Anbookstore com Copyright 2013

harder for the government official to exercise his authority because she is not home to receive the

order to attend the gacaca trial. In other words, “everyday resistance emphasizes a constant strategic

alertness on the part of those involved that places a lot of weight on agency and calculation”

(Sivaramakrishnan 2005, 350–51).

The second additional quality is benefit to the resister. On occasion, a long-term benefit will be the

result, as was the case with Jolie, who received medical coverage for herself and her family. More

common is short-term benefit. In my example of the woman who gets up early to tend her fields, she

will be successful in avoiding gacaca only every so often, because the local official will inevitably

find ways to force her to participate in future sessions. At least with regard to those gacaca sessions in

which she successfully avoids forced participation, she has practiced everyday resistance. The local

authorities might not even notice her absence, particularly if she is expected not to testify but merely

to attend. If too many individuals practice everyday resistance in the same way, the local official will

likely notice that many ordinary Rwandans are not participating as expected. Having raised the

attention of the local official, the act is no longer one of everyday resistance but instead becomes one

of confrontational resistance where individuals collude—knowingly or not—to avoid participation in

gacaca sessions. If too many people undertake acts that also allow them to avoid gacaca sessions,

harm can befall the resisters, thereby invalidating the strategy of everyday resistance.

The five qualities of everyday resistance operate on a continuum. Specific acts of everyday

resistance include one or more of these qualities. There is no “pure” form of everyday resistance.

Instead, such acts are “largely implicit” (Comaroff 1985, 261). Given the forces arrayed against

ordinary Rwandans in the promotion of national unity and reconciliation, simply holding the line is

interpreted as an act of everyday resistance. If the individual does no more than maintain his or her

resources—land holdings or access to school fees, for example—in the face of attempts by local

authorities to take them away for any reason, then the individual is practicing everyday resistance.

Where survival depends on acquiescence or quiescence, the individual may do just one or the other or

both, depending on the context and circumstances on that particular day and contingent on the stated

goal (Gaventa 1980, 20–25). For example, everyday resistance can include ignoring the demands of a

local government official in nonobvious ways or refusing to be bullied by a member of the security

forces. Acts of everyday resistance allow for examination of the actions of individual Rwandans that

may appear innocuous or meaningless to show that their actions are strategic and purposeful rather

than an indication of their presumed obedience to government directives or their willingness to

“forgive and forget” or “tell their truth” in the name of national unity and reconciliation.

An analytical focus on the everyday acts of resistance of ordinary Rwandans runs the risk of

exaggerating their ability to make choices and act on them. It also runs the risk of overemphasizing

individuals’ ability to counter or mitigate sociopolitical structures of domination such as the policy of

national unity and reconciliation. Within the anthropological literature, analysts tend to romanticize

resistance “to read all forms of resistance as signs of ineffectiveness of systems of power and of the

resilience and creativity of the human spirit” (Abu-Lughod 1990, 42). To avoid this trap, I emphasize

individual agency to understand the power relations in which individuals are enmeshed and the

resultant social and political inequalities and hierarchies. Agency is not exclusively tied to one

individual actor but is instead bound up with the power hierarchies that structural forms of inequality

ultimately produce (Emirbayer and Mische 1998). In delinking agency from structure, we learn how

individual actors are able to evaluate critically the conditions of their lives to illustrate how

individuals are not only enmeshed but also positioned differently in relation to a particular system of





power. This chapter and chapter 6 demonstrate how ordinary Rwandans practice everyday acts of

resistance to minimize the effects of the policy of national unity and reconciliation in their daily lives.

The emphasis is not on acts of everyday resistance per se but rather what the chosen forms of

resistance say about the policy as a system of state power.

the policy of national unity and reconciliation, it is first necessary to situate the broader

socioeconomic context in which they live their lives. For foreign visitors who base their stay in

Rwanda’s capital city, Kigali, and take day trips along the paved main roads to visit the national

museum in the south, to see the mountain gorillas in the north, to visit Lake Kivu in the west, and to

safari to Akagera National Park in the east, the deep poverty and daily hardships that confront

ordinary Rwandans are difficult to imagine. The Office Rwandaise du tourisme et des parcs nationaux

(ORTPN), Rwanda’s national tourist agency, encourages international visitors to “experience”

Rwanda by day tripping from Kigali (ORTPN 2004, 5). Kigali boasts a modern airport, several

international hotels, a modern information and communications technology (ICT) infrastructure that

includes numerous wireless hot spots, and countless new residential and commercial properties.

Numerous cafés and nightclubs have opened to cater to Kigali’s growing middle class of bureaucrats

and businesspeople, as well as expatriates. Kigali also has a “low crime rate, clean streets and civic

order” that “outsiders appreciate” (Kinzer 2008, 239).

Behind this pristine image is the daily reality of crushing poverty that shapes the everyday lives of

most Rwandans. For example, the government decreed in July 2006 that only covered shoes must be

worn in Kigali and other town centers such as Butare (Huye), Gikongoro (Nyamagabe), and Gitarama

(Muhanga). Many ordinary Rwandans, most of whom wear rubber flip-flops because of their low cost,

are now unable to enter town to sell their wares at market. The regulation states that covered footwear

is necessary “for cleanliness as well as food safety” (interview with MINALOC official 2006). A

MINALOC official told me in September 2006 that Kigali “only had 12 percent of its citizens suffer

urban poverty” and bragged “that is the lowest urban poverty rate in Africa!” When I suggested that

the low rate of urban poverty was probably the result of the government razing residents’ properties in

the interests of “cleanliness” and “forcing” people back into the countryside, the official agreed that

was possible but urged me to think about how clean and safe Kigali is: “Without those poor running

around threatening our resources, we can think of ways to develop Kigali even further!” (field notes

2006). The International Monetary Fund (IMF) reports an urban poverty rate of 20 percent. Southern

province, where most of my participants live, has the highest rate of poverty in the country, with 65–

6 7 percent of the population living below the poverty line (IMF 2008, 162; National Institute of

Statistics 2012, 11).

2006)

central Kigali, May 2006. By 2010 the government had razed informal urban neighborhoods across the

country to make way for “modern” housing in the name of modernization and economic development.

(photo by author)

27). In 2006 the official poverty line was a daily income per adult of 175 Rwandan francs (Frw) (or

(MINICOFIN 2001, 9). Among the ordinary Rwandans who participated in my research, the average

income per household was 50 Frw (US$0.09) per day or 20,000 Frw per year (US$40). Justino and

Verwimp (2008, 15) found that households whose home was destroyed during the genocide or that lost

land after the genocide through squatting or forced migration into villages (imidugudu) lived in

greater poverty than their also poor relatives and neighbors. Southern Rwanda, where most of the

Rwandans who participated in my research live, remains among Rwanda’s poorest provinces, despite

positive economic growth since the end of the genocide, because of the high levels of Tutsi loss of life

during the genocide combined with low levels of resettlement of returnees in this region of the

country.

though the lowest available denomination is 100 Frw (US$0.21). With rare exception, the ordinary

Rwandans I met were thin, barefoot, and dressed in ragged clothes, which in many cases was the

extent of their full wardrobe. Few owned shoes, making trips to market an additional burden as they

had to rely on family and neighbors to be able to afford a single pair of shoes. Several women I knew

shared a pair of covered shoes, carrying them in a bag just in case they were stopped by a police

officer to show that they owned covered shoes (field notes 2006). Their hands and faces were

weathered and gave the women the appearance of an age older than their biological years. People’s

eyes were lackluster from continued hunger; some had orange hair, a telltale sign of malnutrition. In

2003 the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) estimated that the per capita consumption of

calories in Rwanda was 2,070 kilocalories (kcal), of which a mere 54 calories were protein (FAO

2004, 2). This average daily caloric intake may seem acceptable by American standards, where the

average daily caloric requirement for a sedentary or lightly active adult is between 1,290 kcal per day

(women) and 1,975 kcal per day (men), of which at least 40 percent are protein based. For peasant

Rwandans, who earn their livelihood through manual labor, both the basic caloric and the protein

intake are too low to allow them to sustain normal levels of activity, and the quality of the food fails

to meet basic nutritional guidelines (FAO 2001, 35–52). I regularly saw evidence of starvation.

Several of my research participants as well as their children exhibited symptoms of kwashiorkor and

marasmus (forms of malnutrition caused by lack of protein in the diet). Several of the women who

participated in my research told me that they sometimes eat dirt or swallow pebbles to ward off

hunger pangs; two women had lost children to starvation since the genocide. Men told me that they

drank banana beer “to fill the void of days without food” (field notes 2006). Their wives scoffed at the

idea that drinking beer is a suitable solution to deal with chronic hunger. One woman told me, “When

we have nothing I mix haricots [green beans] with dirt to make a mixture that would keep us until the

next meal. If my husband would stop drinking beer, we might have a little left over to buy some rice

or bread” (interview with Olive, a destitute Hutu woman, 2006).

Women suffer the additional indignity of struggling with the men in their lives for resources and

personal power at the household level. More than one-third of Rwandan women reported having

experienced spousal violence—physical, emotional, or sexual (UNDP Rwanda 2007, 33). The legacy

of the genocide means that women head more than a third of Rwandan households, 56 percent of

which are widows of the genocide (UNDP Rwanda 2007, 33). There is no way to know whether these

figures include women other than Tutsi survivors of the genocide, as the government of Rwanda does

not allow the disaggregation of statistical data on the basis of ethnic identity. Presumably, the figure

of 56 percent is composed of Tutsi widows of the genocide, as they are the only accepted category of

“survivors.” Of the sixteen women that participated in my research, all but two considered themselves





widows of the genocide (even those that had remarried). One woman said, “Oh yes, I remarried for

survival. I need a husband to help with everything, especially to help with the fields. I loved my real

husband but this one? Really, it was a matter of survival” (interview with Marie Claire, a destitute

Hutu widow, 2006).

Female-headed households have a “higher and deeper incidence of poverty” than other households

(UNDP Rwanda 2007, 3). The average life expectancy for Rwandans is 45.2 years; half of the children

born in Rwanda since the genocide will not live past their fortieth birthday (UNDP 2008). For all of

the thirty-seven ordinary Rwandans who participated in my research, the lack of food, clean water, and