Women's Transformative Voices Within The Literature Bearing Witness To The Genocide Against The Tutsi in Rwanda

Womens Transformative Voices Within the Literature Bearing Witness
to the Genocide Against the Tutsi in Rwanda
Alexandre Dauge-Roth
Abstract
This article explores various cultural and political challenges that women survivors of the
genocide against the Tutsi face as they bear witness. As they craft new social spaces and political
venues within post-genocide Rwanda to voice their sufferings and demands, women survivors
must not only overcome personal, cultural, and traumatic blockages. Gender dynamics and
cultural expectations play an additional role in their abilities to craft their responses to the
genocides traumatic aftermath. Since the vast majority of Tutsi women who survived the
genocide are widows or orphans who suffered various forms of sexual violence, their testimonies
are socially disturbing as they transgress cultural taboos. Thus, in order to testify, women
survivors have claimed unprecedented roles in the present responses to the genocides aftermath.
It is only by re-envisioning women survivors social place, voice, and agency that their
testimonies can fulfill their transformative potential within Rwandas national reunification
process and alleviate the cultural trauma that keeps so many survivors in self-destructive silence.
Keywords: Rwanda, Genocide, Testimony, Reunification, Women, Survivors, Renewal
The International Journal of Conflict & Reconciliation

Spring 2017, Volume 3 Number 1
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With such losses, who am I? From this date and
these dates on, one had to relearn how to live, to
dream differently, to start anew. But who was going
to start all over, from where and with what? To start
anew in the emptiness, in the existential void, in the
street, in a roving life. That is what awaited us. To
live and to think only through the prism of this
drama whose consequences we still endure? From
that moment forward, the past was going to be more
present than the present itself. The atrocious death
of our loved ones was going to be the source of
inspiration for our life plans.
(Berthe Kayitesi, 2009:62)1
For Rwandan women who survived the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi, bearing witness cannot
be reduced to a personal endeavor or a therapeutic quest, nor can it be solely envisioned as a duty
to remember that would leave the present state of Rwandas society unquestioned. The act of
testifying represents a social and cultural performance of survival that potentially transforms the
survivor as much as her community of listeners and readers. In addition, bearing witness to
sexual violence that is a cultural taboo while negotiating a new sense of self within ones
community does not happen without generating tensions and conflicts. This is especially true in
Rwanda when it comes to reconciling womens social role with personal, collective, and national
memories. This uneasiness surrounding the place, nature, and scope of the violence that women
survivors of the genocide against the Tutsi embody transpires in the very titles of testimonies
written by those who went through the abyss and witnessed gendered forms of violence: Dont
Be Afraid to Know (Mukagasana 1999), The Wounds of Silence (Mukagasana 2001), We Still
Exist (Kayitesi 2004) or Stphanies Flower. Rwanda Between Reconciliation and Denial
(Mujawayo 2006).2
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In the case of the genocide against the Tutsi of Rwanda, it is remarkable to note that the
testimonial literature published in French and in English is predominantly written by women
survivors. The testimonies of Yolande Mukagasana (1997,1999, 2001), Esther Mujawayo (2004,
2006), Yannick Kayitesi (2004), Berthe Kayitesi (2009), and in the United States, of Immacule
Ilibagiza (2007), to name a few, have been among the most well-known.3 Striking in the
narrative choices made by these authors is their reluctance to privilege historical and political
explanations or to adopt a rhetorical framework that would subsume their personal trajectory to
an official history lesson where gender issues would be eclipsed. In addition to sharing a
fragmented, associative, and polyvocal esthetic, their testimonies privilege the social nexus and
family tapestry that the genocide annihilated as well as the ongoing challenges that women
survivors continue to face as many have been widowed and more than a quarter million have
suffered sexual violence (Nowrojee 1996, Williamson 2014). While these women seek to voice
their past experiences and aspire to a new sense of self, Rwandas rapidly changing society is not
always willing to listen to the traumatic and divisive past to which they bear witness. This social
indifference is often a source of additional trauma, as survivors find themselves unable to fulfill
their duty to remember, to pursue their quest for justice, or to cope with their trauma in a socially
accepted fashion and at a desired pace. Paralleling Thomas Keenan's view on the issue of social
recognition of the AIDS crisis when discussing Kai Eriksons concept of community trauma, in
post-genocide Rwanda as well one can state the existence of a double trauma generated by the
unwillingness to listen: On the one hand, theres a cataclysmic event, which produces symptoms
and calls for testimony. And then it happens again, when the value of the witness and the

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testimony is denied, and theres no one to hear the account, no one to attempt to respondnot
simply to the event but to its witness as well (2014:114-115).
Intimately linked to the possibility of facing ones traumatic past is the ability for
survivors to inscribe it within a personal and collective narrative to make it audible to themselves
and their community. This process holds for the survivor the potentialbut never the
assuranceof envisioning her past from a certain distance while simultaneously gaining social
recognition for her ability to live with the genocides visible and psychological scars. In
Unclaimed Experience. Trauma, Narrative, and History, Cathy Caruth emphasizes the crucial
negotiation between the personal and the collective relationship to a traumatic past as follows:
The belated experience of trauma . . . suggests that history is not only the passing on of a crisis
but also the passing on of a survival that can only be possessed within a history larger than any
single individual . . . (1996:71). For testimony to achieve its transformative potential, then, it is
crucial that a post-genocide society envisions testimonies as a social practice that engages not
only survivors, but Rwandan society as a whole in order to establish an inclusive and mutually
affirming dialogue between the various memories, sufferings, and demands that co-exist within
the national reunification process.4
Because women survivors bear witness to some of the most violent facets of genocidal
ideology, they find themselves in the necessity to transgress cultural taboos surrounding
sexuality and abuse in order to be heard. Thus, they frequently face gendered forms of
censorshipboth self-imposed and collectively drivenas their testimonies disturb the
prevailing social order. In the very first pages of her testimony, Mujawayo highlights the

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reluctance she often faces when trying to inscribe the ongoing challenges of the traumatic
violence of the genocide into a shared space of dialoguesignaling to her readers upfront the
necessity to explore a different reading pact and embrace a new set of expectations when
listening to survivors like her:
I can tell you, in one sentence, why, as survivors, we remained silent after the
genocide: we could feel that we were a disturbing presence. People could not
stand to listen, it was too much for them. Too much what, I dont know. You
start to tell your story, you go on, and they refuse to listen, and this is terrible.
They say: It is too horrible. They say: It is too much, too much . . . . It is
too much for whom? It is too much for me or for you who listens? (2004:20)
In other words, negotiating the possibility of enunciating such a traumatic past in a
transformative manner cannot be confined to the private realm or limited to the psychological
resilience and narrative ability of women survivors. It is a process that requires the co-ownership
of their interlocutors and a socio-political eagerness to acknowledge the unique and often
disturbing needs and demands voiced by genocide survivors. As delegates of their respective
communities, who often were not willing to hear their stories at the time, listeners too must
reconsider the role they ought to play, today, within the testimonial encounter. As Shoshana
Felman states, the listening community must be aware that to bear witness is thus always more
than simply to narrate or report a fact or an event . . . ; it is always a use of memory or of ones
experience in order to address another. This capacity to address is very importantit is an
appeal to another, to other human beings, and more generally, an appeal to a community (quoted

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in Caruth 2014:322). For testimonies to be heard, circulate, and actualize their transformative
potential, the various listening communities need to overcome their desire to silence survivors
appeals when their words depart from their expectations, express sensitive political demands, or
transgress cultural norms.
Throughout Rwanda today, survivors continue to forge listening communities where their
interlocutors, rather than interrupting them, are being interrupted by victims who seek to gain a
legitimate voice within the ongoing dialogues through which social memory and belonging are
shaped. It is only through the emergence of this new ethic of listening that survivors will find
means to alleviate the haunting grip that keeps so many of them confined in a self-destructive
loneliness and exiled within their own society. In her 2014 testimony, Elise Rida Musomandera
poignantly captures this alienating dynamic of being alive while frequently feeling locked up in
the traumatic past of the genocide: Survival, in itself, is combat. Survivors are not heroes
because they were able to escape death but rather because they can support the act of living
afterwards, of witnessing the consequences of genocide. We are the living witnesses of the lost,
incapable of separating ourselves from them; we, the survivors, are the dead resurfaced
(2014:79).5 For these women, bearing witness therefore always represents altogether a tribute to
the dead, a means to reassert the failure of the genocidal project that aimed to annihilate them,
and a performance of political and existential survival within their present community.
While all stress the duty to be faithful to the genocides memory and to honor those who
were killed, all survivors equally assert the necessity to no longer be solely defined by the
genocides legacy and its corrosive and often shameful imprint. Musomanderas testimony

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expresses as follows the conflicting dynamics she needs to reconcile within herself as she
confronts her past and seeks to alleviate its haunting legacy:
My ears still can hear their hateful screams; they still hear the noise of the bones
cut by their machetes; my nose still smells the dead. . . . I will never get tired of
bearing witness. (2014:16-17)
To forget, to forgive, to live, to survive, verbs that I need to conjugate at all the
tenses and modes, voluntarily or by necessity. . . . I need to forget the past, the
past that continues to make me tremble, the past that is part of me while I, I do no
longer want to be part of it. (2014:79)
Fully aware that she can not simply turn the page of her traumatic past and repress it without
self-destructive consequences, Musomandera openly confronts through her writing the
destabilizing forces and harsh realities she needs to negotiate as an orphan of the genocide. As
the haunting power of the dead and the killing she witnessed recurrently resurface within her
present, she continually explores strategies to face the traumatic legacy of genocide so that she
does not drift away from the present and find herself sucked, once again, into the abyss. For her,
bearing witness constitutes a vital counterpoint to the genocides obliteration and one of the
pillars of her resilience. The long process of writing and rewriting The Book of lise constitutes
as such a transformative endeavor that has opened an inner and public space of dialogue through
which Musomandera confronts, on her own terms, the traumatic grip of genocidal violence, the
legacy of her decimated family, the fight against impunity, and the quest for justice within a

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society that, too often, seeks to turn the page of the divisive past she embodies.
In the case of women survivors, in addition to their function as a reminder of a divisive
past, several other factors contribute to their silencing within local communities. Among them, I
will briefly discuss the social humiliation of having been sexually assaulted and the cultural
interpretation of recurrent nightmares as a symptom of being haunted by evil spirits. As Susanne
Buckley-Zistel (2006) highlights in her study of chosen amnesia as a strategy for local
coexistence in post-genocide Rwanda, the cultural shame surrounding sexual abuse and rape led
many to adopt a self-imposed amnesia with the hope that this form of censorship would impede
their social rejection as women due to the stigma that sexual violence imposes on victims.
According to a 2004 report from Amnesty International, it is estimated that a quarter of a million
women who survived the genocide against the Tutsi were raped and, according to Rwandan
womens organizations such as AVEGA Agahozo (Association des Veuves du Gnocide dAvril)6
and Pro-Femmes Twese Hamwe,7 that 80 to 90 percent of women who survived the genocide
were sexually abused. These high numbers result from the gendered hatred instilled over the
years by the Hutupower ideology that stereotyped Tutsi women as arrogant, thinking themselves
too beautiful for Hutu men, and looking down upon them. Tutsi women were also cast as
untrustworthy and RPF spies, allegedly using their charms to seduce Westerners and Hutu
politicians (Holmes 2014).8 As one Tutsi woman quoted by Llezlie Green highlights, Rape
served to shatter these images by humiliating, degrading, and ultimately destroying the Tutsi
women (2002:747). In their study of women who survived after having been raped during the
genocide in Rwanda, Donatilla Mukamana and Anthony Collins (2006) highlight the

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psychological and social long-term consequences of the stigma that rape carries for these
survivors as follows:
. . . for a woman, being raped involves the loss of many things, such as the
loss of control over her body and the loss of her dignity and value. To be a
woman in Rwandan society implies respect from all members of the
community to which the woman is a part. Unfortunately, during the 1994
genocide . . . women were humiliated by public rape, which was carried out in
the community by those people who were supposed to respect them, such as
neighbors and children. (2006:149)
If the voices of these women survivors are also repressed, it is in part because they are the
symptom of a cultural trauma that requires social and cultural changes in order to engage in a
process of peace and reconciliation that does not rely on a culture of silence for survivors. As
Stevan Weine stresses in Testimony After Catastrophe, If there is no testimony, no storytelling,
no open entre of survivors stories into culture, then what kind of cultural change can there be?
(2006:130). The necessity of cultural transformations to allow survivors to bear witness to their
ongoing trauma is also highlighted in Marie-Odile Godards analysis of the socio-cultural
interpretations of dreams and nightmares in post-genocide Rwanda (2003). First she highlights
that the former society and its ritualized forms of interactionsfrom greeting neighbors to
evening discussion or wakeare no longer possible for many survivors as the vast majority of
their relatives have been wiped out, and that a climate of mutual suspicion prevails in many
communities. Furthermore, it is not only the Rwandan social fabric and modes of socialization

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that have been obliterated and perverted by genocidal ideology and the aftermath of the killings.
The cultural importance and understanding of dreams and nightmares have been equally affected,
requiring new interpretative frameworks to make the traumatic suffering and losses of survivors
socially audible both to themselves and their community.
In her chapter Dreaming in Rwanda, Godard stresses the urgency to reconsider the pre-
genocide belief that bad spirits called Abazimu are responsible for nightmares. In Rwandan
culture, the Abazimu embody the angry spirits of the dead who have not been honored properly
or avenged, or have departed without posterity. Expressing a form of bad consciousness,
Abazimu haunt the living and function as a culturally significant reminder of the broken promises
or injustices toward the dead. Fundamentally, they force people and communities to evaluate the
resonance that the past shall have within the present and which continuities or ruptures shall
occur in the transmission of history from generation to generation. As many survivors were not
only traumatized by the atrocities they suffered, but also felt guilty for not having buried in
dignity their relatives and in many cases even totally ignoring their fate, many suffer recurring
nightmares. When they attempted to explain the persistence of these nightmares, many believed
themselves to be victims of the Abazimu unleashed by genocide massacres, haunted by these
spirits who were demanding justice. However, this attempt to make sense culturally of the
symptom of traumatic condition through the Abazimu created unforeseen consequences for
survivors. Many found themselves accused by religious authorities of being possessed by Satan
since Abazimu are evil spirits and told that their refusal to forgive perpetrators was linked to their
inability to fight Abazimus influence. As Godard demonstrates, this cultural and religious

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interpretation of Abazimu led to new forms of self-censorship, self-shaming, and ultimately
additional suffering for survivors (128-133). The unprecedented numbers of traumatized people
in post-genocide Rwanda demanded a challenge to the cultural patterns equating the origin of
nightmares with the Abazimu in order to counter the belief that survivors were under a satanic
spella perception that contributed to additional suffering, social exclusions, and the imposition
of a culture of silence for survivors. Without this shift within the dominant culture, the cultural
trauma that characterized post-genocide Rwanda could not have been addressed and
nightmares envisioned as a psychological process of the mind to cope with post-traumatic loss
when no words can express ones incommensurable pain.9
Since a vast number of Tutsi survivors are widows, orphans, and rape survivors, their
testimonies not only honor the memory of the dead but also carry a socially transformative
impetus since their former lifestyle, family network, gendered identity, and cultural framework
have been destroyed by the genocide. Berthe Kayitesi, an orphan of the genocide, asks: With
such losses, who am I? From this date and these dates on, one had to relearn how to live, to
dream differently, to start anew. But who was going to start all over, from where and with what?
(2009:62). For survivors, bearing witness constitutes, then, an attempt to embrace a new sense of
self and an opportunity to explore new cultural norms and social roles as women within post-
genocide Rwanda:
April 2004, ten years later. Ten years later, and finally the beginning. Yes, but
the beginning of what? The beginning of living again? Finally? Moving from
the condemnation of being alive . . . to the choice of living, this is the path that

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I have traveled during these last ten years. (Mujawajo 2004:42)10
In this quest leading to the choice of living, it is crucial to recognize that many women who are
destitute widows or have been sexually abused face numerous forms of cultural discrimination,
social rejection, and political pressure to forgive and embrace the politics of national
reconciliation. In this specific context, in order to overcome this condemnation of being alive
and of being, to some extent, socially dead, it is crucial for women survivors to forge new
communities and networks of solidarity in order to overcome their feelings of mistrust in others
and the guilt of being alive while their children and relatives were killed.
Among the social challenges that women survivors face in their desire to bear witness is
the gendered convention that it is a mans prerogative alone to speak in public and to pass on the
family history. The fact that the vast majority of the survivors of the genocide against the Tutsi
are women has contributed to redefine their public role within post-genocide Rwanda when it
comes to passing on the family or the genocides history. Antoinette, a Tutsi woman who
survived the 1994 massacres, highlights this issue as she explains why she wanted to testify
within the project Voices of Rwanda.11 The necessity of a preliminary explanation indicates that
the sole fact of being a survivor is not sufficient criteria for a woman to be considered a
legitimate speaker. While her preamble signals that her testimony might be culturally seen as an
audacious move, it also performatively redefines the cultural voice and role of women regarding
the remembrance of the genocide and who is allowed to voice the demands of its haunting
legacy:

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Its not important to withhold anything from what I will say because this is
what happened. Because, if I say that it should be hidden, it would be like
denying the genocide. And right now . . . I think the reason that I have strength
to talk is If I die without telling my story here, my lineage will be snuffed
out. Do you understand? I am the sole survivor. So if I die, at least the history
of the surviving member of the family will be preserved. Thats what I hope
for. Thats also why it is going to be difficult for me. But I will do it. . . . The
one who was telling stories was my Dad, but they killed him and my siblings.
That means if I keep it to myself, it will disappear forever. And the name of
our family will disappear. I would like to ask you a favor, for me. This video
you are making of my testimony . . . this is the first thing I can do to help my
future child [who] will be able to watch this, and learn about our history.
(Antoinette, Voices of Rwanda)12
Antoinettes decision to record her story represents both the fulfillment of a promise to the dead
and a cultural transgression of the gender roles she grew up with. It is therefore crucial to keep in
mind that bearing witness for women survivors represents not only a form of duty to remember
the dead, but, equally important, a transformative departure from the gendered expectations
defining public speaking and womens positionality within post-genocide Rwanda.
Jonathan Torgovniks documentary project Intended Consequences (2008) constitutes
another remarkable example of a testimonial enterprise that calls for new cultural norms and
forms of understanding in the aftermath of the genocide. As it confers a salutary cultural

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visibility to women who had children as a result of being raped during the genocide, Intended
Consequences advocates for the transformative power of testimony as a cultural means to
renegotiate social norms and gender expectations in post-genocide Rwanda. By giving a voice to
women who cannot hide the fact that they were victims of sexual violence used as a weapon of
war, Intended Consequences seeks to force a discussion on the cultural taboo that surrounds the
10,000 children who were born as a result of genocidal rape.13 Such enterprises are crucial not
only because they undo the silencing injunctions through which communities seek to confine the
disturbing experiences to which genocide survivors bear witness but also, as Shoshana Felman
highlights, because a victim of traumatic violence is by definition not only one who is
oppressed but also one who has no language of his own, one who, quite precisely, is robbed of a
language with which to articulate his or her victimization . . . . Since history by definition
silences the victim, the reality of degradation and of suffering are intrinsically inaccessible to
history (2002:125). Furthermore, Intended Consequences highlights the struggles, courage, and
resilience of these women who, more than anyone else, embody in the most intimate way the
demanding path that can potentially lead to personal and collective reconciliation and renewal.
They do so by overcoming the ideological perversion and violence that intended for them to hate
themselves and precipitated them to become shameful mothers who resented their children. One
of the thirty women featured in Intended Consequences is Odette. She was a junior in secondary
school at the time of the genocide. During several months, she was held captive and repeatedly
raped. Here is how she reflects on who she is and her relationship to her son Martin more then a
decade after the genocide:

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I dont think I am a mother. I dont think I am a girl. I am something in-
between, something I dont know. Because a mother must have a home, I
dont have a home. A girl doesnt have a child, I have a child. I started
loving Martin when I went to school and studied psychology. Thats when I
knew that this kid of mine needs a lot of attention. Then I tried to shift, to
remove the hatred and turn it into love. The adults who were raped when they
were mothers, they give me courage to live. The biggest challenge for me and
for them is losing dignity. The challenge is always fighting within yourself to
recognize that you were supposed to be this, now you are this. You have lost
value in a way. (Odette, Intended Consequences)14
Having become mothers as minors following a rape, women like Odette feel they can no longer
conform to social expectations or participate in the cultural reproduction of social groups and
expectations. Their rape propels them into a traumatic stage and socially uncharted territories.
Many must find the means to overcome the segregation to which they are subjected within their
own communities, where they are commonly perceived either as a threat to existing social norms
or as a source of shame and humiliation for their families.
After having been dehumanized by the Hutu power propaganda as invasive cockroaches
or treacherous snakes to justify their extermination, many women survivors explore, through
testimony, ways of creating vital spaces of support, encounter, and recognition within their
communities. Womens testimonies express both a psychological need and a political will that
seeks to break the loneliness, suspicion, hatred, and exclusion so many women survivors face in

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post-genocide Rwanda. At stake in their effort to undo the social status quo are the social
responsiveness and the political will to acknowledge survivors demands for spaces through
which their experiences of loss, rape, and being left alive contaminated with HIV can become
audible, both to themselves and their interlocutors. It is only through the emergence of such
venues of dialogue that new forms of belonging can be negotiated and demands for cultural
change initiated. Being able to find such spaces where survivors can voice their past experience
and current challenges is an essential step that has allowed many to move away from a position
of victim and to reclaim a sense of agency, of having a voice and a choice. Meanwhile, one
should not undermine the demands that the reconciliation process imposes on women survivors
as they are the ones who are asked to make significant social concessions and cope
psychologically with the compromises they are required to make. As Domitilla, who was
executive director of the Gacaca courts highlights: We are demanding a lot of the victims: to be
patient, to handle their trauma and feelings, to coexist again with their perpetrators We believe
it is somehow too much, especially in comparison with the concessions that we made to the
perpetrators . . . But we have no choice (quoted in Mujawayo 2006:216-217).
One of the crucial spaces that was created by women survivors to negotiate the possibility
of personal reconciliation during the immediate aftermath of the genocide and during the politic
of national reconciliation and transitional justice implemented by the Rwandan government after
2005 was AVEGA, a non-governmental organization that counts 25,000 members today. Created
immediately after the end of the genocide, AVEGA provides widows and orphans psychological
and medical care, justice and advocacy services and socio-economic support. Tutsi and Hutu

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widows created this organization in the months following the genocide as an ersatz for their
obliterated families and a venue for forging new solidarities. As widows were forced to embrace
unprecedented social roles to survive and regain a sense of self and belief in a future for which
nothing prepared them, associations such as AVEGA played a role that cannot be undermined.
These associations offered to many women a safe space where they could speak without being
judged, realize that they were not alone in their attempt to overcome the guilt, and overcome the
shame of the irremediable losses and humiliations they suffered. Mujawayo, one of the founding
members of AVEGA, describes its transformative role as follows:
We cannot be widows like others. Our specificity is not to be envied. We have
to rebuild our homes. We have to rebuild our hearts and bodies. We have to
reinvent a family. Mothers who have lost everything have to relearn to be mothers
for children who have lost everything.... For all these reasons, we cannot be
widows like others and we decided to create Avega, Agahozo in September
1994. (2004:76-77)
The challenges for women survivors are tremendous since they speak and write from a position
that requires them to craft their testimony both within and against the vacuum generated by the
loss of their relatives, the collapse of their former sense of self, the shame and humiliation they
experienced, and the cultural disconnectedness of their experiences. In this particular context of
enunciation defined by loneliness, trauma, and stigma, bearing witnessbe it orally, or through
writing and filmingfunctions as a call for as well as a performance of remembrance, mourning,
and affirmation of being alive and reclaiming an agency.

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To conclude, I would like to discuss how women survivors respond to the political
injunction to contribute positively to Rwandas reconciliation and renewal while
acknowledging that this desire does not equate to turn the page or forgive. The second part
of Mujawayos testimony, Stphanies Flower (2006), entitled Words of Reconcilers, offers
some insight into what this collective endeavor concretely means in todays Rwanda. In this
section, the author focuses on the stories and words of women survivors who are fully implicated
in the reconciliation process. Among them are Thophila, who decided to oversee perpetrators
and detainees assigned to community work (TIG Travaux dIntrt Gnral) with the hope that
by embracing dialogue rather than conflict she might overcome her feelings of revenge that
maintained her being trapped in the past; Josphine, who works in prisons to encourage
perpetrators to confess their crimes, accelerate their release, and embrace Rwandas reunification
process rather then perpetuating resentment and hatred; Odette, who has been elected to the
appeal court within the Gacaca judicial system that litigates genocide crimes and had to develop
a neutral view despite being constantly reemerged in the traumatic past of the genocide hearing
after hearing; and Stphanie, who joined the British NGO Oxfam to be trained in conflict
resolution and lead peace and development workshops among Rwandans in a post-genocide
society.
For Mujawayo and most of these women who survived the genocide and lost the majority
of their relatives, engaging in the reconciliation process and closely working with perpetrators
means that, one more time, survivors are asked to make the impossible happen politically,
socially, and psychologically:

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When you sense that society wants to close the heavy chapter of the genocide,
sometimes impatiently, you understand that the survivors will remain on the
sidelines. You then ask yourself: and in all this, how I am going to position
myself? Stay aside and contemplate, like a spectator, what is done and what is
at play? Anyway, as a survivor, you have nothing to lose Thus, instead of
being subjected to this exclusion, you decide to become an acting victim
[une victime agissante]. (2006:207)
Nonetheless, behind this willingness to reclaim ones agency within the reconciliation process,
Mujawayo raises the following concern: what is the psychological price these women will
ultimately pay when opting to live in daily proximity with perpetrators? They take the crazy
chance to get closer to these others who wanted our death. But who gets closer to them?
(2007:211) she asks. What is at stake here for many survivors is the refusal to die a second time
by being socially smothered and remaining silent within the current process of social and
political renewal that is not immune to selective forms of amnesia and deafness when it comes to
needs and claims of women survivors. Ingrid, a rape survivor and member of AVEGA, puts it in
the following terms: We are determined to retain the little dignity left us by the humiliation
from rape. We cannot live on assistance, because those who raped us and killed our relatives
would be happy to see us impoverished and suffering (quoted in Mukamana and Collins
2006:160). One of the major shifts that occurred after 1994 resides precisely in the social and
cultural negotiations triggered by women to redefine their agency. As such, women who found
and continue to find the means to bear witness to their survival and to voice the ongoing

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challenges they face as widows, orphans, single mothers, and survivors of sexual violence play a
highly transformative role, as they contribute to the emergence of social forums where gendered
expectations and norms within post-genocide Rwanda can be redefined as culturally acceptable.
Demographic factors also play an important role in the assessment of the transformative
power of testimonies written by women survivors and the pressure that they face to turn the
page. First, these women survivors represent a very small percentage of the overall
populationaround 1 percentand do not constitute a unified political group nor are they part
of one single organization that could defend their needs and claims. Second, it is vital to
acknowledge the numerous socio-economic entities that compose Rwandas society today in
order to avoid the trap of a dualistic vision or generalizations based on ethnicity and gender. In
addition to the small percentage of Tutsi survivors are the Tutsi who came back from exile in
Europe or neighboring countries, those who fought in the ranks of the Rwandan Patriotic Front,
the few Hutu who saved lives and opposed Hutupower ideology, the large number of perpetrators
released from prison since 2003, and the one million Hutu who, after their flight to Congo at the
end of the genocide, came back to Rwanda. Moreover, the population of Rwanda has doubled
since the genocide to more than 12 million people in 2014, creating a socio-economic divide
between Kigali and the rest of the country where more than 90% of the population lives. Even
more significantly when considering issues of social memory pertaining to the genocide and the
comprehension of survivors needs, more than 50% of the population today was born after
1994.15 All these socio-demographic factors highlight the diversity of views, needs, and
expectations that co-exist and compete within Rwanda today. The fact that women survivors

20
constitute such a small minority only accentuates the resistance and disbelief their demands often
encounter. The vast majority of the population cannot fathom the traumatic violence these
women survived and there is a prevailing tendency to dismiss, two decades after the genocide,
their ongoing struggles as they continue to cope with the haunting past of the genocide.
For women survivors, then, bearing witness requires from them engagement in a
polemical dialogue with competing discourses that instituteat a communal, national, and
international levelthe dominant representations of the genocide and the demands of its
aftermath. While some survivors can embrace these official representations, others reject them as
they constitute in their views forms of denial or require impossible compromises. If it is crucial
to take into account these polemical dialogues and gendered issues in our understanding of what
is at stake in the act of testifying for Rwandan women, it is because these very dialogues shape
and legitimize the categories, narrative patterns, expected cultural norms, and historical
references through which a traumatic history can gain visibility and social recognition.
Furthermore, even before a survivor can speak, the conditions in which she is invited to do so
must be negotiated within a community to ensure that she will be heard and that her demands
stand a chance to be met. In other words, what agency and means are the Rwandan society
willing to give women survivors, knowing that their stories are fundamentally disturbing,
disruptive and challenging to the cultural norms and priorities of the majority? This is why it is
essential for women survivors to find social and political responses to their desire to be heard
when bearing witness. The progressive ability to overcome the memory of having been forced to
behave in a shameful and inhuman manner in order to survive can only be achieved if there is a

21
non-alienating dynamic between their personal memories and the official memory that is
currently taking shape in Rwanda.
In their attempt to re-envision and to reassert themselves through testimony, women
survivors move from a position of being subjected to political violence to a position that offers
the promise of agency and the possibility of crafting the meaning of who they are and assessing
their needs. To bear witness, therefore, is to generate a social space within which survivors can
negotiate and, eventually, reclaim on their own terms the meaning and means of their survival.
The gesture of passing on their pain and the deaths of those who were at the heart of their social
identities becomes one of the possible affirmations of their survival. In these womens accounts,
it is not the voice of a single survivors testimony that we indirectly witness, but rather the
polemical dialogue that women survivors engage in within various communities of interest in
order to gain social recognition and renew a feeling of belonging, of being alive, and for some, of
being able, once again, to give life.
As such, their testimonies are remarkable not only because they maintain the memory of
the dead and the past present, but also because they bear witness to the multiple ways women
survivors negotiate the constraining contexts that define the personal and social resonance of the
genocide and the demands that living with their ongoing trauma imposes. Through their act of
witnessing, these women, in addition to offering a memorial to their relatives, simultaneously
open cultural spaces to voice their experiences and forge the possibility of their social
recognition despite the highly disturbing past they embody. If we believe with Terry Tempest
Williams in Finding Beauty in A Broken World, that a mosaic is a conversation between what is

22
broken, (2009:20) the testimonies of these women remind us that to bury the dead is not an
ending, but that we honor the departed through the dialogues they generate among us, the living.
Notes
23
1
For all quotes from Demain ma vie / Tomorrow my Life, the translation is mine. I dedicate
this article to the loving memory of Berthe Kayitesi who died suddenly on June 23, 2015 in
Canada. Thank you for all you taught me over the years. It has been a privilege and honor to
discover Rwandas culture, people and histories with you. Your generosity, attentiveness to
others needs and laughter will be sorely missed. Thanks to the many lives you have enriched and
transformed, you will continue to be present among us as we try to live up to your legacy and
honor your resilience through our actions.
2
Yolande Mukagasana, Naie pas peur de savoir / Dont Be Afraid to Know (1999) and
Les blessures du silence. Tmoignages du gnocide au Rwanda / The Wounds of Silence.
Testimonies of the genocide in Rwanda (2001); Annick Kayitesi, Nous existons encore / We Still
Exist (2004); Esther Mujawayo and Soud Belhaddad, La Fleur de Stphanie. Rwanda entre
rconciliation et dni / Stphanies Flower. Rwanda Between Reconciliation and Denial (2006).
For all quotes, the translation is mine.
3
Among the testimonies written by men who survived the genocide, one rare testimony
that gained international attention is Rvrien Rurangwas Gnocid, which was first published
in French in 2006 and translated into English in 2009 under the title Genocide. My Stolen
Rwanda.

24
On the issue of co-existing memories of suffering, see Ren Lemarchand (2008), Timothy
Longman and Thoneste Rutagengwa (2006), and Scott Straus and Lars Waldorf (2011).
5
For all quotes from Le Livre dlise / lises Book, the translation is mine.
6
Agahozo meaning literally in Kinyarwanda To dry our tears. For more information, see
the official web site of AVEGA: http://avega.org.rw/. Retrieved on June 24, 2016.
7
For more information on this organization working for the advancement of women see
http://www.insightonconflict.org/conflicts/rwanda/peacebuilding-organisations/pro-femmes/.
Retrieved on July 1, 2016.
8
For an analysis of the depiction of Tutsi women in the media both through cartoons
printed in the Hutu extremist journal Kangura and radio slogans aired on RTLM (Radio
Tlvision Libre des Mille Collines), see the remarkable study directed by Jean-Pierre Chrtien
Rwanda. Les medias du genocide (2002).
9
On the issue of psychiatric counseling and strategies to help survivors of genocidal
violence to live with their traumatic past and to craft a discourse to express them to themselves,
see Naasson Munyandamutsa (2004, 2005, 2014); for the cultural tensions related to the
possibility to communicate culturally and linguistically sexual violence in Kinyarwanda, see the
work of Rangira Batrice Gallimore (2008, 2009).

25
10
For all quotes from SurVivantes / Women Survivors, the translation is mine. Here the
symbolic meaning of the capital V in the French title cannot be rendered in English to stress
Mujawayos desire for women to not only be Survivors, but also and foremost Alive.
11
Voices of Rwanda was created in 2005 by the filmmaker Taylor Krauss and continues to
record and archive testimonies of Rwandans who have survived the genocide against the Tutsi.
His non-profit organization offers a unique space for survivors to testify as the recording of their
history is open-ended, does not follow any pre-established set of questions, and allows witness to
exercise control on the footage and use of their filmed testimonies. With more than 1000
testimonies recorded to this date, Voices of Rwandas goal is to make these stories available for
educational purposes and ensure that they inform the world about genocide and inspire a global
sense of responsibility to prevent human rights atrocities (quoted from the official website:
http://voicesofrwanda.org).
12
http://voicesofrwanda.org. Retrieved on July 10, 2015.
13
Regarding this specific issue see Binaifer Nowrojee (1996), Marie Consolee Mukangendo
(2007), and Victoria Canning (2012).
14

26
http://mediastorm.com/publication/intended-consequences. Retrieved on August 20,
2015.
15
http://www.indexmundi.com/rwanda/demographics_profile.html. Retrieved on August
30, 2015.
References

27
African Rights. 2004. Broken bodies, torn spirits living with genocide, rape and HIV/AIDS.
A publication of African Rights. Kigali, Rwanda: African Rights.
Amnesty International. 2004. Rwanda: Marked for Death: Rape Survivors Living with
HIV/AIDS in Rwanda. 6 April: 1-34. Retrieved June 20, 2016.
(http://www.refworld.org/docid/4129fd524.html).
Buckley-Zistel, Susanne. 2006. Remembering to Forget: Chosen Amnesia as a Strategy for
Local Coexistence in post-Genocide Rwanda. Africa: The Journal of International African
Institute Vol. 76(2): 131-150.
Canning, Victoria (2012). Who is Human? Developing sociological understandings of the
rights of women raped in conflict. Pp. 39-54 in Sociology and Human Rights: New
Engagements, edited by Patricia Hynes, Michele Lamb, Damien Short, and Matthew
Waites. New York & London: Routledge.
Caruth, Cathy. 2014. A Ghost in the House of Justice. A Conversation with Shoshana
Felman. Pp. 321-353 in Listening to Trauma. Conversations with Leaders in the Theory &
Treatment of Catastrophic Experience. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
. 1996. Unclaimed Experience. Trauma, Narrative, and History. Baltimore, MD: The
Johns Hopkins University Press.
Chrtien, Jean-Pierre editor. 2002. Rwanda. Les medias du genocide. Paris: Karthala, 2002.
Felman, Shoshana. 2002. The Juridical Unconscious: Trials and Trauma in the Twentieth
Century, edited by Cathy Caruth. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

28
Gallimore, Rangira Batrice. 2009. Souffrances individuelles et voix collectives: la
stratgie orale des tmoignages des femmes au Rwanda. Cultures Sud 172:15-22.
. 2008. Militarism, Ethnicity and Sexual Violence in the Rwanda Genocide.
Feminist Africa 10: 9-30.
Godard, Marie-Odile. 2003. Rves et traumatismes ou la longue nuit des rescaps.
Romonville Saint-Agen, France: Editions rs.
Green, Llezlie. 2002. Hate Propaganda and Sexual Violence in the Rwandan Genocide:
An Argument for Intersectionality in International Law. Columbia Human Rights Law
Review 33: 733-776.
Holmes, Georgina. 2014. Women and War in Rwanda. Gender, Media and the
Representation of Genocide. London: I.B. Tauris.
Human Rights Watch. 2004. Toujours en lute: La justice, un parcours sem dobstacles
pour les victims de viol au Rwanda. Human Rights Watch 16(10). Retrieved June 20, 2016
(http://www.hrw.org/sites/default/files/reports/rwanda0904fr.pdf).
Ilibagiza, Immacule. 2007. Left to Tell. Discovering God Amidst the Rwandan Holocaust.
Carlsbad, CA: Hay House.
Kayitesi, Annick. 2004. Nous existons encore. Paris: Michel Lafon.
Kayitesi, Berthe. 2009. Demain ma vie. Enfants chefs de famille dans le Rwanda daprs.
Paris: Editions Teper.
Keenan, Thomas. 2014. The AIDS Crisis Is Not Over. A Conversation with Gregg
Bordowitz, Douglas Crimp, and Laura Pinsky. Pp. 113-129 in Listening to Trauma.

29
Conversations with Leaders in the Theory & Treatment of Catastrophic Experience, edited
by Cathy Caruth. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
Lemarchand, Ren. 2008. The Politics of Memory in Post-Genocide Rwanda. Pp. 65-76
in After Genocide. Transitional Justice, Post-Conflict Reconstruction and Reconciliation in
Rwanda and Beyond, edited by Phil Clark and Zachary Kaufman. London: Hurst &
Company.
Longman, Timothy and Thoneste Rutagengwa. 2006. Memory and violence in
Postgenocide Rwanda. Pp. 236-260 in States of Violence: Politics, Youth, and Memory in
Contemporary Africa, edited by Edna Bay G. and Donald L. Donham. Charlottesville:
University of Virginia Press.
Mujawayo, Esther and Soud Belhaddad. 2006. La Fleur de Stphanie. Rwanda entre
rconciliation et dni. Paris: Flammarion.
. 2004. SurVivantes: Rwanda, dix ans aprs le gnocide. Paris: Editions de lAube.
Mukagasana, Yolande. 2001. Les blessures du silence. Tmoignages du gnocide au
Rwanda. Photographies dAlain Kazinierakis. Arles: Actes Sud and Mdecins sans
frontires.
. 1999. Naie pas peur de savoir. Paris: Robert Laffont.
. 1997. La mort ne veut pas de moi. Paris: Fixot.
Mukamana, Donatilla and Anthony Collins. 2006. Rape Survivors of the Rwandan
Genocide. International Journal of Critical Psychology 17: 140-166.

30
. and Petra Brysiewicz. 2008. The Lived Experience of Genocide Rape Survivors in
Rwanda. Journal of Nursing Scholarship 40(4): 379384.
Munyandamutsa, Naasson. 2014. Crer pour acqurir une existence face lautre: la
tenacit de la mmoire des exclus. Les Temps modernes 2014(4): 264-270.
. 2005. Renouer avec les liens gnrationels. Pp. 83-89 in La Sant mentale en
actes: de la clinique au politique, edited by Jean Furtos and Christian Laval. Romonville
Saint-Agen, France: Editions rs.
. 2004. Blessure invisible, une exprience droutante. Humanitaire 10: 160-167.
Mukangendo, Marie Consolee (2007). Caring for Children Born of Rape in Rwanda. Pp.
40-52 in Born of War: Protecting Children of Sexual Violence Survivors in Conflict Zones,
edited by R. Charli Carpenter. Hartford: Kumarian.
Musomandera, lise Rida. 2014. Le Livre dlise. Paris: Editions les Belles-Lettres.
Nowrojee, Binaifer (1996). Shattered Lives: Sexual Violence during the Rwandan
Genocide and its Aftermath. Human Rights Watch. Retrieved June 28, 2016
(www.hrw.org/reports/1996/Rwanda.htm).
Rurangwa, Rvrien. 2009. Genocide. My Stolen Rwanda. London: Reportage Press.
Straus, Scott and Lars Waldorf editors. 2011. Remaking Rwanda. State Building and Human
Rights after Mass Violence. Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press.
Torgovnik, Jonathan. 2008. Intended Consequences. Media Storm. Retrieved June 20, 2016
(http://mediastorm.com/publication/intended-consequences).

31
Weine, Stevan. 2006. Testimony After Catastrophe. Narrating the Traumas of Political
Violence. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press.
Williams, Terry Tempest. 2009. Finding Beauty in A Broken World. New York: Vintage
Books.
Williamson, Caroline. 2014. Breaking the Silence: Rwandan Women Survivors Give
Testimonies and Find a Voice. E-International Relations. April 27. Retrieved June 20, 2016
(http://www.e-ir.info/2014/04/27/breaking-the-silence-rwandan-women-survivors-give-
testimony-and-find-a-voice/).

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Women's Transformative Voices Within The Literature Bearing Witness To The Genocide Against The Tutsi in Rwanda

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Women's Transformative Voices Within The Literature Bearing Witness To The Genocide Against The Tutsi in Rwanda

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Womens Transformative Voices Within the Literature Bearing Witness

to the Genocide Against the Tutsi in Rwanda

Keywords: Rwanda, Genocide, Testimony, Reunification, Women, Survivors, Renewal

The International Journal of Conflict & Reconciliation

testimonial literature published in French and in English is predominantly written by women

The International Journal of Conflict & Reconciliation

simply to the event but to its witness as well (2014:114-115).

the national reunification process.4

censorshipboth self-imposed and collectively drivenas their testimonies disturb the

The International Journal of Conflict & Reconciliation

listening to survivors like her:

In other words, negotiating the possibility of enunciating such a traumatic past in a

experience in order to address another. This capacity to address is very importantit is an

The International Journal of Conflict & Reconciliation

transgress cultural norms.

The International Journal of Conflict & Reconciliation

confronts her past and seeks to alleviate its haunting legacy:

bearing witness. (2014:16-17)

longer want to be part of it. (2014:79)

self-destructive consequences, Musomandera openly confronts through her writing the

The International Journal of Conflict & Reconciliation

In the case of women survivors, in addition to their function as a reminder of a divisive

interpretation of recurrent nightmares as a symptom of being haunted by evil spirits. As Susanne

The International Journal of Conflict & Reconciliation

woman in Rwandan society implies respect from all members of the

community to which the woman is a part. Unfortunately, during the 1994

neighbors and children. (2006:149)

Stevan Weine stresses in Testimony After Catastrophe, If there is no testimony, no storytelling,

ongoing trauma is also highlighted in Marie-Odile Godards analysis of the socio-cultural

The International Journal of Conflict & Reconciliation

socially audible both to themselves and their community.

or avenged, or have departed without posterity. Expressing a form of bad consciousness,

themselves to be victims of the Abazimu unleashed by genocide massacres, haunted by these

The International Journal of Conflict & Reconciliation

when no words can express ones incommensurable pain.9

The International Journal of Conflict & Reconciliation

The International Journal of Conflict & Reconciliation

what happened. Because, if I say that it should be hidden, it would be like

to talk is If I die without telling my story here, my lineage will be snuffed

(Antoinette, Voices of Rwanda)12

defining public speaking and womens positionality within post-genocide Rwanda.

Jonathan Torgovniks documentary project Intended Consequences (2008) constitutes

forms of understanding in the aftermath of the genocide. As it confers a salutary cultural

The International Journal of Conflict & Reconciliation

Consequences advocates for the transformative power of testimony as a cultural means to

decade after the genocide:

The International Journal of Conflict & Reconciliation

between, something I dont know. Because a mother must have a home, I

value in a way. (Odette, Intended Consequences)14

or as a source of shame and humiliation for their families.

The International Journal of Conflict & Reconciliation

perpetrators . . . But we have no choice (quoted in Mujawayo 2006:216-217).

The International Journal of Conflict & Reconciliation

members of AVEGA, describes its transformative role as follows:

We cannot be widows like others. Our specificity is not to be envied. We have

widows like others and we decided to create Avega, Agahozo in September

writing and filmingfunctions as a call for as well as a performance of remembrance, mourning,

and affirmation of being alive and reclaiming an agency.

The International Journal of Conflict & Reconciliation

injunction to contribute positively to Rwandas reconciliation and renewal while

of Mujawayos testimony, Stphanies Flower (2006), entitled Words of Reconcilers, offers

socially, and psychologically:

The International Journal of Conflict & Reconciliation