Whispering truth to power: The everyday resistance of Rwandan peasants to post-genocide reconciliation

Abstract

The government in post-genocide Rwanda stakes its moral claim to legitimacy on a policy of national unity and reconciliation, claiming to create a ‘Rwanda for all Rwandans’. This article investigates peasant resistance to this policy. Focusing on everyday acts of resistance among the rural poor, it demonstrates that despite the appearance of widespread popular support, many peasant Rwandans consider the various mechanisms of national unity and reconciliation to be unjust and illegitimate. Obedience to the dictates of the policy of national unity is frequently tactical, rather than sincere, as peasants employ various strategies to avoid participation. Through a focus on everyday acts of resistance, the article reveals how the post-genocide state through the policy of national unity and reconciliation seeks to depoliticize peasant people by orchestrating public performances and by closing off the possibility for individuals to join together to organize politically.

The policy of national unity and reconciliation has been the backbone of the Rwandan government's reconstruction strategy following the 1994 genocide in which civilian Hutu killed at least 500,000 Tutsi.¹ It structures the interactions of individual Rwandans with the state and with each other. On paper, it is a set of mechanisms that ‘aim to promote unity between Tutsi and Hutu in creating one Rwanda for all Rwandans’;² in practice, it disguises the government's efforts to control its population while working to consolidate the political power of the ruling Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF). This article analyses the everyday acts of resistance of a cross-section of peasant Rwandans to their government's post-genocide policy of national unity and reconciliation.³ This snapshot of their everyday resistance illuminates more than the extent to which the policy goes against their interests as peasants. It also demonstrates its unpopularity among individuals at the lowest rungs of Rwanda's socio-economic hierarchy.⁴ The significance of peasants' everyday resistance lies in part in the fact that the RPF stakes its moral legitimacy to rule on the success of the very policy that in reality fails the majority of the population. This article therefore cuts to the heart of the government's claim to legitimate power through its examination of three types of everyday resistance – staying on the sidelines, irreverent compliance and withdrawn muteness – that some peasant Rwandans employ as they engage, avoid, or subvert the state-led requirements of this policy. In other words, I examine some of the subversive and strategic ways in which peasant Rwandans whisper their truth to the power of the post-genocide government. My purpose is to illustrate the many ways in which government policy produces merely the appearance – and not the reality – of national unity and reconciliation, and therefore fails to provide the grounds for legitimate rule. In this way, the article points students of politics in Rwanda and elsewhere toward the multiple and overlapping structures of power that peasant people confront in their daily lives.

My focus on everyday acts of resistance illustrates that peasant Rwandans do not believe in the policy of national unity and reconciliation – that is, their perceived compliance with its dictates is tactical rather than sincere. My argument is developed in five sections. In the first, I analyse government claims that it has successfully reconciled Hutu and Tutsi Rwandans. The second sets out the policy of national unity and reconciliation to demonstrate how the government generates compliance while eliminating non-conformity among Rwandans. Then, in the third section, I set out my theoretical framework for understanding and explaining everyday acts of resistance. The fourth section explains the research methodology used to gain access to the ‘terribly closed’ world of Rwandan citizens.⁵ Finally, I analyse the everyday acts of resistance of 37 Rwandan peasants to illustrate the extent to which the state-led, top-down processes of national unity and reconciliation are an oppressive form of state power in their everyday lives. I conclude with an analysis of the implications of studying everyday acts of resistance to understand and explain state–society relations in other African countries.

Restoring peace or forcing reconciliation?

There is, many would argue, much evidence that points to Rwanda's admirable recovery from the events of 1994. The post-genocide state, strong and centralized under the leadership of the RPF, has made significant gains in ‘restoring peace, unity and reconciliation to all corners of the country’;⁶ it has facilitated rapid reconstruction; and, unlike most African nations, is able to exercise its territorial control exceedingly well.⁷ The institutions of the state have been rebuilt and infrastructure such as roads, bridges, and airports have been restored and in some areas upgraded. Rwanda is a leader on the African continent in terms of service delivery in education and health. It is consistently cited by international donors – notably the UK, the USA, the EU and the World Bank – as a country with low levels of corruption and with institutional accountability.⁸ The recovery of the economy is outstanding. Not only has urban poverty decreased as national income rises, but the economy continues to grow at an average of 5 percent per year.⁹

At the same time, some have criticized Rwanda's reconstruction and reconciliation process.¹⁰ The RPF seeks to dominate all levels of socio-political life, from the lowest levels of administration to the office of the President. 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 that only Tutsi died in 1994).¹¹ These laws are vaguely worded and arbitrarily applied to anyone who makes public statements that the government perceives as critical. The government also targets journalists as the purveyors of divisionist opinion and strictly controls civil society organizations and other forms of associational life. While Human Rights Watch and other international human rights and advocacy groups highlight the government's lack of commitment to basic human rights such as the right to life and to free expression,¹² President Paul Kagame stresses the importance of state intervention to maintain the ethnic unity that he claims to be the basis of present and future security in Rwanda.

Such dramatically different perceptions and claims about post-genocide Rwanda – as a model of peace and reconstruction versus a violent and oppressive regime – raise the question of what everyday life there is really like. Has Rwandan society rebuilt itself as effectively as the government claims, or has rapid economic development come at the expense of political liberties? The answer depends on who is being asked. The government directs its critics to the broad-based support that its policies enjoy among Rwandans, ‘particularly at the grassroots’, as evidence of its moral legitimacy to govern with a heavy hand in the interests of peace and security.¹³ Rwandan elites – educated, gainfully employed and resident in urban areas – tend to benefit most from the post-genocide policies of the RPF.¹⁴ Those who benefit least are the rural poor – the majority of the population – who are subject to RPF-empowered local leaders and who must perform the government-prescribed rituals of national unity and reconciliation regardless of their lived realities.

Situating the policy of national unity and reconciliation

The policy of national unity and reconciliation is an ambitious social engineering project that the RPF-led government claims will forge a unified Rwandan identity while fostering reconciliation between genocide survivors and perpetrators. It aims to re-educate the population on the ethnic unity that existed before colonialism, at a time when Tutsi and Hutu lived in ‘peaceful harmony and worked together for the good of the nation’.¹⁵ In romanticizing the historical past and presuming that all Hutu need to be re-educated, the policy relies on two broad simplifications: all Tutsi (whether they were in Rwanda during the genocide or not) are innocent victims or ‘survivors’; and all Hutu (whether they participated in the genocide or not) are guilty perpetrators. As a result of its predication on this simplistic dichotomy, Rwanda's ‘national unity and reconciliation’ can only be maintained through the extensive policing of public speech. Rwandans can only speak publicly about ethnicity in state-sanctioned settings like the ingando camps and the neo-traditional gacaca trials, and during genocide mourning week. Otherwise, the RPF does not allow for public discussion of the violence that individual Rwandans of all ethnicities – Hutu, Tutsi, and Twa – experienced before, during, and after the genocide.

The government promotes national unity and reconciliation in numerous ways. It encourages collective memory of the genocide through memorial sites and mass graves that show the end result of ethnic division. Every year, annual commemorations are held during national mourning week (7 to 14 April) to remind Rwandans of the ‘pernicious effects of ethnic divisionism’.¹⁶ The government also adopted new national symbols (flag, anthem, and emblem) in 2001 because the existing ones ‘symbolized the genocide and encouraged an ideology of genocide and divisionism’.¹⁷ As part of Rwanda's administrative re-structuring in 2006, the government changed place names at all administrative levels (from villages to provinces) to ‘protect survivors from remembering where their relatives died’.¹⁸ In addition, the revised 2003 constitution criminalized public references to ethnic identity (article 33) as well as ‘ethnic divisionism’ and ‘trivializing the genocide’.

The RPF uses the apparatus of the state to try to ensure that survivors forgive and forget what happened to them during the genocide, and that perpetrators try to tell the truth about what they did.¹⁹ For Rwandans who try to step outside the roles prescribed for them in service to national unity and reconciliation, the reaction from the government and its agents is quick and relentless: imprisonment without charge, disappearance, intimidation, even death. This means that survivors (read former Tutsi) and génocidaires (read former Hutu) have been cast into the essentialist categories of victim and killer, and as such have become the protagonists in the fiction of national unity. For example, the policy officially substitutes génocidaire for ‘Hutu’, and is thus able to exclude from public life those Hutu who were victims or bystanders, or who will not confess to their real or imagined crimes. While the policy appears to be inclusive and conciliatory, Hutu can in fact participate only as génocidaires – not as victims of the genocide, of the 1990–4 civil war, or of the RPF-led revenge attacks between 1994 and 1996.²⁰

The ingando re-education camps are central to the government's efforts to control the populace. Released (Hutu) prisoners must graduate from ingando before they are allowed to return to their home communities. These men are required to attend ingando for periods ranging from several weeks to several months in order to study government policies, Rwandan history, and unity and reconciliation.²¹

I attended an ingando camp for a week in August 2006 after the government revoked my research permit and ordered me to undergo re-education to learn the truth about Rwanda, as opposed to what simple peasants had told me.²² The re-education I witnessed failed to promote a sense of national unity and reconciliation among my Hutu classmates. Instead, these former prisoners were taught to remain silent and not to question the RPF's vision for creating peace and security. For these released prisoners, ingando is an alienating, oppressive, and sometimes humiliating experience that silences dissent.

The neo-traditional gacaca courts are also key mechanisms in the promotion of the government's vision of national unity and reconciliation. More than 10,000 individual jurisdictions bring together génocidaires and survivors. Also present are bystanders, resisters, and rescuers who make up the citizen audience that come to observe trials in their communities once every week. Benches of lay judges oversee the process and work under the supervision of the National Service of Gacaca Jurisdictions, which is part of the Supreme Court of Rwanda. The government expects that through the gacaca process peasant Rwandans will become reconciled as a result of truth-telling and forgiveness. For many Rwandans I spoke with, however, the gacaca courts represent a form of state control in their lives, which promotes fear and insecurity as opposed to unity or reconciliation. Central to the negative effects of the courts is the fact that the policy has outlawed public discussion of, or even reference to, one's ethnicity – individuals may speak only of being ‘Rwandan’. 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 lived experiences that differ from the official version, in which only Tutsi were victims and only Hutu killed. Nor does the RPF allow public acknowledgment of the existence or experience of Tutsi and Twa perpetrators; Hutu and Twa rescuers; Tutsi, Hutu, and Twa resisters; or Hutu and Twa survivors. Tutsi are rightfully and correctly survivors of genocide, as they were targeted by virtue of their ethnicity, but all Rwandans are survivors of conflict, jostled and shaped by traumatic events over which they had little or no control.

Conceptualizing and situating everyday resistance in post-genocide Rwanda

In order to identify and analyse everyday acts of resistance of peasant Rwandans, I draw on Foucauldian and feminist critiques of state power, theories of power which focus on the ‘weak’, and theories of resistance to dominant forms of power. These literatures combine to provide the necessary conceptual tools to access the externally invisible ‘infrapolitics of the powerless’.²³ The key to analysing the ‘weak’ is to recognize that they are not truly weak, and to appreciate that power is relational in seeking to keep under surveillance and discipline those subject to it.²⁴ Thus everyday resistance is an important analytical concept because it highlights the scope and nature of power in most forms of relationship.²⁵ I conceptualize everyday acts of resistance as any subtle, indirect, and non-confrontational act that makes daily life more sustainable under a strong and centralized state power such as that represented by the policy of national unity and reconciliation. Everyday acts of resistance include some combination of persistence, prudence, and individual effort to accomplish a specific goal. I also argue that everyday resistance, in contrast to open resistance, reflects a degree of oppression in which the latter is not deemed possible by the resister. This does not mean that open resistance is held to be impossible because there is a law against the act in question, but more simply that individuals would be taking a calculated risk to maintain or enlarge their position vis-à-vis the state or representatives of its power.

I am not the first to identify individual acts that qualify as everyday resistance in Rwanda. For example, African Rights has shown how peasants ignored the orders of elites to burn Tutsi bodies during the genocide. Jennie Burnet states that peasants in southern Rwanda refused to cut down their banana plantations to plant crops that the government considered more productive. Alison Des Forges describes instances of resistance against the German colonial authority as well as the Tutsi king in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Timothy Longman describes how peasants burned woods to resist elite directives before the genocide. Catharine Newbury shows how peasant farmers destroyed coffee bushes in the late 1980s and early 1990s to grow food for their families instead.²⁶

Everyday resistance has three key qualities. The first is the combination of persistence, prudence, and individual effort to accomplish a specific goal. The second is a lack of awareness on the part of the target – the government official or other agent of the state. This choice to keep targets in the dark reflects the fact that everyday resisters seek covertly to counteract or frustrate the mechanisms of the policy of national unity and reconciliation, not overtly to defeat or overthrow it as more conventional understandings of resistance would imply. The final quality is benefit to the resister. This gain may be long-term – as in obtaining qualification for government-assisted medical coverage – but most commonly it is short-term. For example, the woman who gets up early to avoid participating in the mandatory gacaca will succeed only some of the time, as her local official will inevitably ensure her future compliance. For the gacaca sessions that she avoids, however, she has successfully practised everyday resistance. If too many individuals practise everyday resistance in the same way, the local official may notice this non-compliance with the law and their actions will move into the sphere of confrontational resistance in which individuals collude – knowingly or not. This may in turn result in harm to the resister and invalidation of the strategy.

Everyday resistance operates on a continuum; there is no ‘pure’ form and it is ‘largely implicit’.²⁷ Given the forces arrayed against peasant Rwandans in the promotion of national unity and reconciliation, the ability of an individual to do no more than maintain his or her resources –land holdings, for example, or access to school fees – in the face of attempts by local authorities to take them away, is a demonstration of everyday resistance. For example, a ‘survivor’ woman who was raped during the genocide, now has AIDS, and has lost her social and economic networks through the death of family and friends, has a different set of options and limitations on her actions than does a woman who returned after the genocide (‘returnee’) to take up a position as a local official. The survivor may choose to avoid gacaca trials as a mode of self-protection while the returnee official will seek, by force if necessary, to encourage her to attend gacaca as the full participation of the population is required by law.²⁸

The example also serves to illustrate the subtle distinction between an everyday act of resistance to government directives and survival strategies that individuals enact to cope with life's daily challenges. Since individuals do not act in isolation, but interact with others, who one becomes through practice is not entirely up to the individual. Instead, it is the outcome of many intersecting and unpredictable interactions, such that ‘nobody is the author or producer of his own life story’.²⁹ An emphasis on the everyday strategies of resistance of some peasant Rwandans allows for analysis of the post-genocide political order from their perspective. This agent-centred approach privileges the locally situated knowledge peasant Rwandans possess by employing methodological tools that uncover, rather than presuppose, individuals' motivations and behaviours.

The everyday acts of resistance of peasant Rwandans

A detailed look at the actual means whereby average Rwandan citizens resist the various mechanisms of the policy of national unity and reconciliation is the aim of this section. All of the individuals that participated in my research understood well the risks of speaking out against the policy of national unity and reconciliation and this awareness on their part imbues their actions with added weight. Before discussing the everyday acts of resistance practised by Rwandan peasants, a brief note on methodology is in order.

In order to identify and situate the everyday acts of resistance of typical Rwandan citizens in their broader context, I administered semi-structured interviews with Rwandan government officials and conducted life history interviews over a seven-month period in 2006 with 37 peasant Rwandans resident in the south of the country. In addition, I consulted approximately 400 Rwandans from across the country through participant observation – meaning spontaneous, casual conversation in the course of everyday life – on the themes of national unity, justice, peace and reconciliation. My semi-structured interviews with state authorities, from members of the Senate and Office of the President down to local officials, resulted in 79 hours of recorded material. The primary sample comprised 37 individuals, including three ethnic Twa, 20 ethnic Hutu, and 14 ethnic Tutsi, all of whom had lived through the 1994 genocide.³⁰

The individuals who participated in the research were identified through their social and political networks rather than on the basis of their residence in a particular community. Nowhere in the text do I use specific place or community names. This is to respect the confidentiality of the interviewees, and to protect the safety of Rwandan assistants and translators from possible government backlash. Names used throughout the article are pseudonyms. My research is informed by the lived experiences of peasant Rwandans from different regions in the country and from different subject positions, meaning that I can better generalize about the negative impact of the policy of national unity and reconciliation on their lives since the genocide. These are locally grounded and contextualized narratives in which Rwandans express themselves in their own words and as ‘knowers’ of their own life stories. As such, they open up for analysis the extent to which the government's rhetoric about the utility of the policy of national unity and reconciliation in delivering peace, justice, and reconciliation to Rwandans is not reflected in the lived reality of the populace.

I learned in the course of my interviews with Rwandan elites and ordinary folks alike that there are three categories of people who speak out against government policy or openly defy the directives of government officials, two of which are relevant to the aims of this article. The first are known among their peers as abasazi (plural, meaning foolish). They use their ‘madness’ to give the impression that they are mentally unstable and to justify their willingness to say what others will not or cannot attempt for fear of government penalties. Second are the individuals known as ibyihebe (plural, meaning fearless). The individuals that participated in my research who fall into this group understood the risks of sharing their experiences and no longer feared speaking out because of the hardships they had endured. This is true mainly of Tutsi survivors of the genocide, many of whom consider themselves to be ‘walking dead’. The third group of resisters are known as ibipinga (plural, meaning those with deep-rooted principles). This group includes journalists, human rights activists, and other intellectuals who risk speaking out against the government because of their deep-rooted principles, despite their knowledge of potentially grave consequences. My research focuses on the actions of the first two groups: the abasazi and the ibyihebe.

In the course of my consultations with peasant Rwandans resident in the south of the country, I learned that they practise three specific types of everyday resistance: staying on the sidelines; irreverent compliance; and withdrawn muteness. Examining the spectrum of resistance allows us to learn about more than the hardships that individuals experience in their daily lives since the genocide; we also see what their chosen forms of resistance reveal about the policy as illegitimate.

Staying on the sidelines: The first form of everyday resistance is staying on the sidelines, which is embodied in an array of avoidance tactics. For example, many peasant Rwandans told me that they try as much as possible to stay on the sidelines to avoid too much trouble with the local authorities. Prosper, a 56-year-old ethnic Twa, told me that he tries to stay on the sidelines as a ‘way to protect my soul. My [local official] doesn't understand that my people [the Twa] died because of the events [of 1994] and that I have new problems that need solutions since they say peace and unity have been restored. It is better to avoid contact than to be forced to reject your ancestry’.³¹ Aurelia, a 39-year-old Hutu widow, says that she actively tries to avoid her local official.

The best strategy is to avoid the authorities. When you see them, they make demands for reconciliation. [My official] knows that I lost all of my people [family members] during the events. He knows I am weakened and therefore pushes me to tell my truth. But my people are dead. What is there to tell? Because I am a former Hutu all I can do is try to get recognition as a survivor of the genocide so I can get some [financial] support. It is hard to ask for help when I prefer not to speak with my local official because I fear his demands.³²

Vianney, a 25-year-old ethnic Tutsi man, says he also seeks to avoid contact:

My whole family died in 1994. Why forgive anyway? The Hutu who killed, they know who they are but are they able to tell their truth? No, and I understand why not. If they say anything, they go straight to prison. I understand their problems; I blame this government for its lack of fairness. If we could all just get along, I know we could find some way to coexist. Reconciliation is never going to happen. It is better to remain distant than to get mixed up with the ideas and plans of this government.³³

Peasant men, particularly released prisoners, shared with me how they used the marketplace as a domain where they could whisper news of political developments. They shared information with each other: who had been arrested, denounced, or put in prison since the last market day; news of how gacaca trials were progressing in different communities; as well as news of how ingando graduates were coping with the return home following extended prison stays. Such secretive ingenuity facilitates the flow of political information between peasant Hutu men. Gaston, a 34-year-old released Hutu prisoner, explained it best:

We have few options. Going to the bars is not an option. If the authorities see a group of former Hutu at a bar, then we can all get interrogated. They think we are plotting genocide or something. Instead of facing charges of genocide ideology, we communicate when we sell at market. The authorities are there; sometimes military men come to shop. We pass information by scribbling on gourds. When we pass vegetables, the officials think we are just sharing our produce. But with a pencil, we can share information so our brothers know what is happening and when. This helps us avoid contact with the authorities who need us to participate at gacaca because each of us knows what others are experiencing.³⁴

The level of political acumen that average Rwandans exhibit when determining how and when to engage their local officials so that they can appear to be ‘cooperative, interested in peace and reconciliation, and ready to tell [their] truth’ belies elite perceptions that peasants are, in the words of one RPF official, ‘just mere peasants who need us to tell them what to do. Really, they are like infants. We need to parent them so they know about peace and reconciliation.’³⁵ In fact for such ‘mere peasants’ government imperatives are to be avoided not only because they distort the lived experiences of the past but also because they are incommensurate with the harsh realities of ongoing survival. As Jeanne, a 47-year-old Tutsi widow, explains,

Everything in the country is political. I am hungry. I have seen people die during war and starve during so-called times of peace. If you can't feed your family, then your thoughts are about survival, not about much else. Of course we need peace. But there can be no peace in the heart if there is no peace in the stomach.³⁶

The mandatory activities imposed on peasant Rwandans in the name of national unity and reconciliation (such as government speeches, umuganda community work days, and gacaca justice trials) prevent them from tending their fields and engaging in other life-sustaining activities. The post-genocide government does not provide basic social services, despite almost a decade of economic growth. Any economic gains in the country have accrued to elites in Kigali as the government seeks to streamline and modernize the Rwandan economy.³⁷ Several individuals shared with me the difficulties of assuring basic needs for themselves and their families, as bridges and roads that linked rural communities to the market centres have been washed away. Joseph M., a 44-year-old Hutu man, told me:

Building bridges is not an official means of reconciliation but I have worked side-by-side with men who also want to provide for their families. We understand that the bridge is important to us all and we try to work together. It is risky, particularly for men like me because when they see us working together, they think we are plotting genocide. We don't ask for permission, we just do it and hope that our efforts won't be noticed until the work is done. Of course if there is any backlash, some or all of us go to cachot. If there is praise for our efforts from the central authorities, it is the local official who benefits. …³⁸

Implicit acts of everyday resistance, like washing laundry or building a bridge, may appear on the surface to be survival strategies, not concerted and strategic acts designed to improve one's quality of life despite government threats to the contrary. What these everyday acts of resistance reveal is that some peasant Rwandans feel that the policy of national unity and reconciliation makes their daily struggle to provide for survival more complicated. Rather than blindly or willingly accept state-led directives to reconcile with one another, peasant Rwandans recognize that the policy is yet another form of social control that they strategically avoid so that they can get on with more pressing matters of rebuilding their lives and livelihoods.

Irreverent compliance: A second form of everyday resistance is irreverent compliance, which involves following the rules and regulations of the policy of national unity and reconciliation in ways that covertly undermine the authority of local officials and other agents of the state. Irreverent compliance is a response of peasant Rwandans to various assaults on their dignity, notably the expectation that they will participate earnestly and readily in the prescribed activities of national unity and reconciliation. People have devised a number of ways to subvert the expectations of some aspects of the policy, particularly relating to the return ceremonies for ingando graduates following their release from prison and the pressures of forced participation in national mourning activities every April. For instance, Tutsi survivors who are forced to attend the return ceremony of a Hutu individual who they believe should not have been released from prison will laugh outlandishly at the remarks of local authorities during their ‘welcome home’ speeches. In this way they practise irreverent compliance: they attend the mandatory meetings but let officials know in subtle ways their contempt or disrespect. For example, Esther, a 40-year-old Tutsi widow, told me about how she is able to ‘disrespect the system’ while avoiding punishment for expressing her discontent with government policy at the frequent speeches that local officials make on all aspects of the policy of national unity and reconciliation: ‘Oh yes, when [the local official] says [at a speech] that [the graduate] has been re-educated through ingando training, I laugh out loud, or if that is not possible, I glare at him, to let him know that I do not believe for even one minute that ingando is a good idea for peace and unity.’³⁹

While Esther's act of irreverent compliance may appear to have accomplished very little, on closer examination it becomes clear that her tactics exploit one of the most vexing insecurities faced by local government officials in post-genocide Rwanda. As individuals who exercise their authority through fear, local officials expect a certain measure of deference and compliance. Indeed, the power and authority of local officials is reinforced through a strong central government, which makes acts of vocal disrespect like Esther's all the more revealing. Esther's act situates her on a very fine line between the insubordination that could bring down harsh punishment on her head and the compliance that would efface her own subjectivity and opinions. By attending the mandatory ceremony, she remains a law-abiding citizen, but by expressing her contempt she subtly undermines the process. Her act brings irony to the fiction of the government's policy; her laugh belies the popular unity on which the government's claims for success are based.

The compliance of many peasant Rwandans is an indicator of the systemic forms of structural violence to which local officials subject them in the name of national unity and reconciliation. Acts of irreverent compliance are indeed one of the more disguised forms of everyday resistance as they are the canny acts of persons living in extreme poverty, emotional pain, continual fear, and constant isolation. Laughing, glaring, and defying government orders on how to mourn the lives of loved ones show that some peasant Rwandans continue to resist the demands of the policy of national unity and reconciliation prudently, creatively, and with determination, even in the presence of local officials, in ways that restore their dignity. Indeed, acts of irreverent compliance do little to mitigate the structural forms of violence that peasant Rwandans experience in their daily lives. However, in a context of social control and oppression like post-genocide Rwanda, many peasant Rwandans recognize that the policy is a form of violence against them; they also understand that even the smallest act can be met with brutal reprisals from local officials and other agents of the state.

Withdrawn muteness: A third form of everyday resistance is withdrawn muteness. These are purposeful and strategic moments of silence that peasant Rwandans employ to defy the expectations of the policy in ways that either protect their meagre resources or assure their dignity in their interactions with local officials. Acts of withdrawn muteness are conveyed through particular ways of holding the body and face, and are a standard response of many peasant Rwandans to local authorities or other agents of the state. This leads elites to wrongly conclude that peasant Rwandans are not political beings, since they lack ‘the necessary education and consciousness to understand politics. It is because they are not modern that we have to educate them on becoming Rwandans.’⁴⁰ Among the peasant Rwandans I met, far from any primary road, electric line, or other modern convenience, I encountered individuals who possessed levels of political awareness that energize and shape everyday acts of resistance as subtle and indirect as withdrawn muteness. Trésor, a 16-year-old Tutsi boy, described the purpose of withdrawn muteness as a tactic that sabotages the efforts of local officials to promote reconciliation among peasant Rwandans: ‘Remaining silent is very rewarding because it angers local officials. They ask if we are stupid. They ask why we are so difficult. That is the point. When he [the local official] gets mad, I smile inside. The officials make us get reconciled but I just want to be left alone. Being silent is a good way to avoid the difficulties of life since the genocide. Silence helps us do that in ways that make sense to us, not to local officials.’⁴¹

Withdrawn muteness is also the tactic of choice for the imprisoned Hutu who have even fewer options to resist. Of the six prisoners that I spoke with, three had confessed to their crimes of acts of genocide while the remaining three swore their innocence. Prisoners use withdrawn muteness as a way to avoid cooperating with prison authorities, as well as with the soldiers assigned to guard them during the days on which they fulfil their travaux d'intérêt général (works in the general interest, or TIG) obligations in exchange for serving their time in confinement. For example, Jean-Bosco, a 42-year-old imprisoned Hutu, shared that he finds playing dumb a useful tactic. He says,

When I was nominated for TIG, I jumped at the opportunity because I heard it was a way to get back home much sooner than rotting here in prison. So the boys [soldiers] all know that I am a medical doctor so I act like I don't know how to terrace or dig. It is just degrading and not something that I will do without the ability to go home at night. Now of course they [prison officials] exaggerated about the right to live at home while performing TIG. I shouldn't have been surprised as this government just wants to keep educated Hutu out of the public system. This is why I am in prison even though I am 100 percent innocent. I saved lives during the genocide, and even did not run afterwards. I stayed in Butare and worked at the hospital, patching up everyone – Tutsi or Hutu. Some died on my [operating] table. Others survived. I am guilty for the deaths of those that died.

So with these young boys, I just play stupid. I look at my feet, I look at the sky. I stare at them as they speak to me about how to work the shovel. I act completely ignorant and say nothing. I did this for months and months. I think it was almost one year before the soldiers began to tell one another that I was useless and could not be counted on to work. It is a risky strategy as I will never fulfil the TIG requirements of my sentence. But I also know that someone like me will never get out of prison. There is no justice in Rwanda since the genocide. So I do what I can to limit my responsibilities. …⁴²

Jean-Bosco plays dumb and remains silent as a strategy to make his life in prison more bearable. He also says nothing and feigns ignorance to maintain his sense of self as someone who is above manual labour; his actions guarantee him (at least in his eyes) his dominant position as a medical doctor with the ‘young boys who are responsible for prisoners’. Indeed, Jean-Bosco understands that as an ‘educated Hutu’ he is likely to spend the rest of his life in prison. This in turn shapes his decision to feign ignorance. As a Hutu prisoner with few, if any options, to face justice and return to his community, Jean-Bosco's acts are limited, individual, and border on resignation; they reveal a poignant and meaningful element of the concept of everyday resistance – awareness of the oppressive elements of TIG activities that are upheld by local officials and other agents of the state. Withdrawn muteness shows that he will not submit entirely to the discipline of the soldiers and other agents of the state charged with overseeing and controlling his participation in TIG projects. It also indicates the oppressive nature of state power that Jean-Bosco is up against as a member of one of post-genocide Rwanda's most marginal categories, and illustrates how individuals resist the demands of the policy of national unity and reconciliation in minute and non-obvious ways.

Conclusion

A careful look at what may appear on the surface to be trivial acts – for example, remaining silent or mocking local officials – provides insight into the kinds of power relations peasant Rwandans are facing since the genocide. Power relations in post-genocide Rwanda take many forms, have many aspects, and are interwoven. They are also contingent on the relationships between individual peasants, as persons subject to the power of the state, and the various mechanisms of national unity and reconciliation. This article also shows how subtle, indirect, and non-confrontational acts of everyday resistance reflect individual understanding of the operation and function of state power in post-genocide Rwanda. Indeed, the strongest evidence for the existence of, and importance of identifying and analysing acts of everyday resistance is its ability to identify sites of opposition and struggle within the policy of national unity and reconciliation. Speaking of everyday resistance does more than show the creativity, ingenuity, and resourcefulness of the many peasant Rwandans who are subject to the dictates of the policy; it also reveals the marginal socio-political position of peasant Rwandans in identifying the places of resistance where the oppressive power of the state is enacted in their daily lives.

A focus on the everyday acts of resistance of some peasant Rwandans to the many mechanisms of the policy of national unity and reconciliation shows how the post-genocide state tries to depoliticize peasant people by orchestrating public performances, but most importantly closes off the possibility for individuals to join together to organize politically. Because peasant Rwandans have no opportunity to express themselves politically in public, their everyday practices in response to the demands of the policy demonstrate how they tactically conceal or reveal their political opinions. When they express no opinion, and therefore appear compliant, many casual observers conclude that peasant 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 performances of 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, individuals continue to express their politics through their acts of resistance. Identification of the individual acts of everyday resistance of the most marginal in a stratified society such as post-genocide Rwanda points analysts towards areas where political life can quickly descend from the appearance of compliance to open protest and perhaps onto revolution or even genocide.

1.

Alison Des Forges, Leave None to Tell the Story: Genocide in Rwanda (Human Rights Watch, New York, NY: 1999), p. 15.

2.

National Unity and Reconciliation Commission, ‘Nation-wide grassroots consultations report: unity and reconciliation initiatives in Rwanda’ (Kigali: NURC, 2000), p. 4.

3.

By ‘peasant Rwandans’, I do not mean those individuals who hold formal political power as members of the political elite, nor those individuals engaged as agents of the state (police and military personnel, civil servants, local authorities, and others). I use the term to refer broadly to the non-elite and largely peasant citizenry.

4.

Eighty-seven percent of Rwanda's entire population live in rural areas and are considered by the government to be peasants. The Rwandan government divides its peasantry into four broad socio-economic categories, the lowest being the ‘most vulnerable’, followed up the social hierarchy by ‘vulnerable’, then ‘poor’, with the ‘salaried poor’ rounding out the typology. The individuals I consulted are self-identified members of the ‘vulnerable’ and ‘poor’ categories, and taken together these groupings represent approximately 66 percent of Rwanda's peasant population. For more on the government's typology, see Ministry of Finance and Economic Planning, ‘Economic Development and Poverty Reduction Strategy, 2008–2012 (MINECONFIN, Kigali, 2007), p. 13. <http://www.minecofin.gov.rw/docs/LatestNews/EDPRS_-_English.pdf> (28 December 2010).

5.

Danielle de Lame, A Hill Among a Thousand: Transformations and ruptures in rural Rwanda, trans. Helen Arnold (University of Wisconsin Press, Madison, WI, 2005), p. 14.

6.

President Paul Kagame, speaking at the sixteenth commemoration of the genocide, Kigali, 7 April 2010. <http://rwandinfo.com/eng/president-paul-kagames-full-speech-at-the-16th-commemoration-of-the-genocide-on-07-april-2010/> (21 April 2010).

7.

Timothy Longman, ‘Rwanda: chaos from above’ in Leonardo A. Villalón and Phillip A. Huxtable (eds), The African State at a Critical Juncture: Between disintegration and reconfiguration (Lynne Rienner, Boulder, CO, 1998), pp. 75–91.

8.

See the World Bank's ‘Worldwide Governance Indicators: 1996–2008’ for Rwanda, <http://info.worldbank.org/governance/wgi/pdf/c188.pdf> (29 April 2010).

9.

An Ansoms, ‘Resurrection after civil war and genocide: growth, poverty and inequality in post-conflict Rwanda’, European Journal of Development Research17, 3 (2008), pp. 495–508.

10.

Representative articles are Bert Ingelaere, ‘Do we understand life after genocide? Center and periphery in the construction of knowledge in postgenocide Rwanda’, African Studies Review53, 1 (2010), pp. 41–59; and Filip Reyntjens, ‘Constructing the truth, dealing with dissent, domesticating the world: governance in post-genocide Rwanda’, African Affairs110, 438 (2011), pp. 1–34.

11.

For analysis, see Amnesty International, ‘Safer to stay silent: the chilling effect of Rwanda's laws on “genocide ideology” and “sectarianism”’, <http://www.amnesty.org/en/library/asset/AFR47/005/2010/en/ea05dff5-40ea-4ed5-8e55-9f8463878c5c/afr470052010en.pdf> (19 October 2010).

12.

See, for example, reports of Human Rights Watch, <http://www.hrw.org/africa/rwanda> as well as Amnesty International, <http://www.amnestyusa.org/annualreport.php?id=ar&yr=2009&c=RWA> (19 April 2010).

13.

President Paul Kagame, speaking at the fifteenth commemoration of the genocide, Kigali, 7 April 2009, <http://www.paulkagame.com/speeches_main_1.php> (21 April 2009).

14.

Patricia Justino and Philip Verwimp, ‘Poverty dynamics, violent conflict and convergence in Rwanda’ (Working Paper No. 4, MICROCON, Brighton, 2008), p. 15.

15.

National Unity and Reconciliation Commission, ‘The Rwanda conflict: origin, development, exit strategies’ (NURC, Kigali, 2004), pp. 41, 53.

16.

Interview, NURC official, Kigali, May 2006.

17.

Ibid.

18.

Interview, Ministry of Culture official, Kigali, May 2006.

19.

For analysis of the extent to which the government of Rwanda uses the apparatus of the state to produce a particular version of post-genocide justice that renders the average Rwandan citizen largely powerless over individual processes of reconciliation and justice, see Susan Thomson and Rosemary Nagy, ‘Law, power and justice: what legalism fails to address in Rwanda's gacaca courts’, International Journal of Transitional Justice5, 1 (2001), pp. 11–30.

20.

For analysis of the RPF's role in the genocide, see Alan J. Kuperman, ‘Provoking genocide: a revised history of the Rwandan Patriotic Front’, Journal of Genocide Research6, 1 (2004), pp. 61–84. For analysis of the war and violence before the genocide, see Scott Straus, The Order of Genocide: Race, power and war in Rwanda (Cornell University Press, Ithaca, NY, 2006).

21.

Generally, only men attend these camps. Government policy is to re-educate women through membership in cooperatives and civil society organizations.

22.

Susan Thomson, ‘Re-education for reconciliation: participant observations on Ingando’ in Scott Straus and Lars Waldorf (eds), Remaking Rwanda: State building and human rights after mass violence (University of Wisconsin Press, Madison, WI, 2011), pp. 480–91.

23.

James Scott, Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden transcripts (Yale University Press, New Haven, CT and London, 1990), p. xiii.

24.

Bernice Carroll, ‘Peace research: the cult of power’, Journal of Conflict Resolution16, 4 (1972) pp. 585–616; Michel Foucault (trans. Alan Sheridan), Discipline and Punish: The birth of the prison (Pantheon Books, New York, NY, 1977); Elizabeth Janeway, Powers of the Weak (Alfred A. Knopf, New York, NY, 1980); James Scott, The Moral Economy of the Peasant: Rebellion and subsistence in Southeast Asia (Yale University Press, New Haven, CT and London, 1978); and James Scott, Weapons of the Weak: Everyday forms of peasant resistance (Yale University Press, New Haven, CT and London, 1985).

25.

Lila Abu-Lughod, ‘The romance of resistance: tracing transformations of power through Bedouin women’, American Ethnologist17, 1 (1990), pp. 41–55; and Sherry B. Ortner, ‘Resistance and the problem of ethnographic refusal’, Comparative Studies in Society and History37, 1 (1995), pp. 173–93.

26.

African Rights, Kindama: A collective account (African Rights, Kigali, 2003); Jennie E. Burnet, Country Report – Rwanda, <http://www.freedomhouse.org/template.cfm?page=140&edition=8&ccrpage=37&ccrcountry=167> (27 December 2010); Alison Des Forges, ‘“The drum is greater than the shout”: the 1912 rebellion in northern Rwanda’ in Donald Crummey (ed.), Banditry, Rebellion and Social Protest in Africa (James Currey, London, 1986), pp. 311–31; Alison Des Forges, edited by David Newbury, Defeat is the Only Bad News: Rwanda under Musinga, 1896–1931 (University of Wisconsin Press, Madison, WI, 2011); Timothy Longman, ‘Genocide and socio-political change: massacres in two Rwandan villages’, Issue: A Journal of Opinion23, 2 (1995), pp. 18–21; and Catharine Newbury, ‘Rwanda: recent debates over governance and rural development’ in Goran Hyden and Michael Bratton (eds), Governance and Politics in Africa (Lynne Rienner, Boulder, CO, 1992), pp. 193–219.

27.

Jean Comaroff, Body of Power, Spirit of Resistance: The culture and history of a South African people (University of Chicago Press, Chicago, IL, 1985), p. 261.

28.

Article 29 of Organic Law No. 16/2004 of 19 June 2004 establishing the organization, competence, and functioning of gacaca courts states that ‘Every Rwandan citizen has the duty to participate in the gacaca courts’ activities.'

29.

Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition (University of Chicago Press, Chicago, IL, 1959), p. 184.

30.

I discuss my methodology in detail, including the procedures used to identify the ethnicity of individuals who participated in the research, in Susan Thomson, ‘Getting close to Rwandans since the genocide: studying everyday life in highly politicized research settings’, African Studies Review53, 3 (2010), pp. 19–34.

31.

Interview, subsistence farmer, southern Rwanda, July 2006. In Rwanda, ethnic Twa are a small minority, making up 1 to 2 percent of the national population in both pre- and post-genocide Rwanda. Since 2001, when the ethnic divisionism laws came into force, organizations working for Twa people have had to change their names as well as their substantive focus to comply with the new regulations. This puts organizations that work for the rights of Twa people in the difficult position of having to justify their work with a segment of the population that has not been adequately reached by the existing programmes and policies of the post-genocide government. See, Danielle Beswick, ‘Democracy, identity and the politics of exclusion in post-genocide Rwanda: the case of the Batwa’, Democratization 2011; 18, 2, pp. 490–511.

32.

Interview, subsistence farmer, southern Rwanda, May 2006.

33.

Interview, day labourer, southern Rwanda, August 2006.

34.

Interview, unemployed released prisoner, southern Rwanda, August 2006.

35.

Interview, local government official, Huye (Butare), September 2006.

36.

Interview, petty trader, southern Rwanda, May 2006.

37.

For evidence of elite gain at the expense of the rural peasantry, see An Ansoms, ‘Re-engineering rural society: the visions and ambitions of the Rwandan elite’, African Affairs108, 431 (2009), pp. 289–309.

38.

Interview, subsistence farmer, southern Rwanda, July 2006.

39.

Interview, subsistence farmer, southern Rwanda, April 2006.

40.

Interview, NURC official, Kigali, 2006.

41.

Interview, secondary school student, southern Rwanda, July 2006.

42.

Interview, prisoner accused of acts of genocide, southern Rwanda, June 2006.