An estimated one in five Hutu men committed violence during the genocide (McDoom, 2009). However, astonishing as this statistics is, it still means that four out of five Hutu men did not commit violence (McDoom, 2013). Furthermore, estimates of the numbers of victims (dead and survivors) and perpetrators indicate that almost five million Rwandans, more than 70 per cent of the total population of approximately seven million people, do not fit the categorisation of rescapé and génocidaire (Donà, 2013). Given that the minority Twa comprises 1 to 2 per cent of the total population, it follows that the overwhelming majority of Hutus fall outside the core narrative of genocide victims and perpetrators. This account is in stark contrast with the general view of popular participation in the genocide (Mamdani, 2001). Different reasons are advanced to explain the representation of widespread involvement in violence: the country was densely populated; killings took place in public spaces; the intimate nature of violence; the role of the radio broadcasting lists of people to be targeted and news of the killings; and the highly structured administrative organisation that facilitated the mobilisation of mobs of killers (Fujii, 2004; Hintjens, 2001; Human Rights Watch, 1999; Mamdani, 2001; Pottier, 2002; Pruniér, 1995). Contrary to the ‘myth of innocence’ that portrayed the German population in the role of innocent bystanders who were unaware of the deportations and mass killings of Jews during the Holocaust (Barnett, 1999), the reverse ‘myth of culpability’ exists in Rwanda, according to which the majority ethnic group is held morally responsible for the genocide because of the public knowledge surrounding the killings. For the Government, there is no ambiguity in the narrative of the genocide, as President Kagame writes: ‘genocide happened in broad daylight and the population knows who is guilty and who is innocent of genocide crimes’ (Kagame, 2009a: xxiii). In the years soon after the end of ethnic violence, a tendency to ‘globalize guilt according to identity’ (Eltringham, 2004: 69) could

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be detected in the public discourse on the genocide, which intertwined the victim/perpetrator dichotomy with the Tutsi/Hutu identities. Internationally, the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) contributed to consolidate a narrative of collective guilt in the language of the trial with attacks being led by Hutus (Kamatali, 2003). Furthermore, the process of reconciliation, and in particular gacaca, created a hierarchy of victimhood that imbued Hutu and Tutsi identities with collective guilt and victimisation, respectively (Begley, 2016). It is in this context that the call for a public apology made by the president in June 2013 and the launch of the programme Ndi Umunyarwanda (I am Rwandan) in November of that year are significant events in the consolidation of the narrative of collective culpability, guilt and shame. Almost two decades after the end of the genocide, the call for a public apology was formalised with the launch of the Ndi Umunyarwanda, which claims to foster unity and reconciliation by rewriting the country’s social history and reimagining national identities. The programme includes as a resolution the statement that the genocide against the Tutsi was committed in the name of Hutus, thus for the real healing of Rwandan society it is indispensible that Hutus whose name was used in the genocide crime apologize to Tutsi victims, denounce such acts and distance themselves from perpetrators, and fight clearly against the genocide ideology and ethnical divisionism. (Mbaraga, 2013) The programme of ‘Hutu apology’ (Mbaraga, 2013) has been criticised for positioning all members of the majority ethnic group in the space of the morally culpable. The invitation to make an apology implies an acknowledgement of an offence or failure. In 2012, a year prior to the call for Hutu apology, gacaca courts had ended their proceedings. The closure of the transitional justice process completed the legal and social process of distinguishing criminal culpability from innocence. With the génocidaires named and brought to justice, the words ‘owning up the wrongs … on behalf of those who committed them’ extends culpability to the remaining members of the perpetrator group, those who did not commit the crimes yet are held morally accountable for them. The justice and culpability narratives in the master-­narrative of the genocide against the Tutsi are thus brought together to describe génocidaires and non-­génocidaires as (criminally and morally respectively) culpable. The narrative of culpability is in dialogue with the killing narrative of the génocidaires and the survival narrative of the rescapés. Non-­perpetrators are held ethically responsible for not having stopped the wrongs committed on their behalf and for not having saved those from the other group upon whom the wrongs were committed. Personal stories of members of the perpetrator group who did not commit atrocities are transformed into a homogenous story of culpability. While the justice narrative addressed at the génocidaires tells a story of

Reframing culpability, shame and guilt   47

personal crime and punishment, the culpability narrative addressed at non-­ génocidaires is a story of moral responsibility for the ‘wrongs’ committed in the name of the ethnic group and for lack of intervention. In the dialogical relationship between the core justice narrative and the supporting culpability narrative, we can observe two narrative shifts, from criminal to moral responsibility and from individual to collective culpability, with the effect that social history is written through the appropriation and dissemination of the official narrative of moral culpability, in which the majority of the population is ‘being positioned’ (Bamberg, 2004) in the role of the guilty party. But there is a difference between culpability and guilt. Culpability is defined as ‘responsibility for a fault or wrong; blame’ (The Oxford Living Dictionary, 2018a: n.p.), and in the context of Rwanda it refers to powerful elites attributing collective responsibility to the Hutu group for having committed a wrong for which they are to be blamed. Guilt can refer to ‘the fact of having committed a specified or implied offence or crime’ (The Oxford Living Dictionary, 2018b: n.p.), as in the case of génocidaires, or it can describe ‘a feeling of having committed wrong or failed in an obligation’ (The Oxford Living Dictionary, 2018b: n.p.), as in the case of the non-­génocidaires. Political elites publicly inflict culpability onto all members of a group while the blamed group experiences guilt. Culpability and guilt express different positionalities: of those assigning the blame and those receiving the factual or emotional blame. The Hutu majority becomes ‘guilty by association’, as the attribution of guilt is made not because of any factual evidence but because of their association with the offending party. The so-­called programme of Hutu apology saw young Hutus expressing guilt by association by apologising for the actions of their family members and relatives (Blackie and Hitchcott, 2017). Culpability and guilt are linked to shame, which is a ‘painful feeling of humiliation or distress caused by the consciousness of wrong or foolish behaviour; loss of respect or esteem; dishonour’ (The Oxford Living Dictionary, 2018c: n.p.). In post-­genocide Rwanda, the official narrative of culpability has resulted in collective shame (Eltringham, 2004), which Rwandans refer to as la honte (shame) or la tâche (stain, stigma, mark). This has a profound mark on their identity, as expressed by Rose: ‘Nowadays it is a shame to be Hutu … Hutu is likened to killer, bastard, heartless, bad and everything else you can think of.’ The culpability/guilt/shame narrative triad is central to the consolidation of the master-­narrative of the genocide against the Tutsi because it incorporates the non-­génocidaires into the master-­narrative of genocide against the Tutsi, attributes (criminal and moral) culpability to génocidaires and non-­génocidaires alike, and makes the majority of the population, specifically Hutu as a group, feel guilty and ashamed. Culpability results from the fact that génocidaires acted in the name of the group and also that the majority witnessed violence but did not intervene to stop  the perpetrators or help the victims. How do Rwandans engage with the moral culpability narrative that is being assigned to them and address the shame and guilt that they are made to collectively carry? What narrative themes

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do non-­perpetrators draw upon to voice their historic consciousness of violence? The remaining part of this chapter examines Rwandans’ engagement with the narrative of collective ethico-­moral culpability, shame and guilt in dialogical relationship with other narratives of the constellation of the master-­narrative of genocide. It shows that there is resistance to the imposed narrative of culpability and ensuing guilt and shame, and that this resistance is articulated with reference to three components of the narrative: morality, culpability and collectivity. An alternative narrative of ordinary morality and decency is advanced in order to challenge the collective attribution of moral culpability; stories of non-­ involvement towards perpetrators and non-­assistance towards victims are drawn upon to rethink culpability; and the transitional justice system is used to give prominence to personal culpability instead of collective responsibility. Central to this chapter is the idea that narrative engagements reveal non-­perpetrators’ strategies both for distancing themselves and their conduct from the imposed narrative of culpability and the world view of the perpetrators, and for dissociating themselves from guilt and shame.

Revisiting moral culpability through ordinary morality The national narrative of moral culpability represents the majority of the population as a guilty party to genocide: as ethnic members of the génocidaire group they are morally accountable for the actions of those who committed crimes in their name and for not having intervened to stop the genocide. Yet, there is a historic consciousness among the population about ‘those who were not involved’ and also that ‘the majority were not involved’. Beyond the binary rescapé and génocidaire there are ‘ordinary’ Rwandans who stood back from the call to participate in genocidal violence and who belong to a moral order that is different from that of the extremists – the moral world of ordinary, good-­hearted people. The term ‘ordinary’ is also used to describe perpetrators, individuals who become involved in violence not necessarily because of ideology or ethnic hatred but due to intra-­group dynamics and pressure. In the context of the Holocaust, Browning (1992) explains that for the ‘ordinary’ men of the reserve police battalion 101 in Poland, neither anti-­Semitism nor firmly held Nazi beliefs were necessary to motivate them to march Jewish civilians into the woods and shoot them in the neck; what made them commit mass murder was a feeling of obligation to one another and a desire not to leave such an unpleasant duty to their peers. In Rwanda, Fujii writes that joiners, low ranking implementers of the genocide, are ‘ordinary people, farmers, with no previous police or military training, married men with children’ (2008: 585) who do not fit the category of ‘loose molecules’, professional thugs or violence specialists but individuals whose actions are better explained through the power of local ties. Indeed, perpetrators have variously been described as extraordinary only by what they do and not by who they are (Waller, 2002: 8).

Reframing culpability, shame and guilt   49

But if perpetrators are ordinary individuals in terms of socio-­demographic characteristics or motivations, their world views are not ordinary for Rwandans, who position génocidaires and their actions in a different moral order to that of the ordinary majority. In response to the public narrative of collective moral culpability, they reconfigure the moral space of wrong and right by positioning génocidaires in the realm of extremism and immorality and placing the non-­ génocidaire majority in the space of ordinariness and morality. This repositioning occurs through an ‘act of distancing’ from the culprits, by drawing upon moral and religious norms, and by placing non-­perpetrators in the moral space of right and the perpetrators in that of wrong. Isidore for instance, confronted the interahamwe who were armed with machetes by saying: ‘You, young men, are evildoers. Turn on your heels and go. Your blades point the way towards a dreadful misfortune for us all. Do not stir up disputes too dangerous for us all’ (Hatzfeld, 2005: 106). In his warning, there is a clear separation between ‘you’, the evildoers, and the ‘us’, who are the subjects of misfortune and danger. To separate and distinguish the non-­perpetrator majority from the extremists is of paramount importance for ordinary Rwandans’ articulation of historic consciousness. Reflecting on the overlap between ethnicity and culpability, Rose connects her nightmare during the conflict when people wanted to kill her with her frustration after it ended, when she realised that to be Hutu is a crime, complaining that ‘everybody associates you to the killers, did you know they call us interahamwe abroad!’ Rose continues to carefully articulate her distance from the perpetrators by adding: ‘How would you feel to carry the name of your enemy, the name of a killer of innocents, the name of somebody who is wanted by the international justice system, of a bad person who has tortured you?’ These words clearly convey distancing from those she refers to as killers, bad people, the ones she considers to be her enemy and torturers. She is ‘being positioned’ in the category of criminal, made to ‘carry the name’, to be called interahamwe, a derogatory term, and in response repositions herself in the role of the victim who is the subject of cruelty, drawing from the victimhood narrative of the war master-­narrative. While belonging to the same ethnic group as the génocidaires, Rose does not consider herself to be a member of the extremist section of the same ethnic group. Soon after the genocide, the term ‘moderate’ was used to refer to those Hutu who resisted the call to violence. Pruniér wrote that the term ‘moderate Hutu’ appeared to indicate ‘Hutu who actively resisted at a visible, political level the violence perpetrated (and planned) by the CDR constellation’, but adds that ‘If “Hutu moderate” signifies only visible actors at the political level, why is there no collective term for the “ordinary” Hutu who resisted the genocide?’ (1995: 182). The implication that ‘moderates’ were all slain offers ground to the assumption that Hutus alive in post-­genocide Rwanda are accomplices, supporters or morally culpable bystanders. Moderate non-­perpetrator members of the perpetrator group distance themselves from the génocidaires with reference to the moral order of good and evil. Contrary to scholarly representations of

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popular participation in the genocide and of the normalisation of evil (Kayumba and Kimonyo, 2008), the extremists and their actions are placed in a separate amoral and abnormal space from the moral and normal one inhabited by the ordinary majority, the non-­implicated people. Extremists saw ‘evil in the form of good’ (Hatzfeld, 2005: 216), became like ‘wild animals who were blinded by ferocity’ (Hatzfeld, 2005: 229) or were ‘hooked by the madness’ (Hatzfeld, 2005: 81). While the extremists are described as ‘bad-­hearted people, the killers, the bad ones, criminals and génocidaires’, the ordinary majority are the ‘good-­hearted’, ‘honest’ people who hold onto religious values and believe in the moral good. For Damas, the son of a Hutu father and Tutsi mother, the actions of the killers are incomprehensible because they belong to a different moral order: ‘As a Christian and honest man, my altruism does not allow me to understand how somebody can kill his neighbour with whom he shared everything.’ Damas places himself in a very different moral space from that of the killers. His historic consciousness of the past draws upon religious and moral frames of self-­ representation of the honest and altruistic person, for whom the violent actions of the killers are incomprehensible. While he belongs to the ethnic group of the perpetrators, following the patrilineal transmission of ethnicity, Damas does not view the violent actions as having been carried out ‘on his behalf ’. He does not align with the narrative of collective moral culpability. Non-­perpetrators also voiced their disapproval of violence, and had even warned and confronted the extremists. The wife of the génocidaire Alphonse challenged him by saying: ‘everything you are doing will have accursed consequences because it is not normal and passes all humanity. So much blood provokes a fate beyond our lives. We are going towards damnation’ (Hatzfeld, 2005: 102–103). Alphonse’s wife knew of her husband’s deeds but could not intervene to stop his violence. Yet she was not a supporter but rather a disapproving witness of her husband’s actions. She admonished him about the abnormality that ‘passes all humanity’ and drew upon religious images of curses and damnation to speak of the impact of violence. She places herself in a different moral order from that of her husband, while also being aware that the consequence – ensuing moral disorder and damnation – affect all. Within this religious cosmic order of good and bad, there are divine rewards and punishments, as Antoine, a Hutu man whose Tutsi wife was killed with their two girls while he was outside looking for food, explains: My neighbour took advantage of my absence to commit killings in my house. Unfortunately my neighbour died in Congo with all his family. One harvests what one sows. I will never sow hate and vengeance. God rewards the selected ones. In response to the top-­down representation of the morally guilty Hutu in the national imagination, the homogenous view of the Hutu is broken down, with

Reframing culpability, shame and guilt   51

perpetrators being positioned in the realm of extremism and immorality and the non-­perpetrator majority being placed in the space of ordinariness and morality. The narrative of collective culpability portrays all members of the perpetrator group, and most notably non-­perpetrators, in close proximity with the génocidaires by ethnic association. Without denying that there are Rwandans who were complicit, who deny responsibility or feel guilt and shame for the genocide, their experiences are not necessarily homogenous or totalising ones. Hutu non-­ perpetrators were unable to stop the violence they witnessed, but that does not mean that they condoned it or did not attempt to help victims when they could. The national narrative of collective responsibility for crimes committed in one’s name implies that Rwandans are morally responsible because they were present when violence unfolded and did not intervene to halt it: they did not stop the perpetrators nor did they help the victims. The next section examines Rwandans’ narrative engagement with attributions of culpability for non-­intervention, and foregrounds the dialogical connections between the supporting narrative of culpability, guilt and shame with the core narratives of the génocidaires’ killing and rescapés’ survival. Challenging culpability: resistance, choice and power The public request for a national Hutu apology implies that Hutu non-­ perpetrators are situated closer to the actions of the génocidaires than to the predicament of the victims due to their inaction. They are, according to the national narrative of collective responsibility, passive onlookers who went along with the actions of the perpetrators, did not resist violence or help the victims and are made to carry collectively the moral guilt and shame of non-­intervention. Yet, their personal perspectives and experiences on non-­intervention remain marginalised. Rwandans use the metaphor of the ‘hunt’ to describe the dynamic of genocidal violence in which there were not only those pursuing and those being pursued but also those who ‘were neither pursuing nor being pursued’. As violence erupted, Damas recounts: everyone living in the neighbourhood escaped to the orphanage, both Hutus and Tutsi, but a short time afterwards the Hutu went back to their homes because they soon found out that they were not sought after [italics added] to be killed, they were not in danger like the Tutsi neighbours. The hunt metaphor expresses the dynamic of hiding and seeking, of daily patrols and the sustained efforts to survive, resist, witness and protect. Detailed accounts of the unfolding violence suggest that those who were ‘neither pursuing nor being pursued’ were aware that lists of targets were being compiled and heard the names of the wanted on the radio. They witnessed house-­by-house searches, saw people undergo identity checks at road blocks, heard the stories of people being taken away or running for their lives, hiding in peoples’ houses or

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empty buildings, moving to the marshes or fields and trying to reach safe areas. At the beginning of the genocide, Rwandans set up joint patrols and protected one another from aggressors. When the dangers of this form of active resistance became increasingly overwhelming, they continued to resist discreetly, through private acts of kindness or by assuming the role of onlookers (African Rights, 1994: Human Rights Watch, 1999). While the general account of the hunt was one in which Hutu extremists were going after the Tutsi, at a micro-­level, on a daily basis, everybody was afraid. As Pierre explains: during the genocide, I was in school. I did not know what was going on … there were Tutsi refugees who came to the church inside the school compound fleeing the Hutu militias … in a space of a week, the military launched grenades on the group. They all died the same day. We were afraid. We had to remain in the school and to be calm, when you started to be afraid, people said that you were a Tutsi and could kill you. In the context of chaos and uncertainty non-­perpetrators had to constantly negotiate their position in a balance between the call to violence of the perpetrators and the cries of the victims, as the next sections explain. Non-­i nvolvement, passive resistance and the génocidaires At the time of the genocide, there was widespread pressure to participate in violence. The extremists aimed to create two categories of people in Rwanda, the killers and the killed. There was also punishment for Rwandans who refused to take part in the violence. Ignace explains that the extremists ‘boarded up the homes of the reluctant ones. They threatened them with fines. They herded them towards Kigungo and gave big lectures. Those who tried to zigzag found themselves overtaken and set back on the right track’ (Hatzfeld, 2005: 65). Non-­involvement was a means of distancing oneself from the genocide project. It was a way of saying, through concealed acts of solidarity, who you were, and, through tacit acts of refusal, who you were not: neither a killer nor an accomplice to killing. Through pro-­active silence and a morally defined sense of space, non-­involvement confounded the expectation that all Hutus would be accomplices and supporters of the genocide. As open resistance started to die out, acts of non-­participation were situated closer to passive resistance than passive support for violence. Societal expectations about gendered roles meant that it was most difficult for Hutu men to resist the call to violence because there was an expectation of participation, and many households decided to supply the labour of one person per household to the genocidal effort, with perpetrator households often being represented by a single male perpetrator (usually the father or the son) (Verwimp, 2005). It was easier for women and children within families to remain onlookers, although both women and men were expected to report victims and not to hide them (Jones, 2002).

Reframing culpability, shame and guilt   53

For perpetrators, acts of non-­participation could mean rejecting the authority of the military, by paying to avoid going on patrol, hiding, disobeying orders or absconding. Augustin explains how his brother stood back from the killing project: Our parents died before the genocide started but in spite of this we did not grow up with a wild spirit. This is one of the reasons that pushed my older brother to desert the army because he was given the order to participate in the killings. Given the public nature of the killings, the essential meaning of being a non-­ perpetrator lay in the creation of strategies for not being present for participation, which sometimes included hiding in the same manner as the victims. One night Innocent encountered three strangers who told him that they were Pentecostals and the ‘Holy Scripture forbade them to kill men whom the Good Lord had created in His image. And since the authorities forbade them to leave the area, they had gone into the forest’ (Hatzfeld, 2005: 108). As well as creating a moral distance from the killings, individuals distanced themselves from violence physically, by hiding, retreating – and witnessing. Rose opted for a strategy of passive non-­intervention once it became clear that active engagement against the genocide was not possible, as even those in positions of authority were powerless: It was impossible for mayors, etc. to stop the killings, there were lots of FPR [Front Patriotique Rwandais] in the population; it’s unjust that those mayors, etc. are now being imprisoned for not having stopped the killings, that’s not facing the truth about how things were. Everyone was just trying to save themselves. In articulating their historic consciousness of the violent past, family socialisation and values accounted for non-­participation in violence, while religious values, particularly the belief in the sanctity of human life, motivated others to hide in order to avoid becoming perpetrators. Rose explained that the lack of resistance she witnessed was the outcome of an appraisal of the situation, a perceived lack of commensurate force and feelings of danger and insecurity. Non-­participation in violence can be attributed to chance, evasion, refusal, or distance: Williams (2014) outlines the role of proximal factors in participation or non-­participation in violence. Additionally, household location and social ties proximate to leaders can be seen to account for differing spatial patterns of involvement. These indicate that the majority of perpetrators live close to or in the same family as other perpetrators (McDoom, 2013) and that non-­perpetrators are more likely to be geographically and socially distant from the perpetrators. Coincidence or luck seem also to have played a part, as some people were recruited walking along the road (Straus, 2006), while

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others simply had the good fortune to have avoided being seen by the recruiters. When approached for recruitment, situational factors governed by fear – of authority, of being viewed as a non-­conformist, of repudiation by peer groups – played a decisive role. Modes of public behaviour that may have been deemed immoral and illegal during times of peace, such as shirking one’s duty through bribery, proved to be effective strategies for countering the force of fear and refusing its imprecations (Gourevitch, 1998; Straus, 2006). But to refuse coercion meant being fined, beaten or killed, and physical punishment was a public affair, a spectacle staged to further induce fear. Indeed, witnessing the punishment of those who resisted the call for violence served as a deterrent for further acts of non-­involvement. Post-­genocide engagements with and assessments of non-­involvement required mediations and negotiations, as non-­perpetrators reframed accusations of culpability for non-­intervention as methods of non-­ involved resistance to the call to participate in the genocidal project. Lack of assistance and the rescapés Moral culpability is also attributed to the ordinary majority for not having responded to the victims’ cries for help. Many were unwilling or unable to help, hide or protect victims. Innocent, for instance, recalls that a friend explained his refusal to assist by saying: ‘Innocent you are like a little brother to me. You saved your life and I rejoice in that. But if the situation returned, I would do the same. With such a fate, I had no choice’ (Hatzfeld, 2005: 115). For those with limited choices, non-­intervention was sometimes the least bad choice. Marie-­Chantal says: for a woman it was unthinkable to hide an acquaintance, even if you had been close to her since childhood, even if she gave you small sums of money. When the news got around of a concealed survivor, you had to give her up without delay to your neighbours. You might even be forced to kill her with your own hands. So it did not save her, beside lasting a few days longer for nothing, and it obliged you to do the most sickening work of the men. (Quoted in Hatzfeld, 2005: 115) As the terror escalated and surveillance became all-­pervasive, conditions for the non-­involved grew more uncertain. Sedata explains that rescuers who chose to also act as protectors could be forced to withdraw their help: ‘I hid at Isa’s home for three days. The family treated me very well. But then news went around that houses would be searched to unearth ibytso [accomplices] who were hiding. Every Hutu was right to be scared’ (Human Rights Watch, 1999: 599). Fear was the affect that gave the genocide its emotional, psychic dynamic. Fear, internalised and projected across the Rwandan landscape, determined

Reframing culpability, shame and guilt   55

relations between individuals, communities, the state and its institutions. There was fear of perpetrators, fear of disobeying orders, fear of punishment and becoming targets. This fear was compounded by fear of the enemy, the invading Rwandan Patriotic Army (RPA), and of the accomplices inside the country. There was also, due to uncertainty and chaos all around, a generalised ambience of fear. Dispositional attributes such as values, beliefs and emotions influence counter-­violent responses, as do relational processes and situationally driven decisions based on available, perceived and limited choices and power. Reasons for the non-­intervention of perpetrators and victims vary; dispositional traits, such as personal qualities and moral values, are used to explain non-­involvement in violence towards perpetrators, while situational reasons such as lack of power, restricted choices and fear are used to explain the absence of help towards victims. It is worth noting that ordinary Rwandans also helped victims, as discussed in the next chapter. In conclusion, non-­perpetrators’ personal stories do not necessarily mirror or align themselves with the public narrative of moral culpability. In relation to the narrative of génocidaires’ killing, non-­participation is interpreted as a form of resistance to the call to violence while in dialogue with the narrative of rescapés’ survival, non-­involvement and lack of assistance are explained by limited power and choice. Non-­perpetrator members of the perpetrator group resist the generalised attribution of culpability by reframing it through the language of resistance or incapability, and in doing so they distance themselves from collective guilt and shame. Fidele expresses frustration at the imposition of culpability: For the time being, we are called génocidaires even though we have not played any role. Even my wife is frustrated to have married a génocidaire. It is from these frustrations that we run away to go to a place that does not blame us like this. Resistance to the narrative of culpability is articulated through the language of personal responsibility. Drawing connections between the genocide and post-­ genocide periods, the next section explores another kind of narrative engagement with the public narrative of moral culpability, namely the personal and collective dimensions of culpability. Collective and individual responsibility and the ‘innocenté(e)s’ In the years following the end of the genocide, the dominant narrative of victims and perpetrators was replaced with that of rescapé and génocidaire, continuing to render invisible the stories of non-­perpetrators in the social history of the country. This is visible in the justice narrative that shaped social life in the postgenocide period, especially during gacaca, the transitional justice process that lasted for more than a decade from 2001 to 2012. In its designation of the

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c­ riminal and social position of non-­perpetrator members of the perpetrator group whose stories do not fit with the survival narrative of the rescapés or the killing narrative of the génocidaires, the phrase ‘those who are not implicated in gacaca’, differs from the broader narrative of collective culpability attributed to the Hutu group as a whole. Non-­perpetrators include two categories of citizens: those who are not subjected to gacaca because they are not accused in the first place and the innocenté(e)s (declared innocents), those who had been accused but were found innocent and exonerated. The gacaca process created a new category to describe the ethnic majority in the justice narrative. In the first connotation, non-­perpetrators are members of the population at large who did not take part in gacaca because they were not accused of genocide involvement, a fact which carries legal but also social significance, as Damas explains: ‘I was born from a Hutu father and Tutsi mother but I have always been completely against this ideology of massacres especially given that in my family, nobody was implicated’ (italics added). Non-­perpetrators are also those who went through the trials and were acquitted and declared innocent. Similarly to the emergence of the post-­genocide categories of rescapé and génocidaire, the new category of the innocenté(e) is a proxy category for ethnicity. Its inclusion in the justice narrative allows non-­ perpetrators to reconfigure culpability at a personal level, and to separate the guilty perpetrators from the innocent non-­perpetrators, those who were present but might not have been able to intervene to save victims or to openly resist the pressure to participate in violence. Gacaca courts prosecuted individuals for acts such as killing, raping and spoiling, but they did not prosecute certain punishable acts and omissions relating to non-­intervention in the interest of reconciliation and to acknowledge the circumstances under which such acts were committed, the intention of those who committed them, and the conditions of the country at the time. Failure to assist those in danger was one such type of non-­intervention. The national service of gacaca courts stipulated that it would be unjust to punish an ordinary citizen for not daring to step forward, under risk of death, and attempt to stop acts that were planned and put into action by the government. Other non-­punishable acts included presence without participation in violence. Presence at roadblocks was not considered a crime, as a person who had obeyed the order to be at a roadblock could not be convicted merely for presence at a roadblock where no crimes were committed. Attendance at meetings advocating the extermination of the Tutsi was also exonerated, as it was mandatory for each person (excluding the targets) to attend. Refusal to participate was regarded as civil disobedience at the best, or treason at the worst. Participation in night patrols during the genocide was not in itself a crime punishable by law. The gacaca courts recognised that national and proximal contexts influenced the range of permissible responses. To be present without intervening was not sufficient ground for culpability during genocide (Center for Conflict Management, 2012). As lack of intervention is exonerated from culpability in the interest of reconciliation,

Reframing culpability, shame and guilt   57

the call for the Hutu apology, which implies culpability, is also made in the name of peaceful coexistence and reconciliation. This divergence in narratives places non-­ perpetrator members of the perpetrator group in an ambivalent position, and they respond by redefining personal and collective responsibility. Gacaca tribunals convicted a little under one-­third of the adult Hutu population (mostly adult men) of various forms of participation (from sexual violence to killing, assault and petty theft) (Chakravarty, 2014). The majority who were not involved, meaning two-­thirds of the population, supports the distinction of the guilty from the innocent, as Damascene explains: I think that there should be justice to establish who did what during the Rwandan tragedy. We need a true justice and judicial system in Rwanda. People who got involved in the atrocities should be punished and those who are found innocent should be rehabilitated. Kalisa uses the phrase ‘the crime is personal’ to distinguish collective and personal crimes, adding that ‘nobody should be accused of crimes committed by others’. While gacaca courts’ main aim is that of prosecuting perpetrators and bringing justice to the victims, in the longer term they reconfigure the national space by separating the culpable perpetrators from the non-­culpable others. As such, gacaca is a process through which not only culpability is ascertained but innocence is also established: to not be accused of genocide or to be declared innocent means to shift from the role of guilty perpetrator to that of the innocent non-­perpetrator. Given that the majority of Rwandans belong to the category of the non-­ perpetrator, an alternative narrative emerges to challenge the imposed narrative of collective culpability, guilt and shame. It is a narrative of ordinary decency, which draws from values, norms and relationships from pre-­genocide peaceful times and considers non-­perpetrators to be honest and good-­hearted people. Decency is also inscribed in the criteria for the selection of inyangamugayo – gacaca judges – which require the following qualities: ‘not to have participated in genocide’, ‘to be of high morals and conduct, to be truthful, to be honest and to be characterized by a spirit of speech sharing’ and to be a ‘person of integrity’ (Ngarambe, 2016: 73).

The narrative of national unity and reconciliation: everyday relations and values The narrative of collective culpability in the genocide master-­narrative considers non-­perpetrator members of the majority group to be morally responsible for actions committed in the name of their group, guilty for not having stopped violence and ashamed for not having helped victims. Non-­perpetrators distance themselves from the imposed narrative to view themselves as ordinary individuals who disapproved of and resisted genocide ideology. For the ideologues

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of genocide, non-­perpetrators are accomplices of the enemy because they resisted the call to defend the country against the invaders while drawing from the master-­narrative of war. Non-­perpetrators are also victims of war, including the 1990–1994 civil war, the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF )-led revenge attacks between 1994 and 1996 and massacres. The complex nature of the ethnic, political and civil war means that anybody could become a subject of violence as Valentine, a Hutu woman who was persecuted because she looked Tutsi and lost her family members during violence explains: I supported it courageously because it was a national affair, everyone was a candidate for these atrocities.… In the midst of the genocide, there was a disorder that could take hold of everybody. Ethnicities were confused! It was no longer a matter for the Tutsis alone, but there were several cases of settling accounts, jealousy, banditry, wickedness and so on, that took away a lot of Hutus too. In such a chaotic environment, there are multiple categories of victims and killers. In post-­genocide Rwanda, the narrative of national unity and reconciliation encourages the population, including members of the majority group who did not commit crimes, to acknowledge the centrality of the genocide master-­ narrative in order to reimagine national unity and promote reconciliation. Yet, the Rwandan programme of national unity and reconciliation provides no official recognition of the diversity of lived experiences of the 1994 genocide beyond the official assertion that Tutsi were the victims of violence during the genocide and Hutus were the killers (Thomson, 2014). Settling for a single conflict story  and defining a rigid victim–perpetrator dichotomy can be profoundly excluding and limited in capturing the diversity of victimhood and perpetration experiences, memories and perceptions; and can also (re)produce former and new unequal relations of power (Hourmat, 2016). Members of the perpetrator group describe the post-­genocide period of national unity and reconciliation, especially the time of gacaca, as a time of ‘uncertainty’, ‘fear’, ‘restlessness’ and ‘worries’. Celestin, a Hutu man married to a Tutsi wife, describes the insecurity and isolation experienced during the years of gacaca: We live in an unprecedented regime of terror. We cannot speak, even when we are locked up inside the home we are afraid. We are afraid of the maid, we are afraid of our own children, we are afraid of our own spouses. We whine all the time, the pain is so strong that I find myself crying alone in the living room, alone in bed … we feel lonely without any support. While both public master-­narratives of genocide and that of war set temporal boundaries defining peace and violence, for members of the majority ethnic

Reframing culpability, shame and guilt   59

group, the historic consciousness of the past violence continues to be present in their lives. Pierre, who was an adolescent at the time of genocide, explains: ‘I do not trust that the war has totally ended’ and expresses his recurrent fear: ‘Each time, in my dreams, I have visions of an army that comes to kill innocent civilians. I think that finally, they will kill all Hutus sooner or later.’ Following the narrative of Hutu victimisation found in the master-­narrative of war, Désiré, a young Hutu man who fled to Tanzania, expresses fears that Hutus will be the targets of violence again and unable to escape: ‘I myself, I know that at any moment I will die, nobody can reassure me otherwise. It is what many around here think.’ Remembering victims’ inability to flee due to the tight controls in operation across the country during the genocide, Désiré expresses his worries about survival and surveillance: ‘I am worried because I see the organisation of the FPR from the base. Each person is coded. How can one escape at least like the others did?’ Amid an atmosphere of uncertainty and worries, non-­perpetrators reframe violence, culpability and victimhood. While the justice narrative considers justice against génocidaires to be a precondition for the achievement of national unity and reconciliation, non-­génocidaires perceive the justice narrative to be a hindrance to reconciliation when crimes are treated differently. This occurs when the justice system itself punishes the innocents as when Jeanne, a Hutu woman who lost two boys during the crimes of war, says that the state ‘encourages discord, especially in the case of the gacaca tribunals where people inflict heavy sentences on the innocents’. To achieve justice and reconciliation, it would be important for Bernadette ‘to not involve innocent people in the settlement of accounts’. Justice is also a hindrance to reconciliation when crimes are treated unequally across groups. Gatete, a Hutu man from the northern part of the country who was attacked during the war of the abacengezi (insurgents) (Ingelaere, 2009), is disillusioned at the injustice of differential naming of crimes: In this country some people are frustrated: there are crimes that are not denounced, that are considered heroism, and crimes that are reprehensible, when they both are of the same nature! This injustice will have repercussions on future generations. It is a hindrance to true reconciliation between the population. Frustration is a common feeling among the non-perpetrator members of the perpetrator group, who believe that due to the narrative of collective culpability, their group as a whole is made to pay for genocide reparations even when individuals are not responsible. Bonaventure, a Hutu man who lost his Tutsi wife and two children during genocide, expresses the contradictions that exist between attributions of collective responsibility and personal experiences of victimhood:

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In spite of the killing of my dear wife and two daughters, my parents had to pay, and were left without much to eat, in order to save their lives! They take a whole hill and charge everyone a certain amount to compensate the rescapés, even though the state itself should be doing this! Forgiveness is a central tenet of unity and reconciliation, and this is focused on victims and perpetrators whereby the apologies of Hutu génocidaires prompt the forgiveness of Tutsi rescapés (Thomson, 2014). Members of the majority group who did not commit crimes challenge the public narrative of collective Hutu responsibility, and call for communal responsibility for crimes against innocents. In line with the master-­narrative of war, the Hutu majority compels all killers of innocent people to ask for forgiveness. Trust between ethnic groups is key to promote unity and reconciliation but in the absence of a public apology from members of the rescapé group who also committed atrocities, trust continues to be lacking. Désiré articulates his historic consciousness of the past by connecting crimes, apology and trust as follows: ‘If they have killed many innocent people, as is the case in the deliberation meetings held throughout the country where Hutus were killed, how can one have trust if these people have never apologised?’ The aim of the narrative of national unity and reconciliation is to forge the new Banyarwanda. The denial of difference in the master-­narrative of the genocide against the Tutsi means that the voices of non-­génocidaires are invisible or subsumed within a narrative of collective culpability, guilt and shame. Rose criticises the marginalisation of certain stories: People get problems. Tutsis and Hutus died in the war. Because Tutsis are a minority, it seems as if more Tutsis than Hutus were killed, but this is not true, many different groups were killed and they are not spoken about. The Government gives opportunities to one group to speak, others are prevented from speaking. Members of the majority ethnic group are aware of the silencing of personal experiences that differ from the national version of unity and reconciliation, and the dangers of voicing them. After recounting how in his family there are those killed by the interahamwe militias who pillaged properties and those killed by the RPF soldiers for vengeance, Antoine is careful to add: It is sad and I do not like to talk about it. One never knows. Life is as such. But one day, these things will be clear, for our young children and even for future generations, the blood of the innocents spills down from the sky. Non-­génocidaires resist the narrative of collective culpability by challenging the centrality of the victim–perpetrator story and their guilt by ethnic association. Drawing from the master-­narrative of war, they critique the narrative of genocide

Reframing culpability, shame and guilt   61

justice and the uniformity of the genocide story that silences other stories. Non-­ génocidaires redress the narrative of collective culpability by speaking of innocent victims, thus breaking down the conflagration of membership to the majority ethnic group with culpability only. Innocents are those members of the Hutu group who died opposing the extremist regime, to save victims, in massacres, because of revenge or accidentally; innocents are the victims of the unjust justice system who are in prison under false accusations; and innocents are those who have been exonerated of culpability during gacaca trials. The righteousness of the innocents challenges the narrative of collective culpability by (re)allocating responsibility and victimhood across ethnic groups. Good-­hearted, honest members of the perpetrator group can foster reconciliation. In contrast to the public narrative of ‘state bestowed forgiveness’ (Zorbas, 2009), the grass-­root narrative of reconciliation tells a story of shared suffering, reliance on peaceful values, faith and morality, and draws on the power of social ties within and across ethnic groups. Living reconciliation For members of the majority ethnic group, existing values, norms and social relations provide common ground for coexistence with victims and perpetrators. Having witnessed different forms of violence, they speak of communal suffering, and of personal suffering that is shared by and connected to that of others. Aristide, an adult of ethnically mixed parentage, was a child at the time of the genocide: ‘I am not the only one to suffer, there are other people who have been victims and who are still victims, even among my friends, my acquaintances.’ Gatete, a Hutu man from the northern region which was affected by the war of the abacengezi, speaks of the losses of each family during and after genocide: ‘Do you think that there is not a family who has not lost at least one family member during the genocide or even after? I do not believe it, everyone has had their losses; obviously the degrees differ.’ These forms of reconciliatory narrative engagement focus on the shared nature of suffering. Chantal, a rescapé married to a Hutu man, explains how the family is the foundation for inter-­ethnic unity amid suffering: ‘I feel sad, I avoid thinking about it, but one day it will go away. I experience traumatic crises, my husband too, but we console each other. My husband too has lost close family.’ Families play an important role in maintaining unity and promoting reconciliation. For Aristide, a formed child soldier from an ethnically mixed family, the extended family is the source of emotional and material support across ethnic boundaries: I cannot understand why my family’s story was twisted! … My father was put in prison for the crime of genocide: it is said that a Tutsi friend came to see him to ask for help to flee, and that he could not save him when he was at a checkpoint. He’s going to be in prison for 15 years. The whole family is

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dejected, but everyone holds on. Even the wives of my uncles, who are all Tutsis, are disappointed by this justice. In the articulation of historic consciousness in the everyday, families are social institutions that enable the transcendence of hatred and the initiation of reconciliation by drawing on inter-­ethnic social ties that existed prior to the genocide. Decentring the genocide master-­narrative thus takes place through a communal investment in ethical conduct that fosters reconciliation beyond the rescapé–­ génocidaire binary and valorises faith as a source of sustenance and unity. Phrases that reflect the power of belief in overcoming suffering include those of Aristide (‘when I think about my life, I say that only God is great. I only count on him, for my future’), Ines (‘in the end, we have to put ourselves in the hands of the Lord’) and Reymond (‘only God cares for the weak!’). Prayer is the last resource for Louise, a Hutu widow whose husband disappeared after he fled to Congo: Since then, we have not seen each other again. Some people tell me he is dead, others tell me he may be alive, that there are people who are in the middle of the equatorial forest who live like savages! I cannot imagine him living naked like a wild Indian. I try to forget everything by praying! The church provides a space of solace amid the uncertainties of daily life, as Alida indicates: ‘Our times are hard, my husband and I, we opted for the voice of the church and then, we keep silent, it’s the secret to survive here.’ Members of the génocidaire group who did not commit atrocities view unity and reconciliation differently from the state bestowed model of forgiveness or the civic identity model of unity. They express a reconciliatory narrative that gives voice to the commonality of suffering across ethnic divisions and decentre the genocide and war master-­narratives by recourse to frames of reference of everyday life, existing norms and on-­going social ties as means of advancing unity and reconciliation.

Conclusion The chapter has traced the formation of the narrative of moral culpability that is addressed at non-­perpetrator members of the perpetrator group, leading to collective guilt and shame. According to the culpability narrative, all Hutus residing in the country during the genocide are held morally responsible for the violent actions committed in their name, for not having stopped the killers or helped the victims. The incorporation of the narrative of culpability, guilt and shame consolidates the master-­narrative of the genocide against the Tutsi because it includes the non-­génocidaires in the master-­narrative of the genocide against the Tutsi, attributes criminal and moral culpability to génocidaires and non-­ génocidaires alike, and makes the majority of the population, specifically Hutu as a group, feel guilty and ashamed.

Reframing culpability, shame and guilt   63

Without denying that some individuals may experience guilt for their inaction during the genocide, non-­perpetrators generally engage with the imposed culpability narrative by resisting it and challenging its key elements: morality, culpability and collective ascription of guilt. Personal stories suggest an alternative view of ordinary morality and decency to that of moral culpability; non-­ involvement in the extremists’ call to participate in violence is reframed as resistance and lack of assistance towards victims is explained through limited power; and the transitional justice process that has punished the guilty and exonerated the innocents shifts the debate from collective responsibility to personal culpability. Non-­perpetrators distance themselves from the world view of the génocidaires and break down the correspondence of (Hutu) ethnicity with génocidaire to reveal other identities and relationships. These identities are those of the ordinary, honest and good-­hearted individuals whose historic consciousness of the past draws upon peacetime norms and social relations to guide their actions and to inform their views of post-­genocide unity and reconciliation.

Chapter 4

Revisiting the figure of the heroic rescuer Communal rescue, care and resistance

Introduction For me, it’s incomprehensible how someone risks his life for a Tutsi. These people really deserve rewards. On my part, if the possibilities allow me, I would award the rewards to those who hid me … For me, let them be punished, all those who participated in the genocide, but those who have done good deserve rewards in the eyes of all in order to show everyone that not all Hutus are bad. Like that, it will facilitate the process of unity and reconciliation. But it’s difficult because there are those who have hidden some and have gone to kill others. (Kalisa) In recounting his story of survival, Kalisa remembers that he is still alive thanks to the sustained efforts of his friend Peter and his brothers who hid him, his friend Thomas who regularly brought him a mug of urwagwa (banana beer) and even paid the interahamwe not to kill him, his Muslim neighbour who brought sugar and others who helped. His testimony conveys gratitude and appreciation for having been saved while bringing attention to the unstable context of his salvation. Kalisa’s personal story of survival intersects with the constellation of genocide narratives by distinguishing the killers to be punished from those who did good and whose actions deserve to be publicly rewarded to challenge the narrative of collective Hutu’s culpability and shame. Unity and reconciliation are best achieved by acknowledging these different experiences. Kalisa’s account also brings attention to the challenges of naming the heroic rescuers, given the difficulty in isolating rescuing acts from other actions, most notably killing, during genocidal violence. How does the narrative of the figure of the heroic rescuer unfold and what function does it have in the social history of violence? How does it connect with the narratives of rescapés’ survival and génocidaires’ killing as well as of those of moral culpability, guilt and shame of non-­perpetrator members of the génocidaire group? How does the rescuing narrative fit within the master-­narrative of the genocide against the Tutsi and the master-­narrative of war?

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The previous chapter showed that the supporting narrative of moral culpability, guilt and shame imputed to non-­perpetrator members of the génocidaire group strengthens the master-­narrative of the genocide against the Tutsi by rendering one ethnic group solely responsibility for the violence. Members of the majority group distance themselves from the world view of the génocidaires and reframe the imposed narrative of culpability by resorting to everyday moral values and social bonds. This chapter continues to document the social history of violence through the perspective of members of the majority group by examining another supporting narrative in the constellation of genocide narratives: the rescuing narrative. The narrative of community protection challenges that of collective moral culpability by focusing on relationships of assistance, and strengthens the narrative of rescapés’ survival by highlighting the connections between victims and rescuers, while contrasting that of génocidaires’ killing with non-­ violent actions of care. The chapter gives a brief overview of rescuers and rescuing activities in contexts of violence in general before tracing the formation of the public narrative of the heroic rescuer in Rwanda. It continues by showing that this representation is limited in that it focuses on individual heroes marginalising the role of communities, portrays rescue actions to be the exception to the norm and de-­ contextualises them from the socio-­cultural milieu. Stories of protection contribute to the rewriting of the social history of the genocide by revealing a less visible story that speaks of the significant role of networks of individuals in rescuing efforts whose actions of solidarity were inspired by moral and religious values and were made possible by existing social ties that challenged the genocide strategy, ideology and objective. Rescuers and rescuing activities Esman writes that even though ‘ethnic nationalism has become the dominant political ideology in the modern era, contrary to some writers, ethnic awareness and solidarity have deep roots in human history’ (2004: 7). In conflicts, there are individuals and communities who resist the call to violence and risk their lives to help the victims. But stories of rescuers are marginal in accounts of ethnic violence, and the limited literature, mainly about rescuers during the Holocaust, examines individual actions and motivations (Cesarani and Levine, 2014; Fogelman, 1995; Hilberg, 1992; Monroe, 2008). Rescuers are sustained by moral values and empathy (Staub, 1993), inclusive altruism born of suffering (Vollhardt and Staub, 2011), religious and ideological beliefs, humanitarian ideals, compassion and a conviction that all mankind is a fraternity (Fogelman, 1995). Rescuing actions are significant because they represent resistance to genocides (Palmer, 2014; Sémelin et al., 2011). During the Holocaust, Judeophiles were moved by a love for Jews, others by rage against the Nazis, while a few concerned professionals perceived Jews as clients in need and saw the Nazi violating professional codes. British rescuers were united by a familiarity with

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German and Central Europe, a sense of cosmopolitanism and personal responsibility (Cesarani and Levine, 2014). In the context of Rwanda, research on rescuers details the dynamics of rescuing activities (Fujii, 2011b; Luft, 2015; Rothbart and Cooley, 2016), the role of religion (Conway, 2011), gender (Brown, 2018) and the representation of rescuers during (Janzen, 2000) and after genocide (Waldorf, 2009). Similarly to the formation of the survivor testimony genre, the rescuer testimony genre is visible in autobiographies like that of Paul Rusesabagina’s An Ordinary Man (2006), individual testimonies published in print media anthologies like African Rights’ Tribute to Courage (2002) and accessible online in sites like ‘Rescuer testimonies of the Genocide Archive Rwanda’ and Reconciliation in Rwanda: Stories of Rescue. On the occasion of the twentieth anniversary of the genocide in 2014, the Deputy Director of the Kigali Genocide Memorial Yves Kamuronsi said that featuring the testimonies of rescuers is more important today than ever and yet these are under-­examined: ‘It’s now 20 years after genocide … and in every commemoration, every movie, we see stories of survivors, we see stories of perpetrators. We see less stories of rescuers’ (Warner, 2014:1). How are stories of rescuers narrated and how is the narrative of the rescuer represented? The next section traces the formation of the public narrative of the heroic rescuer and discusses its role in post-­genocide Rwanda.

Naming the public figure of the rescuer: individual, exceptional, heroic Statistics on genocides generally publish estimates of the number of fatalities rather than those of survivors, and yet these are equally revealing of the dynamics of violence. In 2007, more than a decade after the end of genocide, the Rwandan National Institute for Statistics in collaboration with the Ministry of Local Government conducted a census of genocide survivors and concluded that there were 309,368 genocide survivors, among whom 58 per cent were women and 42 per cent were men (Government of Rwanda, National Institute for Statistics and Ministry of Local Government, 2007). Considering that at the time of genocide the Tutsi population residing in the country consisted of approximately 800,000 Tutsi (Government of Rwanda, 1991), this means that about a quarter of the Tutsi population survived the killings (Human Rights Watch, 2014). While available data is debatable, we know that a minority of Tutsi residing in the country survived, and that they owe their lives to the actions of family, neighbours, friends and strangers who protected and helped them. On 7 April 2004, at the opening ceremony commemorating the tenth anniversary of the genocide, President Paul Kagame paid homage to those who saved Tutsis: You demonstrated the very highest degree of humanity by risking your own lives to save others. You could have chosen not to do so. But you did it anyway … There are people still living in Rwanda today, people who are

Revisiting the figure of the heroic rescuer   67

here in this very stadium, who would have died ten years ago without your bravery. (Rosoux, 2007: 496) These official acts of recognition are edifying moments of unifying national history. The remembrance narrative of the genocide against the Tutsi acknowledges the role of rescuers, both those who died and the surviving ones. The memory of those who perished to protect Tutsi is inscribed in the Kigali Genocide Memorial, and specifically in its reference to ‘the planned nature and horror of the Genocide against the Tutsi, as well as stories of survival, rescue and from those who stopped the slaughter’ (Kigali Genocide Memorial site, 2018). The 2009 Rwandan Law Governing Memorial Sites and Cemeteries of Victims of Genocide against Tutsi in Rwanda (10/09-2008) also makes reference to the actions of those who perished to protect others. Article 11, which specifies the guidelines for the arrangement of memorial sites, states that each location should include information about the local history of violence, expose the remains of the victims and the tools of the perpetrators and also the ‘names and photos of heroic characters’ (UNESCO, 2015). In 2016, Law No. 15/2016 of 02/05/2016 was implemented to govern ceremonies commemorating the Genocide against the Tutsi and the organisation and management of memorial sites (Tumwebaze, 2017). Rescue efforts of the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF ) are also recognised, but are housed in a separate memorial site, the Campaign Against Genocide Museum, which details how ‘only the RPF/RPA forces who were in the war of liberation took the unilateral decision to stop Genocide, rescue victims of Genocide and defeat the Genocidal forces’. The state narrative exalts the RPF as saviour, an image on which the ruling party bases its legitimacy (Bentrovato, 2016). Lists of rescuers, both those who perished and those who survived, are compiled and celebrated. Ibuka (to remember), the umbrella organisation for survivors’ associations, has drawn up lists of rescuers, calling them les justes (the righteous ones), and during a dedication ceremony held at Nyanza memorial centre in July 2009, Ibuka called the nine Hutu rescuers and one Italian priest ‘saviours’ (Nambi, 2009). Kayshema and Masabo (2010) describe them as indakemwa, meaning the moral and chaste ones. What emerges from public memorialisation narratives is a normative representation of rescuers – individualised, exceptionalist and isolated – which is celebrated but also questioned. The figure of the rescuer, which is visible in lists, names and photos of individual heroes, captures personal stories of rescue. Rescuers are viewed as heroic people, the saviours, righteous and moral individuals who acted courageously against divisive ideologies and put their lives in danger to save those in need. Rosoux writes that ‘it is precisely the independent spirit that gave righteous individuals their strength during the genocide’ (2007: 497). In post-­genocide Rwanda, the heroic rescuer narrative expresses the exceptionalism inherent in the figure of the saviour whose bravery stands out from the

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inaction of the majority and whose courageous actions are the exception to the norm, the norm being represented by the inability or unwillingness to stop the génocidaires and/or help the victims. The narrative of courage of the heroic rescuer removes individual heroes, whose numbers are few, from the narrative of collective moral culpability of the other members of the perpetrator group who did not commit atrocities but also did not endanger their lives to save others. Featuring the testimonies of rescuers is important to show that not every Rwandan played their ethnically assigned role of killer or victim, says Yves Kamuronsi, the Deputy Director of the Kigali Genocide Memorial (Warner, 2014). Yet, in an interview with Svodoba, Burnet explains that rescuing was widespread during the genocide and that dozens of people she interviewed had taken part in a variety of rescue operations, from supplying people in hiding with food and clothing to paying militiamen to release Tutsi marked for death, and also that many Rwandans engaged in rescue actions for long periods of time, sometimes weeks, until it was no longer possible (Svoboda, 2017). Rescue efforts were made in response to knowledge of the brutal treatment that Tutsi faced, either through direct observation or word-­of-mouth, involved active gestures of finding and offering assistance to at least one Tutsi who faced mortal danger, and were carried out by interacting directly with the killers who were searching for Tutsi (Rothbart and Cooley, 2016). The rescue narrative challenges the portrayal of a landscape of total violence during genocide to highlight the existence of spaces of solidarity and relationships of care. However, the formation of the narrative of the heroic rescuer marginalises the existence of communities of protection and the critical role played by individuals who helped the visible rescuers. The next section examines communal rescue in Rwanda. Stories of collective protection challenge the master-­ narrative of the genocide against the Tutsi by showing that there are identities beyond those of the rescapé and génocidaire and relationships of care that bridge the dominant relationship of killing and survival.

From exceptional heroes to communities of care The emphasis on individual rescuers and their heroic actions is helpful in that it acknowledges the existence of Hutus who are not perpetrators or supporters of violence, but it presupposes that rescue was individualist and neglects the fact that most acts of protection and rescuing during the Rwandan genocide were made possible not in isolation but by webs of individuals, households and neighbourhoods who acted together as networks of solidarity and care. Many testimonies of survivors and rescuers confirm the existence of such networks. Kalisa recounts the ways in which various people saved his life: I’ve almost been killed many times and thanks to God, at the last minute, they let me go sometimes for a sum of money. Once my neighbour Thomas

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gave the interahamwe the sum of FRW2000 so they did not kill me (but then Thomas and Jean-­Marie were threatened) … Gregoire, Peter, Penke and Thomas helped me out and I remember one day when they saved me when I was shot in the head. They hid me between the two houses in a smaller space that they called ‘Mw’igi’ (in the egg) because of this very limited space. Thomas often brought me a cup of urwagwa (banana beer). We often see Thomas, but unfortunately, Jean-­Marie is dead. Kalisa’s testimony of survival suggests that more than one individual helped, describes how they worked together to protect him, and shows that at different times they risked their lives to save him. Rather than a single heroic rescuer, ordinary Rwandans performed heroic gestures at different points in time. Similarly, the rescapé Abbé Oreste Incimitata reported: ‘I hid in the bush and in the homes of many Hutu people. Different Hutu people saved my life – they hid me and found ways for me to escape’ (Human Rights Watch, 1999: 598). In Abbé’s case, family units operated as rescue teams. The household as a whole became a rescue space, including maids and guards, and the survival of the victims was possible thanks to the loyalty and silence of all members of the protection network. For instance Marthe, her sister Bernadette and other members of the family hid in their neighbour’s compound where ‘the workers were out and around town during the day and they told me that they heard everything about the girl who was hidden but whom no one had yet been able to find’ (Human Rights Watch, 1999: 589). Marthe was later asked to leave for fear of incursions by the interahamwe. Rescapés’ survival was made possible by innumerable single actions of protection and negotiations for safety, each one making the difference between life and death. Desiré Gashirabare, an employee of a governmental agricultural coffee production project in Kibungo, is alive thanks to the help of his Hutu neighbours as well as his colleagues who protected him when the interahamwe came and looted the place – taking vehicles that belonged to the project. They broke everything with their axes. They went into the offices; what they could not take, they destroyed or threw outside. I had Hutu colleagues who told me to lock my door. They said that they would tell the attackers that I was not there. (Human Rights Watch, 1999: 602) Even members of the government protected Tutsi collectively. The soldiers assigned by the Government to protect a rice factory in Mugusura Commune ensured the safety of the director Augustin Nkusi’s Tutsi relatives and others in the commune of Rusatira (Human Rights Watch, 1999: 565). These accounts reveal the presence across the country of groups and networks that helped victims survive during the genocide through sustained efforts, which range from the provision of supplies, hiding, keeping secret the presence of victims and

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paying the killers. Ethnic and religious minorities facilitated rescue operations. Members of ethnic or religious groups participated in the protection of neighbours and friends. Each act of care made the difference between life and death. Braun (2016) observes that minority groups are more likely to protect persecuted groups during episodes of mass killing. According to Jean, a member of the Twa minority group, it was relatively safer for targets of genocide to hide among their Twa neighbours because their excluded status in society made it less likely that the perpetrators would search for Tutsi in Twa households or communities. Similarly, Rwanda’s Muslims opened their doors to thousands of desperate Tutsis (Conway, 2011). Muslim families, many of them intermarried Tutsi-­Hutu couples, for the most part succeeded in hiding Tutsis from the Hutu mobs, who feared entering the country’s insular Muslim communities. The testimonies of rescapés and rescuers are evidence that collective efforts involved sharing information with trusted members of the network and concealing this information from others. Augustin, who with his brother protected Tutsi inside their family compound, explains the coexistence of secrecy and sharing: No one else helped us except the other people we were together with, that is our tenants. We shared all and yet we did not have any bond of consanguinity with the Tutsis, it was only love. And the fact that my big brother had a bar and that there were Tutsi among his clients gave him the courage and the motivation to use all his means to save the threatened ones. Augustin also describes how rescuers shared information about protection. His family compound was located in the neighbourhood where 400 victims had sought protection at the centre run by Damas Gisimba: ‘Gisimba trusted us. We shared information about the situation, they even called us so that we could help him bury the babies who died due to poor living conditions.’ Physical, social and moral buffer spaces of peaceful cross-­ethnic relationships amid genocide were formed, but while the dynamics of violence within these spaces have been the subject of research, we know less of the dynamics in the spaces where genocide did not happen (Donà, 2013; Janzen, 2000). Given the level of commitment required and the dangers involved, it would have been impossible for an individual alone to function as saviour, rescuer or protector. The ‘power of local ties’ (Fujii, 2008) that explains popular participation in the genocide is also the power that enables popular participation in rescuing efforts. While public representations of individual heroes marginalise the existence of rescuing networks, the emphasis on the heroic saviour renders invisible the role played by those who helped the main rescuers and whose actions were equally important in ensuring survival. The next section examines the case of protection at the Gisimba orphanage in Kigali to draw attention to social relations of care, trust and support that took place among different social actors, helpers, guardians and friends, under the leadership of the main rescuer, Damas Gisimba. The example of the rescue of almost 400 individuals between 6 April 1994 and their

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evacuation on 1 July 1994 at the Gisimba centre reveals the vital, collaborative role played by members of society in rescuing victims. This section brings together data from a life history interview conducted with Damas Gisimba and documentation of survival and protection in an orphanage that was published by African Rights in 2003 with the title The Gisimba Memorial Centre: No Place for Fear. The ordinary people behind the heroic saviours In 1994, Damas Mutezintare Gisimba, the manager of the orphanage established by his family in the 1980s, looked after 65 orphans. Damas grew up in an ethnically mixed family with a Hutu father and Tutsi mother. Gisimba recounts the days following the plane crash of President Habyarimana, at the beginning of the genocide, as my neighbours knew me as a caring and compassionate person … it is for this reasons that at first they thought that I could hide their children, and little by little that I could hide them too, and thus they joined me. Although the gate of the orphanage marked the boundary between the safety of those within and the dangers of the external environment, the gate could not sufficiently ensure safety of the orphanage without the presence of guards. Gisimba ‘placed children and employees who weren’t at risk on guard to check that no militiamen saw them. Whenever the interahamwe came, the lookouts used to signal to the refugees that they should go back inside the houses’ (African Rights, 2003: 9). Damas was very attached to the orphans and while protecting them he also enlisted their help in the protection efforts. Enatha recalls how Damas ‘particularly sent those who’d lived in the orphanage for some length of time, and who were known by the neighbours’ (African Rights, 2003: 2). Damas also spoke of the loyalty of the children themselves, who he had taught to always stick together. If they had been taught badly, they would have denounced the people I was protecting. They would have told the militia that the people they were looking for were, in fact, at our place. If they’d done that, none of my people would have survived. I was never worried about this; I was sure that they would follow my example. (African Rights, 2003: 2) Inside the orphanage, a secret room, kept locked at all times, was used as the hiding place for those most at risk. The room became and remained a safe space because only trusted members of staff had access to it and knew who was hiding there. Genevieve, who was more at risk than others, recalls: ‘we couldn’t go out at all. The room had a shower and a toilet in it. We didn’t hear about everything

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that was going on outside’ (African Rights, 2003: 6). Genevieve’s survival was made possible by the action of Donatha Mukandayisenga who had been teaching at the orphanage since 1991, and remembers how ‘we could only take them food at night, after we made sure that nobody was around’ (African Rights, 2003: 7). Damas is aware that one of his strengths stems from him being embedded in the local area, ‘the fact that I have spent a lot of time in the neighbourhood’, which meant that he knew and was known, not only by those who went to the orphanage in search of protection, but also by the militiamen, many of whom were his neighbours. Staff recount how the local militiamen regarded Gisimba with esteem, because his father had helped people in the area a lot. Damas used his standing in the neighbourhood to his advantage. When he knew that militiamen were planning to attack the orphanage, he made sure he was present, as his influence was an important condition for the maintenance of fragile security and protection. His existing social connections in the neighbourhood also meant that he could rely on others to help him navigate the permeable boundaries between security and insecurity. When, towards the end of the genocide, Damas learned that his name was on the list of targets to be killed, he asked a neighbour to drive him to the offices of the extremist RTLM Radio where he had been summoned: ‘I contacted a neighbour whose spouse was a cousin of President Habyarimana asking him to take me in his vehicle to the RTLM Radio, above all because nobody could attack it.’ Networks of protectors and helpers operated across the country, and served as communities of care. But the stories of the many social actors involved in protection are marginalised in the heroic saga; there are no medals, awards or lists commemorating these communities’ collective actions. Yet many Tutsis who survived owe their lives to Hutu friends, neighbours and even strangers, all of whom took great risks to protect them. Throughout the country, ordinary Hutu people concealed Tutsis in their houses and farms, often with great ingenuity. They knew that the price of being discovered was probably death, and many did indeed pay with their lives for their humanity … in less conspicuous ways, the resistance of ordinary people was crucial to the survival of those Tutsi who are still alive in much of Rwanda. (African Rights, 1994: xii) Jeanne is a Hutu woman who lost her two sons while they were saving two friends who were threatened because of their ethnicity and sought refuge in their home. Her sons saved their friends by taking them out of Kigali town where they lived, but were killed by vengeful RPF soldiers. As she recalls the event of saviours turned into war victims, Jeanne describes those people who continue to hurt others, especially the Tutsi who abuse innocent Hutus! One day they will have to pay for their wrongs! Everything we do for others can

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turn one way or another; it’s an investment that can be good or bad, depending on the case. Because ordinary Rwandans operated as networks of care across the country and supported the rescue efforts of those in positions of influence, the rescue narrative genre needs to be reframed beyond the figure of the lone rescuer to include the stories of such networks. The rescue narrative’s centralising function requires dismantling to include collective care and solidarity which proved effective by operating communally, without a central, lone figure. The existence of individual and communal actions of care and solidarity conveys a different story of the genocide from the dominant master-­narrative of ethnic divisionism and violence. It is a story of communal resistance to the genocide ideology, violent strategy and divisive mission.

The communal rescue narrative: care and resistance Schabas (2000) writes that pre-­genocide hate propaganda relies on polarised discourses of ‘Us’ – Hutu victims – and ‘Them’ – Tutsi enemy and their collaborators. The formation and consolidation of a divisive narrative was articulated as a religious duty, for instance in the Ten Commandments of the Kangura magazine (Chrétien, 1991), and publicly disseminated through the media (Verwimp, 2000). In this context, the narrative of communal rescue and care challenges the extremist narrative of hate and defies divisionism. Rescue ranged from a single act of kindness given by a stranger to the act of risking one’s life to protect family members. Given secretly or in public, rescue of victims involved those who were known and strangers, those in position of power and those in humble roles (African Rights, 1994; Human Rights Watch, 1999). In an atmosphere of violence, care overcomes hatred and solidarity triumphs over divisionism. Acts of care and solidarity are best understood in relation to both victims and perpetrators. Spencer writes that one choice is whether or not to aid the perpetrators or to avoid becoming one. The other fundamental choice is the inverse of the first – to aid victims or to avoid the danger of becoming one too. This can involve different kinds of action or inaction – to speak up or not, to act overtly or covertly or to remain passive. (2012: 51) Stories of solidarity express historic consciousness of the past by countering three components of the genocide framing: its violent strategy, its ideological core and its divisive objective. Together, these components show that resistance to violent ideology was present (Palmer, 2014). First, acts of care in the form of  self-­care and self-­defence challenge the violent strategies of the genocide

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planners by resisting its implementation. As the assassination of President Habyarimana sparked the spiral of mass killings that lasted until the beginning of July,  the first response of many communities to the disaster was to set up communal patrols, involving members of different ethnic groups. The extremists tried pressure, bribery and force to break the bonds of communal solidarity and in most places they succeeded. Resistance did not usually last long. (African Rights, 1994: xii) Organised resistance took place at Bisesero, where Tutsi organised and resisted collectively from 8 April until 1 July (African Rights, 1997). Cutting across ethnic lines, self-­defence patrols sprang up against outsiders and perceived common enemies across the country. During the initial period of the genocide, the enemy was identified as those outside of local communities and described as thugs, interahamwe or attackers. An African missionary who worked near Gitarama recalls how, as the situation deteriorated and news of deaths and attacks reached the area, people came to the parish in search of protection: At this point, there had been no deaths in our parish. We put up checkpoints to prevent infiltration of armed people from other sectors and communes. Our parishioners were adamant that killers should not come to disturb our peace; they were vigilant in manning checkpoints. The only armed people allowed through were soldiers. (African Rights, 1994: 619) On more than one occasion the parishioners’ strategy of maintaining an interahamwe-­free zone led to violent confrontation with their attackers. Nonetheless, spontaneous forms of inter-­ethnic solidarity emerged across the country. The husband of a Tutsi woman in Cyarwa-­Cymanana tells how, on the arrival of a group of attackers from nearby Tumba to kill his wife, his neighbours ‘blocked the entrance to the enclosure and would not let the killers in’ (Human Rights Watch, 1999: 567). Kamanzi, a Hutu shopkeeper refused to leave his Tutsi friends, fought alongside them and was killed in Kibungo (African Rights, 2002). According to Human Rights Watch, while each place of struggle had its own story of individual and collective resistance, most share common elements: in the early days, Tutsis, and mixed groups of Tutsi and Hutu and Twa repelled the initial attack; the aggressors obtained physical and material reinforcements, usually from soldiers or the National Police; the aggressors attacked repeatedly until they overcame the resistance; some Tutsi survived, hidden among the bodies or elsewhere or by fleeing (Human Rights Watch, 1999). Second, communities of rescue challenged the extremist ideology of hatred and violence by investing discursively, as well as physically, in everyday values

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of peace, care and solidarity. Committee meetings and public gatherings were used to negotiate, advocate and argue against local, regional and central agendas that supported hatred. In Butare, communities of care led by Jean-­Baptiste Habyarimana, the only Tutsi Préfect in Rwanda, used their influence and negotiation skills to keep peace in the Prefecture for 12 days after the killings started (African Rights, 1994: 609). Solidarity among the inhabitants of Giti Commune under the leadership of the Burgomaster Edouard Sebushumbe prevented the outbreak of violence until the arrival of the RPA by neutralising the extremist forces, prosecuting petty crimes before they could escalate into genocidal crimes and implementing a variety of other actions to uphold civility and law. Sebushumbe’s rejection of Rwandan society’s racial dogma was of singular significance (Janzen, 2000). The opposition to elements of the genocide ideology was also a form of resistance to the ideology of divisionism. Jean-­Baptiste Bemera, an agricultural supervisor, described the arguments that took place as tension among the killers increased at the news of the approach of the exiled Tutsis. The leader Bernadette came by to give out an order to exterminate even Tutsi women married to Hutu men. The Hutus opposed this, telling her to start off with the killing of the wife of the Burgomaster of Ndora, Célestin Rwankubito, that of the Chancellor Vénant Ntabomvura … The decision was eventually thrown out. (African Rights, 1995: 31–32) Even Hutus who supported the defence strategy against the war enemy drew a distinction between war and genocidal killing of civilians and resisted the extremist ideology of extermination. Third, spontaneous acts of kindness and help contributed to victims’ survival and reveal the commonplace resistance to the divisive aim of the extremist ideology. As the Parmehutu Power was targeting the core of community relations, or as Karamira put it in a radio speech of 12 April, the ‘war’ had to become everyone’s responsibility (Human Rights Watch, 1999: 231), any attempt, however simple, partial or tentative to oppose the Us–Them binary was punishable. Master-­minders and supporters of the Parmehutu genocidal ideology used divisive language to break down social relations and justified the use of violence as a way of preventing ‘the enemy from living among us and instilling the ibyitso here’ (Human Right Watch, 1999: 566). Parmehutu supporters were openly suspicious of those thought to ‘be in connivance with the enemy’ (Human Right Watch, 1999: 566). Consequently, Hutus wives trying to protect their Tutsi husbands and children were rescuers and also victims. African Rights (2004) tells the story of Concessa, whose Tutsi husband had hidden in the bush with his brothers while the women and the children stayed together at home in Sahera, Butare. One night, two interahamwe came to search the place, and finding no men there, raped all the women. Soon afterwards, the

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women moved to the house of a Hutu sister in law, but again militiamen, who returned on a daily basis to rape them, found them. Concessa faced a difficult decision: After a while we decided to seek refuge in the sorghum field, near the house. As my husband and his brother were still alive, I told them that I wanted to return to my family, as I’d had enough of the daily rapes. My family members were Hutu so I wouldn’t be at risk. They begged me not to abandon them, since there was no one else who would bring them food. (African Rights, 2004: 5) Concessa’s husband persuaded her to stay with a Hutu neighbour so she could continue to help him. But once again she and her female relatives were found and attacked. She said that the men ‘hit us before and after raping us, demanding to know where our husbands were’ (African Rights, 2004: 5). Interahamwe had already killed her children. Later, they discovered the men, and killed them. Extremists expressed their criticism of those who did not conform to the divisive mission and referred to them as disloyal brothers, for instance when stating that: ‘certain persons whom we took to be our brothers are hiding secrets from us’ (Human Right Watch, 1999: 568). According to Human Rights Watch Hutu sometimes helped Tutsi spontaneously in an act decided and carried out in a minute or two of time. Donatilla Mukamusoni warned Tutsi in Mbazi of an impending attack and told them that wearing banana leaves would protect them, a warning for which she paid with her life. Students intervened to negotiate the release of fellow students who were being taken away by soldiers. A young Hutu woman lent her identity card to a Tutsi so that she could pass barriers on her attempted flight from death. (1999: 494) Against the divisionist call to betray and abandon those in need, small acts of kindness and gestures of aid were punishable as acts of betrayal. Like those who they were trying to protect, helpers were threatened, beaten, raped or killed if they were found out. These cases were widely known in local communities and often led Hutus to refuse or end their assistance to Tutsi. Accounts of care, solidarity and resistance thus offer an alternative narrative to the dominant one of generalised violence and hatred. While in the master-­narrative of the genocide against the Tutsi rescuers are celebrated as saviours and righteous individuals, supporters of the war master-­ narrative regard the figure of the heroic rescuer with ambivalence. The presence of Hutu rescuers challenges the narrative of collective moral responsibility of the non-­perpetrator members of the génocidaire group by showing that not all Hutus were bad people or supported the extremist ideology. Their presence also indicates that members of the ethnic majority group did not follow the call to defend

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the country and were not loyal to their group. For these reasons, rescuers find that their position in relation to other members of the majority group is ambivalent and prefer to keep a low profile and do not speak of their rescue actions for fear of judgement and retaliation. The section has contributed to rethinking the social history of the genocide in Rwanda by examining rescue activities that shift the focus from the individual heroic rescuer to networks of ordinary people. Communities of care, solidarity and resistance oppose the violent strategy, narrative ideology and divisionist aim of ethnic violence. The shift from the core narrative of rescapés and génocidaires to that of networks of rescuers expands the range of social actors in the constellation of genocide narratives and challenges the dominant narrative of ethnic hatred by revealing a less known narrative of communal kindness.

The ambivalent legacy of rescuing Stories of protection have an intrinsic value in post-­conflict societies. They can be inspirational, diminish stereotypes that perpetuate distrust and hostility, and may encourage reconciliation (Conway, 2011). Yet, in post-­genocide Rwanda, the rescuer is an ambivalent figure, celebrated but also resented and even harassed. Social relations in post-­genocide Rwanda are changed by the experience of protection. Damas explains how my neighbours thanked me sincerely for all I did because I hid them during war, so they thought of me as a man with a good heart … as for the militia of the old regime who have been recently released, apart for the exchange of greetings, really, they do not want to talk or spend time with us. One does not know if the cause is hate or shame. Similarly, the protector Augustin explains that: some neighbours and friends sometimes feel shame when they imagine how we were able to do this act while we were orphans. They think they too could do something and that sometimes makes them uneasy. By contrast, those who were with us at home, so among the tenants, we sometimes have fun when we meet, we talk about the past, so we’re like brothers. In post-­genocide times their very existence reminds the killers and their accomplices, as well as those who did not help, that they could have saved lives. Lists and medals are visible signs of the value placed on the figure of the heroic saviour, and yet this visibility can be a cause of risk in politically charged environments, as Damas Gisimba explains: I was also threatened after the genocide, stones were thrown on my house, and there were people who followed me in a car with a Ugandan plate and

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somebody advised me to pay attention because there were people who wanted me dead … on my way home I saw a car and I changed route, I returned to the orphanage and I remained there for three days. For three days, my family and I, we were placed under police surveillance for our security. It is unclear who wanted to endanger Gisimba’s life but it is clear that visibility can be dangerous. When another well-­known rescuer, Rusesabagina, the manager of the hotel where hundreds took protection, became a vocal opponent of the Government, he was not only forced to flee the country and seek protection abroad, but his story of protection was subject to contestation. During genocide, political elites find it hard to reconcile the places for righteous individuals who were systematically suspected of having acted as intermediaries or collaborators. In post-­genocide Rwanda, those holding the reins of power can barely tolerate the dissonant position adopted by some of them (Rosoux, 2007). The figure of the heroic rescuer is celebrated but also resented. Attitudes of survivors towards helpers vary from recognition through bitterness to silence, and rescapés speak out to recall that the ‘true heroes of the genocide’ are the survivors (Rosoux, 2007). Controversial are the stories of those who rescued but also killed and who are not included in these lists (Fujii, 2011b). Most rescuers are not officially recognised because they prefer to remain anonymous. A government programme to give rescuers an official ‘thank you’ was put on hold after canvassing just 20 per cent of the country and identifying fewer than 300 of them (Warner, 2014). Many rescuers do not want public recognition for their lifesaving deeds. In post-­genocide Rwanda, many are reluctant to go public out of fear that members of their own group will judge them for having harboured Tutsis (Svoboda, 2017). During the genocide rescuers were labelled ‘weak’, ‘dubious Hutu’ and branded ‘traitors’ in radio broadcasts and public speeches, and many were targeted (African Rights, 1994, 2003; Penal Reform International, 2004). Some rescuers continue to feel ostracised and others report that other Hutus tell them they are no longer ‘one of us’ in post-­genocide Rwanda (Warner, 2014). Rwanda is a place where conformity is a form of protection and the desire to be like everyone else rather than to be exceptional is a survival strategy (Svoboda, 2017). The next section examines narrative engagement with the heroic genre narrative and discusses how ordinary people interpret the national narrative of the heroic rescuer and the invisibility of communities of rescue and care.

Revisiting the figure of the heroic saviour This section identifies strategies of narrative engagement through which Rwandans express their historic consciousness of the past in relation to the narrative of the heroic rescuer during genocide. The first type of narrative engagement is discrepant with the public narrative of exceptionalism and revisits heroes and heroic actions through the lens of ordinariness and common sense.

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Reframing exceptionalism One of the key differences between the national representations of heroic rescuers and the marginalised accounts of ordinary acts of care is linguistic: those who saved Tutsi and moderate Hutu victims during the genocide use terms like ‘ordinary’, ‘common sense’ and ‘human’ to narrate rescuing stories. Damas Gisimba received a medal from the Rwandan President of the Republic for his actions, some funds from a Swiss Foundation as a reward, and his name is among the list of rescuers published by African Rights. However, he distances himself from these official and international recognitions when he says: ‘In reality, I cannot see any reward that can be given for a similar action.’ Gisimba interprets his protection of almost 400 people through the figure of the ordinary good-­hearted person, and explains that after the genocide ‘my neighbours thanked me profoundly for all I did for them because I hid them during war, and so they consider me a good-­hearted man’. He describes himself as follows: ‘I am a man of peace, I am not a man of violence nor a man of politics.’ Paul Rusesabagina, the manager of the hotel whose story of protection became an internationally acclaimed film titled Hotel Rwanda, chose to title his autobiography An Ordinary Man (Rusesabagina, 2006). The term ‘ordinary’ extends to ‘the countless non-­visible Hutus who saved Tutsi once the genocide began. Not only did Hutus risk death by protecting Tutsi, but also there are many instances of Hutus who died to protect Tutsi’ (Pruniér, 1995: 97). To be human means to acknowledge the limits of one’s actions, as indicated by Augustin, who is aware that the contentment for having saved some victims is connected to the inability to saving others: ‘One of the major hurdles we have encountered is that even though there are people we have been able to save, there are others who have been killed but we could not really do anything to save them.’ Felix used the word ‘common sense’ to explain the help he gave to his neighbours. He felt a moral obligation to help. He protected two families, the one of a friend and later of a neighbour. Seventeen of them were in the house and went hungry after a few weeks for lack of food. Threats of raids were common and Felix relied on networks to help. Friends alerted him of imminent raids and he moved ‘his’ Tutsi to a neighbour’s hiding place, and then from house to house and into a banana plantation. The existence of a network spread the risks and burden, as Felix recounted after the neighbour was moved to another place: ‘He was safe and no longer a burden to me.’ This operation was challenging in many ways. Felix used a portion of the money he withdrew from the bank to pay for his neighbour Atanase to be taken to Saint Famille and he used an intermediary, a gentlemen who knew the interahamwe, to help. He said ‘it should not surprise you to hear that the interahamwe saved lives. They could have kept the money and not take him to safety.’ Fujii (2011b) distinguishes rescuers from acts of rescue, deliberate actions that people took to keep another person from being killed, committed by various people during the Tutsi genocide in Rwanda, including perpetrators. These acts

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were highly context dependent (on immediate context and also on who else was physically present) and based in part on the existence of prior ties to the Tutsi person in question. The narrative of the heroic saviour does not account for the rescuing actions of those who were also involved in violence. Thus, some of those who protected or rescued Tutsi will not be acknowledged as heroes. Only those who were never accused or suspected of having cooperated with the génocidaires can qualify for recognition as courageous rescuers (Conway, 2011). For Kalisa, saving does not count if an individual was involved in violence. He said: There is a certain Mohammed who hid our neighbour’s daughters and he also gave a kilo of sweet for my children, … but eventually he was accused of participation in the genocide. For me, everything he did would have been useless if these accusations are true. I cannot say that these accusations are unfounded while other people charge him with crimes, or there is something behind those charges just as he could hide some on the one hand and go kill others on the other hand. Yet, if we consider rescuing as actions that ordinary individuals carried out, then it is possible to acknowledge these actions and to examine the reasons and contexts in which different behaviours unfolded. Mamdani writes that many had combined saving in one place with killing in another. Could they have killed under duress – knowing that if they refused or even appeared reluctant, they would surely be killed – and saved a life when the opportunity presented itself? Was this not more representative of humanity in the ordinary? They were less than heroic under stress, yet humane in ordinary circumstances – perhaps one reason their experiences are not celebrated in the open and without reservation. (2001: 221) Embedding rescuing activities Embedding rescuing acts within existing social relations and cultural values forms another kind of narrative engagement that is discrepant with the public narrative of the heroic saviour. This narrative practice offers a critique of the narrative of the exceptional saviour who is removed from his/her social and cultural milieu. This reorientation explains the significance of social relations, cultural practices and religious values in rescuing. In Rwandan culture, mutual help is valued. Abanyawani – brotherly pacts of mutual help – facilitated the protection and rescue of those with whom previous relations were in place. In his biography detailing the protection of Tutsi and moderate Hutus who sought refuge at the hotel Mille Collines, the then manager, Rusesabagina, explains that ‘Rwandans are expected to offer shelter to the distressed, no matter what the

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circumstances. I took this lesson as gospel, and I grew up believing that everybody felt this way’ (Rusesabagina, 2006: 12). Augustin too distances himself from the figure of the hero when he says: ‘Those who did so deserve well to be rewarded even though I realised that it was thanks to God that we were able to save people.’ The picture of rescuers that emerges from accounts of protection, spontaneous and organised as well as individual and collective is the figure of the civilian rescuer who exposes human qualities and speaks of humanity in action amid genocide. In this regard, the figure of the civilian differs from the public portrayal of the exceptional hero. The context makes it necessary to examine the limits of the figure of the righteous individual as a normative role model (Gensburger, 2002). In July 2004, the survivor organisation Ibuka paid homage to all Rwandans who did their utmost in the service of human dignity (Rosoux, 2007) and for the rescapé and author of SurVivantes, Esther Mujawayo, there is no denying that there were a number of Hutus who put themselves at risk; nevertheless, ‘they are not heroes in the sense that we currently give the term’ but ‘they are humans … and the living proof that even in the worst situations there will always be a spark of humanity that burns’ (Mujawayo and Belhaddad, 2005: 14). Perhaps it is the humanity of many rather than the exceptionalism of the heroic few that should be acclaimed, humanity capable of selfless efforts and rescue acts performed without a thought of financial gain (Brown, 2018).

Conclusion The chapter has contributed to the revisitation of the social history of the genocide by focusing on communal rescue, care and resistance amid genocidal violence. The chapter traced the formation of the public narrative of the individual heroic rescuer and proceeded to elaborate on the ways in which this narrative focuses on individual heroes only and marginalises the narrative of communal rescue, depicts their actions to be the exception to the norm and decontextualises them from culture and society. Stories of rescue reveal the less visible narrative theme of care and solidarity that challenges the hegemony of the core narrative of widespread killing and survival in the constellation of genocide narratives. Networks of solidarity challenge divisive ideologies and reveal that even amid widespread violence, peaceful relations exist. Rwandans engage with the figure of the heroic rescuers by reframing heroes as ordinary individuals and rescuing actions as common-­sense behaviours, by embedding rescue actions in existing values and norms of support, and revisiting the ambivalent role of saviours in post-­genocide times. The shift from the exceptional individual to the ordinary person and from the heroic act to the common behaviour draws attention to the fact that these acts of protection and assistance were inspired by everyday values, practices and relations and made possible by existing social relations.

Chapter 5

Families of mixed ethnic backgrounds The intimate burden of those caught in-­b etween the politics of ethnic identity

Introduction I have no more family, I lost my husband, he was a teacher, I lost my children, I have brothers and even sisters in prison, I am isolated from the world … Tutsi say that my brothers committed the genocide, Hutu say that I bear false testimony against them while they killed my family. (Claudine, a Hutu widow who lost her Tutsi husband and eight children during genocide) Even friends were afraid to come to see me, the whole family was demonised during this period. People have slowly forgotten, but lately I was shocked when I asked a favour to somebody who replied that he could not assist the wife of a criminal. (Immaculee, a Tutsi rescapé married to a Hutu man accused of being a génocidaire, who died in prison before his trail) The quotes with which I have started this chapter are illustrative of the complex ways in which ethnic violence and its legacy impact upon intimate relationships. The legacy of the genocide on the family unit is discernible in Immaculee’s despairing account of the social ostracism endured by her family in the aftermath of the genocide. The words of Claudine, who describes herself as a ‘living dead’, powerfully convey the isolation and discrimination experienced by members of  ethnically mixed families who are caught between the politics of ethnic conflicts. The master-­narrative of the genocide against the Tutsi orbits the core narratives of rescapés and génocidaires and perceives a relationship solely of searching and being sought after, killing and escaping. The overlap of ethnicity with the categories rescapé and génocidaire, which implies that only Tutsi can be victims and only Hutu killers, marginalises the stories of individuals in mixed relationships, like those above of Hutu genocide widows or rescapés whose experience of social culpability is comparable to that of non-­perpetrator members of the perpetrator group.

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Individuals and families of mixed ethnicity are caught between the ethnic divide, as they belong to both ethnic groups in conflict and are likely to be discriminated against by both sides of the ethnic divide. How do individuals and families of mixed ethnicity narrate the violence of genocide from their marginalised position? How do their stories fit within the constellation of genocide narratives that are focused on divisionism and hatred between rescapés and génocidaires rather than harmonious relationships? In previous chapters I described the formation of the master-­narrative of the genocide against the Tutsi in dialogical relationship with the counter master-­ narrative of war. I showed that there is resistance to the public narrative of collective moral culpability, guilt and shame addressed at members of the perpetrator group who did not commit atrocities, and also describes how narratives of rescue challenge ethnic divisionism by showing that there is communal solidarity between the groups of the rescapés and génocidaires. This chapter revisits the social history of the Rwanda genocide and war from the perspectives of people in ethnically mixed families, and the challenges presented to them in post-­genocide Rwanda. Their stories articulate the complex, intimate burdens experienced on both sides of their family and give a compelling voice to the survival, not only of individuals, but also of the family as a unit. Inter-­ethnic families are forcibly positioned into belonging to one group or the other on the basis of ethnic and categorical boundaries that fail to acknowledge the existence of bi-­ ethnic identities. The chapter problematises the public narrative of ethnic identity that renders invisible the ‘mixed’ dimension of the identity of individuals and family units. Unlike the master-­narrative of the genocide against the Tutsi, in which the overlap of ethnicity and the social categories of the rescapé and génocidaire is interpreted as comprising distinct and bounded categories, the inclusion of the stories of inter-­ethnic individuals and families reveals the porous nature of ethnic boundaries. And while official and public discourse exclude the ‘mixed’ element from its narratives through erasure, the stories of inter-­ethnic individuals and families before, during and after the genocide point to the centrality of the ‘mixed’ component of their identity in their social and narrative lives. Members of families of mixed ethnicity engage with the narrative of invisibility and identification with one group by reclaiming elements of the ‘mixed’ identity. Even though they are likely to be discriminated against by both sides, their narratives reconcile elements of both genocide and war master-­narratives. The next section sets the context for understanding the experiences of families of mixed backgrounds in general, prior to examining the ways in which public narratives render invisible ‘mixed’ identities and the ways in which inter-­ethnic individuals and families engage with ‘mixed’ belonging.

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Ethnically mixed families during and after conflict Existing scholarship on ethnically mixed populations focuses predominantly on white/black relations in peaceful contexts (Song, 2017; Spickard, 1991; Tindale and Klocker, 2017). There is a deficit of research conducted where large-­scale violence takes place between the constituent ethnic groups, and even less among ethnic groups who share the same language, culture and religion. Although varying in degrees, mixed families exist in societies that experience identity conflicts (Causevic and Lynch, 2011; Malcolm, 1994; Muldoon et al., 2007). When identities become increasingly oppositional and entrenched during violence, ethnically mixed individuals and families generally experience rejection by their extended families, discrimination and stigmatisation (Korac, 2006), and their children have identity issues (Muldoon et al., 2007). In post-­conflict societies, couples in such marriages tend to leave the locality (Causevic and Lynch, 2011), while those ethnically ‘mixed’ citizens who remain become ‘invisible citizens’ who are spatially unmappable, bureaucratically invisible and socially undesirable (Hromadzic, 2012). In spite of the challenges, intermarriages – whether based on religion, ethnicity or race – have a positive role in building social cohesion and promoting forgiveness and reconciliation (McGlynn et al., 2004), and are a constructive force for tolerance within communities (Hodson et al., 1994; Smits, 2010). Mixed marriages, by the fact that they happen at all, can be considered a positive step towards reconciliation. Inter-­ethnic marriage patterns are an example of the dynamic configuration and transformation of ethnicity that is embedded in broader social and economic contexts (Botev and Wagner, 1993). Personal narratives of individuals in these arrangements reveal a high degree of sophistication and understanding of conflicts and identities. In Northern Ireland for instance, mixed Protestant-­Catholic couples describe holding several identities which they feel can overlap (British and Irish, British and Northern Ireland, more Irish than British), showing that boundary blurring takes place, provides inter-­ethnic couples with a sense of continuity, and justifies the marriage choices they made and the subsequent difficulties they encounter (Muldoon et al., 2007). While this section has set the general context for understanding mixed identities during conflicts, the next one traces the historic formation and transformation of inter-­ethnic identities in Rwanda, leading to the public erasure of the mixed constituent before proceeding to narrate the stories of individuals in ethnically mixed families, their narrative engagements with the master-­narrative of the genocide and, to a lesser degree, that of war.

The erasure of the ‘mixed’ constituent in public narratives Stories of individuals and families of mixed ethnic backgrounds are conspicuously absent from accounts of the genocide and its aftermath in Rwanda. McLean Hilker writes that

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in subsequent portrayals of the genocide, there is little information about the plights of ‘mixed’ families during the violence. Equally, little has been documented about the children of these ‘mixed’ unions who have grown up in the aftermath of the genocide, living in a polarised social context where they belong to both – or neither – of the polar categories. (2012: 230) They are also invisible in the genocide master-­narrative, in which the displacement of their inter-­ethnic identities occurs through a process of erasure of the ‘mixed’ element, the forced allocation into one group, and the separation of extended inter-­ethnic families into distinct patrilineal lineages. The invisibility of the ‘mixed’ element can be traced to the country’s historic pattern of ethnic identification along patrilineal lines of descent whereby new-­born babies inherit their ethnicity from the father’s side. Children born from Hutu fathers and Tutsi mothers are Hutus and those born from Tutsi fathers and Hutu mothers are Tutsi. Unions between Twa and other ethnic groups are uncommon due to their economic and social marginalisation in Rwandan society (Jackson and Payne, 2003). In rural communities, it is hard for Twa men to find the large bride prices demanded by other ethnic groups. Mixed marriages are more common for rural Twa women, because men from other ethnic groups benefit from their low, or non-­existent, bride price (Jackson and Payne, 2003). Such inter-­ethnic marriages would follow the same patrilineal pattern. In the social history of Rwanda, there is a discrepancy between the reality of inter-­ethnic unions and their absence from official records. This is due to the patriarchal institution of the family and also to the ways in which identities became fixed during Rwanda’s colonial era. While in pre-­colonial Rwanda, Hutu, Tutsi and Twa comprised ethnic groups as well as classes with somewhat permeable and fluid boundaries that made possible changes in ethnic/class identification during an individual lifetime, these identities became fixed during the colonial period. The introduction by Belgian colonial administrators of identity cards requiring the registration of ethnicity forced individuals into one group without the option of having a hyphenated identity or being able to change affiliation over one’s lifetime. The practice codified ethnic identity in such a way as to erase the presence of families of mixed ethnic heritage from the official social history of the country. In spite of their official erasure, the existence of mixed ethnic heritage families was common knowledge in pre-­genocide Rwanda and mixed unions were highly politicised. Attitudes towards ethnically mixed relationships hardened and pressure to remain within the confines of one’s group intensified in the wake of ethnic violence: the government was determined to establish absolute differences among Rwanda’s casually mixed peoples (Mirzoeff, 2005). In December 1990, the extremist magazine Kangura published its infamous list, ‘Ten Commandments’, the first of which read:

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Every Hutu man (muhutu) must know that whenever he finds a Tutsi woman (umututsikazi), she is working for her Tutsi ethnic cause. In consequence, any Hutu is a traitor who marries a Tutsi woman; acquires a Tutsi mistress, or makes a Tutsi woman his secretary or protégée. (Chrétien, 1995: 141) The call to ethnic divisionism advocated the neat separation of the two ethnic groups and positioned Tutsi women and Hutu men in a ‘mixed’ relationship into the category of the suspicious other: Tutsi women as agents of the enemy and Hutu men as traitors. The ‘Ten Commandments’ reframed ethnic and gender relations to fit the war discourse around the Us versus Them divide. Given the temporal nature of its non-­presence, the invisibility of the ‘mixed’ element can be said to constitute a non-­visible continuum, whose effects are discernible in the subsuming of the ‘mixed’ component into patrilineal ethnic identification; in the shift, in post-­genocide legislative discourse around identity by which ethnic identity was replaced with national identity; in the erasure, in post-­genocide Rwanda, of ethnicity from the revised 2003 Constitution. The policy of invisibility has been criticised for promoting ethnic amnesia through civic identification (Vandeginste, 2014). However, although public mention of ethnicity is banned in post-­genocide Rwanda, indirect reference to ethnic identity is nonetheless present. Social categories rescapé (Tutsi genocide survivor) and génocidaire (Hutu genocide perpetrator) function as proxy references of ethnicity. The invisibility of the ‘mixed’ component in official narratives of the country’s history, past and recent, is inconsistent with the reality of the widespread presence of individuals in mixed ethnic families and from ethnically mixed backgrounds on the hills of Rwanda. While precise numbers of mixed marriages, today and in the past, are lacking, the practice of ethnically intermarrying was relatively common prior to the genocide (Human Rights Watch, 1999). David Newbury (1998) suggests that more than 25 per cent of Rwandans have both Hutu and Tutsi grandparents and that, in some regions, this figure is likely to exceed 50 per cent, while Mamdani (2001) estimates that about one-­third of Tutsi daughters would be married to Hutu. Intermarriages were considered a vehicle of alliance building between lineages, social advancement and protection in a context where one or the other group was economically dominant (Taylor, 1999). Successful Hutu men married Tutsi women, who were considered more beautiful and of higher status than Hutu women and political elites chose wealthy Tutsi women as marriage partners (Hintjens, 1999). The historic commonality of inter-­ethnic marriages means that, as Mamdani writes, anywhere from a significant minority to a majority of contemporary Rwandans are likely to be children of Hutu and Tutsi intermarriages … rather than being biological offspring of Tutsi of centuries ago, today’s Tutsi need to be understood as children of mixed marriages who have been constructed

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as Tutsi through the lens of patriarchal ideology and the institutional medium of patriarchal family. (2001: 154) The large numbers of ethnically mixed individuals and families that comprise the ‘caught-­in-between’ subjects of post-­genocide Rwanda’s politics of ethnicity is discrepant with their absence in public narratives of mono-­ethnic or civic identification. Their personal stories are invisible in the master-­narrative of the genocide against the Tutsi or that of war. The next section addresses a gap in the social history of the genocide by documenting the experiences of inter-­ethnic families during conflict, whose narratives blur ethnic boundaries and traverse categorical borders. In doing so, these stories problematise the overlap of ethnicity with the social identities of rescapé and génocidaire.

Rethinking the proxy categories of rescapé, génocidaire and orphelin du génocide Contrary to the invisibility of the ‘mixed’ aspect of their identities, members of inter-­ethnic families suffered profoundly during the genocide because of their ‘mixed’ belonging. They were among the first victims of genocidal violence, targeted because of their association with the enemy, their ‘moderate’ views or simply because their very existence posed a threat to the extremist ideology of ethnic purity (Human Rights Watch, 1999). Their experiences of violence were affected by ethnic affiliation and also by the interplay of gender and ethnicity as a consequence of the patriarchal ideology and patriarchal institution of the family. While Tutsi were the main targets of genocide, the destiny of Tutsi men and Tutsi women in inter-­ethnic families differed. Tutsi men married to Hutu wives were targeted from the inception of violence, while Tutsi women married to Hutu men were not the primary targets in the early stages of the massacres (Chakravarty, 2007). Similarly, Tutsi men married to Hutu wives were less able to find protection than Tutsi wives of Hutu men (King, 2010). Tutsi women themselves were not treated in an undifferentiated manner. Tutsi women with Hutu husbands appear to have been targeted later than Tutsi women married to Tutsi men and to have escaped death, rape or mutilation more often than Tutsi women with Tutsi husbands (Chakravarty, 2007). Class also played a role in the fate of Tutsi women, as Jean-­Baptiste Murangira explains: ‘Tutsi wives of poor Hutus had to be killed, but their children could be spared. Tutsi wives of well-­off Hutus could be saved if the husbands participated conspicuously in the killing duties’ (Hatzfeld, 2005: 109). Thus, since Tutsi men were targeted more frequently and Tutsi women in mono-­ethnic relationships were more likely to be killed than those in inter-­ethnic ones, it follows that many Tutsi rescapé women are in inter-­ethnic relationships and have survived with the support of family members of the génocidaire group

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who went to great lengths to protect them. This analysis of the ways in which ‘mixed’ belonging had an impact on survival problematises the simplistic overlap of ethnicity with the category rescapé. It also highlights the challenges faced by inter-­ethnic families to protect their members. Hutu men married to Tutsi women were particularly under pressure. Their actions could make the difference between life and death. While some men killed their wives to spare them from brutalisation and some appeared to kill them more willingly, others fought to save their wives. The case of François Kalinganiré, who became known as the Just Man of Kanzenze (Hatzfeld, 2005: 107), highlights the kind of strains that non-­perpetrator male members of the perpetrator group in inter-­ethnic marriages encountered during genocide. On 12 April, adversaries accompanied by the interahamwe approached Kalinganiré’s house and, knowing that he was married to a Tutsi, ordered him to kill her to show his support for the genocide. Kalinganiré refused and forbade them to enter his house. Terrified by the confrontation, Kalinganiré’s neighbours urged him to obey his assailants and sacrifice his wife; instead, he tried to dispel them and was murdered in his courtyard. This example indicates that ‘moderate’ Hutus in mixed households were also victims of genocidal violence. In post-­genocide Rwanda, the term ‘moderate’ only refers to the dead victims. This implies that there are no ‘moderate’ Hutu survivors (Pruniér, 1995). There is no comparable term to that of rescapé to refer to those individuals who opposed genocidal violence and are still alive. The word itsembatsemba, referring to the massacres of Hutu opposed to genocide, all but disappeared from the official narrative (Morrill, 2006). The proposition of Gregoire, a young adult whose Hutu father was murdered because of his ‘moderate’ political views and Tutsi mother was killed because of her ethnic identity, that ‘there are also Hutu rescapés’ controversially breaks the superimposition of the Tutsi only with the victim. Similarly to the lack of public acknowledgement in the genocide master-­ narratives of the stories of ‘moderate’ Hutus who resisted and survived the violence, there is a lack of recognition of the efforts of ‘moderate’ Hutus to assist their inter-­ethnic families’ members. The public narrative of the heroic rescuer celebrates selfless acts mainly towards strangers, ignoring the rescuing efforts of members of nuclear or extended families to survive as a family unit. The matter is further complicated by the fact that to protect their Tutsi wives or relatives, Hutu men were forced to participate in genocide to show their loyalty to the extremists, and on that basis are considered génocidaires only, and placed in the same category of those who willingly participated and supported the extremist cause. These examples again highlight the problems that are intrinsic in the essentialised overlap of ethnic and social identities. The fate of Hutu women married to Tutsi men also challenges this crude association, in the case of rescapé with Tutsi only. As Tutsi men were being chased, Hutu women married to them were also targeted and raped (King, 2010). After the genocide, Hutu

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widows of Tutsi men were commonly thought of as rescapés (Chakravarty, 2007) but their specific predicament is marginalised in the master-­narrative of the genocide against the Tutsi. Deaths that occurred outside the script are also excluded from the master-­ narrative of the genocide against the Tutsi due to their controversial nature. The assumption that only Hutu génocidaires killed Tutsi leaves unpunished those cases in which Tutsi were killed by members of their own group because they were considered to be Hutus. One such instance is that of Chantal, a Tutsi rescapé in an inter-­ethnic marriage who lost her only baby daughter by the hands of a Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF ) soldier who mistook her for Hutu. In recalling the genocide, Chantal’s suffering, as a survivor but also as a mother, is evident in her words: But when I think of my elder child who was killed in the home of a friend’s family by the RPF, I tell myself that I am unable to speak. I myself was the victim of a sexual rape by the militia, but the loss of my child haunts me!! Let’s stop talking … It’s hard … this is the only girl I had, I do not even have any pictures of her. She was really pretty … This is the peak of my great suffering. I have seen many evils that I cannot tell how I suffered during the war. I suffered physical tortures. I suffered moral tortures, but I will miss this angelic beauty forever! This example highlights the relevance of the ‘mixed’ element of ones’ identity and problematises the portrayal of stories of rescapés’ survival in isolation to those around them. Chantal’s suffering as a rescapé can be given voice, but her burden as the mother of a child of ‘mixed’ identity, killed because of mistaken identity, cannot be revealed in public. Another example of the ways in which the ‘mixed’ element of one’s identity challenges the overlap of ethnic and social identities is that of Ines, a rescapé whose story of persecution by extremists is juxtaposed with the murder of her son by the RPF because of lack of recognition of his ‘mixed’ belonging. Ines recounts: During the genocide, I suffered, I cannot explain how much to you! But my husband helped me a lot. My suffering incited my son to go into the RPF army just towards the end of the genocide. Later I was told that he was executed because of his ethnicity. I cannot let it go. He regarded this army as an army composed of my blood brothers. He loved the army very much. He died innocently. He was against injustice; he died unjustly, young, at 24. Ines’ personal testimony challenges not just the view that only Hutus were killers, but also reveals the ways in which the ‘mixed’ component of one’s identity is erased in the politics of ethnic divisionism. Inter-­ethnic families are left to carry the heavy burden of historic consciousness, and its contradictions, in the

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intimacy of their family lives. Inter-­ethnic families’ complex and controversial ‘mixed’ narratives are silenced in post-­genocide Rwanda, leaving them unable to voice and reconcile their intimate suffering. Children of mixed ethnicity, during and after genocide During the genocide, the offspring of ethnically mixed marriages were in a particularly difficult position. In some cases, children and young people were targeted along with Tutsi because they were considered impure due to their Tutsi blood or because of their physical appearance, social networks or by chance (McLean Hilker, 2012). Most often, children of Hutu fathers and Tutsi mothers were more likely to be spared than those of Tutsi fathers and Hutu mothers, and girls more than boys. Even though children who were considered Hutu were more likely to survive, Gregoire adds, many have witnessed the killing of their Tutsi mother and are traumatised. The survival of ethnically mixed children was dependent on the erasure of the ‘mixed’ component of their identity, as Clémentine explains: They’d warn me not to hope for anything for my husband, since their men were firmly resolved to kill everyone. They advised me to teach my son that he hadn’t had a Tutsi father, that he was a full-­blooded Hutu, because if he ever let his tongue slip later on, it would be deadly for him. (Hatzfeld, 2005: 104–105) If the survival of children in mixed relationships was dependent on the erasure of the ‘mixed’ component of their identity, the birth of children as a result of sexual violence inflicted by génocidaires on rescapés highlights the porosity of ethnic boundaries even at the height of violence. The social construction of Tutsi women as prey and objects of desire meant that during the genocide they were forced into sexual slavery for weeks or months in exchange for their survival (Nowrojee, 1996; Twagiramariya and Turshen, 1998). An estimated 200,000 Rwandan women or more have been victims of some form of sexual violence (Newbury and Baldwin, 2000). Three broad types of assault were identified: opportunistic assaults, which seemed to be a product of the disorder inherent within the conflict; episodes of sexual enslavement; and genocidal rapes, which were framed by the broader genocidal endeavours occurring at the time (Mullins, 2009). The legacy of violence for ‘raped maidens’ and ‘Tutsi wives’ (Burnet, 2012) is heavy in general and even more so for those who became pregnant. It is estimated that almost 5,000 ethnically mixed children have been born as a result of rape, and while some women chose not to keep these children, the many who did encountered resistance and reprobation from their families and the local community (Newbury and Baldwin, 2000). The ethnically mixed children of Tutsi rescapés and Hutu génocidaires carry the stigma of their circumstances and are

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described as the children of bad memories, children of hate, unwanted children, devil’s children or little interahamwe (Carpenter, 2007; Newbury and Baldwin, 2000). Children in ethnically mixed families who survived the genocide are caught in-­between the politics of identity. Paul noted that sometimes parents do not tell their offspring their identity, saying they do not remember or have lost the papers, and that it is only when children become adolescents, or when checks are being carried out by prospective in-­laws when they plan to marry, that they discover their mixed identity. The place in Rwandan society of ‘Hutsi’, a term derived from the merger of the words Hutu and Tutsi to describe post-­genocide children of ethnically mixed families, seems to be one of uncertainty and mistrust (McLean Hilker, 2012). The erasure of the ‘mixed’ element of Hutsi ethnic identities is in contrast with the reality of their lives, which speaks of a ceaseless negotiation around the ‘mixed’ component of their identities. Revisiting the category of the genocide orphan Many children in ethnically mixed families are likely to have lost their parents, as well as other family members. The category orphelin du génocide (genocide orphan) generally refers to Tutsi children who lost one or both parents because of the genocide, and mainly comprises children in mono-­ethnic Tutsi families, but also includes children in inter-­ethnic families with Tutsi fathers. The situation of orphans of a Tutsi mother and Hutu father remains ambiguous, highlighting the centrality of the ‘mixed’ component when categorising ethnic and social identities according to bounded categories. It is unclear under what conditions such children are considered genocide orphans and rescapés, as they are subjected to on-­going scrutiny and changes in status. Aristide, who lost his Tutsi mother during the genocide, was at first a recipient of support from FARG (Fonds National pour l’Assistance aux Rescapés du Genocide – Genocide Survivors Assistance Fund) but was removed from the selection committee’s list when his Hutu father was imprisoned. Aristide says: I was struck off the list of people who received support with their studies, and my sister and my brother were too … My family was persecuted during the genocide. We are reported to be Tutsi, but in terms of identity documents, we are Hutu … I felt frustrated … I would like to continue to receive assistance from FARG for my studies. I was even president of the association of students who survived the genocide. Gregoire too belonged to a rescapé association where he experienced discrimination when other members questioned his right to participate by repeating that he should not be in the association because he was Hutu. As an ethnically mixed person who suffered during the genocide, his view is that: ‘one does not have to be Tutsi to be rescapé. You can be rescapé and still have all your family. The rescapés and orphelins themselves should not be making comparisons against

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one another.’ He criticises the formation of hierarchies of victimhood as if ‘the only way to live is to show that you had been harmed’. Similarly to the categories rescapé and génocidaire, the post-­genocide category orphelin du génocide is a proxy for ethnicity. Alida, a Tutsi rescapé in an inter-­ethnic family, challenges the public visibility of genocide orphans that renders invisible the plight of other orphans: The government only talks about the orphans of the genocide. The others cry and grind their teeth. Yes, all the same! You do not see that on certain occasions the parents who lost their children on the front with the RPF war can cry before the president to be assisted. There are parents who lost their children in war on the side of the government army of the time. Their families have had nothing. Do you think that everyone was animated by a desire to commit genocide? Nobody thinks of them! They have left widows or orphans. They do not get support. They are even frustrated to make known that their parents were military. It was a job like so many others. They served the country! Who will speak for them? This section has examined the ways in which the ‘mixed’ constituent of the identity of offspring of mixed unions challenge the bounded categories of victim and perpetrator and their simplistic overlap with ethnicity. The next section tells the social history of the genocide from the perspective of inter-­ethnic individuals and families who are caught in-­between the politics of ethnicity that leave them to carry a heavy burden in their intimate lives.

Caught in-­b etween: narrating the intimate burden of ‘mixed’ belonging The invisibility of the ‘mixed’ component of inter-­ethnic families and individuals in the master-­narrative of the genocide of rescapés and génocidaires hides the complexity of the ‘mixed’ belonging experienced by those who are connected to both sides of the ethnic conflict and yet caught in-­between the ethnic divide. Dancilla, a 40-year-­old Hutu widow of a Tutsi man who fled to Zaïre (now Congo) at the end of the genocide, vividly explains the dilemmas of being caught-­in-between: I fled to Zaïre because the radio said that the RPF atrociously murdered all Hutu on its way. In fact, I was running away from the RPF because I was Hutu and I was running from the génocidaires because I had Tutsi children. I did not know which way to go. (Mukagasana and Kazinierakis, 2001: 76) Christine confirms their challenges when telling that members of mixed ethnic backgrounds ‘go to one side of the family and are not wanted, and the same for the other’.

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These stories of proximal violence express the multiple burdens that invade the personal space of the family, deeply affect family relations and leave emotional scars. As a consequence of their ‘mixed’ belonging, inter-­ethnic families are likely to have suffered losses on both sides of the ethnic divide, as Celestin, a Hutu man married to a Tutsi wife explains: ‘Our children no longer have a family neither on the maternal side, nor the paternal side.’ For mixed families caught in-­between the violent divide, mixed identity functions as a two-­pronged weapon that assaulted them simultaneously during genocide and war. To be caught in-­between is to carry the burden of losses on the side of the genocide victims and the imprisonment of others on the side of the genocide perpetrators as the biography of Claudine, a Hutu widow in the Tutsi household reported at the beginning of this chapter, recounts: ‘I lost my husband, he was a teacher, I lost my children, I have brothers and even sisters in prison.’ In addition to the burden of losses and culpability, those suspended in the in-­ between space must also contend with the burden of mistrust from both sides of the ethnic divide. Emmanuel explains that when someone discovers that the identity of the interlocutor is mixed, he/she thinks that the person is a spy and not to be trusted. The burden of mistrust makes individuals in mixed households feel unsafe as Ines, a Tutsi woman married to a Hutu man, says: Mixed families are for the time being in danger. All ethnic groups do not trust us. It does not matter which side can kill us, especially since after the genocide, one cannot think of mixing how we used to do. Members of families of mixed backgrounds are aware of the delicate position that ‘mixed’ belonging entails. Their stories challenge the separation of Tutsi victims and Hutu killers in public narratives. For instance, after describing the looting of property and killings by the interahamwe and those of the RPF soldiers for revenge, Jean-­Pierre concludes his observation by saying: ‘it is sad and I do not like to talk about it. One never knows.’ Similarly, Chantal, a rescapé whose daughter was killed by the RPF knows that to share one’s story outside a close circle of trusted friends is risky: I only speak of this death to friends!! Otherwise it would cost me dear!! Until when? … If someone caught me talking about the subject!! Let’s stop, one should not die of his own tongue!! Let us change the subject. Thus, silence becomes another burden for inter-­ethnic families. The genocide affects inter-­ethnic families and individuals in complex ways. Attempts to reduce inter-­ethnic experiences into mono-­ethnic ones fail to recognise the ‘special burden’ (Newbury and Baldwin, 2000) that these experiences carry, not only during but particularly in the years after the genocide. Indeed, the centrality of their ‘mixed’ identity is visible in their complex positionality in the post-­genocide period, in instances when their ambivalent or controversial stories are marginalised in narratives of remembrance, justice, reconciliation and unity.

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The narrative legacy of the genocide Inter-­ethnic families are caught in-­between the commemorative, justice and reconciliation narratives that keep distinct the predicament of rescapés and génocidaires, and consequently expel the ‘mixed’ element of their stories. In post-­ genocide Rwanda, the inclusion and exclusion of certain memories of the genocide means that remembering the losses of ethnically mixed Rwandans remains controversial. When reflecting on memorialisation, Chantal, a rescapé whose child was killed in a case of mistaken identity, describes the problems of commemorating some members of her family but not others, when she says: I mourn the death of my daughter as if she had been killed by the militia. I proclaim aloud the death of my parents, we carried out their burial in dignity, but I never buried the remains of my child! I have been told that they were burned. Thus, linking memorialisation to reconciliation, the latter can be achieved when Rwandans are able to ‘talk about the dead people and the perpetrators of their death. Even allow people to experience this event officially.’ While publicly being allowed to mourn the losses on one side of the family while having to keep invisible those on the other sides reveals the complex position of individuals of mixed ethnicity who during yearly commemorations, as Emmanuel explains, ‘have pain in the heart because they have lost friends they knew, or lost their property’ and ‘everyone is inside his suffering … the situation is tense … the healing process is slow’. During official commemorations, Emmanuel added, ‘people think that I cry for them but I cry for myself ’. In the public commemorative narrative, only the losses of one side of the ‘mixed’ identity are acknowledged, leaving individuals unable to articulate their historic consciousness of the ‘mixed’ belonging in the past and properly mourn the death of their loved ones across the ethnic divide. The predicament of inter-­ethnic families is similarly complicated in the justice sector and the justice narrative in which rescapés and génocidaires confront each other. Because of their positionality, families of mixed ethnic backgrounds are caught in-­between the justice sought by the rescapé side and the punishment on the génocidaire side. As indicated above, Claudine, who lost her Tutsi husband and children and who has siblings in prisons accused of genocide involvement, is caught in-­between the justice narrative: ‘Tutsi say that my brothers committed the genocide, Hutu say that I bear false testimony against them while they killed my family.’ Families of mixed ethnicity are also caught in-­between the narratives of victimhood and culpability, as one spouse’s burden of being the target of genocidal violence becomes the other spouse’s burden of injustice. Reymond is a man of mixed ethnicity whose mother was Tutsi and father Hutu and who married a woman from a Hutu family. All his maternal family was killed, including his mother, while his wife’s parents were killed by the RPF. He says that,

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this war that took away all my uncles and their families has shaken me too much. I myself barely survived! I was pursued because of my slender figure. People even refused to take my identity card and wanted to kill me at all costs! I had to give a lot of money. Now, it is my wife’s turn to flee the country! The poor woman was still a minor during the genocide. It is part of personal settlements among neighbours who wanted to seize the property of her family. Because of their ‘mixed’ belonging, members of inter-­ethnic families are preoccupied with the fairness of the justice process and its misuse. Bernadette says that the most important thing would be not to involve innocent people in the ‘settling of scores’, and that justice can only be accomplished if it is ‘just’ justice – justice for all. Chantal, a rescapé married to a Hutu man, believes that only fair justice can lead to reconciliation and unity: I help everyone, I have never been an extremist and I will never be, it is useless, but we need justice that is just for everyone. This is what would be the basis of unity and reconciliation … Both large ethnic groups (Hutu and Tutsi) have guilty elements for various reasons, including the very problems of education! I do not think there is a fundamentally bad ethnicity. There are people wounded on all sides, poorly educated. This is the time to correct this error. Chantal’s analysis of the past attributes responsibility to both large groups and express her historic consciousness by problematising the unilateral attribution of culpability to a single group. Forgiveness is a significant component in the public narrative of unity and reconciliation, and is centred on the public apologies of Hutu génocidaires and the forgiveness of Tutsi rescapés (Thomson, 2014). At an intimate level, the asking for and receiving of forgiveness extends beyond physical actions of violence to include emotional betrayal through non-­intervention in time of need. Valentine, a rescapé married to a Hutu man, finds it hard to reconcile the fact that her husband did not help her during the genocide: The non-­assistance of my husband during such an overwhelming situation has affected me too much. They wanted to kill me, they had just killed my family. He did not suffer for me, he did not care about anything, but he did not participate in the massacres. Why did not he comfort me? Why was he not compassionate? He did not say a word to support me! I wanted him to! Why this silence? Why did he abandon me? He alone knows. One day, he will have to pay for this behaviour like the criminals … I am ready to forgive him, but he has never apologised. This example highlights the challenges of asking and receiving forgiveness in the intimate sphere of inter-­ethnic families.

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Conversely, family members can also act as intermediaries for reconciliation, as Bonaventure, whose wife and two children were killed by a neighbour, explains that Even the mother of this man apologised in the gacaca and everyone told her that the gesture was worth something. She comes here all the time to visit us! When I see her, I think a little but I straight up my thoughts quickly. Healing can be achieved by moving on, according to Bernadette: Rwandans must stop thinking in terms of death, but of life to move forward, otherwise they will not go anywhere; death is everywhere and in everything. It is the same with life. Man has only to make his choice. He will see what haunts him every time, life or death! The public invisibility of the ‘mixed’ component amid individuals in mixed families is divergent from the personal reality in which the ‘mixed’ component of their identity is instrumental in interpreting their social and narrative lives during and after conflict, and articulates their historic consciousness in the everyday. The next section examines the ways in which ‘mixed’ belonging facilitates inter-­ ethnic understanding and support. Crossing the ethnic divide: empathy, support and unity Ethnically mixed families generally experience discrimination during and after conflict, but a closer examination reveals that their personal stories also express empathy, support and unity across ethnic boundaries. In spite of being caught in-­ between the politics of identity, ‘mixed’ belonging allows members of ethnically mixed families to feel empathy for the suffering on both sides and acknowledge communal losses. The capacity to reach across the ethnic divide is exemplified by the story of Gatete, a Hutu man married to a woman with Hutu father and Tutsi mother: ‘My wife lost cousins and uncles during the genocide! I lost all my family in the war of the infiltrators! Across our native hills, there is nobody left but few rare orphans.’ Gatete’s testimony also shows that sharing the burden can strengthen family relations, as he continues: We have had to suffer without consolation! Fortunately my wife was by my side, I was going to be crazy! Now I do not think about it all the more because it cannot help to think of what makes me suffer! Life goes on … As a family, my wife was very supportive. We are a connected, strong household as in the past if not more. The war did not divide us as in some families where people have even had to divorce! My wife tries to fill all the affection that nature has taken away from me.

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‘Mixed’ belonging can also lead to inter-­ethnic emotional and material support, as indicated by Aristide, a child whose father was detained with accusations of genocide, who explains how his aunts on his mother’s side ‘take me as their own child, even my mother benefits from their assistance’. The acknowledgement of common hardships across the ethnic divide can foster unity and reconciliation, as Bernardine, a Tutsi returnee married to a Hutu says: The two ethnic groups must acknowledge that the past has not been rosy for both and that they must accept this fact in order to not compromise the future of the country! Everyone has lived through harsh conditions, but we must look at what unites the Rwandans and put aside what divides them. These examples show that the ‘mixed’ constituent of one’s identity can be highly instrumental in promoting unity and reconciliation. In this context, the formation of new families of mixed identity is significant because they challenge dominant expectations of mono-­ethnic affiliations. ‘It’s not like before yet, mixed marriages are less frequent, but they are increasing more and more’ (Zorbas, 2009: 135). In the aftermath of genocide, inter-­ethnic mixing was considered taboo and individuals entering these unions have to overcome the resistance of their own families. Bernardine explains that the decision to marry was hard and she spent nights crying as both sides of the family resisted it. The prospective groom was deemed by her parents as ‘not being worthwhile’ because he did not have money. Bernadine’s future parents-­in-law were also against the marriage. His father had spent four years in detention for presumed involvement in the genocide of the Tutsis. This was a blow to the family who knew he was innocent and he had done everything to save many human lives during the genocide. He had been the victim of the machinations of people jealous of his socio-­economic situation. For the family of my husband, the enmity between them and the Tutsis was an established fact. There was no question of marrying them. Similarly Samantha, a Tutsi returnee from Uganda who married Fidele, a Hutu, recounts that she received threats, and Fidele explains that the couple was able to overcome the ostracism by drawing from their faith: ‘Our marriage has been, more due to providence than to men. My wife had to insist before we got married. She told me that it was somehow forbidden to marry a Hutu.’ Individuals embarking on mixed marriages transcend ethnic difference to focus on shared values or personal qualities. Bernadette, a female Tutsi returnee from Burundi who met her Hutu husband while at school, explains: I met my husband, when he was a teacher at my school, when I was attending high school! He was very kind to me and he seemed very serious!

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We began to exchange words and I admired the way in which he lived the word of God, as a true Christian. I saw him worshipping! He spent few minutes in prayer before the start of the classes. This behaviour fits well with that of the ideal man I wanted to marry. These new inter-­ethnic unions become role models for other prospective couples. As Bernadette explains: What amazes me is that almost every month we welcome people who come to ask us how they can convince their parents to marry without being of the same ethnic group! It is an experience that we have gained and the way is simple, to convince the parents through convincing arguments: one does not marry the ethnic group, one marries an individual who can be good or bad for various reasons. The formation of new inter-­ethnic families problematises notions of ethnic purity, exposes the blurred configuration of ethnic boundaries and challenges the overlap of ethnicity with the categories of rescapé and génocidaire. Rather than a civic language of Banyarwanda (we are all Rwandans) aimed at promoting unity by eliminating the ‘mixed’ element of ethnic identity, it is the acknowledgement of its significance in the lives of many families that enables reconciliation. This section has shown that ‘mixed’ belonging for existing and new families can be a resource for reconciliation and unity as it facilitates the emotional and material bridging of the ethnic divide. This crossing is also visible among individuals in inter-­ethnic unions whose stories reconcile and integrate elements of the master-­narrative of genocide and the counter master-­narrative of war, as shown in the next section.

Articulating and reclaiming the ‘mixed’ Families of mixed ethnicity engage with the narrative of the invisibility of the ‘mixed’ constituent of their identity through different narrative engagement strategies that also speak of their historic consciousness in the everyday. A relative fit between personal and national narratives can be seen in comments that ‘mirror’ the official discourse and articulate the ‘mixed’ continuum along patriarchal lines of membership. Terms like ‘unity’, ‘ethnic divisionism’ or ‘genocide’ reproduce the public narrative of the genocide against the Tutsi while others like ‘war of the infiltrators’ indicate an affinity with the counter master-­ narrative of war. Similarly, comments that expose controversial exclusions found in the genocide master-­narrative show an alignment with the war master-­narrative that is in dialogical relationship with the genocide one. An example is the comment made by Fidele:

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It is said that a person is a génocidaire because he is Hutu, as his neighbour who decimated his entire family after the genocide is crowned in glory and walks with his head held high. The military people who killed the population during killings of Kibeho (former province of Gikongoro), DRC [Democratic Republic of Congo] (Tingi Tingi) and north of the country are known. They have never been punished! They are the ones who publicly insult the innocent Hutus and they say that they are génocidaires! Who is between the two? An individual is not born génocidaire. While elements aligned with the genocide and war master-­narratives are visible in these narrative engagements, others are discrepant, such as the case of survivors who speak of the crimes committed by their own blood brothers. However, ethnically mixed individuals and families also adopt a reconciliatory narrative strategy that articulates the ‘mixed’ constituent of their ethnic belonging, and do so by integrating elements from the master-­narrative of genocide and war. More specifically, the narrative of the intimate burden of those caught in-­between the two sides of violence reclaims the painful, personal ‘mixed’ aspect that is erased from their official identity, and which would serve to confine them on the side of victimhood or culpability only. It is through this act of reclamation that the suffering of both sides of the family is integrated. Survivors narrate the losses on the other side of the ethnic divide and so do members of the majority ethnic group. Their narrative reconfigures the meaning of the words ‘victim’ and ‘killer’ beyond the ethnic divide so that the specificities of their experiences of violence and its legacy can be brought to light. Being part of a family that existed in pre-­genocide times helps to transcend ethnic divisions in favour of acts of empathy and support that draw from and sustain on-­ going family relations.

Conclusion The chapter narrated the genocide and war from the perspective of people of mixed ethnic heritage, and elaborated on the intimate burden that they carried and the challenges that they face in post-­genocide Rwanda, where they are caught in-­between the national politics of ethnicity. While the ‘mixed’ dimension of their identity is invisible in the master-­narrative of the genocide, their stories reveal the significance of the ‘mixed’ component of their identity in their social and narrative lives. These stories challenge essentialised mono-­ethnic categorisations and problematise the overlap of ethnicity with génocidaire and rescapé. Members of families of mixed ethnicity engage with the narrative of invisibility and the imposition of identification with one group by reconciling elements of the master-narrative of genocide and that of war and reclaiming elements of the ‘mixed’ identity.

Chapter 6

Marginalisation and survival of the other minority group

Introduction None of the Twa wanted power or played with the politics of killing. Each Twa finds himself or herself without relatives and we have no idea why we had to suffer. (P.J.-B., quoted in Lewis and Knight, 1995) We paid a high price.

(Jean)

Reproduced from one of the very few studies containing testimonies of violence by the minority group Twa conducted soon after the end of genocide, the above quote by P.J.-B. articulates the incongruous position of the third ethnic group who, together with the Hutu and Tutsi, constitutes the Rwandan nation. Its members did not have decision-­making power in the politics of ethnicity that led to violent conflict and yet suffered the consequences of choices made by others. Their marginalised position in Rwandan society leaves the Twa struggling to understand the reasons behind their predicament during the violence. In an interview I conducted with Jean 15 years after the end of genocide, the bewilderment was still tangible. He spoke of the ‘high price’ that his community had paid for a conflict carried out by the other two ethnic groups. While positioning his community in the role of the observer to violence, Jean nonetheless saw the conflict not as a disconnected event that was played out in a territorial and social space removed from that of his community, but as a tragedy that his community was part of. The Twa’s suffering during genocide, war and displacement was accrued in the long-­term by the legacy of conflict when a combination of losses, poverty and on-­going discrimination altered the demographic, economic, legal and social composition of this minority group. In previous chapters I examined the ways in which the narratives of diverse social actors strengthen the master-­narrative of the genocide against the Tutsi and the counter master-­narrative of war. Public narratives of rescapés’ survival and génocidaires’ killing are complemented by attributions of collective moral

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culpability, guilt and shame of members of the perpetrator group who did not commit atrocities, the public representation of the heroic rescuer and the erasure of the ‘mixed’ constituent for ethnically mixed families. Narrative engagements with these public narratives break down the problematic ‘fit’ between ethnic identity and the rescapé–génocidaire binary. They do so by presenting stories told from specific subject positionalities of non-­perpetrators, civilian rescuers, etc. that are associated with one or the other or both ethnic groups. Situated outside the narrative framework of the violent conflict between Hutu and Tutsi is the third Rwandan ethnic group, the Twa. Because they were neither the direct targets nor the perpetrators of ethnic violence, the Twa are excluded from the core narratives of rescapés and génocidaires. This absence could be read as a contention, voiced through exclusion, that the Twa’s survival was not at risk during the violence, and that they were not under pressure to participate in the hostilities. This reading is compounded by the invisibility of Twa stories when compared to the narratives of other protagonists of the constellation of genocide narratives. For example, due to their outsider and marginalised social status, the Twa are not publicly subjected to collective culpability, guilt and shame for not having intervened to stop violence like members of the majority group. Conversely, they are not publicly honoured for their roles as resisters or rescuers. And while Twa and ethnically mixed families share a relationship with the bystander narrative, onlookers from mixed families are connected to both groups through kinship, whereas the bystander narrative implies that the Twa are related to neither of the two groups. Isolated and without honour, the Twa are insiders to the landscape of violence; they suffered physical, symbolic and material losses, and were doubly victimised during and after genocide. Twa accounts of these experiences mark a troubling divergence from the visible narrative of the Twa as bystanders located outside the violence. Twa stories of violence are also marginal in the master-­narrative of war; in this narrative Twa experiences of victimhood are subordinated to those of the majority group. Rather than keeping the master-­narratives of genocide and war distinct and separate, Twa stories of violence point to the hybrid, interrelated nature of genocide and war (Shaw, 2015), whereby war is an instigator and a context for the escalation of genocide (Fein, 1993). For the Twa, the experience of life during and after violence diverges from and exceeds the genocide-­related narratives of naming, remembrance, justice and unity that connect the genocide past and its legacy to the post-­genocide present, and it is the stories of the Twa themselves that provide the greatest insights into the challenges to their material and symbolic survival during this tumultuous period. Erased from Rwanda’s history and legacy of violence, the Twa constitute a temporal detritus. They are ‘those who are left behind by history’ (Jessee, 2017), the people whom Rwandan national memory struggles to include. How do the Twa narrate the genocide and war in which their presence is characterised by

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exclusion, isolation and marginality, indeed by being barely present at all? How do they engage with the master-­narrative of the genocide against the Tutsi, with its focus on victims and perpetrators from which they are excluded or that of the war victimisation of the majority group, when they are the third minority group? This chapter contributes to the social history of genocide and war by detailing the experiences and impact of violence on the individual and community life of the Twa. The introduction of the narrative of progress in the constellation of narratives is an example of the ways in which narratives are constantly in dialogical relationship with other narratives inside and across constellations, and in constant transformation. Zooming into the diverse narrative lives of the Twa allows us to uncover not only their specific story as an indigenous minority but also their narrative engagements with national narratives. The diverse personal and collective stories challenge the single story plot, allow us to unravel the intertwined narrative of rescapé and génocidaire with the Tutsi and Hutu identities, and to narrate more comprehensively the social history of violence that took place in Rwanda in the last decade of the twentieth century. Minorities and conflict The upsurge of ethnic conflicts that characterised the second half of the twentieth century and of which the Rwandan genocide has become an exemplary case is generally explained as a struggle for power, control over limited resources and identity politics or the contestation of competing claims to national belonging among different ethnic, racial or religious groups. In these contexts, minority issues in general fall under the narrative rubrics of rights and persecution. Minority rights are about guaranteeing the special protection of national minority groups compelled to live within the boundaries of nation-­states ruled by governments representing a majority of the population (Shaw, 2015). In violent identity conflicts, in which a group commits mass atrocities with the aim of expelling or eliminating other groups in order to establish a mono-­ethnic nation, ethnic, religious and linguistic minorities are the overt targets of violence and persecution (Capotorti, 1979). States’ consolidation of power following victory is also sometimes achieved through the use of force against minorities who become scapegoats for the new regime that discriminates against them (Harff and Gurr, 1988). As a result and as a consequence of states or societies posing barriers to their upward mobility, minorities are not only victims but can also become instigators of violence when they form separatist nationalist movements and call for independence from existing nation-­states (Fearon and Laitin, 2003). Thus, when discontent breeds violence, minority groups can be direct subjects as well as agents of violence, and this representation fits within the victim–perpetrator binary. This dichotomised understanding of people’s roles in conflict is limited. As identity conflicts unfold, the stories of other minorities who inhabit the landscape of violence are left untold. The stories of minorities who protect other minorities

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are, for instance, situated outside the framework of the victim–aggressor binary. During violence, minority groups are more likely to protect persecuted groups than others because their minority status fosters the formation of collective networks of assistance, as shown by the increased numbers of Jews living in proximity to Catholic churches in dominant Protestant regions and to Protestant churches in Catholic parts of the Low Countries during the Holocaust (Braun, 2016). Solidarity of minorities towards other persecuted minorities is nonetheless not a given. Auron (2017) examines attitudes of the Jewish community in Palestine and the Zionist leadership response to the massive destruction of the Armenians by the Turks during the First World War, and distinguishes the ‘indifferent’ from the ‘reactors’, concluding that the vast majority were indifferent onlookers and only a small minority reacted. Minorities can thus occupy different positions, that of victim, instigator, saviour and bystander but while the stories of minority groups who are victims or nationalists are narrated, those of minority groups who fall outside the victim–perpetrator binary tend to be excluded from narratives of national violence. In the context of Rwanda, the Tutsi-­victim and Hutu-­ perpetrator dichotomy not only obscures the plurality of violence and victimisation experiences within these two groups, but also renders invisible the stories of the Twa community (Hourmat, 2016). The experiences of minorities such as the Twa are under-­researched in genocide studies and also in the emerging field of Rwanda Studies, with scholars continuing to highlight the gap in existing knowledge about this minority group (Hourmat, 2016; Jessee, 2017; King, 2010) without addressing it. How are stories of the indigenous group narrated and how is the narrative of the minority represented? The next section traces the formation of the public narrative of historic marginalisation and the configuration of the outside onlooker during genocide, while also examining the significance of this positionality in post-­genocide Rwanda. It begins by unravelling the public discourse that excludes the Twa from the master-­narrative of genocide and that of war, and that, by positioning them as outsiders, disregards that their lives are embedded in the social fabric of the nation. The chapter argues that there is a dissonance between the portrayal of the Twa community as the outside onlooker and individual stories of Batwa that show their presence in the national space of violence. Historic continuity in the narrative of discrimination and marginalisation means that the Twa are excluded from dominant narratives of genocide and war, as well as from those of memorialisation, justice and reconciliation in post-­genocide Rwanda. Their social and narrative marginalisation threatens their material and symbolic survival.

Naming the outside onlooker: the Twa Agathe is explaining to me the Rwandan ceremony of sharing sorghum beer (ikigage), with people drinking from the same container using different straws,

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when she casually adds, ‘except the Twa’. She elucidates that they do not ‘share the drinking of beer with straws but are given a different container from which to drink’ because they are a ‘special category’. These words capture the view of non-­Twa Rwandans about the Twa community, who they regard to be isolated, relegated and underdeveloped. The marginalisation of the Twa from the other two ethnic groups is a characteristic that Taylor calls avoidance when writing that ‘well in advance of European intervention in Rwanda, interactions between Twa and others were governed by practices of avoidance in marriage, residence, and commensality, practices which were termed kuneena batwa’ (2011: 187). The Twa are the first indigenes of the Great Lakes region. They are hunter-­ gatherers who originally lived in the forests of the Great Lakes region before the arrival of the agriculturalists Hutu, who moved to the area from across the region in search of new fields and were followed by the arrival of Tutsi cattle herders migrating in search of new pastures from north-­east Africa. By the eighteenth century Hutu, Tutsi and Twa shared the same language, Kinyarwanda, animistic religion, cultural practices and a complex political system that resembled western feudal kingdoms, with the Tutsi holding the position of aristocrats and the Hutu that of serfs (Pruniér, 1995). The Twa were also the first of Rwanda’s three ethnicities to suffer stigmatisation, a practice that predates European colonialism by several centuries (Taylor, 2011). The communal areas of these hunter-gatherers were taken away for agriculture and pasture, pushing them to become principally potters but also woodcrafters, tinkers, blacksmiths, day labourers, bards and performers in the countryside (Lewis, 2006). Not all Twa were discriminated against and some were influential players in pre-­colonial times when they became clients of Tutsi chiefs and performed important roles for them as musicians, messengers and warriors at their courts (Lewis, 2006). When colonial officials reached the Great Lakes region towards the end of the nineteenth century, they marvelled at what they saw: a sophisticated level of centralisation of a Rwandan kingdom ruled by a Tutsi king and inhabited by three very different peoples with attributed different historical roots (Ndahinda, 2011). During the colonial period, the German and Belgian powers applied a racial order to the populations with whom they came in contact. The Tutsi were constructed to be racially superior Hamitic colonisers from the north-­east of Africa who had conquered the racially inferior Hutu, who themselves had once conquered Rwanda’s autochthones, the most racially inferior, Twa (Newbury, 1998; Pottier, 2002). The colonial encounter transformed social distinctions into races and porous ethnic boundaries into racialised hierarchies on the basis of physical characteristics and migration histories. The Twa were ranked and positioned at the bottom of the social arrangement. Belgian colonial administrators went one step further in codifying the racial order. In 1933, they introduced identity cards that required the inclusion of ethnic membership. This practice fixed the ethnicisation of identity (Longman, 2001) and ended the social mobility across ethnic/ class groups that existed in pre-­colonial times. It not only created the conditions for the implementation of the genocide during which individuals in flight across

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the country were asked to show their identity cards at road blocks, it also fixed the lower status of the Twa. At independence, the hierarchical ideology linking indigeneity and migration was reversed between the two mobile groups, while leaving the third indigenous one placed at the bottom. The Tutsi were portrayed as the outside invaders and the minority group oppressing the majority while the Hutu saw themselves as the regional inhabitants of the area and the majority population; the claims of the third minority and autochthonous group were barely acknowledged. Their livelihoods were shattered in 1980 when a new law was introduced, under which the forest became a protected area and activities such as hunting animals or gathering plants, on which the Twa depended for a livelihood, were declared illegal (The Independent (Kampala), 2017). Twa communities were forced to leave the forests and, finding it difficult to adapt to the new life, were forced to live in extreme poverty. In the period leading to war and genocide, the notion of citizenship was deployed to divide the polis by reducing citizenship to ethnic Hutu identity, to the exclusion of all Tutsi (Buckley-­Zistel, 2006) and the continued erasure of the Twa from political and social life. Centuries of cultural avoidance, social segregation, economic discrimination, political exclusion and refusal of recognition of their special status as indigenes forged a national narrative of the Twa community as a marginal and devalued ‘special group’. Discrimination towards the Twa takes the form of negative stereotypes, denial of rights and separation (Woodburn, 1997). Their dismissal from public discourses around the formation of the nation, and more generally the history of the country, is usually explained in instrumental terms on the grounds of their numerical insignificance. At the time of genocide, the Twa’s population ranged between 70,000 and 150,000 to constitute 1–2 per cent of the country’s approximate seven million inhabitants (Government of Rwanda, 1991). Because of their low numbers and historic discrimination, the Twa are regarded as the outside minority to the ethnic violence that took place between the Hutu and Tutsi, and are positioned as onlookers to the genocide. Their stories are absent from accounts of the genocide, and there is a risk that they will be the forgotten minority in the history of violence (Jessee, 2017). The public discourse obscures the fact that the Batwa are an intrinsic member of the social fabric of the nation and that contrary to perceptions of bystandership, members of the Twa community held different roles during genocide, as shown in the next section.

Questioning the onlooker narrative: the insider and the struggle for survival In spite of their historic marginalisation and differently from public perceptions of their onlooker role during the genocide, the Twa’s historic consciousness of their positionality in the history of genocide and war is one of connection. Making reference to Rwandan mythical history of Kigwa, a man descended from

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the sky who had three sons, Rututsi, Ruhutu and Rutwa (Malkki, 1995), Jean adopts the metaphor of the family to incorporate the Twa in the history of the country’s recent violence. For him, the Rwandan nation is like a family constituted of three brothers, the Hutu, Tutsi and Twa. The Twa witnessed the fight between the other two brothers but as they are members of the same unit, the conflict did not leave them uninterested or uninvolved but it touched them too. Contrary to their absence in the single conflict story of the genocide and their representation as outside onlookers, Twa’s personal narratives tell the story of a presence awaiting acknowledgement, and question the exclusion of the Twa in the master-­narrative of the genocide against the Tutsi and their invisibility in the victimisation of the master-­narrative of war. Settling for a single conflict story and defining a rigid victim–perpetrator dichotomy can produce the effect of excluding the diversity of experiences, memories and perceptions of conflict (Hourmat, 2016). The Twa as a group may be viewed as an onlooker to violence, but members of the Twa community were involved participants in the conflict, in which they occupied a variety of roles. First, they were victims of violence. The dominant dichotomous representation of Tutsi victims and Hutu perpetrators obscures the plurality of experiences of violence during which the Twa were targeted, displaced or killed. The extremists viewed the Twa as supporters of the Tutsi enemy because of their past connections with Tutsi chiefs. Twa communities were often menaced, with extremists telling them: ‘First, we kill the Tutsi, then we will kill you!’ or ‘Your time will come!’ (UNPO (Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organization), 1994: 19). It is estimated that over 10,000 Twa died during the events of 1994 (Thomson, 2009a). The Twa also resisted the attackers together with their neighbours. While each place of struggle had its own story of individual and collective searches, escapes and resistance, most share common elements: in the early days, communities repelled the initial attacks until resistance was overcome when the extremists called for reinforcements (Human Rights Watch, 1999). In villages, Tutsi, Hutu and Twa set up self-­defence patrols to fight against the outsiders. A Twa interviewee by Lewis and Knight explains: We villagers used bows and arrows and spears to defend ourselves. My family lost three children. I was almost killed. Now [due to my injuries] I am unable to look for work or food. The young child I live with is almost dying. (1995: 62) Twa also rescued Tutsi fleeing persecution. Their social status as an outsider became an asset, as Agathe explains: ‘it was relatively safer for those who had Twa neighbours to hide among them’ because it was unlikely that ‘the interahamwe would search for the Tutsi in the houses of the Twa’. In the narrative of the heroic rescuer, stories of rescue of Tutsi by the Twa, who hid and protected persecuted individuals, are seldom celebrated, if at all.

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Due to their historic connection with Tutsi royals, the Twa also helped the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF ). Peter, a RPF soldier who returned from Uganda, told me that he was grateful for the Twa’s hospitality; he and other members of the Tutsi diaspora stayed with them when crossing the border to go and sensitise the Tutsi population inside the country. As Rwandan citizens, Twa men were also instructed to participate in roadblocks, and were enlisted in patrols. Some of them participated in the killings. The perception is that they were forced rather than chose to join the interahamwe: ‘People say that they were forced by the Hutu to participate otherwise they were going to be killed like the Tutsi’ (Lewis and Knight, 1995: 64). Refusal to collaborate could lead to accusations of being a supporter of the enemy: The way things happened the Twa were victimised during the war. Some Twa were taken to man the road blocks and they did it in order to avoid being killed, because if you didn’t they called you a traitor like the Inkotanyi (RPF ). (Lewis and Knight, 1995: 64) These personal stories of violence told by the Twa are invisible in the master-­ narrative of the genocide against the Tutsi. The narrative of the innocent (Tutsi) survivors and guilty (Hutu) perpetrators leaves little room for discussion of Twa civilians’ experiences of the genocide – during which they were often targeted as alleged Tutsi supporters, or are considered sufficiently pliable to be coerced into contributing to the genocide (Jessee, 2017). It also leaves out their stories as resisters and rescuers. And contrary to the public representation of the Twa as the outside onlooker, members of the Twa community were, in fact, embedded in the landscape of violence in different roles. The Twa therefore paid a ‘high price’ for the hostilities between their two brothers, namely, the safety of their own already fragile survival. The struggle for existential survival The narrative of the outsider Twa is challenged, not only by testimonies that depict the various roles that individuals held during genocide, but also by the widespread effect of violence on this minority community. Jean uses the phrase ‘We paid a high price’ to refer to the huge impact of genocide and war on the demographic, social and political life of the third sibling. The Twa suffered disproportionality as a consequence of the rivalries of the other groups (Lewis, 2006). Despite having no interest or role in national politics, about 30 per cent of Rwandan Twa were killed or died during the genocide and ensuing war, compared to the combined population loss of 14 per cent of Hutu and Tutsi (Lewis and Knight, 1995: 93). Zephyrin Kalimba of the indigenous people’s association, COPORWA (Communauté des Potiers du Rwanda (Rwandese Community of Potters), declares his community’s greatest struggle in post-­genocide Rwanda: ‘We fight for our survival’ (Ashdown, 2013).

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The storyline of survival and the threat to survival succinctly describes the predicament of the Twa during and after conflict. There is the threat of their numerical survival, as the number of Twa has diminished significantly since the pre-­genocide period. At the time of the genocide, the Twa comprised between 1 per cent and 2 per cent of the Rwandan population, their numbers ranging between 70,000 and 150,000. In 2010, there were, according to a major survey conduced by the association representing this ethnic minority, only 33,144 Twa residing in Rwanda (COPORWA, 2010). This number is less than half of that counted prior to the genocide. The Twa now represent only 0.41 per cent of the national population of 8,128,553 (COPORWA, 2010). These figures provide evidence that the conflict took a significant toll on the Twa community. During my visit to the Twa mountain community near Nyaguru National Park, I witnessed first-­hand the poverty, economic destitution and social segregation of its members whose access to traditional hunting grounds had been taken away to create a national park; I spoke with those living at the outskirts of the capital Kigali, who complained of the low price that their earthenware fetched amid rising costs; and in the south of the country I was told of the challenges to their future as a community as their numbers dwindle and they are dispersed across the country in increasingly small communities, with poverty barring the possibilities of reuniting. The Twa’s perceived outsider status has three main consequences; their losses comprise an invisible presence in the narrative of the genocide, and the impact of genocide and war on the survival of their community is marginalised in the recent history of the country. Their voices are similarly invisible, present in the constellation of genocide narratives as presences characterised by erasure, neither fully present or non-­present, haunting the exterior and the margins of the narrative of violence. Situated outside the victim–perpetrator binary, the Twa are the people of an attempted forgetting within the national discourses of ethnicity in Rwanda. However, their personal narratives challenge this narrative of politically willed amnesia and its representation of the outsider Twa. These counter-­ narratives speak instead of the connections of the Batwa to the Rwandan family, document the different roles that they occupied during genocide and voice the Twa struggle for survival that the genocide, war and displacement seriously compromised.

Post-­g enocide narratives: from autochthones to historically marginalised There is continuity in the way in which the Twa are portrayed as marginal bystanders in the social history of the country, including its genocide, and in the national narratives of remembrance, justice and reconciliation in post-­genocide Rwanda. The delineation of victim and offender along ethnic lines informs the public approach of reconciliation and unity, one in which Tutsi are cast as victims/survivors and Hutu as perpetrators, and with anyone who deviates from

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this ‘rigid typology’ at risk of being labelled a genocide denier (Hartley, 2015). In the commemorative narrative, the Twa losses are either omitted or tangentially acknowledged by the adverb ‘also’ that concludes speeches about remembering the death with the words ‘and also Twa died’. The ‘high price’ that the community paid during conflict in losses and suffering was followed by another high price, paid in the aftermath of violence through the erasure of their losses from memorialisation narratives. Connecting genocide and post-­genocide narratives shows that the Twa’s public absence is counteracted by stories of their lived experiences, which speak to and of the victimisation of persecuted minorities and challenge the perception of the uninvolved bystander. The severity of Twa losses during genocide and war remains unspoken in Rwanda’s national discourse because it undermines the bounded rescapé and génocidaire binary. This unspoken loss is reproduced in the justice narrative, in which the Twa are absent yet doubly victimised. The justice narrative: doubly victimised The Twa are marginal in the transitional justice narratives, most notably gacaca, in which the minority group is a witness listening to the testimonies of the rescapés and the defence or confessional statements made by the génocidaires. The role of outside witness does not reflect the fact that the Twa had multiple roles during conflict and that as members of the Rwandan family, they were connected to both rescapés and génocidaires. This view marginalises the collective Twa’s experiences of double victimisation, as victims of violence during genocide and of justice in its aftermath, when their roles were reversed from targets during violence to killers in judicial tribunals. During the genocide, the Twa were targeted because of their historic links with the Tutsi chiefs and were persecuted when they refused to partake in violence. The Twa experiences fit with the victimisation narrative, as told in the following quote from a testimony that Lewis and Knight gathered soon after the end of the genocide: About Twa behaviour, starting around April 1994: they behaved well but were eventually victimised. We lived by making pots and cultivating the land, but food became scarce once the war started. People were telling us to go and man the roadblocks and if we refused they said the Twa should be killed. Some did what they were told, in order not to be killed, and others lost their lives. (1995: 63–64) While they were targeted during genocide, in the post-­genocide period the Twa became associated with the Hutu perpetrators, initiating a reverse kind of victimisation, as explained by a Twa widow in the same report by Lewis and Knight:

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The problems started when we came back from exile. Many of our people were thrown into prison by others saying they were Interahamwe. We would like them back because the Twa people are very few, and therefore we need them. Our pottery does not earn us enough money to survive. So we do not eat well. (1995: 69) It is known that some Twa participated in roadblocks, pillaged and committed crimes but the vast majority did not, a fact that was regularly communicated to me by Twa and non-­Twa alike. While it is very difficult to know the exact numbers because of the abolition of ethnic referencing in the divisionism law, there is a consensus that they were few, that they were generally following orders and that they were not members of the political ideologues of violence. Despite having resisted the force-­to-kill policy, many Twa returned home to find themselves branded as interahamwe simply because some Twa from their area had in some way participated. Thus Twa became the victims of two kinds of association: first, that of the extremists who associated them with the Tutsi and considered them to be sympathetic to the enemy, and then of RPF elements attempting to administer justice, who associated them with the perpetrators of the genocide. To become doubly victimised challenges the predicament to the onlooker to violence. Yet the enduring narrative of the group’s segregation from society hides the personal connections of the Twa to the Rwandan nation. The narrative of national unity: the struggle for symbolic survival The public narrative of national unity endorses national belonging through the promotion of a civic identity based on ‘Rwandanness’ that eradicates ethnic differences from the public discourse (Buckley-­Zistel, 2006). The aim of the narrative of national unity is to forge the new Banyarwanda. The idea of ‘one Rwanda for all Rwandans’ was originally elaborated in 1999 when the National Unity and Reconciliation Commission (NURC) was set up, and found legal expression in the 2003 revised version of the Constitution, which linked national unity with the eradication of ethnic, regional and other divisions. The ambition to create an inclusive national identity around ‘Rwandanness’ or ‘Rwandanicity’ is achieved through the management of identity narratives and their configuration in the post-­genocide narrative of the nation. The Twa are situated at the periphery of the narrative of the new nation-­state (Turner, 2015). In this narrative, their special status as an indigenous minority is replaced by their new civic identity as Rwandan citizens, but citizenship does not translate into active or vocal participation in public narratives of national unity and reconciliation. When ‘clubs de dialogue’ (dialogue clubs) were set up, Agathe explains, the Twa were not really involved because of ‘their limited numbers, the fact that they are isolated, and they have a backward mentality’.

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Explanations for the lack of participation in reconciliation are revealing of the on-­going distance between non-­Twa and Twa civilians and the perceived lower position that the latter occupy in the social hierarchy of the country’s developmental trajectory. Their dismissal in the politics of ethnicity may appear justified in numerical terms but it is unjustified in symbolic terms, as they were the original inhabitants of the region, and this makes them a fundamental constituent of Rwandan society and culture. This is evident in the visual story contained in a wood carving hanging from one of the walls of Hotel Mille Collines in Kigali, which depicts traditional rural life in the pre-­colonial past. In the foreground, at the centre of the bas-­relief, sits a large container, and surrounding it are three men standing at the entrance of a hut while cows forage in the background. This image symbolises, a Rwandan friend explains, the historic inter-­dependence that exists among the three ethnic groups; the agriculturalist Hutus cultivate the land which produces the grass that the cows of the pastoralist Tutsi feed from to produce the milk which is collected in large pottery containers made by the Twa. The Rwandan family is depicted through a narrative of distinct yet complementary roles and responsibilities. This picture of the distant past captures the complementary relationships of unity through difference and complementarity among the three groups, which were transformed into hierarchical and distant ones. Yet, even when relationships are hierarchical they still imply the existence of connections. The traces of the Rwandan family’s past are visible in the narrative of the nation that has historically acknowledged the Twa’s status of indigenous inhabitants of the Great Lakes region, even in spite of on-­going economic, social and political segregation. However, as a result of the genocide that special status has changed to that of ‘historically marginalised population’ (HMP). The Twa have paid a ‘high price’ for the conflict between the other two siblings not only in physical losses but also symbolically, in relation to their identity. They have lost their name and with it the recognition of their autochthonous status. Local non-­governmental organisations working with Batwa have been forced to change their names and/or redefine their mandate to avoid sanctions. The most infamous example is the forced removal of the word autochtone, meaning ‘indigenous’ from the name Communauté des Autochtones Rwandais (Community of Indigenous Rwandans, or CAURWA). The group, founded in 1995 to promote the rights of the Twa, had to remove the word ‘autochtone’ and replace it with that of an occupation, ‘potier’ (potters) because 95 per cent of those who work make pottery. The justice ministry refused to grant legal recognition of the organisation, claiming that its name and objectives were contrary to other prohibitions of divisionism (Reyntjens, 2013). The association changed its name to that of COPORWA. The recognition of their autochthone status was lost as a consequence of the reinvention of the nation in response to the genocide, marking the invisibility of a core feature of the Twa’s identity in society and in the country’s history. As a result of the reconfiguration of the singular post-­genocide civic identity, the Twa have witnessed the removal of their

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historic claim of autochthonous inhabitants and connected rights to special protection as an indigenous minority. They have lost their identity as Twa and struggle to maintain their symbolic identity as forest people. The effects of the policy on the Batwa have been mixed. On the one hand, the law banning ethnic identification has the potential to overcome discrimination, which was widespread in the past, as Mayira explains: ‘They used to distance themselves from us. We couldn’t sit at the same table as other Rwandans and eat with them, but there was enough food for us’ (Ashdown, 2013). Discrimination has subsided after the genocide: ‘Today, no one abuses you because you’re Mutwa’, Mukaruhanga says (Ashdown, 2013). On the other hand, the abolition of ethnic references can be exclusionary (Beswick, 2011). The removal of indigenous status from the nation-­building narrative threatens the survival of the Twa as an aboriginal ethnic group. The Twa are now referred to as HMP. The narrative change from autochthones to historically marginalised is a ‘high price’ that the Twa pay for the genocide and war that took place between the other two siblings. The new name, which was given to them rather than being chosen, tells the story of the community’s lower status in society rather than recording the pride in their origins. Mr Gatera, a representative of COPORWA expresses historic consciousness through dissatisfaction with the change in name: We are simply Batwa, not a ‘historically marginalised people’ … Why should the government label us ‘historically marginalised people’? … As far as I know, I am not historically marginalised. That’s an insult. It’s discrimination. People should stop calling us whatever they want. We are simply Batwa … the banning of ethnic references has left the Twa without a proper name. The fact that when it comes to the genocide the government wants us to refer to it as the ‘Genocide against the Tutsi’ means that the Tutsi are being recognised as an ethnic group. So, why not the Batwa? (Mwijuke, 2014:1) Mr Gatera’s words challenge the imposed narrative of historic marginalisation and question the abolition of ethnic identification, and indirectly the hierarchy, that allows one group to be able to retain its name while another is forced to abolish it. The removal of ethnic identity is an attack on the symbolic survival of the group’s identity. COPORWA’s representative Kalimba explains that, ‘The Batwa are invisible’ and continues by stating that ‘our position is to recognize our identity first’ (Ashdown, 2013). The post-­genocide transition from indigenous people to HMP represents a far-­reaching narrative shift that refuses to recognise the distinctive indigenous character of the Twa and publicly displays their degraded place in society.

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Decentring the genocide narrative: national progress, vulnerability and material survival The Twa’s historic segregation, which operated during and after the genocide, shapes the ways in which the group’s members articulate their historic consciousness and make sense of their personal and collective stories in relation to the master-­narratives of genocide, and the post-­genocide national landscape. Their personal stories do not really fit with the narratives focused on the genocide, memorialisation, justice, reconciliation and national unity. In addition to their physical and symbolic existence, other issues, of vulnerability and material survival, govern the social lives of the Twa. Thus, Twa’s narrative engagement with national narratives can be described as a form of decentring the genocide narrative of survivors and perpetrators and centring the survival of the indigenous minority through a narrative of their own material survival within the narrative of the country’s progress. COPORWA’s report outlining the association’s plan of action between 2010 and 2014, for instance, focuses on four areas of action and none of the themes makes explicit references to the genocide, gacaca or reconciliation. The core areas of economic and socio-­cultural development for the group are: livelihood, human rights, education and culture (COPORWA, 2010), which are connected to the national narrative of progress. Rwanda has been praised for its achievements in creating stability and relative security. The country was commended by the United Nations for having reached virtually all its Millennium Development Goals and was praised by the World Bank for fostering rapid socio-­economic development (UNPO, 2018). The Government’s narrative of progress revolves around the six pillars of Vision 2020, which include poverty reduction, the fight against HIV/AIDS, environment protection, education for all, decentralisation and good governance. These programmes are no less relevant for the Twa. Yet, to understand why Batwa cannot simply embrace the national narrative of ‘progress’, it is useful to examine their relationship to land and the implications of dispossession on their material survival. A key characteristic of indigenous people is that for most, the survival of their particular way of life depends on access and rights to their traditional land and its resources. For Batwa, access to marshlands and ancestral forests is essential to their culture and identity, be that as hunter-­gatherers or in their modern incarnation as potters. The imposition of conservation areas in the last remaining good forests, Parc des Volcans and Nyungwe forest, means that they must access forest resources clandestinely, risking imprisonment. Without consultation or reparation, they have been denied the right to practise their ancestral lifestyle (Lewis, 2006). Few Twa possess land, and even fewer can live off the produce of their gardens. They cannot produce enough to sell their crops on the market and 47 per cent have no farmland, four times the national average (Ashdown, 2013). The dispossession from their land has exacerbated their vulnerability. The Twa’s land insecurity means

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that they are reduced to an itinerant existence of squatting. As a result, Batwa’s material subsistence is more at risk than that of many other Rwandans, who can at least rely on the food they grow themselves. The Twa also continue to suffer social discrimination. COPORWA reports that 30 per cent are unemployed (compared with less than 2 per cent nationally), 77 per cent are illiterate (compared to 33 per cent for the general population) and 51 per cent have never attended school (Ashdown, 2013). Like other forest people in Africa, loss of resources and dispossession from their ancestral lands leave aboriginal forest people in extremely vulnerable conditions of marginality and poverty (Gilbert et al., 2009). Their plight has attracted increasing attention from non-­governmental organisations and treaty-­bodies, as focus has shifted from immediate concerns related to the genocide to longer-­term issues of nation-­ building (Hartley, 2015). The Twa’s self-­narrative is one of vulnerability and survival, whose urgency to act is clearly expressed by Zephyrin Kalimba: ‘The Batwa families are very vulnerable and bound for extinction if nothing is urgently done’ (Irin, 2003). The government does offer programmes for Rwanda’s most vulnerable people, a category under which virtually all of the Twa find themselves, and as a result of these efforts to improve their lives, more Twa have access to free medical care, education and housing (Mwijuke, 2014). But even as their situation is improving, the Batwa continue to exist as a marginalised population who struggle to survive and prosper. The issue of their material survival and socio-­economic underdevelopment is compounded with that of their political exclusion. On a visit to Twa communities on the outskirts of the capital Kigali, Aimable explains that the Twa want to improve their situation, but that this is difficult because they lack political power. Aimable believes that if a Twa were to stand for election, he would not be elected: ‘Nobody from the other groups would vote for us’, he explains. The 2003 revised Constitution promotes political representation of marginalised groups, albeit in the Senate only. Article 82 of the Constitution establishes that out of the 26 members of the Senate, 8 should be appointed by the President of the Republic to ‘ensure the representation of historically marginalised communities’, and while Article 82 does not guarantee access to politics to members of minority groups, it nonetheless remains the only direct recognition that some communities have been historically marginalised (Gilbert, 2013). The Twa want wider political participation, not only in the Senate, but across the political spectrum, as Joseph Ngizwenimana explains: ‘We need representatives from cell level to parliament’ (The Independent (Kampala), 2017). Rather than embracing the vulnerability narrative, which puts them in the same category as other social groups, the Twa have renewed their appeal for affirmative action to improve their livelihoods on the grounds of their distinct history and identity. This section has shown that the HMP narrative engagement with the con­ stellation of genocide narratives shifts the focus of survival from that of the victim of the past genocide to the survival of the indigenous minority in the

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post-­genocide present. The Twa decentres the genocide narrative to speak of their marginalisation in the narrative of national progress: they are the ones left behind and their vulnerability threatens their future. Their stories show the continuity in pre, during and post-­genocide practices of discrimination that continue to position them at a remote distance from Rwanda’s socio-­political development.

Conclusion This chapter has revisited the social history of ethnic violence by challenging the representation of the Twa as the outside onlooker to genocide, a narrative that conceals individual stories of involvement and connection. The chapter has traced the formation of the narrative of the outsider addressed at the indigenous minority group that leads to their exclusion from the constellation of genocide narratives. Without denying the historical marginalisation of the group, the chapter has shown that, albeit from lower subject positionality, the Twa are part of the nation and were involved as civilians in the violence and suffered the consequences of conflict. Personal stories voice alternative narrative themes of involvement to that of bystandership, of suffering to that of distance, of vulnerability and marginalisation to that of progress. The discrimination and vulnerability that structures Twa existence was exacerbated by the genocide losses, war, exile and poverty. The reconfiguration of their survival in the present decentres that of the genocide survivor and calls for the inclusion of marginal narratives that speak of other identities and relationships.

Chapter 7

Civilian returnees Intra-­e thnic differences and continuities with the past and exile

Introduction When in Congo, I learned from the native Congolese that our families were originally from Rwanda, but I had never been in Rwanda and I did not know anything about the suffering of Rwanda and the ethnic problems that led to the genocide … I learned the reality of the genocide after my return to the country. What happened was worse than I had imagined. (Jean-­Pierre, Congolese Tutsi) Jean-­Pierre is a Tutsi returnee and is also Banyamulenge, the name used for ethnic Tutsi who have lived in Eastern Congo for generations. He is one of an estimated 600,000–700,000 Tutsi who returned to Rwanda after the end of the genocide (Waters, 1997) following the victory of the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF ), the army composed of Tutsi refugees, mainly from Uganda, who fought the war. In the quote reported above, Jean-­Pierre is open about his limited knowledge of Rwandan identity politics that led to violence and the dynamics of the genocide. His summary is quite different from the detailed, first-­hand accounts of survival narrated by the rescapés, the members of the same Tutsi group who resided in the country at the time of violence and who are protagonists of the master-­narrative of the genocide against the Tutsi. His commentary is also different from the triumphalist account of the RPF. Even though Jean-­Pierre is a diasporic Tutsi, he was not actively involved in the war led by the RPF who brought the genocide to an end, and his account of violence, which resembles that of an observer, is more subdued than the victorious tale told by the RPF who, according to their own accounts, liberated Rwanda. The previous chapters told the stories of Rwandans residing in the country during violence. The stories of non-­perpetrators, civilian rescuers and ethnically mixed families broke down the problematic ‘fit’ between ethnic identity and the rescapé–génocidaire binary while the stories of the minority Twa questioned their exclusion from the narrative framework of the genocide. In this chapter, I examine another dimension of the ethnic/category fit through the stories of Tutsi civilian returnees who lived outside the geographical landscape of violence

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during the genocide. Their positionality mirrors in reverse that of the minority Twa, who are geographical insiders but social outsiders, showing that physical spaces and social places do not overlap. The returnees’ testimonies are intertwined with those of the rescapé group by ethnic association and also by their support of the liberation war waged by the RPF. Like other survivors, returnees lost family members, relatives and friends inside the country. As refugees involved with the RPF, they also lost young men in combat during the war that preceded the genocide, during genocidal violence and also during subsequent conflicts, most notably the insurgency in the north-­ west of the country and the Congo wars. How do the Tutsi returnees narrate the genocide and war in which they were not physically present yet collectively involved? How do they engage with the master-­narrative of the genocide against the Tutsi, with its focus on génocidaires and rescapés, to whom they are affiliated through ethnic membership? And how do their personal stories contribute to the formation of the social history of the genocide and its narrative legacy of  justice, commemoration, reconciliation and national unity after their return ‘home’? The stories of Tutsi civilians who returned to Rwanda after the end of the genocide are generally subsumed under the public narrative of the RPF, the political organisation representing the refugees. The RPF ’s political role has undergone a shift, from being the diasporic organisation of Tutsi refugees, to becoming the mainstream national party in post-­genocide Rwanda. Although it is composed of citizens across the ethnic spectrum, the party is led by Tutsi returnees (Reyntjens, 2016) who were instrumental in creating and consolidating the master-­narrative of the Genocide against the Tutsi outlined in Chapter 2. And while the RPF ’s new, foundational narrative of the nation and its investment in the master-­narrative of the Genocide against the Tutsi (and its reconfigured commemorative, justice, reconciliation and unity narratives), is publicly visible, less is known about the personal stories of the Tutsi civilians who returned ‘home’ following the victory of the RPF. Tutsi returnees are not a homogenous group, nor are they a static entity. What are their stories of returning ‘home’ to a country many of them had left as children or had never visited, and how do their stories fit with the RPF public narrative of survivor, victim and saviour or that of the new Banyarwanda in post-­genocide Rwanda? This chapter narrates genocide from the perspective of the Tutsi civilian returnees who were abroad when the genocide took place and returned to Rwanda after its end and for whom legacy narratives of the genocide are most relevant. The chapter argues that to conflate the stories of Tutsi civilian returnees with the Tutsi-­led RPF and its public narrative of the ‘new’ Rwanda is limited because it conceals the diversity of their experiences and the continuities that exist with their lives in exile. The public narrative does not capture the varied stories of return, belonging and unity that forged the new Rwandan nation. Other narratives, of cultural, economic and religious transformations, are also relevant

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for understanding the ‘new’ Rwanda, whose trajectory the returnees play an important role in shaping. In order to understand the returnees’ experiences of mobility and belonging, this chapter begins by examining the narrative of the Hamitic people and their historic migration, a history that has defined ethnic relations in the region. The foundational narrative of the exceptionalism of the genocide is contextualised to show that while the tragedy is unique in its pervasiveness, rapidity and intensity, conflict is not new in the history of ethnic relations in the Great Lakes region. Indeed, it is through an engagement with this region that the articulation of claims of national belonging and power relations can be traced to the distant past, and it is in the context of migration that the formation of the RPF, the organisation that has voiced exiled Tutsi claims to national belonging, can be understood. The main part of the chapter proceeds to show the diversity of stories of exile and return that are hidden behind the homogenous RPF narrative of genocide and the creation of the ‘new’ Rwanda. This section questions the ‘new’ in the public narrative of the ‘new’ Rwanda by showing temporal and territorial continuities with the country’s past, its traditions and, most importantly, with past experiences of exile. Returnees brought back values, norms and practices that they were socialised into as they grew up in host societies. The Tutsi’s experiences of exile and return are shared by millions of people forced to flee across borders due to persecution, conflict and human rights abuses. Common experiences of political mobilisation from abroad and re-­adaptation upon repatriation are presented in the next section to set the context for the Tutsi’s return home and allow the extension of generalisations into other contexts. Long-­d istance nationalism and the post-­r eturn reality Across the world, millions of people continue to cross national borders in search of protection and, while in exile, imagine and prepare for the eventual return home. Together with local integration and resettlement, repatriation is the preferred durable solution to refugee crises, and the decade of the 1990s, which is the time when the Tutsi refugees returned home, was declared the decade of repatriation (Black and Koser, 1999). Major repatriations took place across the globe in Africa (Bariagaber, 2016; Hammond, 2004), Latin America (Donà and Berry, 2003) and Asia (Donà and Bloch, 2018; Eastmond and Öjendal, 1999; Long and Oxfeld, 2004). The key criteria for successful return is voluntariness, the cognitive process through which refugees apply their own judgement to their situation in exile, or to conditions in their homeland, to decide when and how it is safe to return home. Imagining and preparing for return and the reality of post-­return are issues of the utmost importance for refugees. From abroad, contacts with home countries are kept by the two variants of conflict-­related diasporas: ‘distant diasporas’, such as the dispersals of Sri Lankans, Afghanis and Somali, and ‘contiguous

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diasporas’, referring mainly to the dispersals of Russian-­speaking peoples in the former Soviet Union, but also to groups such as the Kurds spread across several nation-­states (Van Hear and Cohen, 2017). The role of diasporas in conflict and post-­conflict settings remains controversial, as diasporic presences can function as war-­mongers, peace-­builders or maintain an ambivalence in their influence on conflict (Van Hear and Cohen, 2017). Involvement in the politics of the home country, referred to as long-­distance nationalism (Anderson, 1998), is common among refugee diasporas (Kleist, 2008; McDowell et al., 2018; Toivanen, 2016). The political nature of refugee movements means that members mobilise to form transnational networks which become focal points of political engagement and come to represent the refugee community (Lyon and Uçarer, 2001; Thiranagama, 2014), even though they may marginalise the experiences of other minorities or social groups (Jones, 2014). Long-­distance nationalism shapes the politics in the countries of origin with the view of creating the conditions for repatriation. The reality of post-­return is often characterised by economic, psychological and social challenges (Bascom, 2005; Eastmond and Öjendal, 1999; Ghanem, 2003), reintegration issues (Donà, 1995; Donà and Berry, 2003; Essed et al., 2004) as well as transnational practices (Al-­Ali and Koser, 2002; Moran-­Taylor and Menjívar, 2005). Those returning at the end of conflict are confronted with specific challenges of post-­conflict contexts such as insecurity (Bruce, 2007) and reconciliation (Reyntjens, 2016). Return is not necessarily permanent; it can be provisional (Long and Oxfeld, 2004; Muggeridge and Donà, 2006; Shindo, 2012) or comprise one period of serial migration (Ossman, 2013). In the context of the Great Lakes region of Africa, discussions about refugees, transnationalism and return often fail to capture the intricately connected historical, political, social, economic, religious and legal factors that compelled displacement in the first place (Hovil and Lomo, 2015). The post-­colonial creation and subsequent transformations of the Rwandan state have contributed to the exodus of refugees across the region at different points in time. Two major migratory waves can be discerned: the Tutsi migrations of the period leading to and following independence up to the genocide time of the so-­called ‘old caseload’ refugees who returned to Rwanda after the genocide, and the post-­ genocide mass migration of Hutu refugees, referred to as ‘new caseload’ refugees, who crossed the border to seek protection in the region, many in camps in Congo (then Zaïre) in 1994, the majority of whom repatriated in the late 1990s (Sundberg, 2016). While the experiences of exile among different waves of refugees are narrated in different chapters of the book, this chapter focuses on the narratives of the ‘old caseload’ refugees who returned to Rwanda after the victory of the RPF to examine their role in the country’s social history. Amid the exponential number of publications on Rwanda, it is surprising that the experiences of Tutsi civilian returnees have been subsumed under the public voice of the RPF political elites. The next section examines the narrative of the Hamitic people in

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order to contextualise the recent accounts of exile and return within the longer historic trajectories of mobility and belonging that have defined ethnic relations in Rwanda.

The Hamitic narrative: histories of mobility and belonging The genocide master-­narrative construes the genocide as an exceptional event and a singular point of societal disjuncture in Rwanda’s history of belonging, mobility and nation-­building. The chaos of the violence of 1994 has become the universal, self-­contained master-­narrative of the genocide against the Tutsi. Yet, political struggles of belonging are not new among the ethnic groups that have inhabited the Great Lakes region for centuries. This is a location in which inter-­ ethnic relations are expressed through histories of sedentariness and migration, social patters of integration and exclusion and shifts in hierarchies of power. According to the Hamitic narrative, the Tutsi are the outsiders whose presence in the Great Lakes region can be traced to their pastoralist migration in search of new pastures for their cattle. They migrated from the Horn of Africa to the region where they encountered the Bantu agriculturalists, the regional migrants and the indigenous Twa hunter-­gatherers. By the fourteenth century, the three ethnic/class groups lived in a state of relative harmony based on an interlocustine arrangement in which the monarch/chief was a Tutsi (Pruniér, 1995). The colonial encounter transformed the ‘Hamite’ into the racialised subject, while colonial administrators reconfigured the mobility of the Tutsi from northern Africa into physiognomic similarities with the European colonisers, turning mobility into superiority and strengthening Tutsi power and privilege in colonial Rwanda. The formation of independent Rwanda was fought over the Hutu majority’s claims to belonging when Tutsi foreign superiority was replaced by Hutu indigenous legitimacy (Eltringham, 2004: 19). After independence, political power was transferred to the Hutu majority. This resulted in various expulsions of the Tutsi during the First Republic (1962–1973) when they were viewed as aliens, and during the Second Republic (1973–1994) when they were constructed as a Rwandan minority, marking a shift from race to ethnicity. However, the post-­colonial struggle did not succeed in reconfiguring Hutu and Tutsi as political identities (Mamdani, 2001: 190). Genocide propaganda used a modified Hamitic narrative to assert that African civilisation was at risk due to racially distinct Caucasoid invaders from the north/ north-­east of Africa (Eltringham, 2006). The distant history of invasion was juxtaposed with the recent incursions of the Tutsi foreigners (led by the RPF ) from across the border. The Tutsi in the diaspora were regarded as the enemy, ready to invade and reinstate the imposition of colonial Hutu servitude and old power hierarchies. The perception of the invading outsider promoted by the parme-­Hutu regime was instrumental in mobilising a minority of the population inside Rwanda to partake in genocidal violence.

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The victory of the RPF that ended the genocide gave the Tutsi returnees the power that they had not held since the end of colonial times and never possessed after the formation of the Rwandan state. The Tutsi returnees’ claim to belonging rests on the high price that they paid during the genocide and the high moral ground that the RPF has occupied on the basis of having stopped the genocide against the extremists and intervening when the international community witnessed the violence but remained a passive bystander (Barnett, 2003; White, 2015). In post-­genocide Rwanda the new political elites, among whom the Tutsi returnees play a pivotal role, reconfigured the Hamitic assemblage into the citizen assemblage. In the narrative of national unity, references to ethnicity are banned and histories of migration are disregarded in favour of a narrative of commonality based on shared language, religion and culture. Narratives that speak of the diversity of migratory histories, demographics and shifting power relations are replaced by narratives of pre-­colonial harmony and present-­day national unity. In the counter master-­narrative of war, the reconfiguration of the Hamitic narrative into the citizen assemblage is viewed as a strategy used to replicate pre-­colonial feudal and colonial exploitative relations of unequal power and Hutu subjugation (African Rights, 1994; Human Rights Watch, 1999). With history repeating itself, the counter master-­narrative of war tells that the Hutu majority is again under threat of subordination by invading outsiders, forcing them to flee the country and become refugees, in a reversal of migratory fate and political struggles for belonging. Together with the planners and implementers of the genocide, civilian refugees made up the two million ‘new caseload’ refugees who crossed the border into Eastern Congo (then Zaïre) and the region more broadly, as the RPA army entered Kigali in 1994 (Donà, 2013). Having grown up in refugee camps in Uganda, the new RPF-­led power holders were familiar with the reality of camps and their potential for becoming prolific grounds for social and political mobilisation against the government in the home country. This knowledge prompted the new Tutsi-­led Government of National Unity to push for the swift repatriation of the ‘new caseload’ refugees (Donà, 2001). Following the massive refugee returns of the late 1990s, solidarity camps were set up in the country to re-­educate the ‘new caseload’ refugees prior to their release into the community. In these camps, refugees were exposed to the foundational narrative of the nation (Lischer, 2011) and were taught a revised social history of the country’s past. This new foundational narrative transformed the Hamitic narrative into a story of the country’s new beginning, and marked a movement away from ethnic to civic identification. This shift was made possible by a redefinition of ethnicity as a social construction, whose fixed and ineradicable nature during the colonial encounter led to genocide. The elimination of ethnicity was justified in terms of a preventative strategy to avoid a repetition of genocide, even though the elimination of ethnic references was criticised for strengthening the consolidation of power by the minority group (Newbury, 1995).

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In the rewriting of Rwanda’s social history the Hamitic narrative was replaced by a narrative of the country’s history structured by three main historical periods: pre-­colonial, colonial and post-­colonial up to the genocide, and post-­genocide. Each period was identified by distinct themes of harmony, divisionism and violence, and national unity. The revised historical narrative also reconfigured group identities, namely race/class, ethnic and civic identities. The pre-­colonial period of harmony and fluid class/race membership was twice interrupted, first by a process of colonisation that transformed porous group boundaries into codified ethnic identities (this narrative omits the analysis of power relations and the fact that the minority Tutsi held power during colonialism), and then by post-­ colonialism that reproduced the same model which led to ethnic divisionism and ultimately genocide (this narrative condenses the three-­decade period from the birth of the nation to the conflict into one specific event in time, the genocide), followed by the post-­genocide period of unity and civic belonging. The newly created hierarchies of belonging are managed according to mobility practices that are the cornerstone of the new state-­building enterprise (Turner, 2015). Instrumental in the reconfiguration of these migration biographies and national histories is the RPF, the political movement that was born in exile. The next section traces the formation of the RPF and explains the movement’s role in the lives of the ‘old caseload’ refugees who returned home following its victory. The RPF: the voice of the Tutsi refugees in exile Struggles over claims to national belonging have been part and parcel of the lives of the Tutsi refugees leading to and following the creation of the Rwandan state in 1962. The first of a series of mass expulsions of Tutsi began in 1959 and continued in subsequent decades. A survey conducted by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in 1964 estimated that there were approximately 498,000 refugees in the region, of which 200,000 resided in Burundi, 156,000 in Uganda, 88,000 in Congo and 54,000 in Tanzania (UNHCR, 1964, in Galooba-­Mutebi, 2008). Similarly, the transition from the First Republic under the elected Hutu President Grégoire Kayibanda to the Second Republic under Juvénal Habyarimana, a Hutu who seized power in 1973, led to further mass expulsions of the Tutsi. A chronic problem of refugees characterised the first and second republics, which both the Kayibanda and Habyarimana regimes were unwilling to resolve, citing the small size of Rwanda and overpopulation as the rationale for not repatriating over one million Rwandans, mainly Tutsis, from the diaspora (Yachat Ankut, 2005: 6). Caught between the Rwandan government’s opposition to repatriation and discrimination in their host countries, the Tutsi refugees in Uganda formed a regional political organisation, the Rwandese Alliance for National Unity (RANU) in the late 1970s to discuss a possible return to Rwanda. In 1986, following the victory of Yoweri Museveni’s National Resistance Movement (NRM), RANU decided to increase its support base not only by changing its

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name to RPF but also its political programme. Formed in December 1987 in response to the denial of Ugandan citizenship despite being born in Uganda and playing a major role in the NRM and its rise to power, the RPF was dominated by Rwandan war veterans, and was far more militaristic than RANU (Mamdani, 2001). The aim of the RPF was to secure the ‘repatriation of Rwandans in exile and to reform the government of Rwanda, including political power-­sharing’ (Yachat Ankut, 2005: 6). The party started organising political/military schools in Uganda and Tanzania where ‘cadres learned about the goals of the RPF and received military training, though without weapons’ (Reed, 1995: 51). According to Purdeková (2011) these ingando gatherings draw most inspiration from retreats organised by Rwandan refugee youth in Burundi for self-­help, raising cultural awareness and to implement a platform for mobilisation. Ingando also refers to semi-­clandestine political meetings. If the core of the RPF leadership resided in Uganda, the RPF was a transnational social and political movement. Refugees contributed financially to the cause by allocating a percentage of their income to finance its operations, the organisation of meetings and training. They also participated in educational solidarity camps in which they learned about Rwanda’s past and present. The RPF thus provided a pedagogic, politicising framework through which nationalist empathy was instituted. Refugees felt part of a movement that called for the return to a home country that many of them had not personally known. Following the RPF invasion of northern Rwanda in October 1990 that started the 1990–1994 civil war, ‘political schools’ were organised inside Rwanda itself with the help of Rwanda-­based RPF cells (Reed, 1996: 496). From 1990 to 1993, the RPF ‘installed participants in ingando or “RPF schools” for three weeks, after which participants would be expected to return to their villages and disseminate pro-­RPF ideology’ (Mgbako, 2005: 208). During the war, Yves told me that RPF leaders in exile, especially in the Great Lakes region, were aware that there would be casualties of Tutsi residing inside the country but that they had not anticipated the extent of the losses. They had prepared the Tutsi living in Rwanda for a conflict, and members of the RPF crossed the border and instructed the Tutsi residing inside the country on what to do in the event of incursions: they were to dig a hole and hide therein as the army advanced, and were given coded phrases that would allow them to be recognised as Tutsi by the RPF soldiers, who did not know them personally. With the Tutsi repatriation, the RPF gained and maintained political power on the basis of its victory, but most importantly by forming and consolidating the master-­narrative of the genocide against the Tutsi outlined in Chapter 2. In the history of the new Rwanda, the RPF and the refugees who created it, stand out as the ‘founding fathers’ of the new nation (Cantrell, 2014). They are the ones who stopped the genocide, and it is therefore also seen as their responsibility to prevent Rwanda from slipping back to its pre-­genocidal state of discord and divisionism. When interviewing Tutsi who had returned from Uganda and Tanzania

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shortly after the genocide, Turner was often told ‘We were given a country’ and ‘This country was in ruins and we had a responsibility to rebuild it’ (2015: 89). The RPF is a multi-­functional organisation whose identity has changed over the years. The political association that began as a transnational movement to bring together and mobilise the Tutsi in exile became the army that fought the liberation war that ended the genocide. Since then, the RPF has been transformed into the national political party and the RPA its national army. The RPF is the victims’ saviour, the liberating hero and the war victor while also claiming proxy victimhood status by creating continuity in history between 1959 and 1994 (Eltringham and Van Hoyweghen, 2000). Although the RPF, in principle, includes the hundreds of thousands who returned from Burundi and Zaïre, in practice, it means those from Uganda, as it was the ‘Ugandans’ who made up the core of the RPF; and because the Anglophone returnees dominated the RPF rebel movement, they now dominate the upper echelons of the state, NGOs and the private sector (Turner, 2015). The majority of the Tutsi refugees who returned to Rwanda following the RPF victory did not face the battlefield experiences of the RPF soldiers nor the threats to their survival of those who lived inside the country. They could neither claim the victim’s position of those who had remained in Rwanda or the heroic position of the saviours from Uganda. Behind the representation of a homogenous Tutsi diaspora aligned with the RPF, there are different personal stories that are invisible in the constellation of genocide narrative. They are documented in the following section.

The hegemony of the RPF-­l ed national narrative and the diverse stories of the civilian returnees From the beginning of 1996 until 2000 most of the Rwandans I interacted with in my professional capacities were Tutsi returnees from the diaspora. Many held positions of power and influence in the government, the non-­governmental sector and businesses. They were the cosmopolitan elites of Kigali, bi-­lingual and often multilingual, who brought back with them language skills, knowledge, competencies and networks. They were optimistic, self-­confident, educated, articulate and more open about their lives than those who had been inside the country at the time violence: the traumatised rescapés and the members of the génocidaire group. Tutsi refugees who returned from abroad following the victory of the RPF were often referred to as ‘59ers’ because they or their parents fled during the Rwandan revolution that had began in 1959. They were also called ‘old caseload’ refugees, to distinguish them from the ‘new caseload’ refugees who fled in 1994. However, in addition to historical pointers or temporal distinctions according to migratory waves, they were also distinguished geographically from those who lived in Rwanda and on the basis of the host countries they returned from. Phrases like ‘the Rwandans from abroad’ marked a general distinction between those residing in the country and those who had lived abroad, while

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names like ‘Ougandais’ referred Anglophone Tutsi returnees to ‘Burundais’, and those returning from Francophone Burundi were defined on the basis of the places from which they returned. While the Tutsi who returned following the victory of the RPF are generally viewed as a homogenous group, their stories of exile and re-­adaptation are somewhat different. Refugees who lived in Uganda or Tanzania spoke a different language, English, and were exposed to a different social environment from those who lived in Burundi or Congo, both Francophone countries. And those who lived in Congo grew up in a different political and social situation from those who were socialised in the polarised, ethnic atmosphere of Burundi. Tutsi who had grown up in ethnically polarised Burundi suffered intense economic and social discrimination as Bernardine, a young woman who returned from Burundi, explains: In Burundi, to go to secondary school, a refugee had to score five points more than a national, this was to limit the number of students who accessed education! It was hard to bear. We felt that it was not home after having fled the Hutus who confiscated our property! Access to employment was also difficult! We suffered a lot from the insults of the Burundians of both ethnic groups. We even held meetings in which we said that we could not bear for much longer to live in such conditions! Those who grew up in Congo also experienced discrimination but were relatively at ease and self-­sufficient, having lived in the area for generations, as Jean-­ Pierre, who grew with his 12 siblings abroad, says: In Congo, we did not have the same rights as the Congolese, we could not work in any important role after completing the studies except being a teacher, and access to state schools was tough. But in spite of all of this, life was by far easier compared to that we found here. Tutsi who grew up in Uganda were less discriminated against, and some of them held influential positions in the Ugandan government, following the victory of the rebel forces of Yoweri Museveni that they had joined and helped to gain power over Milton Obote in 1985. While the stories of Tutsi refugees living in different host societies highlight experiential differences, they were united by their transnational connections. Political, economic and social networks enabled refugees to maintain and strengthen their identity as a transnational Rwandan Tutsi community. For instance, Paul, who grew up in Uganda, used to travel to Congo where his elder brother had a business and met other Rwandan Tutsi, while Innocent, who grew up in Congo, used to travel in the reverse direction to Uganda. Elise, who grew up in Rwanda, travelled abroad with her family to visit relatives, but had to be cautious about these connections. Her parents used to hide the pictures of their visits to relatives in Burundi underneath family photos of religious celebrations

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like baptisms or her father would tell the children that the photos had not been developed. The family was targeted by regular inspections in the 1980s, and a few times a year security forces would enter the family house, open the wardrobes and check objects and pictures, ‘It was’, Elise told me, ‘because we travelled abroad’. Elders in the diaspora encouraged transnational ties among the young generations. Marriages among Tutsi youth residing in different countries were promoted so that ties within the diasporic community would be strengthened. The marriage of the country’s president, Paul Kagame, to a Tutsi refugee who grew up in Burundi, is a notable example of transnational marriage. Young people were also encouraged to attend solidarity camps. Solange, for instance first met the man who became her husband in solidarity camps organised to learn about Rwandan culture and politics in Europe, where he was living and she was studying. They married after returning to Rwanda. Most of the Tutsi returnees I met went back with their immediate families alive but they had suffered the losses of close family members, relatives and friends who had been killed during the genocide. Christine told me that when the plane crashed, people at her home in Burundi cherished the event but her father said that they would go back and not find their relatives alive. Among her extended family living inside the country only five members survived. The genocide master-­narrative renders invisible the losses of relatives among Tutsi who lived abroad and also the losses of RPF soldiers. Paul told me that many families, especially those from Uganda who formed the core of the RPF, lost family members or friends in combat. He lost two brothers in the liberation war, while Drocella recounted that a song had been composed to honour a mother who lost all her sons in battle. Fear for one’s survival continued after the genocide and war ended. For those who returned soon after the end of the violence, security was a major concern as low intensity warfare continued. Roadblocks were set up across the country and on a trip to the north-­west of the country, Therese, a Tutsi returnee from Congo, refused to exit the car until we reached a village. She told me that she was afraid for her safety in an area where Hutu support for the previous government was strong in proximity of the border with Congo, which insurgents regularly crossed. Similarly, during the mass repatriations of new caseload refugees from the camps in Congo, Paul, who was working for a non-­governmental organisation at the border with Congo, received a sudden warning from an acquaintance who told him, ‘Papa you’d better leave’, and had to explain to his managers that his life was in danger. Security was among the reasons cited for deciding to wait to return or to choose to leave family members abroad. Jean-­Pierre said that 8 of his 12 siblings returned to Rwanda but other close family members still live across the border: ‘The Congo is now hostile to Rwandans, but we still have family members who live there including my wife and children.’ For some returnees, on-­going occupations mean that return can only be temporary. Almost 15 years after the end of

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the genocide, Mary, a Rwandan who grew up in Uganda and later moved to Kenya with her mother and daughter had decided to return for short periods of time, because she does ‘not trust the situation’, as ‘things continue to happen’. Conversely, insecurity in the host country motivated others to return. Jean-­ Pierre said that Hutu militiamen who have fled to the Congo have destabilised the area. We no longer have the same security in the Congo as before 1994. Congolese learned to kill Rwandans. We returned to Rwanda since the Hutu militia began to persecute us. In 1996, the militiamen killed my uncle while he was looking after his cows. I lost cousins and other members of my family. However, even though we have lost lives, this war has given the Banyamulenge enough openness to the outside world. If security was a factor behind motivations to return, to wait to return or to return temporarily, it was not the only one. Others made judgements based on comparisons between conditions in the host country and prospects of a better life in Rwanda. Samantha, a Tutsi returnee from Uganda, said: We had a lot of property at the end of the war. Even in Kampala, I had a shop. When the people repatriated, I did not hurry to return. My sister was eager to live in her homeland. She often came to visit our aunts who had stayed here and she had loved the country. When she arrived, she took a shop in town and her business has been going very well since then. This has been a great motivation for coming back here. I tried to imitate her. While there is a general feeling among the returnees that they are ‘at home’, some returnees also feel nostalgic about the places in which they grew up. ‘Kigali is boring’, Anitha states with conviction. In Uganda where she grew up, there were nightclubs and live music. In Bujumbura, intercepts Anitha’s husband, ‘the atmosphere was beautiful … we were by the lake’. Jean-­Pierre, who studies and works as a night guard, compares unfavourably his life with that of his brother who still lives abroad: In Congo, we were spoiled, we had never thought to do such work once we returned home! In South Kivu, life is easy. We are 12 children of the same mother. I have my twin. My twin has finished his university studies in Management in Burundi, but me, I’m still in the fourth year secondary. Temporary and continuous mobility occurs in the region and beyond for personal, professional or political reasons. Reverse temporary visits take place among those who still have families or businesses in the countries in which they lived before returning. For instance, Jean-­Pierre frequently goes to Congo to visit his family:

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I go there with Congolese documents that I traffic, but not with a Rwandan passport, it would be a risk, one can even lose one’s life. I have to be in touch with my family who stays there to access school support. We sell a cow every time and they send me the money. I have about 20 cows. My salary of FRW15,000 is not enough to even survive. Paul travels to Bujumbura where he has set up a business while he has relocated part of his family to Uganda where he grew up. The public RPF narrative is a story of collective return home. However, this perception is not unanimous. Some returnees decide to leave again and ‘return’ to their host country where they grew up or to move ‘on’ because of political reasons. Sitting anxiously in a hotel in Kampala with his eyes constantly checking the space, one such Ugandan Tutsi returnee, who is now a post-­genocide refugee, recounts the details of multiple murder attempts made on his life and his constant movement from one place to another every few nights. His situation is not isolated, he continues. Among the returnees, even those who grew up in Uganda and had connections with the RPF do not feel safe in Uganda in the knowledge that connections between the RPF refugees and the Ugandan government are strong. They believe that there are Rwandans still working in the Ugandan governmental offices or Ugandans paid by the Rwandan Government to give information. To illustrate the dangers of their life in Uganda, they gave the example of a Rwandan who was found dead while staying in a safe house under the security of Ugandan security. Post-­genocide Rwandan refugees in Uganda explain their lives in exile through the lens of discrimination; children are not studying and there are no opportunities to work. Their conditions differ depending on whether they are in camps or in cities. Urban refugees have financial difficulties; those in camps have issues with attacks and security. Security is generally a major concern. They do not congregate in big meetings because there is fear that ‘they can kill you’ and they do not call their relatives in Rwanda for fear of putting their lives at risk. ‘We are abandoned’, a Rwandan refugee said. This section has documented the diverse stories of exile and return of the Tutsi civilians that tend to remain marginal in public narratives of post-­genocide Rwanda or are subsumed under the Tutsi-­led RPF national master-­narrative of the genocide. The next section breaks down the dominant narrative of the RPF, and by extension the Tutsi returnees as members of the group, as the victor, saviour or victim by proxy only by examining the narrative engagements of a range of social actors with this thematic narrative. Breaking down the Tutsi returnees’ single story: differences, criticisms and mistrust I am sitting with a small group of Rwandan young people when Rugira, who is a rescapé, states that the way in which the Tutsi residing inside and outside the

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country experienced the genocide was completely different, adding that those living outside had not experienced the genocide. Claiming a space in the genocide narrative, Rebecca, who is a returnee, replied that she lost relatives during the genocide: ‘I saw the bodies of the dead in the river.’ In the constellation of genocide narratives, the Tutsi survivors are saved by the RPF who stopped the genocide and made possible the return of the ‘old caseload’ refugees. The figures of the insider and outsider Tutsi are brought together under the same ethnic affiliation and their relationship is presumed to be harmonious on the basis of shared ethnicity and of shared direct and proxy victimhood. However, the RPF ’s singular story of liberation, salvation and unity is challenged by a different historic consciousness, that of survivors who lived in the country before the genocide, as well as returnees (Newbury and Baldwin, 2000). The visible consensus is challenged by commentaries that are unaccounted for in the social history of the genocide and hidden in the genocide narrative of memorialisation, justice or reconciliation and national unity. Their inclusion shows a lack of fit between social and ethnic identities and identifies a discrepant narrative engagement between personal historic consciousness and the national history of the past that nonetheless informs the present. Some survivors accuse the RPF-­led army of being responsible for the deaths of those inside the country. Even among those from the diaspora, regional and intercontinental differences emerge, as indicated by Christine, a returnee from Burundi who criticises the refugees who were in Europe ‘who only heard the news of the war over the phone and pushed people to fight’. Survivors perceive that they are treated less favourably than returnees. While some refugees lost their relatives during the liberation war, they cherished the RPF victory and ‘the families who came back afterwards, came back happy to have had a country’. Returnees have power and resources while rescapés who survived have lost their families, their properties and their livelihoods. Apart from the governmental fund for rescapés, there is no compensation, and they receive the same assistance as any poor family. For Gregoire, who grew up inside the country, returnees ‘live in another world’. Differences are also present among returnees themselves, whose meaning-­ making narrative strategies are influenced by their situated positionality. Criticisms of the liberation war and the role of the RPF are sensitive topics in post-­genocide Rwanda because they diverge from the official story. Gladys, a Ugandan returnee who married and later divorced a Burundian returnee, said that her ex-­husband returned to Burundi because he could not adapt to this country and became critical of the government. She explains that he was filled with criticisms of the government which he defined as biased. I was afraid in his company. He kept insulting people from Uganda, saying that they killed his brothers on the front because they had university degrees before joining the rebellion … I think it’s false! They had to share the same pains, they needed them to advance on the front, why kill them? Me, I do not know anything. People say things around! It is even said that people

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who came from Congo suffered the same fate as those who fled Rwanda! In what condition must those who came from Uganda be able to commit all this damage without there being revenge? I think it’s a kind of gossip invented to break down the unity of the army! I do not like this kind of discussion, me I’m interested in making money! The critical narrative engagements is discrepant with the official story of the saviour RPF presented above and reveals the diverse modalities of historic consciousness that break down the conformity of the public story. The narratives of unity and reconciliation assume harmonious relationships existed among members of the Tutsi ethnic group who were abroad and those inside the country. This view obscures the presence of mistrust between Rwandans living inside the country and those who came back from abroad. Gregoire, a young adult of mixed ethnic background in a Hutu household, describes the unenviable predicament of those who remained inside the country and were regarded with suspicion by the Anglophones who entered Rwanda from the north. He said: ‘if you are not dead, they wonder why, and think you must have been protected by the regime, or if somebody had family in the capital, why is the house intact?’ Emmanuel, who was in the country during genocide, thinks that the returnees from Uganda think that they are ‘angels’, and view those who stayed behind with suspicion, as if they had chosen to remain in the country during successive mass expulsions because they had connections with the Hutu. Behind the national narrative of successful reconciliation, trust among returnees, survivors and others living inside the country is a challenge because, as Gregoire explained: ‘people trust few people. One trusts one’s family and those true friends that you have known for long.’ The personal narrative engagements presented above challenged the portrayal of intra-­ethnic unity and harmony, broke down the representation of the homogenous RPF-­led Tutsi returnee group and revisited the public narrative of the saviour/victim/hero by drawing attention to different interpretations of the history of the genocide and its legacy among members of the same ethnic group. Behind the representation of the alignment of Tutsi diaspora with the RPF narrative of unity, there are also differences, criticisms and mistrust. The next section problematises another dominant RPF-­led narrative of the ‘new’ Rwanda, with its new state (RPF governed), new nation (post-­genocide) and new people (Banyarwanda).

Revisiting the narrative of the ‘new’ Rwanda: continuities with the past and exile ‘There is no Rwandan culture’, Mary told me, because people return from Canada, Belgium and other countries with different values and habits. The return of many individuals from across the globe was made possible by the victory of the RPF. The genocide is not only a marker of the country’s history of violence

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but also a marker of a before-­and-after-­return condition experienced by the many who were born or grew up in exile and returned to a country they had never visited. Sitting in a restaurant with Paul, I am watching a band of Congolese musicians playing what Paul calls ‘original’ Rwandan songs. By ‘original songs’, Paul means songs that were sung ‘prior’ to his return. Interspersed with the original Rwandan songs and Congolese rhythms comes a request to play a song about ‘those who have returned’. These temporal musical markers point to the complexities of reconciling not only the political histories but also the cultural biographies of those who returned ‘home’ to a country they had left as children or had never seen prior to their return. Many of the returnees hold positions of power or influence and are instrumental in shaping the formation of what President Kagame calls the ‘new’ Rwanda (Kagame, 2009b), with its contradictions (Pottier, 2000). The return of hundreds of thousands of exiled Tutsi played a founding role in the creation of the narrative of the ‘new’ Rwanda. They comprised the country’s new political elite and as such were highly instrumental in forging the master-­ narrative of the genocide against the Tutsi. The importance of story telling for the formation of this new elite cannot be underestimated. It was through recourse to a salvific narrative (Blair and Stevenson, 2015) that the former exiles were able to claim the high moral ground that served as the basis for gaining and maintaining power. The narrative of the ‘new’ Rwanda can thus be understood as both a political and narrative effect of the fracture in society caused by the genocide. The beginning of the ‘new’ Rwanda can be traced to July 1994, when the RPF entered Kigali. However, this newness does not mark a complete break with the old, but initiates a connection between the past and the present. By keeping the name of the RPF, even as this name now designated a national party rather than a military group, Rwanda’s new political class made visible, audible and textual a political continuity between exile and return. The constellation of genocide narratives has a multi-­valent function in its support of the narrative of the ‘new’ Rwanda. Its commemorative, justice and reconciliation narratives are reminders of society’s fracture, while the genocide master-­narrative, in its role as the foundational narrative of the new nation, justifies the creation of the ‘new’ Rwanda with its new political and administrative structures (government, reconfigured administrative mapping, change in the names of places), new national symbols (flag, holidays …) and new national identity (Banyarwanda). On the other hand, the emphasis on the ‘new’ in the narrative of the ‘new’ Rwanda marginalises continuities with the old, in as much as ‘old’ refers to both Rwandan traditions and, perhaps most importantly, to exilic values and practices brought back from abroad. The ‘new’ Rwandan culture is a hybrid culture that borrows, transforms and re-­adapts elements from national tradition and exile. The new national culture is in reality a transnational product. In the period soon after the genocide returnees coped not only with the challenges of social

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r­ econstruction after violence but also with discovering the country that many had left decades previously or never lived in. During the years spent in the country, I witnessed the evolving standardisation of the Rwandan culture in ways that ranged from traditional dress, dance routines and notably, the re-­adaptation of gacaca. In the search for a sense of national belonging, returnees in positions of power and influence reinvented their home country’s culture from their situated positionalities. As political elites, they drew from the country’s tradition to inform modern Rwanda; as returnees, they drew from their experiences in exile. It is possible to trace political continuities in the practice of ingando for instance. In the years following the genocide, solidarity camps were set up that came to be known as ingando. These initiatives were inspired by the pedagogic camps-­inexile that had been instrumental in fostering a national historic consciousness through education. The idea of using ingando as a reconciliatory practice allegedly arose from meetings convened at the Urugwiro State House in the years following the genocide (Mgbako, 2005:7). The practice was targeted at the integration of the Tutsi returnees, some of who had spent decades in exile. The idea was to ‘foster a sense of nationalism among the returnee populations from Congo, Burundi, Uganda and Europe, and elsewhere’ (Mgbako, 2005: 8). As Colonel Rusagara notes, We thought that if we could remove these people from their daily lives and bring them together to share from a common dish – to eat and sleep together – this would build confidence in the diverse populations of repatriated Rwandans, confidence that we could in fact live together. (Quoted in Mgbako, 2005: 8) Similarly, the rediscovery of past mediation practices like gacaca and the renewed sense of the Banyarwanda identity are examples of the ways in which the past is reinvented to forge the ‘new’ country and its people. Continuities with exile and social transformations: language, religion and work ethic The narrative of the ‘new’ Rwanda is forged by looking to the distant past for unity, and by searching for commonalities based on a shared language, religion and culture that can be used to re-­narrate the biography of the nation. Yet, a closer look reveals that defining features of Rwandan culture like language and religion have been transformed on the basis of returnees’ socialisation practices in exile. So while these traditions may appear ‘new’ in post-­genocide Rwanda, they are in fact a re-­adaptation of familiar practices from exile. Three significant themes highlight the influence of exile on the formation of the ‘new’ Rwanda: language, religion and work ethic. Returnees not only play a significant role in the political sphere but also in the social and cultural domains. The ‘new’

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Rwanda is an on-­going project in which civilian returnees play an important role, even though the significance of their foreign experiences in shaping the post-­genocide period is dismissed under the narrative of historic continuities with the Rwandan culture of the Banyarwanda. The return of the Tutsi old caseload refugees changed the country not only politically but also linguistically. In pre-­genocide Rwanda, Kinyarwanda was the indigenous language of Rwanda and French the official one. After the RPF overthrew the Hutu regime and took power in 1994, English was made an official language alongside French and Kinyarwanda. Refugees who grew up abroad are not all fluent in Kinyarwanda, as Anitha’s husband, who came back from Burundi in 1997, explains that Kinyarwanda is ‘difficult’ for the returnees, who speak it with different accents than ‘those from here’, and also make use of different words borrowed from Kirundi, Lingala, etc. I met other Anglophone returnees who learned French upon return. I also witnessed multi-­lingual interactions in transnational Anglophone-­Francophone families, in which language shifts between Kinyarwanda and the language of the returnee parents took place. In 2008, the Government announced its plans to switch the country’s entire education system from French to English in what was described as a move away from Francophone influence towards Anglophone realignment (McGreal, 2008). This included Rwanda becoming a member of the East African Community in July 2007, an organisation made up mostly of English speaking countries, and joining the Commonwealth on 28 November 2009. At the news that French was being banned from schools, Francophones inside Rwanda and Francophone returnees commented that the change was ‘unbalanced’, but they also added that ‘it is not possible to protest’. The change in the language of instruction was criticised because of the short time frame of its implementation, with some Francophone returnees asking ‘how can teachers who used to teach in French suddenly teach in English?’ The Francophone speaking Rwandans tried to resist but resistance was difficult, as the government ‘makes decisions that cannot be counteracted’. Since the language shift, Rwandans now study English, many in the evening, because it is the ‘language of business’ and the language ‘spoken in many countries’, including by Chinese and Japanese people. Religion is another cultural feature of the ‘new’ Rwanda, with the introduction of new belief systems. Uwineza explains that the Tutsi refugees ‘brought back the religions they practised abroad’. Prior to the genocide, the majority of the population practised Catholicism, but because of the Catholic Church’s passivity and involvement in the genocide, the population lost faith in religious institutions. Tutsi from the diaspora, especially Anglophones, had grown up in the Protestant and Evangelical traditions. Cantrell (2014) vividly describes the ways in which the Revival Anglican movement of the Tutsi diaspora is experiencing a reawakening in the post-­genocide church, providing Tutsi returnees with a narrative in which they believe themselves to be a ‘Chosen People’ who found redemption and healing in the refugee camps, and have been ‘chosen’ to

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bring healing and reconciliation through the revivalist tradition in the post-­ genocide Rwanda. For Agathe, the church is a spiritual source of comfort, a form of social support and also a business. She cited a Rwandan proverb that says that the ‘poor is someone who has only his family and God’. The church has replaced family and friends and because there is no social system to deal with depression or stress, people go to the priest. People ask the priest to pray for a job, health, … and the priest can only say yes when asked if he prayed. For Uwineza, because of what people went through, people ‘want to forget their suffering’ and need to believe. However, these new religions are becoming businesses and ‘sects’. Agathe added that there are approximately 200 non-­governmental organisations with a religious purpose registered in the country and that: ‘Many are “sects” coming from the USA and they ask for 10 per cent of your money each time and you have to give money.’ In these new congregations, people go into trances: there are now ‘charlatans’ who also request money from their congregations. Uwineza calls it ‘the business of misery’, and continues by saying that there were rumours that a church was closed down because people wanted to burn themselves or stopped seeing medical practitioners because they thought that God would save them from illnesses. In February 2018, local government authorities suspended the activities of a total of 714 churches in the capital Kigali alone for failing to meet minimum safety and legal standards (Mwai, 2018). The narrative of the ‘new’ Rwanda is a story of progress outlined in the government’s Vision 2020. This is a reflection of our aspiration and determination as Rwandans, to construct a united, democratic and inclusive Rwandan identity, after so many years of authoritarian and exclusivist dispensation. We aim, through this Vision, to transform our country into a middle-­income nation in which Rwandans are healthier, educated and generally more prosperous. The Rwanda we seek is one that is united and competitive both regionally and globally. (Government of Rwanda, 2012: i) The remarkable progress achieved is the product of the new work ethic that old caseload refugees brought back. John, an Anglophone returnee, said that the work ethic resembles the ‘search for excellence’. Perceptions of returnees as businessmen are widespread. As far back as 1995, the Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organization (UNPO) reported that in Kigali, commercial life had practically been taken over by the ‘59 returnees’ (UNPO, 1995). This includes restaurants, shops, kiosks, exchange bureaus, transport, minerals, import and export, and for some entrepreneurs, these are second businesses that they run beside their daily jobs, while others still have businesses in the host societies where they spent many years. Speaking about the entrepreneurial success of the returnees and their dominance in business, a Rwandan who grew up inside the country described it as ‘a

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sacrilege’. Others, like Christine, remembered that people enjoyed life in the countryside and were now forced to study or work and live under pressure. It is not necessarily what they want and it is regarded as an imposition by the state. There used to be a pause for lunch but in recent years employees worked all the time behind the desk and now they look at the west as a model. Gladys summarises the change in work values: They say time is worth money. In Kampala, where I lived, people who are more in a hurry than others have more money than those who spend their time idly. Even here, lately, everybody starts to move! It was not like that at the end of the genocide. We spent a lot of time at the cabaret. By highlighting the role of foreign socialisation in shaping the trajectory of post-­genocide society, this section has problematised the ‘new’ that is disconnected with the ‘old’, and that gives visibility to the reinvention of old traditions without acknowledging the role of migration biographies. The section also showed that personal narrative engagements with the ‘new’ Rwanda are not necessarily as harmonious, even among returnees themselves, as the public narrative would imply.

Conclusion The chapter contributed to the rethinking of the social history of the genocide and its legacy by exposing the diversity of the experiences of the Tutsi civilian returnees who were abroad when the genocide took place and returned to Rwanda after its end, and whose stories are generally hidden behind the public narrative espoused by their political representatives. By narrating a broad range of accounts of the exile and return of Tutsi civilians, the chapter showed the limits of conflating the stories of civilian returnees with the Tutsi-­led RPF public narrative that seeks to conceal the diversity of their migration and return biographies and marginalises their historic consciousness in shaping not only the political, but also the socio-­cultural trajectory of the nation. Other narratives of cultural, economic and religious transformations are also relevant for understanding the ‘new’ Rwanda, whose trajectory the returnees play an important role in shaping. The chapter also demonstrated that the public narrative of the ‘new’ Rwanda is reliant not only on visible continuities with past internal traditions of the Banyarwanda but also with past foreign cultural practices learned in exile. The ‘new’ Rwanda that the returnees continue to shape is a society in which their migration histories play an important role.

Chapter 8

The revised constellation of genocide narratives and the untold social history of genocides

Introduction The Marginalised in Genocide Narratives offers a new and original approach to narrating the social history and legacy of genocide by engaging with and foregrounding the marginalised and offering a place for their untold stories to be documented. Seixas (2004) suggests that our understanding of the past, our ‘historical consciousness’, shapes our sense of the present and the future. The subaltern, marginalised from historiographies of violence whose frames of reference are the victimised and the victimisers, express historical consciousness in the everyday by using multiple framings to confer meaning on their lives during conflict and to cope with the legacies of violence. Any historiography that would exclude the voices of those who suffered would be incomplete, writes Leydesdorff (2017) with reference to Holocaust survivors. The book shows that any history writing that excludes the stories of less visible social actors who inhabit the landscape of violence (beyond visible victims or perpetrators) is incomplete, as these stories interweave together to narrate the social history of genocide. Adapting Halbwachs’ claim that ‘each memory is a viewpoint on the Collective Memory’ (1980: 48), the book affirms that each marginalised story is a viewpoint on the social history of genocide. To account for various subject positions, and to trace their connecting threads, I introduced the framework of the constellation of genocide narratives. In narrative studies, the constellation of narratives refers to a network of interlinked narratives that converge to form a master-­narrative (Strombom, 2013), a coherent frame of reference that is used to interpret the past, guide social action in the present and imagine the future. I reconceptualised and adapted the concept of the narrative constellation to analyse ethnic and political violence. A key contribution of this book is the representation of the constellation of genocide narratives pictured in the Venn diagram in the Introduction and concluding chapter that allows the reader to comprehensively map the social history of the genocide nationally and personally and to identify connecting themes. The diagram allows the reader to create continuities with stories that have not been previously told together.

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There is a tendency in conflict and genocide studies to downplay the role of narratives as meaning-­making interpretive frameworks and the value of narratives in explaining the gradations of political and ethnic violence. By contrast, my research affirms the centrality of narratives for understanding genocides and their strategic use in the foundation of the post-­conflict nation-­state and in personal meaning-­making processes. In South Africa, for instance, a narrative perspective was instrumental in the task of telling a story about South Africa’s transition, in which storytelling was fundamental to catharsis, healing and reconciliation on an individual and national level (Moon, 2006). The reconceptualised constellation of genocide narratives framework offers an alternative view to the single story master-­narrative of genocide that prevails in national accounts of conflict and genocide. While narratives are intrinsically partial, fragmented and contradictory, in post-­conflict societies in which the struggle for power and the quest for legitimacy is at stake, political elites tend to promote a single narrative story. The exercise of control of the past and its narrativisation is a primary concern of power holders who craft, propagate and nurture ‘single public narratives’ that legalise censorship of alternative views (Bentrovato, 2016: 20). Jessee cautions against the ‘danger of the single story’ (2017: 237), that is achieved through narrative closure (Buckley-­Zistel, 2009), a process of inclusion and exclusion through which political elites authorise the visibility of certain stories ‘in’ the public domain and, equally important, censor and relegate others ‘out’ of the official space of narrativisation. Those narratives that support or strengthen political elites’ ideology are included and promoted while those that challenge, contradict or fit uncomfortably within the single story are excluded. Thus, some stories are publicly spoken while others are left unspoken or become unspeakable (Donà, 2011). Duncan Bell writes that the nationalist myth functions ‘as a story that simplifies, dramatizes and selectively narrates the story of the nation’s past, and its place in the world, its historical eschatology: a story that elucidates its contemporary meaning through (re)constructing its past’ (2003: 75). Diverse personal stories of violence are transformed into a public narrative of genocide, which becomes attached to cultural and institutional formations larger than the single individual (Somers, 1994). In the transition from the personal to the public, the many stories are transformed into a singular story. Multiple viewpoints of violence are converted into a monolithic frame of reference. The constellation of genocide narratives can be adopted to understand a range of context-­specific instances of genocides/conflicts in the way in which it problematises the interpretation of the national master-­narrative, commonly conceptualised by ruling elites through the lens of a single story, by showing that the singular nature of such a story actually comprises a convergence of multiple narratives whose relationships are constantly renegotiated, shifting and in dialogue with one another. Chapter 2 traced the formation, transformation and consolidation of a genocide master-­narrative through the identification of a range of narratives that shifted and converged over time to strengthen the power and shape

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the direction of the master-­narrative. The converged master-­narrative retrospectively became the foundational narrative of the post-­conflict nation-­building project, spurring a narratological legacy of the genocide in the reconfigured naming, commemoration, justice, reconciliation and unity narratives. While for Strombom (2013) the master-­narrative is constituted by a collection of dominant narratives whose power is equal, the constellation of genocide narratives framework reveals a more complex picture that speaks about and to the unequal strength of narratives to the understanding of conflicts generally. Narratives that are centred around victims and perpetrators form the core narratives of the post-­genocide nation. Such stories as are told through the victim–perpetrator binary narrate the violent past with clarity and force. Yet, they are not the only stories. National narratives about other social actors may appear peripheral and less powerful but their supportive role is instrumental in strengthening the influence and cohesiveness of the genocide master-­narrative. The first part of Chapters 3–7 identified a range of such supporting public narratives that are relevant to the understanding of a range of diverse violent conflicts, beyond the specific case study: the theme of collective guilt and shame for members of the perpetrator’s group, the narrative of the exceptionalism of the heroic saviour, the mono-­ethnic identification of ethnically mixed families, the representation of the onlooker minority and the new national narrative of the returnee group. These supporting narratives are characterised by a thematic interdependence grounded in a marked difference from the victim–perpetrator narrative, which is one of agency. While the book focused on the constellation of genocide narratives, it also traced dialogical connections with the constellation of war narratives. When counter-­narratives are construed through the lens of the single story, counter-­ narratives are ignored or actively silenced and outlawed until a radical shift in power relations takes place (Bentrovato, 2016). However, when narratives are viewed through the lens of the constellations of genocide and war narratives, dialogical relationships can be traced within and across narrative constellations. Nielsen (2013) calls for the need to surmount the myopic focus on genocide in the case of the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina, while Straus (2015) concludes his comparative analyses of genocidal violence across the world by writing that the most consistent finding is that genocide takes places during war. Behind publicly proclaimed distinctions, between opposing grand single stories, porous boundaries and connections between constellation narratives of the genocide and war are nonetheless present.

The marginalised voices in the revised constellation of genocide narratives The main contribution of the book to conflict and genocide studies, social history and narrative research rests in its deployment of the constellation framework in centring and integrating the stories of previously marginalised social actors. In this regard, the objective of identifying and giving voice to marginal social actors

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is advocated as a process for the analysis of conflicts at large. By positioning marginal narratives in the constellation side by side with public narratives, silenced and hidden voices acquire presence and force, attain power and claim a place in the social history of the genocide. A carefully crafted public narrative proclaiming the domination of one story will conceal but not eliminate the presence of other stories, other voices. As indicated at the beginning of the chapter, the constellation of genocide narratives framework can be adapted to visualise genocide at various levels. I have summarised the main findings about national narratives. In the next part of the chapter, the focus will be on the personal narratives of the marginalised. Somers writes that: ‘to make something understandable in the context of a narrative is to give it historicity and relationality’ (1994: 617). When marginal narratives are placed within the constellation of genocide narratives, they acquire the historicity and relationality that is given to public narratives. The reconfigured constellation of genocide narratives reproduced below gives visibility to marginal social actors, and in doing so it reveals new narrative themes. Together, these previously unspoken narratives tell another story and interject another viewpoint on the social history of the genocide.

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The untold story of the genocide: ‘continuity, embeddedness and the everyday’ It goes without saying that genocides create profound ruptures in society and transform its demographic, social and moral fabric. As survivors’ testimonies of their ordeal command the ‘never again’ declaration and perpetrators’ accounts of their involvement in violence caution against the dangers of the banality of evil (Arendt, 1963), political elites appropriate the story of the violent past to forge a post-­conflict national narrative. In this process of historical consciousness, the inclusion of the voices of the marginalised functions as a re-­appropriation of social history documentation. Unheard stories are told, hidden histories become visible and new viewpoints are disclosed. Chapters 3–7 identified distinct narrative themes that were relevant to explain the experiences of an array of social actors that are transferable across space and time. As the figure above that pictures the revised constellation of genocide narratives indicates, common themes were: ordinary morality and individual responsibility for non-­perpetrator members of the perpetrator group; intimate burdens for ethnically mixed families; communal care and solidarity for rescuers; double victimisation and survival for the autochthonous minority; and mobility and belonging for returnees from the diaspora. Shared themes were also identified across social groups, connecting their stories together to tell another story. The untold narrative, visualised at the centre of the figure depicting the revised constellation of genocide narratives, is named the narrative of ‘continuity, embeddedness and the everyday’, and it can be summarised as follows: individuals relied on continuities with the ordinary, everyday past and on pre-­genocide norms, values and relationships that were embedded in socio-­cultural contexts to interpret and guide their actions during violence and make sense of their reconfigured subject positionalities in the post-­conflict period. These communal narrative themes could be found interspersed in Chapters 3–7. They were discernable in the articulation of disapproval of violence among non-­perpetrator members of the perpetrator group that came from existing religious and cultural norms; communal protection among rescuers that drew from existing social connections and peaceful values of care and solidarity; sustained social relationships among families of mixed ethnic backgrounds based on pre-­genocide close social relationships; on-­going marginalisation of the minority group; and reconfigurations of national belonging and social life among returnees that could be traced to their experiences in exile. If the genocide denotes a fracture in society and a temporal rupture of ordinary life, with the post-­genocide period being often heralded as a new beginning, in reality continuities with the past persist as ordinary people interpret and cope with life in conflict by drawing upon familiar norms, depending on existing social relations and relying on values by which they lived prior to the genocide. In the contested spaces of the appropriation of history, whereas political elites appropriate the distant past to forge a new nation, the marginalised appropriate the recent past that is expressed in their everyday lives – moral values learned

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from parents or at church functions or familial and friendly relationships that were established through regular visits, participation in ceremonies and neighbourly conversations – as a means of interpreting and enduring the chaos of violence that left many of them vulnerable in the present and uncertain about the future. Furthermore, in contrast to the de-­contextualised single genocide story, the untold stories speak of decisions taken and actions carried out during genocide that were embedded in collective social, cultural and religious milieux. The untold stories of the marginalised offer a viewpoint on the social history of the genocide that differs from that of the almost totalising violence exposed in the public domain of the single story. Individuals respond to the fracture provoked by the genocide by reclaiming the everyday; they respond to public claims of a new beginning by telling of continuities with the past; and they respond to essentialised representations of genocide by making reference to existing socio-­ cultural formations. This other social history of the genocide is interwoven with the known one of survival and killing and yet it continues to be relegated to the margins of history.

Narrative engagement: agency and dialogical strategies The reconfigured constellation diagram visualises not only distinct personal and national narratives but also their coexistence and inter-­connections. The constellation of genocide narratives speaks of the plural stories that are located in-­ between relations and confers a bridging function on relations. In post-­conflict societies, political elites exercise power and agency by crafting official narratives, and deciding, in the name of national unity, which protagonists, stories and themes will be included or excluded from the official story. Stories in the private domain may work through repositioning and reorienting official scripts. Through intricate stratagems, individuals negotiate their situated positionalities vis-­a-vis national narratives and exercise their agency by recourse to narrative engagement, a process which brings to light the interpretive competences of social actors who practise historic consciousness in the realm of the everyday. The dialogical relationship between the marginalised personal stories of violence and the national single story of the genocide can be conceptualised as a two-­way relationship of narrative inclusion and exclusion. The formation of the hegemonic genocide master-­narrative is based on inclusion and exclusion (top-­ down), achieved through narrative closure and a ‘monopoly of knowledge construction’ (Pottier, 2002: 202), which leads to an essentialised historic narrative construction where contested, critical or uncomfortable voices are silenced or marginalised. Such narrative closure stands in the way of reconciliation and a genuinely grown national unity (Buckley-­Zistel, 2009). Notwithstanding the power of narrative censorship, individuals also exercise  agency in choosing what to include or exclude (bottom-­up) in their inter­ pretations of the violent past. Narrative engagement with the genocide

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master-­narrative of the single story is generally expressed in terms of the degrees of narrative fit or incongruence. However, unlike the essentialising imperative of the single story, narrative engagement with the genocide (and, to a lesser degree, war master-narrative) as it is represented by the constellation of narratives, denotes a more complex range of agentic strategies. Civilians respond to dominant narratives in ways that do not unquestionably or totally fit with the master-­narrative or reject it but rather they agree and disagree with it to differing degrees, and in so doing these engagements reveal individuals’ abilities to negotiate across a broad landscape of narratives and affirm a capacity for integrating elements of converging and diverging narratives. In the last part of Chapters 3–7, different types of narrative engagements were  examined. These can be organised under the headings of: mirroring, reconciliatory/integrative, discrepant/resistant and decentring/circumventing strategies. Across the chapters, the reader can observe instances of what can be called ‘mirroring’ narrative engagements, in which strategies of inclusion and exclusion expressed in personal stories reflect the public narratives of genocide or war. For instance, when returnees speak of genocide or historical victimisation while members of the perpetrator group speak of war and massacres. In addition, ‘reconciliatory’ narrative engagement can be seen in the ways in which members of one ethnic group include narrative themes associated with the other group in their personal or family histories, integrating elements of the oppositional genocide and war master-­narratives and showing the coexistence of publicly divergent elements in the private sphere. This can be seen in the expression of empathy by the victim group for the losses of members of the perpetrator group or the hardships of their lives in exile, and in the acknowledgement of shared suffering or the lack of recognition of commemorations of the losses that took place during massacres. Readers can also observe the workings of ‘reconciliatory’ narrative engagement in instances when, conversely, members of the perpetrator group acknowledged that the genocide affected the other group in particular and express solidarity with their suffering. Another type of ‘discrepant’ narrative engagement consisted in including themes that were excluded and silenced in the master-­narrative because they exposed troubling inconsistencies between personal stories of one’s group and the public narrative of that same group. Survivors spoke of the taboo subject of the deaths of their own family members at the hands of their own group; widows belonging to the perpetrator group whose husbands were members of the victim group spoke of the isolation that members of their own group inflicted on them; rescuers described criticism raised by their own group against their actions, which were interpreted as acts of disloyalty; and returnees criticised the public versions of history disseminated by leaders of their own group. Lastly, the ‘decentring’ narrative engagement strategy consisted in shifting the gaze away from the genocide and war master-­narratives to include other social frames that spoke of ordinary lives, marginalisation, cultures of solidarity or personal qualities such as those of kind-­hearted persons. Overall, these

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sophisticated narrative engagements can be adapted to understand the relationship between macro and micro-­level narratives in different socio-­political contexts. They express new kinds of inclusion and exclusion of the national in the realm of the personal and articulate a complexity of dialogical relationships that is not grasped by a simplistic notion of degrees of fitness or incongruence with the single story.

Rewriting the social history of the genocide that took place in Rwanda The year 2019 marks the twenty-­fifth anniversary of the Genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda and this book is a timely reminder of the need to revisit the genocide and expand its social history. In the emerging field of Rwanda Studies, scholars have criticised the hegemonic genocide discourse (Reyntjens, 2016; Waldorf, 2009; Zorbas, 2009), problematised the conflation of ethnicity with the social categories of victim and perpetrator (Thomson, 2014; Turner, 2015) and highlighted gaps in current knowledge about other social actors (Jessee, 2017; King, 2010). While they have identified omissions, very few scholars have attempted to actually fill those lacunae by collecting testimonies of marginalised social actors, and to my knowledge, no other researcher has brought them together conceptually. The absence of stories of social actors whose viewpoints are unspoken or unspeakable because they sit uncomfortably or are controversial vis-­à-vis power holders’ public discourses of the violent past, and as such become sensitive research material that is subject to scholarly censorship, continues to be a limitation in accounting for the Rwandan genocide. Instead of critiquing the master-­ narrative that has become the Genocide against the Tutsi, this book addressed a current gap in Rwanda Studies by tracing its formation and mapping the transformation of the genocide master-­narrative to reveal its multifarious and dynamic arrangements. Additionally, by recording testimonies that are absent or under-­examined in contemporary studies of the Rwandan genocide and its aftermath, and presenting an integrated visualisation through the constellation of narratives, this chronicle from below offered an alternative version of the social history of the genocide. Adopting a bottom-­up approach (Ingelaere, 2010) that considers not only individual biographies, micro-­histories of individuals or macro-­stories of the nation, but also family biographies as a unit of analysis, this untold social history of the Rwandan genocide problematised distinctive features of its representation across the chapters. The next section contributes to scholarship on Rwanda by briefly discussing the main features of this history: the tension between ruptures and  continuities between the ‘old’ (pre-­genocide) and ‘new’ (post-­genocide) Rwanda, the reconfiguration of ethnic and social categories of victim and perpetrator and the legacy of the genocide narrative in post-­genocide Rwanda.

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The ‘old’ and ‘new’ Rwanda: continuities, ruptures and value-­l aden meanings The genocide signalled a temporal fracture expressed in the chronological organisation of recent Rwandan history in the pre-­and post-­genocide periods. The public narrative of national unity advanced by power holders in the post-­ genocide period promoted the idea of the ‘new’ Rwanda, ostensibly a new nation, a new state, and, ultimately, a new people (Turner, 2015). History was revisited to tell a national story in which the nation was reconfigured into ‘old’ (pre-­genocide) and ‘new’ (post-­genocide) Rwanda, as the genocide period was condensed into a key event that became the foundational episode for reimagining the nation after its end. The myth of national rebirth (Bentrovato, 2016) generated revised histories, identities and social relations under the slogan of the ‘new’ Rwanda of the Banyarwanda, albeit with the exception that the narrative of the ‘new’ Rwanda is very much reliant on temporal continuities with the ‘old’ Rwanda. If the genocide represented a societal fracture, both political elites and marginalised social actors used the past to interpret violence and used narratives of the past to position themselves in the post-­genocide societal space. However, their readings, interpretations and uses of the ‘old’ and ‘new’ differ in three main ways: how they read fractures and continuities; how they draw upon the distant or recent past and how they view value-­laden associations of the old and new. The revisiting of the past by political elites forged a distinct fracture between the old and new Rwanda. History was reimagined through the temporal frame of the distant mythical past, the recent past and the present. The distant pre-­colonial past was disrupted by colonialism, which was followed by the recent post-­ colonial period that was merged with the pre-­genocide time and was brought to an end by the genocide that prompted a new beginning. In the public narrative, the ‘new’ post-­genocide Rwanda is represented as the antithesis of the ‘old’ post-­colonial/pre-­genocide one. The stories of the marginalised present a decidedly less fractured relation to temporality than the official narratives of the ruling elite. The stories of the marginalised revealed new, hitherto untold accounts of social and narrative continuity between the pre-, during and post-­genocide periods that challenged the concept of the ‘new’ that is detached from the ‘old’. In official narratives the ‘new’ Rwanda is forged through a retrospective process of evoking the distant past. Political elites promulgated the story of a mythical history (Malkki, 1995) of pre-­colonial harmony, rediscovered old traditions like gacaca and adapted them to post-­genocide realities and revisited pre-­ colonial identities to fit contemporary agendas. Retrospection within the narratives of marginalised social actors can be viewed not as a means of forging an agenda driven temporality, but as a way of ensuring that the violence of the past does not overshadow and consume the possibilities of life in present. Accordingly, the marginalised make reference to the recent past, rather than the distant past, in order that they may interpret, cope with and live in the present.

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At the grass-­root level, ordinary people expressed historic consciousness in the temporal continuities with the factual past that they remembered in their lives: the peaceful time preceding war and genocide, pre-­genocide norms and values and enduring relationships with family, friends and neighbours. In the process of rewriting history, the adjectives ‘old’ and ‘new’ acquired value-­laden meanings of ‘good’ and ‘bad’. Political elites constructed a narrative of the ‘good’ distant past (pre-­colonial past), the ‘good’ present and the ‘bad’ distant (colonial) and ‘bad’ recent (post-­colonial/pre-­genocide) past. The history of contemporary Rwanda was thus organised around two distinct periods, the pre and the post-­genocide times, over which was superimposed the vision of the ‘old’ and ‘new’ nation, which became overlaid with ‘bad’ and ‘good’ connotations, respectively. In a totalising revisiting of history everything ‘old’ (pre-­ genocide) is foul and everything ‘new’ (post-­genocide) is commendable. The testimonies of the marginalised challenge these value-­laden temporal associations. In their stories, there are continuities with the ‘old’ (pre-­genocide) Rwanda that are positive: there are peaceful values, family ties and moral behaviours, and there are features of the ‘new’ (post-­genocide) Rwanda that are unsettling, such as discrimination, silencing and uncertainty. Breaking down the overlap of ethnic and social identities of victim and perpetrator Scholars of the Rwandan genocide have problematised the overlap of ethnic identities with the social categories of victim and perpetrator (Thomson, 2014; Turner, 2015). As succinctly explained by Thomson, ‘survivors (read former Tutsi) and génocidaires (read former Hutu) have been cast into the essentialist categories of victim and killer, and as such have become the protagonists in the fiction …’ (2011: 444). This portrayal of victim and perpetrator that is superimposed onto ethnic identities is problematic for various reasons: (a) the focus on victim and perpetrator serves to exclude other protagonists; (b) the essentialised categories of victim and perpetrator result in a lack of recognition of the diversity of experiences of victimhood and victimisation; (c) the superimposition of social categories onto an ethnic group as a whole ignores the variety of intra-­ ethnic roles and subject positionalities; (d) the value-­laden connotations carried by the social categories victim and perpetrator result in judgements being made about the ethnic group as a whole; and (e) the conflagration of the relationship of victim and perpetrator to their antagonistic relationship ignores other connections. The essentialisation of social and ethnic identities creates incongruities that have consequences: certain protagonists are excluded, there is lack of recognition of diversity of experiences, roles and relationships, and ethnic groups are portrayed in value-­laden terms. In the process of decentring core and recentring marginal protagonists in the  constellation of genocide narratives, and showing their connections, The Marginalised in Genocide Narratives redressed some of the exclusionary and

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totalising consequences of superimposing ethnic and social categories. This takes place in the book through the inclusion of other protagonists beyond victims and perpetrators, by documenting diverse narrative themes and relationships, and by describing a range of actions, both positive and negative, carried out by members of the three ethnic groups. The stories of marginalised social actors examined in Chapters 3–7 documented other kinds of intersections of ethnic and social identities that break down the public, essentialised representation of the ruling elite. The book empirically showed that personal stories of victimhood and victimisation are not confined to one ethnic group. The equation of genocide victim with Tutsi only and perpetrator with Hutu only was problematised by visually showing the ways in which ethnic and social categories are not superimposed. While perpetrators were mainly Hutu extremists, Twa and Tutsi also committed acts of violence, intentionally, accidentally or inadvertently. And if victims were Tutsi – those who died, those who survived and more generally Tutsi as a targeted group – other groups were also targeted because of their perceived membership of or association with the victim group. Families of mixed ethnicity were considered genocide targets because they challenged the idea of ethnic purity and loyalty; members of the minority Twa group were killed because of the group’s historic association with the Tutsi; non-­perpetrator members of the perpetrator group were targeted because of their opposition to violence or to protect others. Focusing on the victimhood narrative, Turner (2015) drew attention to the fact that many anomalies appear in the classification of the genocide victim/survivor that disqualified individuals from claiming victimhood status. When the government changed the official term for the genocide to the Genocide against the Tutsi, Hutu who did not take part in genocide and who lost close relatives during the genocide did not qualify despite the fact that it was widely acknowledged, also by the Rwandan state, that so-­called moderate Hutu were explicitly targeted. Likewise, Tutsi who lost close relatives outside Rwanda before or after April–July 1994 cannot claim survivor status. This includes large numbers of Tutsi targeted by the interahamwe and other Hutu groups during the war in Zaïre/ Congo between 1996 and 1999. The superimposition of the category victim or perpetrator onto an ethnic group as a whole also ignored the spectrum of intra-­ethnic roles and experiences. While some members of the Hutu group were perpetrators or accomplices, the majority were onlookers, resisters, rescuers or victims and while members of the Tutsi group were targeted as victims they were also resisters, saviours and also perpetrators of massacres. The actions carried out by members of the different ethnic groups during genocide were positive and negative, and could not be neatly separated according to group membership. This account challenged the value-­laden association of the Hutu group with the (murderous) actions of  the victimiser only and the Tutsi group with those of (vulnerable) victims only. Beyond antagonistic relationships of victimisation and victimhood, other

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­relationships unfolded during violence, as shown in narrative themes of solidarity, shared suffering, marginalisation and belonging, among others. Examining the legacy of genocide on national unity and reconciliation, Thomson (2014) wrote that the two narrow and essentialist categories of survivor and perpetrator continue to comprise the protagonists of national unity and reconciliation, to the exclusion of other actors and experiences of violence. The author states that the programme of national unity and reconciliation provides no official recognition of different lived experiences of the 1994 genocide beyond the official assertion that only Tutsi were victims of violence during the genocide and only Hutu killed. There is no public acknowledgement of the existence or experience of Tutsi and Twa perpetrators; Hutu and Twa rescuers; Tutsi, Hutu and Twa resisters, or Hutu and Twa survivors. Chapters 3–7 of the book narrated the interconnected stories of these other kinds of intersections of ethnic and social identities that remain unofficial in national narratives of the genocide as well as those of unity and reconciliation. Whereas attitudes and beliefs in post-­genocide Rwanda are still portrayed as specific to Hutu versus Tutsi (e.g. Schraml, 2012) in their reconfigured victim and perpetrator connotation, the stories of marginal social actors portrayed in the constellation of genocide narratives showed that varying intersections of ethnic and social identities exist beyond the reconfigured victim/perpetrator dichotomy and behind the official identity of Banyarwanda only. The legacy of the genocide on post-­g enocide Rwanda Connerton writes that narratives are shaped by power and politics, and in this sense they have been used as a tool to legitimise ‘a present social order’ (1989: 2). The inquiry into the way in which narratives of the past are framed in the present is of critical significance to an understanding of how societies recover from violence. In this respect, the formation of the genocide narrative, and its configuration as a foundational national narrative, is central to understanding the way in which the ‘new’ Rwanda functions and imagines itself. The legacy of the genocide narrative in post-­genocide Rwanda is twofold: the genocide impacts on both the narrative life and social life of the nation and its people. The narratological legacy of the genocide is evident in the ways in which the genocide as an event was transformed into the genocide narrative that became the foundational narrative of the nation. Naming the genocide narrative spurred into existence related narratives, of commemorative, justice, reconciliation and unity, which converged to form the master-­narrative of the genocide. It is this national master­narrative that framed the rewriting of the history of the nation, guided the interpretation of the present and consolidated the vision of the ‘new’ Rwanda. Narratives have socialising and mobilising functions. The genocide master-­ narrative was critical not only in shaping the narrative legacy but also the social legacy of the genocide on the country. The genocide master-­narrative was used to frame the planning and implementation of national programmes of justice,

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reconciliation and unity in the post-­genocide period. The centrality and pervasiveness of the genocide master-­narrative in the collective imagination acted as an on-­going reminder of the potential threat of the genocide happening again. This warning was instrumental in passing a number of laws, most notably on fighting the genocide ideology, genocide negationism and ethnic divisionism that changed social identities and interactions. Ethnic identities were replaced with the Banyarwanda identity. This change was justified with reference to the historic narrative of a mythical and harmonious pre-­colonial past when ethnic affiliations were fluid, which was contrasted with the colonial and post-­colonial time when ethnic identities were manipulated, leading to genocide. Linking ethnicity with the genocide was instrumental to the approval of the law that replaced ethnic identities with civic recognition only. Censorship of any reference to ethnicity, except in the official naming of the Genocide against the Tutsi, and punishment for breaking the law, changed the way individuals thought and spoke about themselves. In the justice sector, legal administrators rediscovered gacaca, the traditional conflict resolution process for dealing with minor disputes, and adapted it to prosecute genocide crimes. They drew from the national definition of genocide, and that of genocide victim and perpetrator, to set the parameters and selection criteria of punishable crimes of genocide only. Similarly, reconciliation initiatives followed a model of forgiveness and reconciliation among victims and perpetrators that drew from the narrative of the central protagonists of the genocide. Overall, the genocide master-­narrative framed the ways in which policies, laws and programmes were conceptualised and operationalised in post-­genocide Rwanda, leaving and continuing to leave a pronounced legacy on the social life of the nation. It also left a marked legacy on the narrative and social lives of individuals. The genocide as an event and as a narrative shaped the everyday lives of Rwandans long after the conflict ended by reconstituting and reconfiguring their subject positionalities in the ‘new’ Rwanda. For the marginalised, those whose stories sit uncomfortably within the official master-­narrative, an important legacy of the genocide was the restricted opportunity to articulate their voices and the need to manage silences in their narrative lives. The significance of a master-­ narrative rests in its power to authorise what can be voiced and censor what cannot be voiced, hence the power not only to give voice but also to silence. The Rwandan government’s strategies, which limit political space, combined with civil society avoiding sensitive issues and donors not pressuring the government, create a repressive political context in which it is very difficult to openly contest the identity policies and articulate difference (Beswick, 2010). Silences, omissions and secrets are part of the everyday life of ordinary citizens in post-­genocide Rwanda. A key legacy of the genocide narrative is its power to make the narration of certain stories political and politically sensitive. In choosing to share intimate stories, confide sensitive material and negotiate trust and privacy, the marginalised exercised agency in a context in which the

The untold social history of genocides   149

voicing of personal histories that do not conform within the official single story, could lead to accusations of genocide denial, ideology or divisionism. In this context, individuals may be silenced but they may also silence themselves. For Riessman (1993) the very victims of social or political oppression may prevent themselves from narrating particular experiences, due to a natural response to eliminate from their memory those experiences that are difficult to express: ‘survivor of political torture, war, genocide and other atrocities silence themselves and are silenced because it is too difficult to tell and to listen’ (Riessman, 1993: 3). In the context of Rwanda, Buckley-­Zistel (2006) suggests that Rwandans choose silence in the form of collective amnesia to prevent a sense of closure and to undermine the drawing of fixed boundaries. The testimonies presented in this book confirm the sensitive nature of many themes. Individuals concluded their narration by recommending anonymity, asking not to be named or identified to avoid getting into trouble. Yet, as individuals are silenced – and some choose silence as a strategy to cope with the legacy of the genocide – many chose to speak. The marginalised stories portrayed in this book indicate that people remember what happened to them and their families but pretend not to know or voice public secrets, which Taussig defines as ‘that which is generally known but can not be articulated’ (1999: 6). If the genocide had an impact on the narrative lives of the marginalised, the legacy of the genocide was also experienced in their social lives. The genocide master-­narrative that was articulated in the commemorative, justice, reconciliation and unity narratives in post-­genocide Rwanda reconstituted their subject positions to fit with the single story of the ‘new’ Rwanda. This repositioning has implications for reconciliation and unity. The legacy of the genocide is played out in the dialectical relationship between uniformity and multiplicity. The dominance of the single story of genocide, the single identity of the Banyarwanda, the single model of the ‘new’ Rwanda as a strategy for promoting unity and reconciliation, is contrasted by the marginalisation of certain stories that speak to the multiplicity of social identities and the presence of multiple frames of reference to interpret, respond and articulate the legacy of violence. Unless aspects of the past that have been shelved are reopened and multiple narrative strands are allowed to surface, the single story is likely to be contested, in private when public contestation is not possible, hampering the prospects of long-­term peace and stability in society. The gap between public and hidden transcripts is particularly problematic with regard to the issues of history and unity/reconciliation (Reyntjens, 2016). National reconciliation and unity is best achieved not by denying differences but by acknowledging that there are more of them.

150   The untold social history of genocides

Expanding and applying the constellation of genocide narratives This book has attempted to rewrite the social history of the genocide in Rwanda from the positionality of marginalised social actors through the conceptual lens of the constellation of genocide narratives. Future research could contribute to the development of the genocide narrative constellation framework in three main ways: by including other social actors and narrative themes; examining in greater depth narrative engagements; and applying the constellation to study other conflicts. While this book has identified a range of marginalised social actors, other stories continue to remain invisible, unspoken or unspeakable. Among them are the stories of the large numbers of Tutsi targeted by the interahamwe and other Hutu groups during the war in Zaïre/Congo of 1996–1999; members of the Muslim minority; military forces; foreigners, including Burundian refugees living in Rwanda at the time of genocide and long-­term residents, among others. The fate of the missing during the genocide and in the Zaïre/Congo wars is a sensitive yet under-­researched topic as is an inquiry into collaborators (Drumbl, 2017). Did Tutsi help the perpetrators or collaborate to save their lives? What about Hutu who are considered collaborators of the post-­genocide regime? Research into new social actors is likely to reveal new narrative themes and contribute to the rewriting of the social history of the genocide that took place in Rwanda in 1994, and the wars that preceded and followed it. Furthermore, as shown in the narrative engagements outlined in this chapter, individuals use creative ways to adapt to official policies, such as continuing to discuss group differences in private even when they appear to adhere to the policy in public (Moss and Vollhardt, 2016). They exercise new forms of commoning, that is narrative and social practices of support, conflict and negotiation, even amid violence. How do such narrative strategies influence the lived experiences of civilians, and do they provide feedback onto constituting a national narrative? Finally, the constellation of genocide narratives has been introduced to interpret the case study of the genocide in Rwanda, and future studies could use the framework to systematically compare other conflicts. It is hoped that the constellation of genocide narratives may provide a useful framework for researching conflicts in their complexity and dynamism, and to test the power of narratives to examine genocides and their legacy.

Conclusion This book offered a novel approach to genocide accounts by engaging with the marginalised and offering a place for their voices to be heard. For that purpose the concept of narrative constellation has been reconceptualised to integrate a  range of public and personal narratives in the context of genocide studies.

The untold social history of genocides   151

Examining a range of marginal stories and using the case study of Rwanda, the research into the transformation of a specific event – the genocide – into a powerful narrative of nation, established a means of representing and comprehending the lived spaces of violence and its enduring legacy, which continues to affect the everyday lives of civilians long after the end of ethnic and political violence. Together, the stories of genocide narrated from a marginalised subject position told another story that speaks about the value of using multiple narrative framings to understand genocides. Thus, the book was an inquiry into the power of narratives as interpretive, transformative and mobilising frameworks.

Glossary

gacaca  Kinyarwanda word, literally meaning ‘justice on the grass’ and referring to the transitional system of local courts, based on a traditional grass-­ roots justice system, which was launched in 2001 and functioned for more than a decade until its closure on 18 June 2012. génocidaire(s)  A person involved in perpetrating a genocide. Ibuka  Kinyarwanda word, meaning ‘remember’ and referring to the umbrella association for genocide survivors organisations. It was established in 1995 to keep the memory of the genocide alive and provide support to genocide survivors. ingando  Informal education programme, also knows as ‘solidarity camps’. Inkotanyi  Originally the name of a warrior group under King Rwabugiri in the 1800s, the term was used by the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF ) rebels at the time of the civil war to refer to its armed wing. Interahamwe  Kinyarwanda word literally meaning ‘those who fight together’. It refers to a Hutu militia group formed by young people from the ruling political party whose members played a central role in the genocide. The name Interahamwe can be translated as ‘those who work together’ or loosely as ‘those who fight together’. inyangamugayo  Kinyarwanda word meaning ‘reliable, trustworthy, wise’; term used to refer to judges presiding over gacaca meetings. Inyenzi  Kinyarwanda word meaning ‘cockroach’, and used pejoratively to refer to the RPF rebels at the time of the civil war. Itorero  Civic education institution aimed at teaching Rwandan culture and values such as national unity, social solidarity, patriotism, integrity, bravery and tolerance. It was officially introduced in 2007 as a mechanism to rebuild the nation’s social fabric. Ndi Umunyarwanda  Kinyarwanda word meaning ‘I am Rwandan’. orphelin(s) du génocide  French term used to describe genocide orphan(s). rescapé(s)  Survivor(s); term used to genocide survivor(s). Rwandan administration  In 1994 the administrative structure consisted in 6,300 Cellules, 1,510 Sectors, 145 Communes and 11 Prefectures.

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Index

Page numbers in italics denote figures. agency 141–143 Armenian genocide 5–7, 103 assistance 54–55 authoritarianism 40–41 autochthones 108–109 Banyamulenge 116 Banyarwanda 32–34, 60, 98, 110, 13–132, 144, 147–149 Batwa 103, 104, 105, 108, 111–114; see also Twa Belgium 15, 18, 130 belonging 120–122 binary victim-perpetrator 4, 101 Bisesero 74 burden 79, 82, 83, 89, 92–94, 96 Burundi 97, 122–127, 129, 132, 133, 150 bystander 4, 41, 45, 49, 101, 103, 105, 108–109 care: community of care 68–71; narrative of care 64, 73–77 CAURWA (Communauté des Autochtones Rwandais/Community of Indigenous Rwandans) 111 children 14, 52, 58, 60, 71, 75, 117, 131; of mixed background 84–87, 90–91 choice 52–54 church(es) 12, 33, 52, 62, 103, 133–134, 141 citizenship 35, 105, 110, 123 civil war 25, 37, 39, 58, 123 civilian 11, 59, 75, 81, 107, 116, 117, 124–129 collective guilt 5, 44–46, 55 colonial 33, 85, 104, 120, 122, 145, 148

colonialism 33, 104, 122, 144 commemoration(s) 13, 27, 38, 39, 66, 94 commemorative: of genocide 8–9, 26–28, 94, 109; of war 38–39 communal rescue 64, 73–77 Congo 37, 116, 119, 122, 125, 126, 127, 130, 132, 146, 150 Congolese 125, 127, 128, 131 constellation of genocide narratives: constellation 8, 8–10, 139; extending 150; revised 138–139 continuities with the past 116, 130–135 COPORWA (Communauté des Potiers du Rwanda /Rwandese Community of Potters) 111, 114 counter master-narrative of war 36–41 crimes: against humanity 31, 39; genocide 12, 30, 45, 148 culpability 45–48, 51–52 (dis)unity 40–41, 148 Democratic Republic of Congo 33, 99; see also Zaïre dialogical strategies 141–143 diaspora 14, 18, 38, 118–119, 120, 126, 133 divisionism 33–35, 40–41 empathy 96–98 English 125, 133 ethnic: background 82; differences 116; identities 34, 82, 84–95, 145–147; politics of 82 ethnic conflict 9, 82, 92, 102 ethnically mixed families 84–87 Europe 15, 129, 132

170   Index everyday 140–141; life 34, 62, 148; relations 57–62; values 65, 81 evil(s) 49, 50, 89 exceptionalism 79 exile 130, 132 family histories 18, 142 family(ies) of mixed ethnic backgrounds 82 FAR (Forces Armées Rwandaises/ Rwandan Armed Forces. Rwandan National Army) 33, 36 FARG (Fonds National pour L’Assistance aux Rescapés due Genocide/Genocide Survivors’ Assistance Fund) 91 FDLR (Forces Démocratiques pour la Libération du Rwanda /Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda) 37 forgiveness 60–62 foundational genocide master-narrative 35 French 15, 133 gacaca 31–32, 55–57 gender 52, 86, 87 génocidaire(s) 30, 46–51, 52–54, 82, 87–90 genocide against the Tutsi: commemorative 26–30; formation 24–35; naming 25–26; rewriting 143–148 genocide master-narrative: decentering 112; formation 5–7, 23–24; foundational 35–36; genocide 24 genocide orphan 91–92; see also orphelin du génocide genocide: denial 37, 149; during and after 90–91; ideology 35, 46, 57, 75; memorial 28, 29, 67; social history of 136; untold story 140–141 Great Lakes Region 12, 104, 119, 120 guilt 43, 44, 45–48, 51, 57, 60, 101 Habyarimana, Juvénal 23, 37, 71, 122 Hamitic 120–122 hegemony 6, 32, 124–129 heroic 66–68, 71, 78–81 historic consciousness 10, 40–42, 48–53, 59–62, 73, 94–96, 98, 112, 129–132, 145 historically marginalized population 108, 111–112 histories of mobility 120–123; of belonging 120–123

Holocaust 6, 48 home (country) 110, 117, 119–122, 127, 128, 132 Hutsi 91 Hutu 11–13, 25–26, 36–39, 45–51, 68–71, 82, 85–90; see also génocidaire(s); innocentée(s); non-perpetrator member(s) of the perpetrator group; see rescuer(s) Hutu apology 46–47 Ibuka (to remember) 67, 81 ICTR (International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda) 13, 31, 32, 46 indigenous people 112, 113, 120 ingando 123, 132 inkotanyi 107 innocentée(s) 55–57 innocents 38–39, 60 insider 105–107 interahamwe 49, 64, 91, 110 interdependence 3, 138 international community 26, 121 intimate burden 92–93 inyangamugayo 32, 41, 57 Itorero 34 Juste(s) 67 justice narrative 9, 30–32; (un)-just 39–40, 109 justice system 13, 31, 39, 59 Kagame, Paul 43, 45, 66, 126, 131 Kibeho 38, 99 Kigali Genocide Memorial 28–29, 66–68 killer(s) 11, 49, 52, 68, 70, 74, 82, 93, 99, 109, 145 Kinyarwanda 32, 104, 133 knowledge 14, 45, 85, 103, 121, 141, 143 language 132, 133, 135 legacy of genocide 9, 94–96, 147–149; of rescuing 77–78 marginalisation 100 marginalised 3, 41, 138 marginalised voices 41–42, 138–139 marriages 84–86, 90, 97, 126 massacres 36 master-narrative of the Genocide against the Tutsi see genocide master-narrative material survival 113

Index   171 Memorial Commission on Genocide and Massacres in Rwanda 27, 30 memorialisation 26–30 memory 16, 27–28, 30, 67, 101, 136 methodology 17–18 minority(ies) 100, 102 mistrust 130 ‘mixed’: belonging 92–93; children of mixed ethnicity 90–91; erasure of 84–87; reclaiming the 98–99 mobility 120–122 moral culpability 45–48 morality 48–51 naming narrative: culpability, shame and guilt 45–48; erasure of the ‘mixed’ 84–87; genocide against the Tutsi 25–26; hegemony of the RPF-led national narrative 120–124; outside onlooker 103–105; public figure of the rescuer 66–67; war 36–38 narrative: commemorative 26–28, 38–39; constellation 6–7, 138–141 (see also constellation of genocide narratives); of continuity 140–141; (dis)unity 40–41; of embeddedness 140–141; of the everyday 140–141; Hamitic 120–122; killing 46; legacy 94–96; methodology 17–18; of the ‘new’ Rwanda 130–135; reconciliation 9; survivor 46; themes 8; untold 140–141 narrative engagement: decentring 142; discrepant 142; engagement 10–11, 141, 143; mirroring 142; reconciliatory 142 narratives-in-dialogue 6 national: narrative 3, 19, 24, 30, 34, 48, 51, 113, 124–129, 141, 147; progress 113; unity 57–61, 110 National Unity and Reconciliation Commission 32–34, 110 nationalism 118–119 Ndi Umunyarwanda (I am Rwandan) 46 ‘new’ Rwanda 130–132, 144–145 non-involvement 52–54 non-perpetrator member(s) of the perpetrator group 45–48 NRM (National Resistance Movement) 122, 123 NURC (National Unity and Reconciliation Commission) 33, 110 ‘old’ caseload refugees 119–122 ‘old’ Rwanda 144–145

onlooker 103, 105 ordinary: morality 48–51; people 71–73 orphelin du génocide 87–90; see also genocide orphan Parmehutu 75 perpetrator(s) 3, 4, 39, 45–48, 101, 145–147 popular participation 45, 50, 70 post-colonial 33, 119, 120, 122, 144, 145, 148 post-genocide: narratives 108; Rwanda 147–149 power 52–54, 75 pre-colonial 33, 85, 104, 111, 121, 122, 144, 145, 148 pre-genocide 13, 16, 21, 57, 85, 99, 108, 133, 144, 145 proxy category 87 public narrative(s) 24, 44, 66, 84–87, 88, 95, 101, 110, 117–118, 130, 137, 142, 144 race(s) 1, 104, 120, 122 RANU (Rwandese Alliance for National Unity) 122, 123 rape 76, 88, 89, 90 reconciliation 9, 32–35, 57–61, 61–62 religion 133–134 remembering 27, 28, 30, 38, 59, 94, 109 rescapé(s) 26–28, 46, 54–55, 82, 87–90, 117–118; see also survivor of genocide rescuer(s): 65–66; exceptional 66–68; heroic 66–68; individual 66–68 rescuing: activities 65–66, 80–81; legacy of 77–78 resistance 52–54, 73–77 return 118–119 returnee(s) 116, 117–118, 124–128 righteous 67, 76, 78, 81 RTLM (Radio Télévision Libre des Mille Collines/Thousand Hills Free Radio and Television) 72 Rwanda 11–13, 130–135, 143–150 Rwanda Studies 11–14 Rwandan genocide 11–12, 26 Rwandan Patriotic Army (RPA) 55, 67, 124 Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) 67, 122–124 saviour 78–81

172   Index shame 44–45 silence 18, 32, 52, 93, 148, 149 single story 136–138 situating narratives methodologically 14–17 social history of the genocide 136–138, 143–145 solidarity camps 33, 121, 123, 132 support 96–98 supporting narratives 9, 41–42, 138 survival: existential 107–108; material 113–115; symbolic 110; Twa 105 survivor of genocide 28, 66, 115; see also rescapé(s) Tanzania 59, 122, 123, 125 testimony genre 4, 26, 66 transnationalism 119 truth 9, 24, 31, 32, 37, 57 Tutsi 11–13, 24–30, 73–78, 87–90, 117–118, 122–124, 128; see also genocide against the Tutsi; orphelin du genocide; rescapé(s); returnee(s)

Twa 11–13, 70, 74, 85, 100–107, 110 Uganda 15, 18, 40, 116, 121–116, 128, 130, 132 umuganda 34 United Kingdom 15, 18 unity 32–35, 96-98, 46 values 57–61 victim(s) 3, 4, 36, 101, 145–147 victimhood 38, 48, 59, 92, 94, 124, 145–146 victimized 109 Vision 2020 113, 134 vulnerability 113–115 war 36–41 work ethic 132, 134 Yugoslavia 5, 6 Zaïre 92, 119, 121, 124, 146, 150; see also Congo