Writing as Reconciliation: Bearing Witness to Life after Genocide

Yolande Mukagasana is well known as the first survivor of the 1994 Genocide Against the Tutsi in Rwanda to publish her testimony in 1997. Almost 20 years later, she published a new testimonial narrative focusing on life after the genocide. Similarly, survivor Annick Kayitesi-Jozan published a first testimony in 2004 and a second thirteen years later. Why this decision to return to writing after so many years? In order to explore this question, this chapter focuses on their two recent testimonies: Mukagasana's L'Onu et le chagrin d'une négresse (Aviso, 2014) and Kayitesi-Jozan's Même Dieu ne veut pas s'en mêler (Seuil, 2017). Both these narratives oscillate between the past and the present, intertwining painful memories of the past with reflections on these women's active roles in post-genocide society and the legacy they are building for future generations, both in Rwanda and across the diaspora. Through close analysis of their narratives, this chapter interrogates the ways in which their thinking about reconciliation in post-genocide Rwandan society has changed, pointing to shifts in understanding of the role of writing in the post-genocide context and how its potential in facilitating reconciliation might be harnessed.

‘One Rwanda For All Rwandans’: (Un)covering the Twa in Post-Genocide Rwanda

The leading academic literature on Rwanda tends to focus on the Hutu-Tutsi dichotomy, either directly or indirectly, thus resigning the historical narratives of the Twa to a footnote, permanently buried in history. Based on interviews and focus groups, as well as personal testimony provided by three Twa civil society leaders, this chapter explores Twa perceptions and experiences of national unity and reconciliation during the post-genocide period. As a component of this, our chapter examines popular perceptions of the Historically Marginalized Peoples (HMP) label, a quasi-legal category generally associated with the Twa, within the broader framework of the government's unity-building and reconciliation campaign. This snapshot of Twa interactions with government policy and practice shows that Twa often feel excluded from efforts to foster national pride, unity and reconciliation. Equally, the majority of Twa object to the use of the HMP label, and many emphasize the continued relevance of Twa identity and culture at a community level.

Rebranding Rwanda’s Peacekeeping Identity during Post-Conflict Transition

Drawing on recent theorising of 'nation branding', this article examines how mediatised security narratives are used as part of the current Government of Rwanda's public diplomacy strategy to establish post-conflict Rwanda's peacekeeping identity and brand image as a Troop Contributing Country. It does so by undertaking an analysis of media discourse published by the state-owned English language national newspaper The New Times between 2008 and 2018, and two 'twitter storms' that occurred in March 2017 and 2018 in response to the Central African Republic Sexual Exploitation and Abuse scandal involving French military peacekeepers and a second scandal involving Ghanaian police peacekeepers in South Sudan. Specifically, we ask, how does the Government of Rwanda use mediatised security narratives as a nation branding tool after genocide and civil war? We argue that mediatised security narratives are employed to erase Rwanda's negative brand informed by the frameworks of victimology, poverty and violence and reposition Rwanda as an emerging strategic player in international peacekeeping. The RPF achieves this by 'niche building' and mimicking the public diplomacy strategies of middle-powers in order to present Rwanda as a catalyst and facilitator of contemporary peacekeeping policy and practice.

Competing Narratives and Performancesin Rwanda’s Gacaca Courts

The aim of this chapter is to deconstruct how human rights reports of Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch produce knowledge on the Rwandan gacaca courts as a failed (semi-) legal justice mechanism, and the implications therein. These reports play a fundamental role in our understanding of conflict, violence and accountability measures in the aftermath of atrocities. We use the analytical tools provided by French philosopher Paul Ricoeur's work on narrative and memory in order to understand how such knowledge is constructed and what is excluded in human rights reports. We argue that the human rights reports establish a fixed and static conception of gacaca. Crucially, we show that human rights reports remake history into a single imagery by eradicating context and subjectivity. What remains is a story of failure that leaves little room for different interpretations or meanings attached to gacaca.

Rwanda Is NOT Hotel Rwanda!!!

Rwanda – is not hotel Rwanda No – Rwanda is the heart beating life of Africa – The world’s example and definition of hope, resilience and ambition If you haven’t yet heard listen, Grab a pen and learn – Rwanda is a lesson. Rwanda is where the great Kivu lake...

‘Memory-Traces’ in the Work of Felwine Sarr and Bruce Clarke: What Stories of Change Can Commemorate the Genocide against the Tutsi?

This chapter investigates two different and recent artistic projects that commemorated the Tutsi Genocide of 1994 in Rwanda from an external perspective, twenty years after: the play by Senegalese intellectual, Felwine Sarr, Sur la barrière (2015) and the public mural by South African artist, Bruce Clarke, in 2014 'Upright Men', which is built collectively with the contribution of Rwandan artists. Sur la barrière depicts the complex relationships between a mother, Isaro, and his son's murderer, Faustin. Both artistic projects acknowledge civilian's memory of suffering and violence: by restoring words to the living but also to the dead, they raise the questions about whose stories to tell. They belong to what Marianne Hirsch calls postmemory and thus renew the reflection on memorialization by situating the genocide of the Tutsi within a global and external perspective. Those artistic projects downplay the tragic story to focus on the present of the survivors, fostering human dignity and triggering conversation with young people that were born after the genocide, in Rwanda but also all around the world.

Promising Generations: From Intergenerational Guilt to Ndi Umunyarwanda

Ndi Umunyarwanda is a relatively new concept, having surfaced in post-genocide political narrative in July 2013. There is little doubt however that this concept currently dominates Rwandan identity politics and is envisioned as the answer to almost all the historical ills that have befallen and divided Rwanda. In light of the currently predominant discourse on post-genocide Rwanda, Ndi Umunyarwanda could be perceived as a top-down process of social engineering if considered only from the perspective of the current stage of its political dissemination. However, approached from its inception stage as this essay does, It is a bottom-up phenomenon that originates from Youth Connekt Dialogues (YCD); a series of dialogues held between children of perpetrators, children (of) survivors and representatives of local and central governments. The essay offers a narrative analysis of this emergence of Ndi Umunyarwanda out of YCD. The argument proposed here is that change in post-genocide Rwanda happens in different stages and at different levels. A narrative examination of YCD and Ndi Umunyarwanda as sequentially related phenomena shows that individual and group-initiated changes at grassroots levels can and do shape the national metanarrative of post-genocide nation building.

The Incorporation of Women in Rwandan Politics after 1994

Liberation struggle usually entails the active incorporation and participation of women. However, in the period following liberation after power is captured, we tend to see women excluded. Women are often relegated to the sidelines, gender roles are reinforced, with political positions reserved for men. In Africa, the gender backlash that follows liberation was observed in the liberation movements of the first wave (1960s and 1970s) and second wave (1980s and 1990s). However, this was not the case in Rwanda when the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) took power after halting the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi. The RPF actively included women in politics appointing women to half their allocated seats in the Transitional National Parliament (TNP). This initial inclusion during the transitional period is important because it lay the ground for women's participation in Rwandan politics. The subsequent policies that enshrined women's political inclusion in the constitution through the quota system, as well the structures developed at the lowest level of government to encourage women's political participation, have their roots in the active incorporation that happened during the transitional period. This chapter explores the factors that led to this initial incorporation and why the gender backlash common in liberation movements did not occur in Rwanda.

Rwanda since 1994

The introduction emphasizes the changing nature of Rwanda since the Genocide against the Tutsi in 1994. It presents the book as an exploration of the multiple narratives about Rwanda that have emerged at individual, regional, national, and international levels. All these stories, the introduction suggests, contribute to the conscious and subconscious re-imaginings of Rwanda taking place across the board including in literature, politics and the media. We trace some of the dominant narratives that have emerged in the extraordinary transformation of Rwanda since 1994, and outline the interconnecting nature of the chapters in this interdisciplinary volume.

Stories as Change: Using Writing to Facilitate Healing among Genocide Survivors in Rwanda

Therapeutic writing - that is, narrative writing that systematically follows a deliberately therapeutic format - has been proven effective in reducing the effects of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and improving mental health because it allows an individual to organize traumatic memory by converting images and emotions into words and narrative text. This essay presents a rationale for therapeutic writing, then discusses the design for a particular writing-for-healing model that was developed and employed in working with young adult survivors of the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi of Rwanda. The essay then describes Rwandan participant interactions around and responses to the writing-for-healing project to demonstrate the therapeutic potential of narrative writing in response to trauma.