WHISPERING TRUTH TO POWER: THE

EVERYDAY RESISTANCE OF RWANDAN

PEASANTS TO POST-GENOCIDE
RECONCILIATION
SUSANTHOMSON*
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 mechan-
isms of national unity and reconciliation to be unjust and illegitimate.
Obedience to the dictates of the policy of national unity is frequently tac-
tical, 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 governments 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 governments efforts to control
*Susan Thomson (sthomson@hampshire.edu) is Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in
Contemporary African Politics, School of Critical Social Inquiry, Hampshire College,
Amherst, USA. The author has beneted greatly from comments by Danielle de Lame,
Marie-Eve Desrosiers, Kristina Kyser, Catharine Newbury, two anonymous referees, and the
African Affairs editorial team. For making this publication possible she thanks her Rwandan
research assistants and translators (all of whom requested anonymity), as well as the individ-
uals resident in southern Rwanda who participated in her research.
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.
African Affairs, 110/440, 439456 doi: 10.1093/afraf/adr021
The Author 2011. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of Royal African Society. All rights reserved
Advance Access Publication 17 June 2011
439
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 govern-
ments 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 demon-
strates its unpopularity among individuals at the lowest rungs of
Rwandas socio-economic hierarchy.
4
The signicance of peasants every-
day resistance lies in part in the fact that the RPF stakes its moral legiti-
macy 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
governments claim to legitimate power through its examination of three
types of everyday resistance staying on the sidelines, irreverent compli-
ance 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 poli-
tics in Rwanda and elsewhere toward the multiple and overlapping struc-
tures 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 ve sections. In the rst, I analyse
government claims that it has successfully reconciled Hutu and Tutsi
Rwandans. The second sets out the policy of national unity and reconci-
liation to demonstrate how the government generates compliance while
eliminating non-conformity among Rwandans. Then, in the third section,
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 Rwandas entire population live in rural areas and are con-
sidered 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-identied members of the vulnerable and
poor categories, and taken together these groupings represent approximately 66 percent of
Rwandas peasant population. For more on the governments typology, see Ministry of
Finance and Economic Planning, Economic Development and Poverty Reduction Strategy,
20082012 (MINECONFIN, Kigali, 2007), p. 13. <http://www.minecon.gov.rw/docs/
LatestNews/EDPRS_-_English.pdf> (28 December 2010).
440 AFRICAN AFFAIRS
I set out my theoretical framework for understanding and explaining
everyday acts of resistance. The fourth section explains the research meth-
odology used to gain access to the terribly closed world of Rwandan citi-
zens.
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 Rwandas
admirable recovery from the events of 1994. The post-genocide state,
strong and centralized under the leadership of the RPF, has made signi-
cant 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 accountabil-
ity.
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 Rwandas reconstruction and
reconciliation process.
10
The RPF seeks to dominate all levels of socio-
political life, from the lowest levels of administration to the ofce of the
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. Villaln and Phillip
A. Huxtable (eds), The African State at a Critical Juncture: Between disintegration and recon-
guration (Lynne Rienner, Boulder, CO, 1998), pp. 7591.
8. See the World Banks Worldwide Governance Indicators: 19962008 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-conict Rwanda, European Journal of Development Research 17, 3 (2008),
pp. 495508.
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 Review 53, 1 (2010), pp. 4159; and Filip Reyntjens, Constructing the truth, dealing
WHISPERING TRUTH TO POWER 441
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 per-
ceives 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 govern-
ments 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 politi-
cal 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 legiti-
macy 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 benet most from the post-genocide policies of the RPF.
14
Those who benet 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.
with dissent, domesticating the world: governance in post-genocide Rwanda, African Affairs
110, 438 (2011), pp. 134.
11. For analysis, see Amnesty International, Safer to stay silent: the chilling effect of
Rwandas 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 fteenth 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 conict and convergence
in Rwanda (Working Paper No. 4, MICROCON, Brighton, 2008), p. 15.
442 AFRICAN AFFAIRS
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
unied 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 simplica-
tions: all Tutsi (whether they were in Rwanda during the genocide or
not) are innocent victims or survivors; and all Hutu (whether they par-
ticipated in the genocide or not) are guilty perpetrators. As a result of its
predication on this simplistic dichotomy, Rwandas 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 numer-
ous ways. It encourages collective memory of the genocide through mem-
orial 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 (ag, anthem, and emblem) in 2001 because the existing ones
symbolized the genocide and encouraged an ideology of genocide and
divisionism.
17
As part of Rwandas administrative re-structuring in 2006,
the government changed place names at all administrative levels (from vil-
lages 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 division-
ism 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
15. National Unity and Reconciliation Commission, The Rwanda conict: origin,
development, exit strategies (NURC, Kigali, 2004), pp. 41, 53.
16. Interview, NURC ofcial, Kigali, May 2006.
17. Ibid.
18. Interview, Ministry of Culture ofcial, Kigali, May 2006.
WHISPERING TRUTH TO POWER 443
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, intimi-
dation, even death. This means that survivors (read former Tutsi) and
gnocidaires (read former Hutu) have been cast into the essentialist cat-
egories of victim and killer, and as such have become the protagonists in
the ction of national unity. For example, the policy ofcially substitutes
gnocidaire 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 concilia-
tory, Hutu can in fact participate only as gnocidaires not as victims of the
genocide, of the 19904 civil war, or of the RPF-led revenge attacks
between 1994 and 1996.
20
The ingando re-education camps are central to the governments 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 govern-
ment 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 RPFs vision for creating peace and security. For these
released prisoners, ingando is an alienating, oppressive, and sometimes
humiliating experience that silences dissent.
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 Rwandas gacaca courts, International Journal of Transitional Justice 5, 1 (2001), pp. 1130.
20. For analysis of the RPFs role in the genocide, see Alan J. Kuperman, Provoking gen-
ocide: a revised history of the Rwandan Patriotic Front, Journal of Genocide Research 6, 1
(2004), pp. 6184. 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. 48091.
444 AFRICAN AFFAIRS
The neo-traditional gacaca courts are also key mechanisms in the pro-
motion of the governments vision of national unity and reconciliation.
More than 10,000 individual jurisdictions bring together gnocidaires 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 pro-
motes 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, ones ethnicity individuals may
speak only of being Rwandan. There has been no frank or open discus-
sion of how ethnic categories shaped the violence of the genocide, nor has
there been any ofcial recognition of lived experiences that differ from the
ofcial 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 conict, 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
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 Conict Resolution 16, 4
(1972) pp. 585616; 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).
WHISPERING TRUTH TO POWER 445
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 specic goal. I also argue that everyday resistance, in con-
trast to open resistance, reects 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--vis the state or representa-
tives of its power.
I am not the rst to identify individual acts that qualify as everyday
resistance in Rwanda. For example, African Rights has shown how pea-
sants ignored the orders of elites to burn Tutsi bodies during the geno-
cide. 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 rst is the combi-
nation of persistence, prudence, and individual effort to accomplish a
specic goal. The second is a lack of awareness on the part of the
target the government ofcial or other agent of the state. This choice
25. Lila Abu-Lughod, The romance of resistance: tracing transformations of power
through Bedouin women, American Ethnologist 17, 1 (1990), pp. 4155; and Sherry
B. Ortner, Resistance and the problem of ethnographic refusal, Comparative Studies in
Society and History 37, 1 (1995), pp. 17393.
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. 31131; Alison Des Forges, edited by David Newbury, Defeat is the
Only Bad News: Rwanda under Musinga, 18961931 (University of Wisconsin Press,
Madison, WI, 2011); Timothy Longman, Genocide and socio-political change: massacres
in two Rwandan villages, Issue: A Journal of Opinion 23, 2 (1995), pp. 1821; 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. 193219.
446 AFRICAN AFFAIRS
to keep targets in the dark reects 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
nal quality is benet to the resister. This gain may be long-term as
in obtaining qualication 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 ofcial will inevitably ensure her
future compliance. For the gacaca sessions that she avoids, however,
she has successfully practised everyday resistance. If too many individ-
uals practise everyday resistance in the same way, the local ofcial 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 ofcial. The
survivor may choose to avoid gacaca trials as a mode of self-protection
while the returnee ofcial 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 lifes daily challenges. Since individ-
uals 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
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.
WHISPERING TRUTH TO POWER 447
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 reconci-
liation 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 method-
ology 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 ofcials 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 approxi-
mately 400 Rwandans from across the country through participant obser-
vation meaning spontaneous, casual conversation in the course of
everyday life on the themes of national unity, justice, peace and reconci-
liation. My semi-structured interviews with state authorities, from
members of the Senate and Ofce of the President down to local ofcials,
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 identied
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
specic place or community names. This is to respect the condentiality
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
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 eth-
nicity 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 Review 53, 3 (2010), pp. 1934.
448 AFRICAN AFFAIRS
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 reconcilia-
tion 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 governments rhetoric about the
utility of the policy of national unity and reconciliation in delivering
peace, justice, and reconciliation to Rwandans is not reected in the lived
reality of the populace.
I learned in the course of my interviews with Rwandan elites and ordin-
ary folks alike that there are three categories of people who speak out
against government policy or openly defy the directives of government
ofcials, two of which are relevant to the aims of this article. The rst 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 rst 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 specic 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 rst 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 poss-
ible to stay on the sidelines to avoid too much trouble with the local auth-
orities. 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 ofcial] doesnt
WHISPERING TRUTH TO POWER 449
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 ofcial.
The best strategy is to avoid the authorities. When you see them, they make demands for
reconciliation. [My ofcial] 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 [nancial] support. It is
hard to ask for help when I prefer not to speak with my local ofcial 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 govern-
ment for its lack of fairness. If we could all just get along, I know we could nd 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 pol-
itical 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
ow 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 geno-
cide 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 ofcials think we
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 sub-
stantive focus to comply with the new regulations. This puts organizations that work for the
rights of Twa people in the difcult 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 poli-
tics of exclusion in post-genocide Rwanda: the case of the Batwa, Democratization 2011; 18,
2, pp. 490511.
32. Interview, subsistence farmer, southern Rwanda, May 2006.
33. Interview, day labourer, southern Rwanda, August 2006.
450 AFRICAN AFFAIRS
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 deter-
mining how and when to engage their local ofcials 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 ofcial, 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 incommensu-
rate 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 cant 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, umu-
ganda community work days, and gacaca justice trials) prevent them from
tending their elds 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 difculties 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 ofcial 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
dont ask for permission, we just do it and hope that our efforts wont 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 ofcial who benets.
38
34. Interview, unemployed released prisoner, southern Rwanda, August 2006.
35. Interview, local government ofcial, 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 Affairs
108, 431 (2009), pp. 289309.
38. Interview, subsistence farmer, southern Rwanda, July 2006.
WHISPERING TRUTH TO POWER 451
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 ones quality of life despite govern-
ment 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 com-
plicated. 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 irrever-
ent 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 ofcials 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 com-
pliance: they attend the mandatory meetings but let ofcials 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 ofcials make on all
aspects of the policy of national unity and reconciliation: Oh yes, when
[the local ofcial] 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 Esthers act of irreverent compliance may appear to have accom-
plished very little, on closer examination it becomes clear that her tactics
exploit one of the most vexing insecurities faced by local government of-
cials in post-genocide Rwanda. As individuals who exercise their authority
39. Interview, subsistence farmer, southern Rwanda, April 2006.
452 AFRICAN AFFAIRS
through fear, local ofcials expect a certain measure of deference and
compliance. Indeed, the power and authority of local ofcials is reinforced
through a strong central government, which makes acts of vocal disrespect
like Esthers all the more revealing. Esthers act situates her on a very ne
line between the insubordination that could bring down harsh punish-
ment on her head and the compliance that would efface her own subjec-
tivity and opinions. By attending the mandatory ceremony, she remains a
law-abiding citizen, but by expressing her contempt she subtly under-
mines the process. Her act brings irony to the ction of the governments
policy; her laugh belies the popular unity on which the governments
claims for success are based.
The compliance of many peasant Rwandans is an indicator of the sys-
temic forms of structural violence to which local ofcials subject them in
the name of national unity and reconciliation. Acts of irreverent compli-
ance 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 deter-
mination, even in the presence of local ofcials, 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 ofcials 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 ofcials. 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 con-
sciousness 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
40. Interview, NURC ofcial, Kigali, 2006.
WHISPERING TRUTH TO POWER 453
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. Trsor, a 16-year-old Tutsi
boy, described the purpose of withdrawn muteness as a tactic that sabo-
tages the efforts of local ofcials to promote reconciliation among peasant
Rwandans: Remaining silent is very rewarding because it angers local
ofcials. They ask if we are stupid. They ask why we are so difcult. That
is the point. When he [the local ofcial] gets mad, I smile inside. The
ofcials make us get reconciled but I just want to be left alone. Being
silent is a good way to avoid the difculties of life since the genocide.
Silence helps us do that in ways that make sense to us, not to local
ofcials.
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
full their travaux dintrt gnral (works in the general interest, or TIG)
obligations in exchange for serving their time in connement. For
example, Jean-Bosco, a 42-year-old imprisoned Hutu, shared that he
nds 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 dont 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 ofcials] exaggerated about the right to live at home while perform-
ing TIG. I shouldnt 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 full 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
41. Interview, secondary school student, southern Rwanda, July 2006.
42. Interview, prisoner accused of acts of genocide, southern Rwanda, June 2006.
454 AFRICAN AFFAIRS
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-Boscos acts are limited, indi-
vidual, and border on resignation; they reveal a poignant and meaningful
element of the concept of everyday resistance awareness of the oppres-
sive elements of TIG activities that are upheld by local ofcials 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 Rwandas most marginal cat-
egories, 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 ofcials 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 reconcilia-
tion. This article also shows how subtle, indirect, and non-confrontational
acts of everyday resistance reect individual understanding of the oper-
ation 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 oppo-
sition and struggle within the policy of national unity and reconciliation.
Speaking of everyday resistance does more than show the creativity, inge-
nuity, 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 resist-
ance 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
WHISPERING TRUTH TO POWER 455
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 oppo-
site. 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 inten-
sify 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. Identication of the individual acts of everyday resistance of
the most marginal in a stratied 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.
456 AFRICAN AFFAIRS
Royal African Society 2011. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. Copyright of
African Affairs is the property of Royal African Society and its content may not be copied or emailed to
multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users
may print, download, or email articles for individual use.