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certainly seeks to change individual behavior through its top-down, state-led practices of national

unity and reconciliation to prevent a “future recurrence” of events such as the 1994 genocide (Straus

and Waldorf 2011, 8). As Purdeková notes, individual Rwandans, regardless of their location in the

socioeconomic hierarchy, must do more than respect the authority of the state; they must also

sacrifice individual preferences and sublimate private realities to work for the greater goal of unity

and reconciliation (2012a, 192–95).

Two examples further illustrate this point of disindividuation. First, Sommers recounts a story from

his 2011 fieldwork in which a Rwandan government official chastised his use of the Kinyarwanda

word umutindi in reference to his own “destitution” (2012a, 51–52). Using descriptive language

related to being very poor or destitute (umutindi)—whether jokingly as Sommers did or otherwise—is

perceived by some local officials as criticism of the government. As such, it illustrates some of the

pressures poor Rwandans can experience when interacting with government officials. How can they

ask for what they need if they are unable to use words that best describe their poverty with those

charged to alleviate it? Second, since 2006, it has been illegal to wear open-toed shoes in any of

Rwanda’s cities and town. This means that the rubber flip-flops that so many Rwandans favor because

of their affordability are illegal. This rule, like the many other rules that structure the everyday lives

of Rwandans, makes it difficult for urban and rural poor—the almost 68 percent of the population that

earns less than US$1 per day—to acquire the covered shoes they need to take their goods to market, to

bring their children to school, or to access health facilities.

These are but two of the many forbidden or obligatory practices that the RPF regime demands of its

citizens (see Ingelaere 2011, 74, and Sommers 2012a, 245–49, for fuller lists). Identifying such

disciplinary practices allows for an understanding of what “the state” is and what “it” does from a

variety of viewpoints—political elites, government bureaucrats, and nonstate actors alike—and what

effects the construction of “the state” and the authority it accords its representatives has on the

operation of power throughout society.

By identifying and explaining everyday and often mundane practices of the state, we learn of the

routine and repetitive actions that make “the state” real in the lives of ordinary peasant Rwandans.

Administrative practices define the contours of everyday life without completely capturing it, because

the very process of invading people’s lives generates points of resistance and opposition. It also

highlights the ways in which the command-and-control approach of the RPF regime at the lower levels

of the administrative structure considers ordinary folks to be “vessels” or “implementers” of

government policy without their input. Rwanda’s dense bureaucratic state structure is made up of

“webs of people” and is best conceptualized as a “chain, with ‘cascade’ potential,” its nexus of action

being primarily at the Sector and Cell levels (Purdeková 2011, 477; see also Ingelaere 2011). 7 Chapter





4 analyzes the webs of state actors and institutions as well as the practices and mechanisms of

surveillance and coercion that make up Rwanda’s bureaucracy to isolate where individuals “feel” the

state.

Analysis of the mundane bureaucratic and institutional practices of state authority reveals what the

disciplining presence in their daily lives. In the Rwandan case, the state has different meanings for

different people, and its meaning is best determined by one’s socioeconomic status and not

necessarily by one’s state-imposed or self-perceived ethnicity (see also Chakravarty, forthcoming). 8

This tends to mean that politically connected elites and other urban and educated Rwandans have

overall a rosier perception of Rwanda’s remarkable postgenocide recovery than do the majority of

poor, marginal, and rural dwellers that I consulted in the course of my research. Those at the higher

levels of the socioeconomic hierarchy are more likely to have benefited from Rwanda’s postgenocide

economic and development policies (Ansoms 2008, 2009; Ingelaere 2011). Purdeková astutely refers

to those who benefit from government policies as “the captivated minority.” She continues, “There is

the excitement and elation of relatively privileged young people who believe the future that

government paints in front of them” (2012b, 16). Indeed, it appears as if this “captivated minority” is

one of the few groups to benefit from RPF rule since the genocide. Wimmer et al. (2009) find that

Rwanda has the third-highest rate of socioeconomic and political exclusion in the world (following

Sudan and Syria), concluding that Rwanda “has a higher probability of a return to war than any other

country in the world” (Wimmer et al., quoted in Sommers 2012a, 227). In addition, since 2006 the

Rwandan economy is only adding an annual average of 8,800 private-sector jobs, instead of the

120,000 annual jobs needed to support current levels of economic and population growth (Gökgür

2012, 32)

The popular and predominant narrative of Rwanda’s postgenocide success is one that is largely

attributed to the visionary leadership of President Paul Kagame (1999–present).9 And indeed, there is

no denying Rwanda’s robust economic growth. Under Kagame’s leadership, Rwanda has become a

leader on the African continent in terms of service delivery in education and health. International

donors—notably the United Kingdom, the United States, the European Union, and the World Bank—

consistently cite Rwanda as a country with low levels of corruption and high levels of institutional

accountability (Zorbas 2011). The recovery of the formal economy has been nothing short of

outstanding. Not only has urban poverty decreased as national income rises, but since 2001 the

economy has continued to grow at an average of 7 percent per year (Ansoms 2011). President Kagame

regularly receives international awards and accolades for his visionary leadership in Rwanda’s

recovery from war and genocide (Sommers 2012b). Rwanda since the 1994 genocide is a place where

the government is renowned for increasing women’s rights and includes the highest percentage of

female parliamentarians anywhere in the world; it has also reduced corruption and overseen

innovative local justice processes that have resulted in ethnic reconciliation (Burnet 2008b, 2011;

Cooke 2011). President Kagame regularly boasts that less than twenty years since the 1994 genocide,

peace and security reign again for all Rwandans (Kagame 2011, 2012). By most accounts, under the

visionary leadership of Paul Kagame, Rwanda is an African success story to be admired and emulated

by other postconflict societies (Crisafulli and Redmond 2012; Clinton Foundation 2009; Dagan 2011;

Gourevitch 1998, 2009; Kinzer 2008; UN-OHRLLS 2006, 130; Warren 2009; Zakaria 2009). The

question that is rarely asked is: to whose benefit are Rwanda’s economic gains accruing?

At the same time, Rwanda’s postgenocide rapid reconstruction and reconciliation have been

criticized for its heavy-handedness (Ingelaere 2011; Longman 2011; Reyntjens 2004, 2011. For the





impact of the strategy on youth, see Sommers 2012a, 143–55). The RPF seeks to dominate all levels of

sociopolitical life, from the office of the president down to the lowest levels of administration through

its policy of “decentralization” (MINALOC 2004, 2006, 2007). The government maintains a tight rein

on political expression and, in 2003, banned any public manifestation of “ethnic divisionism”

(between Tutsi and Hutu), “promoting genocide ideology” (against Tutsi), or “preaching genocide

negationism” (that is, questioning claims that only Tutsi died in 1994). These laws are vaguely worded

and arbitrarily applied to anyone who makes public statements that the government perceives as

critical. They also have the effect of removing ethnic Hutu from the public sphere as the genocide

ideology and negationist laws represent a near total and “undifferentiated accusation” of presumed

Hutu participation in the 1994 genocide (Chakravarty, forthcoming; Waldorf 2009, 2011). The

government also targets journalists as the purveyors of divisionist opinion and strictly controls civil

society organizations and other forms of associational life, including churches and mosques

(Adamczyk 2012; Gready 2011; Longman 2011; Sommers 2012a). While Human Rights Watch and

other international human rights advocacy groups highlight the government’s lack of commitment to

basic human rights such as the right to life and to free expression, President Kagame stresses the

importance of state control and authority to maintain the ethnic unity that he claims to be the basis of

present and future security of Rwanda.10

When confronted with such starkly contrasting points of view, it is important not to throw up one’s

hands and declare that the truth lies hopelessly somewhere between the polar extremes of Rwanda’s

glowing economic success and its denial of political liberties. Such an approach is misguided for

analysts on both sides of the divide. Since both sides offer some insights into how “the state”

manifests in the lives of ordinary peasant Rwandans through its practices of authority and control, my

research methodology matters greatly. It is one that focuses on process rather than conclusive

outcomes. As such, my analysis is best understood as a snapshot of everyday life in 2006 for a handful

of ordinary peasant Rwandans resident in the southern region of the country.


Political Ethnography: Identifying Everyday Acts of Resistance


My research joins a growing movement within political science that draws on ethnographic methods

to illuminate different ways of analyzing the everyday practices of state power. Political scientists

have fruitfully employed ethnographic approaches to “get close” to people’s everyday experiences.

For inter-pretivists, ethnography is “the art and science of describing a group or culture” (Geertz 1973,

5). For positivists, it is a tool used to explain the causal story (e.g., Allina-Pisano 2007). Despite this

epistemological distinction, both camps agree on a minimal definition of ethnography as “the process

of learning through exposure to or involvement in the day-to-day or routine activities of participants

in the research setting” (Schensul et al. 1999, 91).

In order to bring in the everyday acts of resistance of ordinary peasant Rwandans, I drew upon

ethnographic methods: living in southern Rwanda for six months in 2006; learning Kinyarwanda, the

national language; participating in daily life through everyday interactions and conversations;

observing events and places such as meetings, festivals, gacaca justice trials, ingando citizenship

reeducation camps, and so on; examining gossip, rumors, proverbs, and jokes for their underlying

meaning; recording field notes to produce everyday accounts of sociopolitical life; and letting trust

and emotional engagement be of benefit to the research.

As a tool for political analysis, I understand ethnography as both an activity and a sensibility, an