Post-genocide Rwanda and discursive construction of legitimacy: contesting seemingly dichtomous political narratives

ABSTRACT

The 1994 Rwandan genocide represents a period of unprecedented violence that almost destroyed the small Central-East African country. The Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), in control of the state after the genocide, committed itself to reconciliation and inclusive nation-building. Analysts of the various approaches adopted by the RPF to addressing peace-building and reconciliation have observed that, despite this rhetoric, the dominant political narratives propagated by the ruling political party are “framed dichotomies” in their concurrent promotion and negation of ethnic division between the Hutu and Tutsi. Although the concurrent de-ethnicisation and ethnicisation of the Rwandan public sphere appear paradoxical, a closer analysis of the “public transcripts” enacted by the Rwandan Patriotic Front reveal that they are not completely irreconcilable. This article shows that these “incongruent” political narratives constitute the cohesive basis of the rule of an ethnically elite minority that demobilises ethnicity as the mode through which to articulate competing political claims on the post-genocide Rwandan state.

KEYWORDS:

• Rwanda
• political narrative
• Hutu
• Tutsi
• ethnicity
• nation-building

Acknowledgments

Lindiwe Makhunga passed away soon after presenting this paper at the NEST Colloquium in Johannesburg, October 2016. Her family and the editors of this special issue are deeply thankful to Gilbert Khadiagala and Peace Kiguwa for their assistance and care in finalising the paper for publication.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. The exact number of people killed during the Rwandan genocide is highly contested (Verpoorten 2005; Verwimp 2005). The Rwandan Government states that just over one million people died during the approximately three-month massacre. Gérard Prunier (1995) estimates it to be between 500,000 and 800,000 people.

2. The Twa are a pygmy people who are recognised as the oldest surviving population of the African Great Lakes region of central Africa. The absence of the Twa in academic analyses of Rwanda reflects their own marginalisation within Rwanda.

3. In 1986, an insurgent movement in Maoism, a form of Marxist-Leninism relevant to agrarian societies, relies on the popular class mobilisation of the peasantry (rural agricultural masses), as opposed to the proletariat, as the revolutionary force that overthrows the capitalist state and establishes socialist egalitarianism. It requires the insurgent movement to have the widespread support of the rural masses.

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Notes on contributors

Lindiwe D. Makhunga

The late Dr Lindiwe D. Makhunga (1984–2016) was appointed as a lecturer in politics in November 2014, having previously completed a number of degrees at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, including her doctorate. She was also awarded a Masters Degree in Gender and Development from the Institute of Development Studies at University of Sussex, where she was the top student in her class. As part of her great love of the African continent, she undertook ambitious fieldwork in Rwanda, South Africa and Sierra Leone, conducting research into the relationship between gender and political behaviour. She took it upon herself to learn the many languages of the continent in order to bring authenticity to her work.