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many ordinary peasant Rwandans who participated in my research on the role of the state in

promoting national unity and reconciliation. For the government, a “capable state” will “shape a

positive future for all Rwandans” and allow for the “continued promotion of national unity,” whereas

Gaston feels the state is best avoided and is wary of its strategies of reconciliation. For the RPF-led

government, “Rwanda is a nation rehabilitated, whose past is truly the past, whose present is peaceful

and stable, and whose future beckons ever more brightly with each passing year” (ORTPN 2004, 4).

Behind this idealized image of Rwanda as a nation rehabilitated are the daily realities of ordinary

Rwandan men and women who lived through the 1994 genocide. Their daily struggles to reestablish

livelihoods, reconstitute social and economic networks, and reconcile with neighbors, friends, and, in

some cases, family are subject to the top-down and state-led practices of national unity and

reconciliation that are the subject matter of this chapter. Everyday forms of resistance to the demands

of the policy of national unity and reconciliation cannot be analyzed without an understanding of the

broader framework of power that the policy represents in the lives of ordinary peasants. The various

practices and mechanisms of national unity operate within the dense apparatus of the Rwandan state

and are a central element of the RPF’s unity-building activities, which are, in turn, the foundation of

its Vision 2020 development program (Purdeková 2012a, 192; Straus and Waldorf 2011, 8–10).

An analytical focus on the interaction of thirty-seven ordinary peasant Rwandans resident in the

south with the constituent elements of the policy of national unity and reconciliation reveals a reality

very different from the government’s idealized version of Rwanda as a “nation rehabilitated.” For the

rural Rwandans who participated in my research, the future is hardly bright, as the past continues to

shape their daily present. The policy of national unity and reconciliation has outlawed public

discussion of or even reference to one’s ethnicity—speaking of being Tutsi, Hutu, or Twa. Individuals

can speak only of being “Rwandan” in state-sanctioned settings—for example, in ingando reeducation

camps, at gacaca justice trials, during genocide mourning week, and through their membership in

civil society organizations. There has been no frank or open discussion of how ethnic categories

shaped the violence of the genocide, nor has there been any official recognition of different lived





experiences of the 1994 genocide beyond the fact that only Tutsi were victims of violence during the

genocide and that only Hutu killed. The RPF also does not allow for public discussion of physical

violence that individual Rwandans experienced before and after the genocide, particularly the violence

they experienced at the hands of its soldiers. Instead, the postgenocide government uses its power to

ensure that ordinary Rwandans respect the rules promulgated through its policy of national unity and

reconciliation about which Rwandans can speak about their experiences of the genocide and how. As

Olive, a destitute Hutu woman, said, “When the state organizes reconciliation, I go because I have no

choice” (interview 2006).

The opening quotations also allude to the vexed relationship between some ordinary Rwandans and

the practices instituted by the postgenocide state in the pursuit of national unity and reconciliation.

From the perspective of the peasant Rwandans who participated in my research, the policy represents

an oppressive force in their daily lives. The postgenocide state “organizes everything,” and it “makes

decisions” in the name of national unity and reconciliation that ordinary people are then left to

interpret and implement according to the official narrative (interviews 2006). The purpose of this

chapter is to dissect the institutional practices and mechanisms of the policy of national unity and

reconciliation to show how the RPF and its agents use the apparatus and authority of the state to

enforce the policy. Deconstruction of the various practices and mechanisms of the postgenocide state

helps to illuminate the social and political differences that the policy masks while showing the extent

to which it represents an oppressive and structural form of social control in the everyday lives of

ordinary Rwandans.

subsequent analysis that enables us to understand the everyday acts of resistance of ordinary

Rwandans as purposeful reactions to the power of the postgenocide state as exercised through the

policy of national unity and reconciliation. The practical, everyday effects of power are determined by

the relationship of domination and resistance between the powerful and the so-called powerless. By

“powerless” I mean individuals “over whom power is exercised without their exercising it; the

powerless are situated so that they must take orders and rarely have a right to give them” (Young

2004, 52). From this perspective, the dominance of state power is not simply an attribute of the

apparatus of the state but rather a product of the relations between the state’s ruling regime of elites

and its citizens and of the resultant distribution of power among them. This approach allows for an

analysis that looks beyond who has power (i.e., state elites) to focus on what kind of power is being

exercised and by whom (Foucault 1977, 1980). The apparatus of the state influences the circulation of

power insofar as it affects the social and political distribution of knowledge, something that RPF elites

do very well (Pottier 2002, 151–78; Purdeková 2012a, 193–96). Analysis of these relational aspects of

power reveals that political and social change rely on more than the institutional practices of the

ruling elite; they also depend on the nature of the social and political relations between individuals

and the state—in this case between ordinary Rwandans and agents of the RPF regime.

A focus on power relations at the level of the individual allows for an analysis of the broader social,

institutional, and structural contexts that shape individual interactions with state power such as those

of the thirty-seven ordinary Rwandans from the south who participated in my research. Young (1990,

89) concludes that power exists only in action and must therefore be analyzed as something that is





“widely dispersed and diffused.” Young’s critique points us to a specific understanding of the power

relationship as one that is unjust and oppressive to those over whom power is exercised, one that is

conceptually understood as domination (Young 1990, 2004). For ordinary peasant Rwandans, the

policy of national unity and reconciliation is a source of sociopolitical exclusion, economic inequality,

and individual humiliation as they struggle to comply with its many demands.


The Policy of National Unity and Reconciliation


The policy of national unity and reconciliation is an ambitious social engineering project that the RPF

believes will forge a unified Rwandan identity while fostering reconciliation between survivors of the

genocide and its perpetrators. The official narrative of national unity and reconciliation argues that the

combination of a docile and obedient population, a legacy of authoritarian government, and colonial

policies of ethnic divisionism caused the 1994 genocide. The official narrative is that “Rwanda cannot

recover from the effects of the genocide until national unity is restored” (interview with senior RPF

official 2006). Ethnic unity is a “traditional value which must be reasserted, reinforced and taught to

all Rwandans” and is considered to be “the basis of future peace and security” (Office of the President

1999, 16).

The policy further posits that a democratic political culture and respect for the human rights of all

Rwandans are also necessary as they provide the foundation from which “those accused of genocide

can take responsibility for their actions” and which “those who survived can participate in judging

them [during gacaca court proceedings]” (interview with Ministry of Justice [MINIJUST] official

2006). The policy also encourages Rwandans to hold their local officials to account for decisions that

are not in the best interests of the community and to resist reckless leaders who might manipulate

them to behave “wickedly,” that is, to engage in corruption (interviews 2006; NURC 2007b; Office of

the President 1999a, 63–64). The need for local officials to be accountable for how they serve the

communities to which they have been assigned by the central government has since been codified in

the form of imihigo (performance) contracts that appointed officials sign directly with President

Kagame and in which they vow “to execute their tasks with bravery and zeal” (Ingelaere 2011, 71).2

For local officials and ordinary Rwandans alike, stepping outside the prescribed roles of national

unity and reconciliation brings a reaction from the government and its agents that is quick and

relentless: imprisonment without charge, disappearance, intimidation, even death (Amnesty

International 2010; Cooke 2011; Frontline 2005; Himbara 2012; HRW 2008, 2010, 2011; LGDL 2004;

Maina and Kibalama 2006; MSF 2006c; Reyntjens 2011). The cost at the community level among

ordinary folks is just as steep but is of a different scale: gossip, character assassination, denunciation,

shunning, and outcasting serve to isolate, ostracize, and demonize individuals on the basis of where

they were during the genocide and whether they experienced, witnessed, resisted, or acted the

bystander to the violence. Denunciation is by far the most serious of these techniques, as it usually

results in a prison sentence at best or in disappearance or death at worst. Both sets of actors—local

officials and ordinary people alike—are constrained by overbearing administrative structures and

information networks, resulting in the ubiquitous presence of the state and its agents in daily life

through “surveillance and indirect control, the display and use of informants, formal and informal

police, the dominance and strength of the military” (Purdeková 2012a, 205).

This near constant surveillance, by local authorities and neighbors alike, means that the essentialist

categories of survivors (read Tutsi) and perpetrators (read Hutu) are made real by the policy of

experienced before, during, and after the 1994 genocide (as discussed in chapter 3). For example, the

policy officially substitutes “perpetrator” for “Hutu” and is thus able to exclude from public life those

Hutu who do not toe the line on the basis that they are all perpetrators (génocidaires).3 The policy of

national unity and reconciliation appears to be inclusive and conciliatory when in fact Hutu can

participate only as perpetrators. The policy also successfully denies the presence of “Hutu moderates”

in postgenocide Rwanda; its logic is that if the “moderates” are dead or have fled, then those Hutu

who remain in country must by definition be “extremists.” The official position is that reconciliation

between these two groups is ongoing and successful—Rwanda is both peaceful and safe. Survivors can

speak of their experiences in sanctioned settings, such as during the April mourning period or at

gacaca trials. Perpetrators can hang their head in shame and ask for forgiveness once they have told

the truth about what they did. It is these two narrow and essentialist categories of “survivor” and

“perpetrator” that are the protagonist of national unity and reconciliation, to the exclusion of other

actors and experiences of violence.

For the ordinary Rwandans who participated in my research, the penalties of falling afoul of the

accepted but unscripted boundaries of the policy of national unity and reconciliation are too high to be

openly risked. The most marginal seek to avoid contact with the government and its agents, while the

government works to make sure everyone participates according to the official narrative. For example,

Judith, a destitute Hutu woman, was put in cachot (detention) by the appointed local government

official in her community because she failed to attend gacaca in mid-May 2006. She says:

already told my truth [last week], and it was rejected by the judges. They said in

front of everyone that my evidence was no good; some laughed. Some [Tutsi]

survivors have said I should be kicked out of [the women’s cooperative to which

she belongs] because I am not respecting the rules of reconciliation. What is the

point of going if I am going to be ridiculed, to be told my truth is not good

enough? They tell us to tell our truth, they then say it’s no good; this is how this

government operates? Of course I know I have to attend, but I have mouths to

feed. I need to plant my fields. There is no one to help me with this; so I decided

to miss gacaca.

I even left home very early in the morning, thinking that they [the judges]

would not miss my presence. When [the local official] noticed I wasn’t there, he

sent a military to come and get me. Now I am more than humiliated; I now have

problems with my neighbors and survivors. And my kids, too. I had to leave

them alone for five nights while I rotted in prison. No one fed me or even my

kids during those days . . . this is reconciliation? I am more fearful than ever

since I spent those nights in cachot. What is next? I don’t know, but I do know it

is best to avoid contact with government officials who push me to reconcile in

ways that I don’t understand. (Interview 2006)


This excerpt also shows that ordinary Rwandans need to understand their role as determined by the

policy of national unity and reconciliation so that individuals can offer the requisite performance in its

name. In order to guarantee that national unity and reconciliation are carried out as envisaged in the

official narrative, the RPF has instituted a variety of mechanisms to ensure that Rwandans, elites and

chapters: (1) the exploitation of the perceived ethnic unity of precolonial Rwanda (chapter 2); (2)

government control of public information, including the RPF’s reinterpretation of its role in stopping