Spectres of ‘development’: Francophonie, agricultural coloniality and genocide memory in Scholastique Mukasonga’s La femme aux pieds nus and Inyenzi ou les Cafards

ABSTRACT

Scholastique Mukasonga’s testimonial memoirs document the environmental conditions of forced resettlement within Rwanda in the decades prior to the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi. Inyenzi ou Les cafards (2006) and La femme aux pieds nus (2008) attest to a form of ‘internal’ exile on coffee-growing paysannats—government-sponsored farms introduced in the colonial period. In this article, I contextualise the Belgian administration’s interest in settling Bugesera in light of continuing economic and colonial-scientific investment in agronomy and agricultural development. I map the intensification of this ‘agricultural coloniality’ in the context of post-independence Hutu nationalism, in which ‘development’ is linked to the coffee economy, neo-colonial involvements based on Francophonie, and the cleansing of ‘invasive’ Tutsi pastoralists from the national landscape. This history illuminates Mukasonga’s premonitory construction of genocide memory, in which colonial models of rationalisation, resettlement, and forced cultivation anticipate both the 1994 genocide and the social cleansing of Tutsi in the early 1960s. ‘Spectres’ of the genocidal implications of development, linguistic reminders of social exclusion, and dehumanising metaphors of eradication as environmental management permeate the memoirs and resonate with a broader colonial topos of development-as-eradication, namely, attempts to eradicate tsetse flies in Bugesera through pesticide spraying and instrumentalised Tutsi resettlement.

RÉSUMÉ

Les témoignages de Scholastique Mukasonga rendent compte des circonstances environnementales de la relocalisation forcée au Rwanda pendant les décennies avant le génocide des Tutsis en 1994. Inyenzi ou Les cafards (2006) et La femme aux pieds nus (2008) communiquent une forme d’exil ‘interne’ dans des paysannats voués à la production du café, c’est-à-dire des exploitations agricoles créées par le gouvernement à partir de la période coloniale. Cet article contextualise l’intérêt de l’administration belge pour le peuplement de la région du Bugesera à la lumière de l’investissement colonial scientifique dans l’agronomie. Nous brossons un tableau de l’intensification de cette ‘colonialité agricole’ dans le contexte du nationalisme des Hutus après l’indépendance, où le ‘développement’ s’associe à l’économie du café, aux implications néocoloniales basées sur la Francophonie et à l’effacement de la carte nationale des pasteurs tutsis ‘invasifs’. Cette vue d’ensemble éclaircit la construction prémonitoire d’une mémoire génocidaire par Mukasonga dans laquelle les modèles coloniaux de la rationalisation, de la relocalisation et de la culture forcée anticipent le génocide en 1994 et le nettoyage social des Tutsis au début des années 1960. Ses mémoires—imprégnées de ‘spectres’ des conséquences génocidaires du développement, de rappels linguistiques de l’exclusion sociale et de métaphores déshumanisantes de l’éradication en tant que gestion environnementale—font écho au topos colonial du développement comme éradication, à savoir les tentatives d’éradiquer les mouches tsé-tsé dans la région du Bugesera au travers de l’épandage des pesticides et de la relocalisation instrumentalisée des Tutsis.

Acknowledgments

The author would like to thank the two anonymous reviewers, for their invaluable comments on an earlier version of this paper, and Kate Spowage, for conversations that furthered much of the thinking on Francophonie.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. In 1996, English was made an official language and it is now the dominant elite language in Rwanda. English-medium public education was introduced in 2008.

2. Indeed, colonial-scientific literature on paysannat schemes in the Democratic Republic of Congo continued to be produced after independence (see Hubert 1965).

3. My observations here are specifically interested in code-switching as it relates to development ideology. For a reading of Mukasonga’s use of Kinyarwanda as a form of cultural restoration, see Hitchcott (2017, 147).

4. Amazu is the plural form of inzu.

5. A 2017 Kigali Today article on the Rwabayanga cave includes the testimony of genocide survivor Senyange Faustini, who states that in 1966, following the ‘Inyenzi’ paramilitary incursions into Rwanda from across the Burundian border, members of his family and neighbouring families were thrown into the cave (Hitimana and Rutindukanamurego 2017).

6. Crucially, the effectiveness of the eradication campaign is measured in terms of both the reduction in the fly population and the successful settlement of the region (Buyckx 1965, 151). The slow re-infestation of the chemically-treated areas by tsetse is not regarded as a problem so long as settlement is achieved, and in a timely fashion that prevents higher levels of re-infestation (151).