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speech about the causes and consequences of the 1994 genocide in ways that reify and reinforce the

hero status of the RPF in stopping it. Rwandans—elites and ordinary folk alike—can speak only of

being “Rwandan” in state-sanctioned settings—for example, in ingando reeducation camps, at gacaca

justice trials, and during genocide mourning week. And yet this reality is starkly contradicted by the

fact that the roles played in state-sanctioned spaces and events are determined by ethnic status. There

has been no official recognition of different lived experiences of the 1994 genocide beyond the

assertion that only ethnic Tutsi were victims of violence during the genocide and only ethnic Hutu

killed. The RPF also does not allow for public discussion of violence that individual Rwandans

experienced before and after the genocide, particularly the violence they experienced at the hands of

RPF soldiers.

Instead, the postgenocide government uses the apparatus of the state to ensure that ordinary

Rwandans respect the rules of which individuals can speak about their experiences of the genocide and

how they do so through its policy of national unity and reconciliation. From the perspective of many

ordinary Rwandans, the official version of how the genocide happened does not recognize the

continuum of everyday violence that Rwandans of all ethnicities experienced, albeit to varying

degrees of intensity, before, during, and after the genocide. The research finds that the policy of

national unity and reconciliation is a mechanism of state power that reinforces the power of the RPF

rather than alleviating Rwandans’ deep-rooted feelings of fear, anger, and despair as they struggle to

rebuild their lives and reconcile with friends, neighbors, and, in some cases, family.

Third, in the name of national unity and reconciliation, the RPF continues to tighten its control over

the sociopolitical landscape. Since taking power after effectively stopping the genocide in July 1994,

the RPF has aggressively sought to consolidate its grip on state power. The RPF uses its version of

how the genocide happened to exclude its political opponents, Hutu, Tutsi, and Twa alike, from

education, higher-status jobs, and positions of responsibility in the bureaucracy of the state. All

Rwandans, elites and ordinary folk alike, are careful about how and whether they speak about life

since the genocide. The RPF considers unscripted comments to be suspect and interprets them as signs

of disobedience. In this way, the power of the policy of national unity and reconciliation lies in its

ability not only to orchestrate obedience but also to shape discussion about everyday life before,

during, and after the genocide. For example, the policy of national unity and reconciliation has labeled

adult male Hutu génocidaires (perpetrators) who are guilty of acts of genocide or who must be closely

watched for evidence that they harbor genocidal ideologies. In identifying all adult male Hutu as

potential génocidaires, the policy positions them as potential enemies of the state, which in turn leads

to the dissemination of credible threats of punishment—such as loss of socioeconomic status,

harassment, imprisonment, disappearance, or perhaps even death. In this way, all adult male Hutu

become subjects of suspicion and second-class citizens seen as probable perpetrators.





Fourth, most ordinary folks resident in the south recognize that the policy of national unity and

reconciliation goes against their interests as peasants who occupy the lowest positions in the

socioeconomic hierarchy. They therefore seek to resist—subtly and indirectly—its many demands.

For many ordinary peasants, the policy represents a double bind in that they consider the various

mechanisms of the policy itself unjust and illegitimate as its aims do not accord with the exigencies of

everyday rural life. For example, appointed and volunteer local officials at the sector and cell levels

force them to enact reconciliation in state-sponsored spaces, such as at the gacaca courts or during

national mourning week activities. Individuals who do not conform to the demands of the policy of

national unity and reconciliation can be harassed, intimidated, imprisoned, disappeared, or even

killed. Any action (or inaction) that leads some ordinary Rwandans, notably those known as abasazi

(“foolish”), to step outside their scripted role is perceived as an attack on the policy of national unity

and reconciliation and indeed as criticism of the government. Many ordinary peasants understand that

the policy is designed to create the appearance of peace and security in ways that reinforce the

authority of local officials, notably RPF-appointed ones. Most of the thirty-seven peasants with whom

I spoke while conducting life history interviews and many of the more than four hundred ordinary

Rwandans I met through participant observation consider the directives of the policy to be a burden in

their daily efforts to rebuild their lives and livelihoods in dignified and meaningful ways.

Fifth, many ordinary Rwandans see the ways in which the local authorities implement the policy as

an affront to their everyday life since the genocide. This marks a dramatic departure from the

interactions of ordinary people with the local officials who mediated their relations with the central

government authorities before the genocide. The Habyarimana regime (1973–94) enjoyed

considerable support among ordinary peasant Rwandans—Hutu and Tutsi alike—who felt that its

development policies served their interests, which in turn gave the regime greater legitimacy at the

grass roots than the policy of national unity and reconciliation currently enjoys. This is not to suggest

that there was no rural discontent under Habyarimana (cf. C. Newbury 1992). It is only to highlight

that the policy of national unity and reconciliation is a different form of state power because of the

role of appointed local officials in implementing its many demands. The implementation process of

the various aspects of the policy and the strategic ways in which peasant Rwandans seek to resist its

demands demonstrate more than its unpopularity and illegitimacy among rural people. They also

highlight many ordinary Rwandans’ resentment of the RPF regime’s lack of concern with protecting

rural livelihoods. Thus, for many ordinary Rwandans, the policy of national unity and reconciliation is

the product of an illegitimate regime, an opinion that contrasts considerably with elite claims that

Rwanda is a “nation rehabilitated” and one that has “put the legacy of the genocide behind it” (ORTPN

2004, 4).

Sixth, many ordinary Rwandans attribute the illegitimacy of the policy of national unity and

reconciliation to the mediating role that appointed local officials play in its implementation. Before

the genocide, everyday interactions with local officials were not necessarily positive. In many ways

the relationship between ordinary Rwandans at the lower levels of the socioeconomic hierarchy and

their local officials was as coercive as it has been since the genocide. What is different is that the

appointed local officials’ unpopularity among ordinary Rwandans before the genocide was mitigated

by the latter’s overall positive opinion of the Habyarimana regime and its development policies; the

local representatives of the state were unpopular, but the center was generally quite popular among

Hutu and Tutsi alike. This may appear counterintuitive, given the authoritarian tendencies of the

regime and the eventual descent to genocide. Ironically, the Habyarimana regime’s popular legitimacy

among the grass roots actually helped make the genocide possible. Ordinary Hutu killed their Tutsi





friends, neighbors, and family members because the order to kill came from local government

officials whose authority was backed by the coercive power of the state that was rooted in

Habyarimana’s credibility in the countryside.

Under the policy of national unity and reconciliation, appointed and volunteer local officials are the

intermediaries responsible for implementing the policies of a largely unpopular and coercive central

authority, the RPF. The ordinary Rwandans resident in southern Rwanda whom I consulted do not

view the RPF regime as a possible source of remedy for their grievances against the excesses of

elected local officials and appointed technocrats, who are responsible to Kigali for effectively and

efficiently implementing government policy through imihigo (performance) contracts and other

imposed top-down measures. This finding also challenges the RPF’s assertions, seconded by casual

foreign observers such as Crisafulli and Redmond (2012) and Kinzer (2008), that its postgenocide

policies enjoy broad-based grassroots support. That the policy of national unity and reconciliation

provides few benefits to most poor peasant Rwandans explains both the unpopularity of appointed

local officials and the illegitimacy of the policy of national unity and reconciliation among rural

people. The superficial appearance of grassroots support also shapes the widely held perception

among Western observers and Rwandan elites alike that ordinary peasant Rwandans believe in and

therefore voluntarily comply with the demands of the policy. A focus on the everyday acts of

resistance of ordinary Rwandans challenges the idea they are obedient and illustrates how they hardly

believe in the dictates of the policy of national unity and reconciliation. Quite the opposite—their

obedience is tactical. Where the policy forces ordinary Rwandans to live within its official truths, they

confront it in ways that seek to restore their personal dignity while subtly attempting to live their own

truth of what they experienced before, during, and after the genocide.

Taken together, these findings illuminate the system of state power that structures ordinary peasant

Rwandans’ everyday lives since the genocide. The analysis demonstrates how Rwanda’s rigid

sociopolitical hierarchy limits individual opportunities to reconcile according to their position in the

social structure and how the policy of national unity further limits their ability and willingness to

reconcile with neighbors and friends. Many ordinary peasants perceive the demands of the policy as

detrimental to their interests, and this shapes their decision to resist in an attempt to make their lives

more sustainable and to restore their sense of dignity. For the ordinary Rwandans I consulted, the

policy of national unity and reconciliation forms the panorama of their everyday life, meaning that it

constantly and consistently reminds them what they must do. The ordinary Rwandans who participated

in the research understand that their appointed local authorities, most of whom have no sense of the

impact of the legacy of the genocide on their everyday lives, do the bidding of the RPF regime in the

name of national unity and reconciliation.

The remainder of this chapter first summarizes what the everyday acts of resistance of ordinary

Rwandans to the policy of national unity and reconciliation say about systems of state power. It then

underlines the methodological importance of bringing in the individual lived experiences of ordinary

peasant people. Finally, it proposes a few areas for further research that are relevant for the study of

politics in Rwanda and elsewhere in Africa.


Understanding and Explaining Systems of Power through Acts of Everyday

Resistance

Questions about why and when individuals comply have been central to the study of politics since

Max Weber first posed the question (Weber 1946, 78–79). The answer is generally drawn from

Weber’s ideal types of political authority (traditional, charismatic, and legal-rational). People obey

for one of three reasons: (1) because they believe in the values, norms, and standards by which a

particular regime operates; (2) because they believe it is in their material interest to do so; or (3)

because they fear the coercive threats and sanctions they will face for noncompliance. Though these

can be valid explanations for why individuals comply, they do not capture the complete picture. Such

approaches to compliance rarely consider the ways that individuals subjected to dominant power resist

its demands. When they do, it is to understand and explain moments of significant upheaval like

rebellions and revolutions, such as the 1994 genocide and the 1959 social revolution in Rwanda.

However, moments of upheaval do not contrast as strongly with “normal” times as many social

scientists have assumed. Explanations about when and why individuals comply during periods of so-

called normalcy fail to provide adequate explanations for why individuals sometimes do not comply

when the situation appears “normal,” as it currently does in Rwanda under the policy of national unity

and reconciliation. In states characterized by authoritarian forms of domination, “normal” times can

involve the intensification of older forms of oppression and the creation of new forms, which can in

turn create the conditions for a return to political upheaval. It is therefore important that social

scientists identify and consider the everyday practices of resistance of individuals subject to coercive

forms of power, such as the practices of direct and indirect control found in the policy of national

unity and reconciliation.

Neither domination nor resistance is autonomous. The two are entangled, so it becomes difficult to

analyze one without discussing the effects of the other at the level of the individual (Scott 1985;

Young 2004). An analysis of everyday periods of “normalcy” through an examination of the everyday

acts of resistance of individuals subject to dominant forms of power identifies sites of struggle and

other points of weakness in the power of the state by pointing to areas where the demands of the state

system conflict with the aims of everyday life. This is the primary contribution of this book; it

provides a bottom-up analysis of state power from the perspective of those subject to the state’s many

demands. In this way, the research adds to the resistance literature in focusing on individual acts of

everyday resistance as a means of understanding how the various practices of the state are manifested

in people’s everyday lives. This is important since the way in which politics affects and is “felt” in the

daily lives of people is almost completely absent in the academic literature. When it is discussed, it is

presented through the eyes of local elites. Such an approach also illustrates the analytical utility of the

concept of everyday resistance to further our understanding of the system of power in which

individuals are enmeshed and of the resultant social and political tensions and inequalities.

The everyday acts of resistance of ordinary peasants to the coercive mechanisms of the policy of

national unity signal more than their individual agency and the strategic nature of their compliance.

The book develops the concept of everyday resistance to point analysts toward the multiple and

overlapping structures of power that ordinary people confront in their daily lives. Tracing the subtle

and indirect resistance of ordinary Rwandans resident in the south from a variety of subject positions

to the demands of the policy of national unity and reconciliation provides more than a bottom-up

approach to disentangling the various practices of domination and the myriad forms of subjugation in

postgenocide Rwanda. It also facilitates analysis of the ways in which particular forms of subjugation

produce the appearance of individual compliance. A careful look at what may appear to be trivial

matters—remaining silent, laughing at the wrong moment, or playing dumb—can provide important

insights into the dynamics of power in contexts of coercive state authority.





A focus on the everyday acts of resistance of some ordinary Rwandans illustrates how the

postgenocide state tries to depoliticize peasant people by orchestrating public performances but, most

important, closes off the possibility for individuals to join together to organize politically. Because

ordinary Rwandans have no opportunity to express themselves politically in public, their responses to

the demands of the policy of national unity and reconciliation show how they tactically conceal or

reveal their political opinions. When they express no opinion and therefore appear compliant, many

casual observers conclude that ordinary people believe in and support the regime. Their everyday acts

of resistance illustrate the opposite. Individuals simulate greater loyalty than they actually feel as a

means of coping. A closer analysis of their presumed compliance shows that the proscriptions and

limitations of everyday life may serve to intensify and enhance their ability and willingness to engage

politically. Thus, even where compliance is coercive and the opportunities for dissent are minimal,

peasants continue to express their politics through their acts of resistance. Identification of the

individual acts of everyday resistance of the most marginal members of a highly stratified society

such as postgenocide Rwanda points analysts toward areas where political life can quickly descend

from the appearance of compliance to open protest and perhaps to revolution or even genocide.

Indeed, the power of any regime, including the RPF, is always partial. Studying postgenocide

Rwanda from the perspective of those subject to its power reveals the paradoxical effects of the

mechanisms of social control found in the policy of national unity and reconciliation. On one hand,

the policy invites the political engagement of Rwandans, elite and ordinary folk alike, that it seeks to

control in forcing them to participate in state-sanctioned activities of national unity and

reconciliation. On the other hand, the methods of resistance available to most ordinary Rwandans,

especially if they are subtle and indirect, are by themselves incapable of significantly altering the

postgenocide sociopolitical order. Nonetheless, these acts of resistance are important because they

point to the hidden spheres of dissatisfaction of individuals who have no opportunity to publically

express their politics. Their practices of resistance are indicators of more than individual

dissatisfaction with a particular regime. They also provide the foundation for creating alternative

spaces for political actions and ideas. It is difficult to predict if and when these individual acts will

cascade into a collective movement that may lead to peaceful contestation of power or culminate in

riot or rebellion. But they clearly demonstrate the potential for such upheavals.

The everyday acts of resistance of ordinary people could be called prepolitical, since they are not

overtly directed at the state system. Still, these acts made in the face of a strong state power are more

than elementary signs of individuals seeking to live their daily lives as best they can; they are

indicators of emergent confrontation with the state system in which those who are most marginal in

society express their dissatisfaction with the state and its agents.

This book has focused on southern Rwanda, but the approach used here is also relevant for the study

of politics in other regions of the country, as well as in other parts of Africa and in other societies

where domination is commonplace. The everyday acts of resistance show how individuals who are

subject to oppressive forms of state power, even the most marginal, work to resist the efforts of the

state to make them comply with its demands. In this way, everyday acts of resistance act as indicators

of discontent and enable analysts to recognize and examine the importance of pre-political actions as

indicative of the locations where collective action for political change may emerge. For, as Norton

(2004, 41) notes, because political change often comes from those who are most marginal and on the

periphery of state power, it is important to “recognize the power of liminal, or marginal, groups. . . .

Because they stand on the boundaries of identity they are often central to debates over those

boundaries.”

Researching Resistance

From the outset, my research has sought to understand the individual experiences of a cross section of

ordinary Rwandans resident in the south before, during, and after the genocide. Also shaping my

analysis is my own direct experiences of the power of the state in stopping my research and placing

me in a “reeducation” camp. This firsthand experience of the tactics used by the postgenocide state to

induce compliance informs this research. Some readers may contend that I lack the critical distance

necessary for the analysis of the complex interactions between some ordinary peasant Rwandans and

the demands of the policy of national unity and reconciliation and that my analysis is unduly biased

against the current regime. In order to maintain the integrity of the research, I have combined my

analysis of the oral data gained through fieldwork and the insights of participation observation on the

daily rhythms of life in postgenocide Rwanda with careful historical and empirical analysis to

understand and explain the ways that ordinary Rwandans have attempted to shape their lives since the

genocide. Throughout the research process, my purpose remained to bring ordinary people into the

frame of analysis in order to provide a nuanced view of contemporary Rwanda that moves academic

and policy discussions beyond the congratulatory writings of some observers about the hero status of

the RPF as the saviors and moral guardians of the “new” Rwanda (e.g., Gourevitch 1998; Kinzer

2008).

My findings challenge the commonly held beliefs, assertions, and assumptions about rural life

during and after the 1994 genocide and more specifically about ordinary peasant people as supposedly

powerless and passive—apolitical actors who willingly obey the directives of their political leaders.

Ethnographic vignettes and excerpts from the life history interviews that I conducted with those

Rwandans who participated in my research add much-needed texture to our understanding of the

policy of national unity and reconciliation from the ground up, rather than privileging a state-centered

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