Legacies of Kanjogera: women political elites and the transgression of gender norms in Rwanda

ABSTRACT

Kanjogera looms large in Rwandan history as a Queen Mother (1895–1931) – a position equal to that of the king – who wielded extraordinary political power. While she was not the first Rwandan woman to exercise this kind of power, she is arguably the most widely remembered in Rwandan popular culture largely due to the brutalities she allegedly inflicted upon her perceived enemies. But why do Kanjogera’s violent excesses stand out when other monarchical figures also occasionally used violence to maintain or expand their power? What might the way her name is invoked in the present tell us about modern Rwandan gender norms and people’s attitudes toward women who exercise significant political power? We respond to these questions by examining the permissible behaviours of Rwandan women political elites in historical perspective. Following an overview of Kanjogera’s political legacy, we turn our attention to two First Ladies, Agathe Kanziga (1973–1994) and Jeannette Kagame (2000-present) who, for different reasons, are occasionally referred to as modern incarnations of Kanjogera. In these two cases, we argue Kanjogera’s name serves as a rhetorical device that reveals ongoing anxieties about women exercising significant political power, while simultaneously undermining the politically prominent men with whom they are associated.

KEYWORDS:

• Rwanda
• monarchy
• women
• political authority
• gender norms

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID

Erin Jessee http://orcid.org/0000-0002-8132-7966

Notes

1 Over the last decade, the Rwanda National Commission for the Fight Against Genocide (CNLG) and other survivor-focus organizations in Rwanda have lobbied the international community to recognize and use this official label for the genocide that overwhelmed Rwanda in 1994. This official label has provoked controversy among Rwandans and scholars alike. Recently, political scientist Scott Straus cautioned scholars against using the label uncritically, as it amplifies the genocide endured by the Tutsi at the expense of the broader experiences of political violence – none of which, admittedly, approached the scale or intensity of the genocide – that Rwandans endured in the 1990s. Straus has called for an approach that serves to “affirm genocide and recognize the other mass crimes.” Straus, “The Limits of a Genocide Lens: Violence in Rwandans in the 1990s,” 2.

2 Controversy persists over which parties to the conflict are responsible for Habyarimana’s assassination. French soldiers and DRC peacekeepers have been blamed; see Prunier, The Rwanda Crisis, 213–4. Habyarimana’s own cabinet has been suspected; see Des Forges, Leave None to Tell the Story, 182. The Rwandan government’s 2010 Mutsinzi Report argues that the Rwandan Armed Forces were responsible for engineering and implementing Habyarimana’s assassination. Republic of Rwanda, “Report of the Investigation.” Kagame himself has also been blamed; see Trédivic and Poux, “Rapport d’expertise”; Hugh Schofield. “Rwanda Genocide: Kagame “Cleared of Habyarimana Crash.” The BBC, 10 January 2012; and Guichaoua, From War to Genocide, 144–5.

3 The number of victims of the genocide is also a point of controversy. The organizers of Kwibuka25—the 25th annual commemoration of the genocide – note that there were over one million victims of the genocide, while scholars such as historians Alison Des Forges and Gérard Prunier have argued that a more accurate figure would be between 500,000 and 800,000 victims. There is a fairly high degree of consensus, however, that the vast majority of the victims were of Tutsi heritage. Kwibuka25, “About”; Des Forges, Leave None to Tell the Story, 15; and Prunier, The Rwanda Crisis, 261.

4 For more on the genocidal rape that occurred during the genocide, see Baines, “Body Politics and the Rwandan Crisis”; Degni-Ségui, “Report on the Situation of Human Rights in Rwanda”; Nowrojee, Shattered Lives; and Taylor, “A Gendered Genocide.”

5 For a solid overview of how Rwandan women have organized and advocated for their interests in Rwanda’s post-genocide period, see Mageza-Barthel, Mobilizing Transnational Gender Politics.

6 Burnet, “‘Women have Found Respect’,” 9. It is important to note that while Rwanda’s post-genocide model of governance can be celebrated for its inclusion of women, it is not without criticism. These critics – most notably, anthropologist Jennie Burnet, sociologist Marie Berry and political scientist Susan Thomson – have focused on the extent to which the gains made by Rwandan women genocide survivors have trickled down to the rural majority, arguing the advancement of a few women genocide survivors has done little to improve everyday living conditions for rural women across the nation. See for example, Burnet, “‘Women have Found Respect’”; Berry, “Barriers to Women’s Progress After Atrocity”; Berry, “‘There is No Hope to Get a Better Life’”; and Thomson, “Rwanda.”

7 See James Munyaneza, “Women Take 64% of Seats in Parliament.” The New Times, 18 September 2013.

8 Brown, Gender and the Genocide in Rwanda, 33.

9 Kanziga is also commonly referenced as Agathe Habyarimana. Here, we have chosen to use her maiden name to avoid confusion with her husband, who is also frequently discussed as bearing primary responsibility for orchestrating the genocide.

10 See for example, Kagame, Un abrégé de l’ethno-histoire du Rwanda; Schumacher, Ruanda; and Vansina, Antecedents to Modern Rwanda. Regarding the Abanyiginya clan, Rwandan oral traditions present this clan as semi-divine in origin, as the descendants of the Ibimanuka – the children of Nkuba, the king of heaven, who allegedly came to earth to give rise to the Rwandan kingdom. See, for example, Mukarutabana, “Myth of Kigwa.”

11 Vansina, Antecedents to Modern Rwanda, 31.

12 Ibid., 27.

13 Ibid., 32.

14 Ibid.

15 Des Forges, Defeat is the Only Bad News, 73.

16 Ibid.

17 Codere, The Biography of An African Society, Rwanda 1900-1960, 247.

18 Ibid., 137–8.

19 Ibid., 309.

20 Des Forges, Defeat is the Only Bad News, 10–11.

21 Ibid., 15–6.

22 Vansina, Antecedents to Modern Rwanda, 44.

23 Possession of the drum was an important marker of legitimacy and was sometimes a key element in deciding succession disputes. For a case on neighbouring Ijwi Island, see Newbury, Kings and Clans.

24 Des Forges, Defeat is the Only Bad News, 17.

25 Ibid., 23.

26 Ibid.

27 In addition to being the king’s beer maker, Giharamagara was also Kanjogera’s brother.

28 Vansina collection, Rwabugiri file, H. 46. See also Rwabugiri file, H. 41; and Pagès, Au Rwanda sur les bords du Lac. This latter source sets the narrative in Nyamasheke and does not involve Kanjogera.

29 Uwineza et al., “Sustaining women’s gains in Rwanda.” For more information regarding the prevalence of this narrative in modern Rwanda, see Jessee and Watkins, “Good Kings, Bloody Tyrants.”

30 See for example, Burnet, Genocide Lives in Us; Codere, The Biography of an African Society; and Jefremovas, Brickyards to Graveyards.

31 Jessee, “The Danger of a Single Story”; and Jessee, Negotiating Genocide in Rwanda.

32 Jessee, Negotiating Genocide in Rwanda, 101–2.

33 Watkins, “Iron Mothers and Warrior Lovers.”

34 Kayijuka, “Lebensgeschichte des Grossfürsten Kayijuka und Seiner Ahnen Seit Sultan Yuhi Mazimpaka, König von Ruanda,” 103–61.

35 Muhumusa is also occasionally referenced in the region as Muserekande or Nyiragahumusa. For further information see Des Forges, Defeat is the only bad news, 269.

36 Finding independent verification for Muhumusa’s claims is virtually impossible at this point. She enters the British colonial records, for example, as a rebel leader many years after Rwabugiri’s death. However, the timelines during which Rwabugiri was fighting in the present-day northwest of Rwanda and southwest of Uganda, where Muhumusa lived, make her claims at least plausible. Kanjogera had far more powerful familial connections, as well as sympathetic allies as part of the abiru (court historians and ritualists), who could help her delegitimize Muhumusa. Abagabekazi (pl. umugabekazi) had manipulated abiru before, including women from Kanjogera’s own lineage. For examples, see Watkins, “Iron Mothers and Warrior Lovers,” especially Chapter 1.

37 Vansina collection, Rwabugiri file, T. 42.

38 For more on Nyabingi, see Freedman, “Ritual and History”; and Feierman, “Healing as Social Criticism.”

39 For more on how Belgian colonization weakened the monarchy, see Carney, Rwanda Before the Genocide, 121 and Des Forges, Defeat is the Only Bad News, 235–36.

40 Uwineza et al., “Sustaining Women’s Gains in Rwanda,” 12.

41 See, for example, Vansina collection, Rutarindwa, Musinga, and Rudahigwa file, H. 7; H. 13; H. 14; H. 18(b); H. 20(a); H. 43; T. 1; T. 3; T. 4; T. 5; T. 13.

42 See, for example, Kagame, Un abrégé de l'ethno-histoire du Rwanda, Vol. 2. See also Pagès, Un Royaume hamite au centre de l’Afrique; and Vansina, Antecedents to Modern Rwanda.

43 Des Forges, Defeat is the Only Bad News.

44 In the few cases where elite women transgressed too far from the norm, such as when Umugabekazi Nyiramongi outlived her son and refused to commit suicide in order for the burial rituals to be properly conducted, or when Rwabugiri’s mother, Murorunkwere, took a lover and was rumoured to be pregnant with his child, they were killed. See Vansina, Antecedents to Modern Rwanda, and Watkins, “Iron Mothers and Warrior Lovers.” One of the few cases in which a woman assumed a traditionally masculine role and was not sanctioned was when the royal servant Nyiramuhanda was appointed to the abiru during Umugabekazi Nyiratunga’s regency (circa 1801-1820). This only happened because she sacrificed her infant son and personal safety to save the infant king Gahindiro’s life. See Vansina collection, H. 6.

45 A notable exception is the case of Ahebi Ugbabe in Nigeria. See Achebe, The Female King of Colonial Nigeria. Yet even this exception proves the rule: Ahebi was unmarried and considered a man by the variable gender standards of Igbo culture, and spoke local languages and English, making her a valuable asset for the British. Though she enjoyed a short time in power, she did not establish any lasting authority, going so far as to perform her own burial rites because she did not trust that the male elders in her community would do them appropriate to her status as a man. Ahebi’s ascent was not replicated in her own society, nor any others under British rule. Her story was almost completely ignored by scholars (though not forgotten in Enugu-Eke), and was only revived through Achebe’s oral history research. For more on European colonizers tendency to undermine powerful African women, see Feierman, “Healing as Social Criticism.”

46 Carney, Rwanda Before the Genocide.

47 See, for example, Vokes, Ghosts of Kanungu, 18–9.

48 Guichaoua, From War to Genocide, 86; and Guichaoua archive, “Box 6: Extended family of Juvénal Habyarimana and his wife, Agathe Kanziga,” 1. Historian David Newbury notes that the abahinza were often regarded locally as abami in their own right. Newbury, The Land Beyond the Mists, 391.

49 Interestingly, Veridiyana (also occasionally spelled Berediyana) Mukagatare, First Lady to President Grégoire Kayibanda (1962–1973), has received little attention from historians and related experts. In the one account we have been able to locate that considers her life, though written in 2014, she is celebrated as “a very well-behaved woman” who was “down-to-earth beyond imagination.” Indeed, the account’s author claims that her absence from the historiography can be attributed to her desire to focus on her agricultural projects and good deeds in the community, and attributes her death in 1974 to be the direct outcome of her husband’s removal from power the previous year and subsequent death sentence. Bwiza, “Ngo ukurusha umugore Aba akurusha urugo” (The one who has a better wife has a better household).

50 Habyarimana had gained some national recognition for his service as Army Chief of Staff prior to claiming the presidency on 5 July 1973. Far from bloodless, the coup culminated in the assassinations of 56 dignitaries of the Kayibanda regime by Habyarimana’s Security Chief, Théoneste Lizinde, as well as the house arrest and gradual murder – allegedly by starvation – of his predecessor. Guichaoua, From War to Genocide, 13; and Prunier, The Rwanda Crisis, 82.

51 Watkins, “Iron Mothers and Warrior Lovers,” 215.

52 Guichaoua, From War to Genocide, 51; and, Verwimp, Peasants in Power, 100.

53 Guichaoua, From War to Genocide, 52.

54 Throughout the authors’ oral historical and ethnographic fieldwork in Rwanda, Kanziga was commonly referenced as Kanjogera in off-the record conversations. As further evidence of this trend, see the personal memoire of Rwanda’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, Louise Mushikiwabo, as well as journalistic and historical accounts by Linda Melvern and Susan Thomson, respectively. Mushikiwabo and Kramer, Rwanda Means the Universe, 228; Melvern, A People Betrayed, 41–2; and Thomson, Whispering Truth to Power, 73.

55 Guichaoua cautions scholars against reading Kanziga and her family as dominating the Habyarimana regime, though he likewise recognizes that their authority within his government should not be underestimated. Regarding Kanziga’s “government of women,” he found no evidence to suggest she ever “personally interceded with any prefect or minister for any particular favour,” though people would approach her with requests that she intervene by speaking on their behalf with her husband. Guichaoua, From War to Genocide, 51–2.

56 The term akazu has been used throughout Rwandan history in reference to the intimate political networks that have worked surreptitiously with the court or the presidency to pursue particular political or ideological agendas, and especially those networks associated with abagabekazi. However, in the context of the Habyarimana regime, the akazu is explicitly associated with Kanziga and her extended family and is often referenced as the main ideological force behind the 1994 genocide.

57 Gourevitch, We wish to Inform you, 80–1.

58 These efforts are especially notable given the close familial ties between many core members of the RPF’s leadership and the monarchical and matridynastic clans. Paul Kagame, for instance, is directly descended from one of Kanjogera’s brothers. This helps to demonstrate that the tensions around Kanjogera’s character are not merely a matter of ethnicity or Hutu hatred of the monarchy.

59 Gitera, “Appeal to the Conscience of the Hutu.”

60 Nahimana was ultimately convicted and sentenced to life in prison by the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) for inciting genocide. International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, “The Prosecutor v. Ferdinand Nahimana.”

61 See United Nations Trusteeship Council, “United Nations visiting mission to trust territories in east Africa, 1960,” no. 120, 14; and Linden and Linden, Church and Revolution in Rwanda, 262.

62 The term génocidaires is distinctly Rwandan and refers to those individuals who committed atrocities during the 1994 genocide. Jessee, “Rwandan Women No More.”

63 Ibid.

64 Bizimungu, a moderate Hutu whose affiliation with the RPF dates back to 1990, stepped down as President amid allegations of corruption, but claims he was forced out of office by Kagame after he objected to the RPF’s unwarranted crackdown on political dissidents. He subsequently attempted to launch his own political party – Ubuyanja (the Party for Democracy and Renewal) – which was then banned by the RPF on the grounds that it promoted ethnic divisions. As a result, Bizimungu was placed under house arrest between 2002 and 2007, before being pardoned by President Kagame. See BBC News. “From President to Prison.” 7 June 2004. In 2015, following a petition that allegedly acquired the support of over 60% of voters, Rwanda’s parliament passed a constitutional amendment that enabled Kagame to run for a third consecutive term in 2017. See Yahoo News. “Rwanda Parliament Votes to Allow Kagame Third Term.” 29 October 2015. Kagame won the 2017 presidential elections having received 98.8% of the popular vote, and can now potentially hold office until 2034. Jason Burke. “Paul Kagame Re-elected President with 99% of Vote in Rwanda Election.” The Guardian, 5 August 2017.

65 News of Rwanda. “President Paul Kagame and Jeannette Kagame – The First Couple of Rwanda.” 14 December 2014.

66 Since 2000, several long-term members of the RPF and Kagame’s inner circle have been forced into exile amid allegations of corruption, promoting genocide ideology, and attempting to stabilize the nation, among other crimes. In several instances, these individuals have gone on to become outspoken critics of the Kagame regime. Most notably, Rwanda’s former Chief of Staff of the Rwandan Army, Faustin Kayumba Nyamwasa, and the recently assassinated former head of Rwandan intelligence, Patrick Karegeya, helped establish the Rwanda National Congress (RNC), which represents Rwanda’s political opposition in exile. Among its various goals, the RNC seeks to draw international attention to the authoritarian nature of the Kagame regime and the negative impact it is having on genuine reconciliation in post-genocide Rwanda. For more information, see Nyamwasa et al., “Rwanda Briefing.”

67 Anonymous, “Letter from the North.”

68 Ibid.

69 Burnet, Genocide Lives in us, 44.

70 Gasasira, “How Rwanda’s First Lady Jeannette Kagame’s Requested her Husband to Mercilessly Behead Major John Sengati.”

71 Watkins, “Tomorrow She Will Reign.”

72 See, for example, Sawyer, “Dwindling Options for Opposition Candidates in Rwanda”; and US Department of State, “Rwanda 2017 Human Rights Report.”

73 Berry and Bouka, “Limitations of Rights-Based Approaches to Women’s Political Empowerment.”

74 See Ignatius Ssuuna. “Rwanda Unveils Gender-balanced Cabinet with 50 Percent Women.” The Independent, 19 October 2018.

75 Mageza-Barthel, Mobilizing Transnational Gender Politics in Post-Genocide Rwanda, 95.

76 Berry and Bouka, “Limitations of Rights-Based Approaches to Women’s Political Empowerment.”

77 Beard, Women and Power, 84.

78 Castor, She-Wolves, 450.