Re-examining resistance in post-genocide Rwanda

Abstract

The scholarship on Rwanda interprets a large swathe of rural activities as types of resistance to government policies instituted by the current ruling party, the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF). This paper presents a detailed life history of an elderly rural man who actively resisted ethnically discriminatory violence in Rwanda in 1973, 1990 and 1994. His decision not to participate in the state-supported violence provides an archetypal example of active resistance and allows for an analysis of what it means to resist state power in a particular time and place. This ethnographic research provides one route to nuance the current interpretations of resistance in Rwanda. It proposes that the dominant accounts of peasant resistance, which draw heavily on the theoretical work of James C. Scott, often neglect power differentials within rural communities, and fail to take adequate account of the normative dimensions that underpin an individual's decision to resist. It concludes with a call for a more careful analysis of how and why people resist state power in Rwanda.

Keywords:

• Rwanda
• resistance
• gacaca
• thick description

Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) [grant number ES/K000683/11] and The Fetzer Institute [grant number 3177.00].

Notes

1. Newbury and Newbury, “Bringing the Peasants Back In,” 832; Newbury, Cohesion of Oppression, pp. 38–52; Des Forges, “‘Drum is Greater than the Shout,’” 321; Longman, “Genocide and Socio-Political Change,” 19.

2. Scott, Weapons of the Weak, 28.

3. Waldorf, “Mass Justice for Mass Atrocity”; Ingelaere, “Does the Truth Pass?”; Thomson, “Whispering Truth to Power.”

4. Waldorf, “Mass Justice for Mass Atrocity”; Ingelaere, “Does the Truth Pass?”; Thomson, “Whispering Truth to Power.”

5. This approach is very much in line with current critical legal research in which one case can constructively be used to explore the broader practice of international criminal law; Drumbl, “When ‘Mere Presence’ Implicates,” 25.

6. Galligan, Law in Modern Society, 11–12.

7. In order to preserve anonymity a pseudonym was adopted for this research participant.

8. This is in line with Straus's account of the outbreak of violence in Rwanda at points of political contestation; Straus, Order of Genocide, 175–201.

9. The notion of ‘thick description’ draws on the hermeneutic methodology pioneered by Clifford Geertz; Geertz, “Thick Description,” 3–33.

10. Scott, Domination and the Arts of Resistance, 6.

11. Scott, Domination and the Arts of Resistance, ix.

12. Mouffe, On the Political, 18

13. Seymour, “Resistance,” 305.

14. Emirbayer and Mische, “What Is Agency?,” 964.

15. Tonkin, “Investigating Oral Tradition,” 203.

16. Vasina, Oral Tradition.

17. Cohen, Miesche, and White, “Voices, Words, and African History”, 12.

18. Cohen, Miesche, and White, “Voices, Words, and African History”, 19..

19. Tonkin, “Investigating Oral Tradition,” 206.

20. Umutesi, Surviving the Slaughter; Mukagasana, La mort ne veut pas de moi.

21. Ingelaere, “Learning to be Kinyarwanda”.

22. Ingelaere, “Learning to be Kinyarwanda” 204.

23. Krog, Mpolweni, and Ratele, There Was This Goat, 175–207.

24. McEvoy, “What Did the Lawyers Do,” 352–36.

25. Interview with Muhimana, 18 April 2012. Recording, transcription and translation on file with the author.

26. Interview with Muhimana, 18 April 2012. Recording, transcription and translation on file with the author.

27. Interview with Muhimana, 18 April 2012. Recording, transcription and translation on file with the author.

28. Ortner, “Resistance and the Problem,” 175.

29. Ingelaere, “Does the Truth Pass?,” 524.

30. Interview with Muhimana, September 5, 2012. Recording, transcription and translation on file with the author.

31. Palmer, Courts in Conflict.

32. In order to preserve anonymity a pseudonym was adopted for this individual.

33. Interview with Muhimana, April 19, 2012. Recording, transcription and translation on file with the author.

34. Interview with Muhimana, April 19, 2012. Recording, transcription and translation on file with the author.

35. Interview with Muhimana, September 6, 2012. Recording, transcription and translation on file with the author.

36. Janzen, “Historical Consciousness and a ‘Prise de Conscience’,” 167.

37. Penal Reform International, The Righteous, 25.

38. Penal Reform International, The Righteous, p. 33.

39. Karekezi, Nshimiyimana, and Mutamba, “Localizing Justice”; Gasibirege and Babalola, Perceptions About the Gacaca Law. The timing of these reports is highlighted by Ingelaere, “From Model to Practice,” 402.

40. Kayishema and Masabo, “The ‘Just’ in Rwanda,” 30–1. French and English versions are on file with the author.

41. Corey and Joireman, “Retributive Justice”; Des Forges and Roth, “Justice or Therapy?”; Fierens, “Gacaca Courts: Between Fantasy and Reality.”

42. Waldorf, “Mass Justice for Mass Atrocity,” 65.

43. Ingelaere, “Does the Truth Pass?,” 524.

44. Ingelaere, “Rise of Meta-Conflicts.”

45. Thomson, “Whispering Truth to Power,” 14.

46. Jones, Bernath, and Rubli, “Resistance to Transitional Justice,” 15.