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national unity and reconciliation is “for Tutsi. They are the survivors, and they get help from this

new government. This is how politics works in Rwanda. Now that Tutsi are in power, they help

Tutsi.”

local government offices. He has little faith in the government’s policy of national unity, saying it

is something for “elites while poor people starve.”

Ephrem (b. 1974) is a Hutu man who was released from prison in 2001 for lack of evidence. He did

not participate in the ingando reeducation camps, although he wanted to receive “the training so I

would know how to participate in these activities for national unity and reconciliation.” He feels

isolated in his community since he was released from prison. “My wife left me and married a Tutsi

because she thought I would never get out of prison. That Tutsi took my wife and my land. What

can I do now but keep quiet until the government changes back to a Hutu one?”

Espérance (b. 1969) is a Tutsi widow who survived by “running every time we heard the killers were

coming.” She eventually ended up in the Kibeho camp and witnessed the RPF attacks on civilians

there. “Many died, but the army of the other side [the RPF] sent their men into the camps to tell us

to keep quiet. I told them I was a Tutsi, and they took me to a hospital just outside Butare. There I

worked as a nurse’s assistant until 1998.” She is sole survivor in her immediate family and tries to

avoid “getting forced to go to activities that the government says are for unity and reconciliation.”

She says, “Reconciliation is for people who can afford to eat.”

Esther (b. 1966) is a Tutsi widow who survived by “[sexually] servicing the killers.” As a result, she

is “deeply traumatized” and has been outcast by her immediate family, who do not want the shame

of having “a damaged woman” in their midst. She hopes the message of national unity and

reconciliation “takes root” in the hearts of Rwandans so that “storms like the genocide” never

happen again.

Florence (b. 1960) is a Hutu widow who successfully hid Tutsi friends and neighbors during the

genocide. “I fought them [the killing squads] and was able to save at least ten people!” She was

raped “many times” but “could not give up because I knew they would die if I told them where

those [Tutsi] were hiding.” She does not believe that the policy of national unity and reconciliation

is “doing anything good for Rwanda because some of us are not even considered human because of

what happened during the events. If only we could get recognition [from the government] as victims

of genocide, perhaps things would get better.”

Janvier (b. 1975) is a Tutsi man who survived the genocide because he had a severe case of malaria

when the killers came to his community. “I was slumped on the floor with high fever and fits, so

they left me as dead. I saw them kill the rest of my family; when I woke up, I found everyone cut

up.” He works the fields of more prosperous landowners for his daily needs. He thinks it is only a

matter of time before Rwandans “start again with the violence” since “it is just part of our culture.”

He thinks the policy of national unity and reconciliation is a good idea but that it “probably won’t

work because who can trust anyone nowadays?”

Joseph M . (b. 1945) is a Tutsi man who survived the genocide by cheering on the killing and

“appearing to support their cause. Because you can’t know who is Tutsi or Hutu, it was easy for me

to join.” He doesn’t think the creation of a national identity of “being Rwandan” will end violence

like the genocide. “Really, issues like national identity and reconciliation are for government

officials to fight over, not us peasants who just want to eat every day and send our kids to school.”

Prosper (b. 1950) is a Twa widower and is the grandson of Séraphine (discussed earlier). He was born





into a prominent Tutsi family, and his father was a hill chief under the Belgian administration.

“When violence came in 1959, I was a young boy. My parents and everyone around me died.

Maman took us [Prosper and his younger brother] as her own children; she raised us really. I

became a Twa over time because she raised us that way. I look like a Tutsi, but my heart is Twa.”

He is skeptical about the prospects for national unity and reconciliation since the policy “works for

[only] some of us. If you are Tutsi survivor, you can benefit. As a Twa, nothing has come out of it

for my people and me. We are not even allowed to say we are Twa!”

Vianney (b. 1981) is a Tutsi man who hid in the marshes during the genocide. He has never married

and has no kids. “Since the genocide, I am basically alone. My parents died, and I don’t know where

my brothers and sister are. I suppose they are dead, but they could be alive. No one has offered the

truth about how they died.” On the policy of national unity and reconciliation, he says, “If only they

[those accused of genocide] would tell their truth, then we survivors could know peace and security.

I won’t rest until the truth has been shared. I just hope this government can bring peace.”


Salaried Poor (Abakene bifashije) Rwandans


Didier (b. 1959) is a Tutsi man who survived the genocide by hiding in the chicken coop of a Hutu

friend who also killed most of his family. He does not have any of his own land because the new

government took over his family home “after the war.” Because he works as a cook in a restaurant

and earns FRw 18,000 (US$39) a month, he is not eligible for subsidies for school fees or medical

care despite his volunteer position as a gacaca judge. Of the policy of national unity and

reconciliation, he says there are “too many problems in this country; they talk about unity and

reconciliation, but I don’t see it in the hills.”

Thomas (b. 1962) is a Hutu man. At the time of the genocide, he was married to a Tutsi woman with

four children. His wife and three of his children died. He remarried in 2005, again to a woman who

identifies as a Tutsi. He did not flee to the refugee camps in Zaïre. Instead, he stayed behind in the

Opération Turquoise zone and later spent time in the Kibeho camp. He presently works as a taxi-

moto driver, and has an average monthly income of FRw 7,000 (US$15). He thinks national unity

and reconciliation are possible if “the government stops telling us to tell our truth. We [Hutu and

Tutsi] need time to heal.”

will never happen for me because I am an old woman and will die in this prison.”

Félicien (b. 1973) is an imprisoned Hutu man. He confessed to his crimes in 1998 and received a

fifteen-year sentence. “Yes, I killed. I killed because it was the law at the time. I lost most of my

relatives, which means life is extra hard here [in prison] because I have no one to come bring me

food or really tell me news about how things are under this new government.”

Jean-Bosco (b. 1944) is a Hutu man who worked as a medical doctor before and after the genocide. “I

took care of Tutsi and Hutu. It didn’t matter, we just worked on those that were injured and who

could be saved. I was put in prison in 2005. But, honestly, if I was guilty, wouldn’t I have run like

everyone else? No. I chose to work in the Butare hospital to help save lives. Prosecuting Hutu for

acts of genocide is a weapon of this government to keep itself in power.”

Jean-Claude (b. 1967) is Hutu man who was released from prison in 2004 after serving ten years in

prison for crimes of genocide. He returned to prison in 2005 when neighbors accused him before the

gacaca courts of killing the family of a Tutsi neighbor. He is now in prison on a thirty-year

sentence and feels that the policy of national unity and reconciliation is “a form of genocide against

Hutu.”

Valentina (b. 1954) is a Hutu woman who left Rwanda in May 1995 with her husband and their two

young children after the RPA attacked civilians at the Kibeho camp. She and her husband were both

arrested on charges of genocide in 1998 after they returned to Rwanda from the refugee camps in

Zaïre. “I do not know who is taking care of my children. I haven’t seen them or my husband [since

our return].” Her neighbors alleged at gacaca in 2006 that she killed nineteen people, which

resulted in her imprisonment; she admits to killing six Tutsi and two Hutu. She is serving a thirty-

year sentence and expects to “die here,” even though she confessed to her crimes shortly after her

arrest and expected to receive a reduced sentence.

GLOSSARY

French Words


cachot : Local detention center.

Conseil supérieur: High Council.

fonctionnaire: Public servant.

gendarmes: Police.

génocidaires: Individuals (almost exclusively ethnic Hutu) who fall into one of two broad categories:

(1) those convicted of acts of genocide through formal legal channels (gacaca, domestic and

international courts), meaning they are bona fide perpetrators of acts of genocide; (2) those who are

believed to have participated in acts of genocide (regardless of available evidence).

Pères Blancs: White Fathers.

tigistes: Individuals who perform work in the public interest.

travaux d’intérêt général: Works in the general interest.


Kinyarwanda Words


abacengezi : Infiltrators.

abahinza: Hutu kings.

abiru: Official ritualists, meaning custodian of royal tradition as well as its rituals and secrets.

akazu: Literally, little hut. Used to refer to the inner circle of political power under President

Habyarimana before the genocide and to President Kagame’s inner circle since 2001.

Bakiga: People from the Kiga region in precolonial northern Rwanda. During the Second Republic,

used to mean people of northeastern Rwanda (Gisenyi, Ruhengeri, and Byumba).

Banyamulenge: People of Rwandan origin from the Mulenge hills in southern Kivu (Congo) who

follow Rwandan customs and cultural codes.

Banyarwanda: People of Rwanda.

ceceka (from the verb guceceka): Shut up or be quiet.

gacaca : Traditionally, the spot where local-level dispute resolution takes place (literally, lawn or

grass); the postgenocide meaning is neotraditional community-based courts that are outside the

formal judicial system.

ibirongozi : Colonial-era local administrators.

ibyitso: Accomplices.

icyihebe (pl. ibyihebe): Fearless. Always used with a negative connotation. Since 2012, has meant

“terrorist.”

igipinga (pl. ibipinga): Literally, people with deep-rooted principles. Since 2011, the term has been

adopted by government cadres to name and shame whoever tries to oppose RPF ideology and

programs. Generally used to mean Hutu opponents.

imihigo: Performance-based contracts that render local officials accountable to the central

government.

Impuzamugambi: Literally, those with a common goal (youth wing of the CDR).

ingando: Reeducation camp.





Interahamwe: Title of the youth wing of the MRND, literally, those who attack together.

inyangamugayo: Title given to gacaca judges, literally, those who detest disgrace.

inyenzi: Cockroach (used to identify Tutsi infiltrators in 1960 and again in the 1990s).

inzu: House.

isambu: Large areas of land traditionally administered by hill chiefs to their subordinates. The chief

held ownership but allowed the land to be farmed in exchange for tribute and corvée labor.

mabati: Iron roof sheeting.

mwami: King.

nyumbakumi: Literally, ten houses. Refers to both groupings of ten households and the elected official

responsible for managing Rwanda’s smallest administrative unit.

panga: Machete.

shebuja: One’s patron.

ubuhake: Traditional system of vassalage. It designated the system in which cattle owners (usually

but not exclusively Tutsi) would give cattle to their clients (usually but not exclusively ethnic Hutu)

in usufruct in exchange for services.

ubukonde: Practice of acquiring land through sweat equity.

uburetwa: Manual labor in the service of Tutsi chiefs.

ubwoko: Ethnicity (or clan).

umudugudu (pl. imidugudu): Literally, village. Imidugudu are communal settlements imposed by the

RPF government as part of its program of villagization.

umuganda: Community work.

umugaragu: Servant.

umuhakwa: Client (meaning the one dependent on ubuhake).

umuheto: Clientship practice based in reciprocal alliances.

umukuru w’umuryango: Head of a lineage.

umuryango: Lineage.

umusazi (pl. abasazi): Foolish or fool.

NOTES

Preface and Acknowledgments


1. Decompression was UN-speak at the time to describe the physical and emotional support provided to staff members after a


stressful event.


2. The RPF is made up mainly of Tutsi refugees who had fled Rwanda during earlier waves of politically motivated violence led by


the Hutu elite and aimed at Tutsi between 1959 and 1973. The military wing of the RPF invaded Rwanda in 1990 with the purpose of


toppling Habyarimana’s authoritarian regime and gaining the right of return for Tutsi refugees.


3. The Arusha Accords are a series of accords signed by the then-government of Rwanda and the then-rebel Rwandan Patriotic


Front in Arusha, Tanzania, in August 1993 to bring an end to the Rwandan civil war that had started when the RPF invaded Rwanda


in October 1990 from neighboring Uganda.


4. International journalists coined the phrase “the ‘new’ Rwanda” in July 1994 to explain the monumental changes in Rwandan


society envisaged by the RPF-led government of national unity and reconciliation (see Pottier 2002). The RPF leadership then picked


up the phrase in some of its policy documents and the speeches of senior government officials, notably President Paul Kagame, to


justify its policy choices.


Introduction


1. Jeanne is not her real name. All names have been changed to ensure the anonymity of participants.


2. In Rwanda, individual integrity is marked through one’s ability to keep secrets. It is also a form of power, linked in particular to


the secret rituals and codes of kingship. See de Lame 2004b, 2005a, 14–16, 88–91, 93–94, 382–83; Pottier 1989, 472–74; and


Turner 2005, 43–47.


3. The LDF is a government-backed citizens’ militia introduced by the government in 1997 with the stated aim of protecting


civilians at the community level from insurgent incursions along Rwanda’s western border with the Democratic Republic of the


Congo. By the end of 1998, LDF commands charged with ensuring peace and security at the lowest administrative levels were in


place across Rwanda. In practice, they often harass, intimidate, rob, rape, detain, and torture citizens. In some of the communities


where I worked, the LDF has been called to account for its abuses and is disciplined, while in others it has had free rein, notably in


communities where government authorities are afraid of its members or have benefited from their actions.


4. The majority of appointed local government officials I met in the course of my research in 2006 were appointed to their


positions by virtue of their RPF membership. Corroborated by Ingelaere 2011, 72.


5. Some 45 percent of Rwandans, living in both urban and rural areas, live at or below the poverty line of 64,000 Rwandan francs


(FRw) (roughly US$100) per adult equivalent per year (National Institute of Statistics 2012, 14). In Rwanda’s Southern province,


where most of the Rwandans I interviewed reside, some 57 percent of the population are poor or destitute (ibid.).


6. In 2006, 87 percent of the population lived in rural areas, 65 percent of which live below the poverty line of FRw 175


(US$0.29) per day (IFAD 2011).


7. In 1994 Rwanda was organized into the following administrative hierarchy: 10 préfectures (now provinces), 106 communes


(now districts), 154 secteurs (sectors), and 9201 cellules (cells), with each cellule being further subdivided into groupings of ten


households called nyumbakumi. In 2001 Rwanda’s administration was reorganized into eleven provinces, plus the city of Kigali, 106


districts, 154 sectors, and 9,201 cells. In January 2006 the government again engaged in a sweeping administrative carve-up that


reduced the number of provinces (from 11 to 4) and districts (from 106 to 30) but increased the number of sectors (from 154 to 416).


The number of cells remained virtually unchanged (going from 9,201 to 9,165).


8. To reflect this finding, the terms “ethnic Tutsi,” “ethnic Hutu,” and “ethnic Twa” are used throughout the book to indicate that





these identities are imposed upon ordinary Rwandans by the state; they are not necessarily identities that the people themselves


embrace.


9. The next presidential election is scheduled for August 2017. According to Rwanda’s 2003 constitutional revision, the president


can only hold two consecutive terms of office, meaning president Kagame is not eligible to stand again as the RPF’s presidential


candidate.


10. President Kagame’s speeches are available on his website (www.paulkagame .com). Most of them are available in English.


11. The combined works of Alison Des Forges, Danielle de Lame, Catharine Newbury, and David Newbury provide locally


grounded and historically contextualized analyses of the ideological uses of competing versions of history, the continued superiority


of state authority over local forms of knowledge, the political dynamics of ethnicity, and the evolution of the Rwandan state, and


reveal contested elite and local views on the 1994 genocide. See de Lame 1995, 2004b, 2005a; Des Forges 1986, 1995, 1999, 2011;


M. C. Newbury 1978, 1980; C. Newbury 1988, 1995, 1998; C. Newbury and D. Newbury 1995, 1999; D. Newbury 1980, 1991,


1994, 1997; and D. Newbury and C. Newbury 2000.


Chapter 1. Bringing in Peasant Rwandans through Life History Interviewing


1. The home in figure 1 was photographed in 2006, before the RPF government instituted its nyakatsi program in which residents,


regardless of household income, must upgrade their mud-and-thatch homes to ones with both cement floors and tiled or metal roofs.


Such “modern” homes, it argued, were needed for community development (MINALOC 2006, 2007). If one accepts, as Human


Rights Watch predicted in its report Uprooting the Rural Poor (2001b, 1, 11–13), that some 94 percent of rural residents would have


to be resettled under the imidugudu policy of villigization, then “the Rwandan state is in a process of forcibly changing the residences


of nearly all of its citizens” (Sommers 2012b, 26).


2. During the summer of 2006, the soccer World Cup was shown on communal televisions in bars and at schools and hospitals and

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