Vernacular memories: recalling Rwanda’s 1943–44 famine during the Covid-19 hunger crisis

Abstract

This article explores how the vernacular memory of the 1940s-era Ruzagayura famine was deployed to critique the contemporary Covid-19-induced hunger crisis in Rwanda. It methodologically advances memory studies scholarship by emphasising the importance of textual analyses of oral histories, poetry, proverbs and panegyrics, especially when transmitted on social media. This crucial revision can begin to redress the Eurocentric knowledge production approaches prevalent in memory studies. Transgenerational vernacular memories run parallel to, in relation with, and in competition with Rwanda’s official memorialisation of historical crises. While the Ruzagayura famine and related narratives are forgotten in the official rewriting of history, they re-emerge and find new life online to be transmitted across generations and geographies. I consider how ‘born-digital’ youth revitalise oral histories of the famine as a form of resistance against official policy, and how powerful actors attempt to suppress these narratives. Thus, this paper contributes to broader literatures on resistance and memory politics in Rwanda and beyond.

Keywords:

• Ruzagayura famine
• pandemic
• memorialisation
• folk memory
• mass starvation
• Great Lakes Region

Acknowledgements

I am grateful to Professor Camilla Orjuela and Professor Swati Parashar for their support in the process of developing this paper and giving me feedback on initial draft. Thank you to the reviewers, who also gave helpful feedback. To everyone who supported this process, I am thankful.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 All names are anonymous to protect the respondents’ privacy. Specific dates and locations of the interviews are not mentioned to conceal respondents’ identity. The study was approved by the ethics committee of the researcher’s affiliated institution and the research broker obtained ethics approval from the local government as required by the Rwandan laws for research done by Rwandans. I will use ‘Interview KE’ and a number for those interviews carried out in Kenya, ‘Interview RWA’ and a number for respondents in Rwanda, and ‘Interview BE’ plus a number for those in Belgium.

2 Source: Les Poetes du Clan des Abasinga, I.2. 16 Nkuriye Ingoma Bruno, poem 055, ‘Icyivugo cya Ruzagayura’, http://dominicains.ca/nyirarumaga/ (accessed February 21, 2022) and also available here: http://rw.bangmedia.org/2008/02/icyivugo-cya-ruzagayura.html#axzz7nvPJ5nkq (accessed March 1, 2022).

3 This translation was done by a professional Kinyarwanda-to-English translator who chose to remain unidentified.

4 These proverbs were recounted by an older interviewee who lived through the 1970s to now (Interview KE2, August 2021).

5 Innocent Bahati; ‘Rwanda: Uko umusizi Innocent Bahati yabuze avuye guhura n’abantu muri Hotel’ February 16, 2021, https://www.bbc.com/gahuza/amakuru-56080371

6 In 2015, https://www.newtimes.co.rw/section/read/192562; in 2021, https://www.newtimes.co.rw/lifestyle/health-activist-fighting-malnutrition-and-supporting-huyes-vulnerable-society

7 Covid-19 Bahati Innocent official channel, March 26, 2020: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fw9cFaO6Tuk

8 Covid-19 Bahati Innocent official channel, March 26, 2020: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fw9cFaO6Tuk

9 Nsengiyumva Emmy, ‘Umusizi Bahati wamenyekanye nka Rubebe yaba yaburiwe irengero’, February 10, 2021, https://igihe.com/imyidagaduro/article/umusizi-bahati-innocent-wamenyekanye-nka-rubebe-yaburiwe-irengero

10 After a letter protesting his disappearance, signed by activists, artists and world-renowned authors and published by PEN international on its website, the Rwanda Investigation Bureau (RIB) officially announced that Bahati Innocent had crossed over to Uganda and was working with enemies of Rwanda. See: https://www.kigalitoday.com/amakuru/amakuru-mu-rwanda/article/iperereza-rya-rib-ryagaragaje-ko-umusizi-bahati-innocent-yinjiye-muri-uganda (accessed February 26, 2022).

11 For instance, in this video uploaded on YouTube on 12 May 2021, women who are 90 and 100 years old recount to a young YouTuber on Legacy TV about the devastation that Ruzagayura left amongst Rwandans. See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nxl_Wi2D82c

12 For instance, see this YouTube show: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0B2s4FZjtXM

Additional information

Funding

Thank you to the African Leadership Centre (ALC), King’s College London, with support of The Carnegie Corporation of New York (CCNY) on the project ‘Mapping and Examining Memories of Pandemic Response and Leadership Emergence in East African Countries’.

Notes on contributors

David Mwambari

David Mwambari is Associate Professor at the faculty of Social Sciences at Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium. David is also Principal Investigator for the TMSS project funded by European Research Council (ERC). He is a core faculty and board member at the Oxford Consortium on Human Rights, University of Oxford. He was a lecturer in African security and leadership studies at the African Leadership Centre at King’s College London (UK). He was an MRI fellow at The Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa (CODESRIA)–Senegal.