Master Plans & Minor Acts: Repairing the City in Post-Genocide Rwanda

Summary This article explores how media has been used to shape the contours of political debate and ethnic identities in post-genocide Rwanda. The article will argue that although the government of Paul Kagame has loosened control on media, its obsession with constructing an “exeptionalised genocide narrative”, has been to a larger measure used as a weapon to gag media freedom. The poor and marginalised Rwandans or “minority discourses” find it very difficult to express their political identities outside the officially sanctioned spaces and categories. The consequence is a fundamentally flawed political narrative that the state uses to practice state sanctioned media censorship, eliminate “dissenting” voices and destroy civic society. Also, in postgenocide Rwanda, there is a worrisome tendency by the government in which citizens are categorised into two groups, described as “saints” and “sinners”, although this is veiled under the policy of “Rwandanicity”. This binary categorisation of society, which is also used to [re]configure state-owned media narratives, is heavily contested in this article because it discourages the emergence of alternative “voices” and “discourses” which can confront the politics of inclusion and exclusion practiced by the state based on who was a “victim” or “perpetrator” of violence during the 1994 genocide. It is also going to be unveiled how private media is often accused by the state for causing “ethnic divisionism”, “negationism”, and of harbouring an “ethnic ideology and genocide mentality”. The degree to which media contest the manipulation of “truths”, challenge the monopoly on knowledge construction, and of political correctness by the state will reflect the extent to which the government can either constrict or democratise media space for full citizen participation in post-genocide Rwanda.

historian James Young, with his seminal book Texture of Memory, may have inadvertently started an analytical trend wherein-in context of study of collective violence-official memorials and otherwise privileged lieux de memoire, including memorial museums, are deemed worthier of investigation than everyday sites of social memory.1 Many time, perhaps because they are located far from centers of power, informal sites of memory-what Paul Connerton recently called loci-have fallen through analytical net.2 This is unfortunate, because studying in is particularly instructive in instances where contending narratives about violent past abound but perhaps are not given full or any recognition in national and international debates. Post-genocide Rwanda, subject of this photo essay, is case in point, because memory is neither plural, nor openly contested there.3 The post-genocide state has dominant role in setting limits on whose lives are to be remembered publicly and how.4Unfortunately, growing literature on politics of memorialization in post-genocide Rwanda has nevertheless prioritized study of official at expense of what historian John Bodnar, in American context, termed vernacular memory.5 Most of available scholarship gives pride of place to analyses of country's seven so-called national genocide memorials.6 By leaving aside hundreds (possibly thousands) of formal and informal sites of not actively, or less actively, curated by authoritarian government, existing literature unwittingly contributes to marginalization-at least in policy-oriented discourse about supposed virtues of memorialization in times of transition-of spatial responses to loss that are less coordinated and often more spontaneous than efforts at memorialization prescribed from above. Our field research suggests that variation in mnemonic practices is often more readily observable in peripheral locations than at center in post-genocide Rwanda. Because the nationalized mourning eclipses community-level or family-level commemorations, which can create impression of unified response to loss in countryside that often has no empirical referent, disaggregating mnemonic practices in post-genocide Rwanda is essential for study of social in that landlocked country.7We believe that what we have elsewhere described as a micropolitical turn would benefit students of social more generally, since most remembering and forgetting is done through textures of everyday settings, in contexts frequently invisible and often mundane.8 Despite burgeoning literature on macropolitics of social remarkably little is known about diversity of mnemonic practices in small-scale, living, breathing contexts where violent pasts are to be contended with; nor do scholars understand well enough how meaning is transferred, filtered, defended, and improvised between and among different spheres of social life. dozen empirical vignettes at heart of this photo essay provide glimpses of these spheres. We single out tropes of that merit careful investigation in situ, in Rwanda and elsewhere. Each trope will be familiar to analysts involved in knowledge production about social memory. Singling out such tropes is to invite more observational work on their empirical salience, as well as on salience of related themes. We hope empirical vignettes illuminate our larger methodological argument-that extensive literature on macropolitics of ought to be complemented with ethnographic research on micropolitics thereof-and reinforce policy implications that follow from this argument.Memory in situIn an effort to encourage more fine-grained research on what one of us has elsewhere termed underprivileged memory, below we present deliberately unsystematic evidence about tropes of that we collected in Rwanda's countryside and cities. …

'Lawfare' describes the systematic use and abuse of legal procedure for political ends. This provocative book examines this insufficiently understood form of warfare in post-genocide Rwanda, where it contributed to the making of dictatorship. Jens Meierhenrich provides a redescription of Rwanda's daring experiment in transitional justice known as inkiko gacaca. By dissecting the temporally and structurally embedded mechanisms and processes by which change agents in post-genocide Rwanda manoeuvred to create modified legal arrangements of things past, Meierhenrich reveals an unexpected jurisprudence of violence. Combining nomothetic and ideographic reasoning, he shows that the deformation of the gacaca courts – and thus the rise of lawfare in post-genocide Rwanda – was not preordained but the outcome of a violently structured contingency. The Violence of Law tells a disturbing tale and will appeal to scholars, advanced students, and practitioners of international and comparative law, African studies and human rights.

Reconciliation in divided societies, recovering from mass violence, is a challenging endeavor. Reconciliation in post-genocide Rwanda is no exception, partially because of the brutality of both the 1994 genocide against Tutsi by Hutu extremists and the war crimes and crimes against humanity against Hutu by elements of the Tutsi-dominated Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF). This chapter discusses two challenges to reconciliation in post-genocide Rwanda. One challenge is a one-sided transitional justice, which held accountable Hutus for genocide but shielded Tutsis from accountability for war crimes and crimes against humanity. The second challenge is a quasi-monopoly of power by Tutsis, according to which all strategic cabinet departments and all top defense and security services are headed by Tutsis. The chapter suggests a Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) approach to remedy the one-sided transitional justice, and a consensus democracy model to ensure that all ethnic groups are meaningfully represented in all branches of the government, including in strategic cabinet departments and top defense and security services.

Field researchers and practitioners in the area of post con£ict mental health have moved away from an exclusive concern with trauma and damage to a resilience perspective.This new perspective focuses on how traumatised individuals and communities reconstruct their lives and institutions.This qualitative study examines resilience in post genocide Rwanda, with the aim of developing a model for understanding resilient processes in the country. The authors used a sample of 20 participants, deemed resilient, who had made a satisfactory life adjustment and did not report any symptoms of posttraumatic stress disorder. Most were less than ten years old during the genocide, and all had lost one orboth parents during that period. Allweremembers of the Association des Etudiants et E¤ leves Rescape¤ s du Genocide, a student organisation that served as a new family for the participants.The interviews were analysed usinga qualitative research procedure. The analysis led to a description of the course of the participants’lives during and after the genocide, and to a theoretical account of the factors that contributed to their resilience. The results suggest a ‘resources-e⁄cacy-resilience’ model, in which the availability of resources creates self-e⁄cacy that facilitates resilience, i.e. the ability overcome past trauma and create a successful life. The results suggest a structural model for programmes for assisted resilience in Rwanda and elsewhere.

This study is a systematic review of the United Nations and African Union reports on the controversial identity of the Batwa and their recognition as an Indigenous people in post-genocide Rwanda. Using the criteria of inclusion and exclusion, 25 United Nations and African Union periodic reports dating from 2000 onwards were systematically selected and reviewed. The findings of the study indicate that both the United Nations and African Union agree and disagree on the position of the Government of Rwanda on the identity recognition and the strategies used to empower the Batwa. Therefore, lack of a unified position on the status of the Batwa grossly undermines the United Nations human rights–based approach leading to the violation of their rights. This study proposes a new thinking that rectifies the status of the Batwa as a historically marginalized people. The study also subscribes to the tenets of national unity advanced by the Government of Rwanda.

Scholarly interest in Rwanda ranges across all aspects of its history. A substantial body of influential research appeared particularly during the two decades following independence in 1962. These contributions together with earlier work constitute the bedrock of later research, including the intensive focus on the mass violence in Rwanda during the first half of the 1990s and its consequences for the Great Lakes region. One of the most controversial questions to emerge from the occurrences of the 1990s has been the role of the churches, and particularly the dominant Roman Catholic Church, in the violence manifesting in its most extreme form in the genocide of 1994. This article addresses the claim by the scholar Philippe Denis in his essay ‘Christian gacaca and official gacaca in post-genocide Rwanda’ (Denis 2019:1-27 of 27) that the Rwandan Catholic Church has played a leading role in the difficult process of post-genocide reconciliation. Denis provides us with an authoritative account of the emergence and functioning of the Christian gacaca and its relation to the official, state-sponsored gacaca. Moreover, he presents grounds for his claim that this pastoral initiative helped to alleviate the tension that arose between the church and the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF)-dominated state in the aftermath of the genocide when the institutional church was widely condemned for its silence during the genocide and even for its complicity in the genocide. The question that I wish to pose is whether, by not broadening the focus placed by the church on the problem of ethnic animosity or ‘ethnocentrism’ as the principal causal factor that ‘led’ to the genocide, Denis does not elide a range of trigger factors that should be taken into account in any assessment of both the genocide and the church’s role in it. I aim to show that, by not taking into account these important factors and their relevance for interpreting the historically close ties between church and state, Denis tends to endorse the church’s reductionist interpretation of the history of intergroup conflict and mass violence, which it attributes almost exclusively to ethnic animosity. Consequently, when in the aftermath of the genocide, the church declared that ‘ethnism’ lay at the heart of all social and political ills, moreover refusing to acknowledge its own role in propagating a state ideology of ethnic racism, it not only risked re-inscribing a binary-logic that guided its thinking and defined its role in the Rwandan politics throughout the 20th century, but also deflected attention away from its problematic assumption of moral authority to mediate between perpetrators and victims/survivors. Keywords: Christian gacaca, Rwandan Catholic Church, genocide, ethnicity, ethnocentrism, ethnism

The Maghreb Review, Vol. 42, 2, 2017 © The Maghreb Review 2017 This publication is printed on FSC Mix paper from responsible sources 2016 SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY CURATED BY MOHAMED BEN-MADANI This selected bibliography is published here for the benefit of our readers and subscribers. The price listed here is the price from the Publishers’ catalogues at the time of catalogue publication and does not include packing and postage. 2nd and 3rd edition reprints are not included in this list. Also, some titles may be available only on print on demand which is now quite common practice. Some titles below are in stock at The Maghreb Bookshop, others can be ordered on request. Achcar, Gilbert, Morbid Symptoms: Relapse in the Arab Uprising, Saqi Books, 2016, £12.99 David Anderson and Jonathan Fisher, Africa’s New Authoritarians, Aid, Securitisation and State-Building, 2016, 176pp, notes, bibliography, index, paperback, £18.00 Has the West tacitly endorsed autocracy in Africa to safeguard economic its interests, or have African rulers manipulated aid and the threat of terrorism to bolster their illiberal regimes? The answer is more complex than that. Abderrahman Beggar. Histoire et mémoire bouraouïennes I (Toronto: York University, The Canada-Mediterranean Centre, ‘Moisaic. Essays’ series, 2016). 155 pages. Paperback Cet ouvrage de A. Beggar est bien étoffe, riche d’enseignements et son écriture vivante, agréable a suivre. Bien plus, comme il traite a la fois de poésie, de littérature, d’histoire, d’art, de philosophie et même de politique. Le regard que son auteur porte sur la pensée critique de Hedi Bouraoui, sa force créatrice, et son analyse de «l’ignorance... comme distorsion des structures», peut fort bien s’inscrire dans la tradition de la critique théorique. A cet regard, la démarche est louable a plus d’un titre car non seulement elle témoigne d’une vision éminemment humaniste - puisque ‘intolérance se nourrit de l’ignorance - mais elle a également le mérite le faire appel a des comparaisons, des parallèles et des rapprochements, noire des convergences avec d’autres écrivains. Nous recommandons chaudement la lecture de ce livre. — Rank Darragi (Université de Tunis) Bellin, Eva and Lane, Heidi E (edit.,) Building Rule of Law in the Arab World. Tunisia, Egypt, and Beyond, 2016, 311 pp, notes, bibliography, index, cloth,£70.50 Bentrovato, Denise, Narrating and Teaching the Nation. The Politics of Education in Pre- and Post-Genocide Rwanda, 2016, 254 pages , notes, bibliography, index, cloth, V&R unipress, Göttingen 214 CURATED BY MOHAMED BEN-MADANI The book investigates the politics of education in pre- and post-genocide Rwanda, examining the actors, interests, and discourses that have historically influenced educational policy and practice and in particular the production and revision of history curricula and textbooks. This study combines a systematic historical and comparative analysis of curricula and textbooks in Rwanda, stakeholder interviews, classroom observations, and a large-scale investigation of pupils’ understandings of the country’s history. Written at a crucial time of transition in Rwanda, it illuminates the role of education as a powerful means of socialisation through which dominant discourses and related belief systems have been transmitted to the younger generations, thus moulding the nation. It outlines emergent challenges and possibilities, urging a move away from the use of history teaching to disseminate a conveniently selective official history towards practices that promote critical thinking and reflect the heterogeneity characteristic of Rwanda’s post-genocide society. Vivian Bickford-Smith, The Emergence of the South African Metropolis Cities and Identities in the Twentieth Century, 2016, 340 pp, notes, bibliography, index, cloth, £64.99 Focusing on South Africa’s three main cities - Johannesburg, Cape Town, and Durban - this book explores South African urban history from the late nineteenth century onwards. In particular, it examines the metropolitan perceptions and experiences of both black and white South Africans, as well as those of visitors, especially visitors from Britain and North America. Drawing on a rich array of city histories, travel writing, novels, films, newspapers, radio and television programs, and oral histories, Vivian Bickford-Smith focuses on the consequences of the depictions of the South African metropolis and the ‘slums’ they contained, and especially on how...

Following times of great conflict and tragedy, many countries implement programs and policies of transitional justice, none more extensive than in post-genocide Rwanda. Placing Rwanda's transitional justice initiatives in their historical and political context, this book examines the project undertaken by the post-genocide government to shape the collective memory of the Rwandan population, both through political and judicial reforms but also in public commemorations and memorials. Drawing on over two decades of field research in Rwanda, Longman uses surveys and comparative local case studies to explore Rwanda's response both at a governmental and local level. He argues that despite good intentions and important innovations, Rwanda's authoritarian political context has hindered the ability of transnational justice to bring the radical social and political transformations that its advocates hoped. Moreover, it continues to heighten the political and economic inequalities that underline ethnic divisions and are an important ongoing barrier to reconciliation.

Abstract:While interest in conducting fieldwork in conflict and postconflict societies continues to grow, literature addressing the specific challenges and dilemmas of this kind of research remains scarce. Based on four months of fieldwork and approximately seventy interviews, this article explores the complexities of conducting research in postgenocide Rwanda. I argue that what at first may appear to be data problems can also be important data points; problems such as historical memory, selective telling, and skewed participant demographics illuminate political structures, group relations, and societal cleavages. This article then illustrates this argument by examining how these challenges/opportunities help explain the difficulties involved in teaching history in postgenocide schools. These reflections on research in Rwanda suggest valuable lessons for fieldwork and data analysis in a number of settings by providing examples of pitfalls, dilemmas, and often unseen opportunities that are likely to present themselves in other divided societies.

While the academic literature is replete with affirming that ‘values-explicit’ citizenship education programs are biased and indoctrinatory, there is scant attention to substantiate this claim. The present paper fills this gap; it investigates the values education notion informing Itorero, a non-formal citizenship education platform for high school leavers (HSLs) in post-genocide Rwanda. The research reported here used a survey questionnaire, focus groups and interviews. The article engages with character education, care ethics, cognitive moral development and values clarification approaches to highlight the values education notion deemed preferable to competing concepts. It is revealed that in educating HSLs for values, Itorero is vehemently committed to character education. I argue that the overreliance on this approach raises serious concerns particularly because values education as it is done in Itorero seems like the cultivation of supportive behavior towards the government in office. Its content focuses on understanding what the government wants and the crafting of dispositions required for the implementation of defined policies.

National reconciliation is a vague and 'messy' process. In post-genocide Rwanda, it presents special difficulties that stem from the particular nature of the Rwandan crisis and the popular participation that characterized the Rwandan atrocities. This article outlines the main approaches being used in Rwanda to achieve reconciliation, highlighting some of the major obstacles faced by these institutions. It then goes on to argue that certain 'Silences' are being imposed on the reconciliation process, including the failure to prosecute alleged RPA crimes, the lack of debate on, and the instrumentalization of, Rwanda's 'histories', the collective stigmatization of all Hutu as génocidaires, and the papering over of societal cleavages through the 'outlawing' of 'divisionism'. The role economic development can play in the reconciliation process is also discussed. Given the Government of Rwanda's central role in the reconciliation process and its progressive drift towards authoritarianism, the article ends with a reflection on the worrisome parallels between the pre and post-genocide socio-political contexts.

Objective Given the prevalence of conflict-related sexual violence, tens of thousands of children are estimated to have been born from wartime mass rape campaigns, sexual violence, and forced pregnancy in conflicts around the globe. Despite their vital interconnection, the existing empirical literature has tended to examine either the realities of women survivors of conflict-related sexual violence, or children born of war rape. Much less literature has addressed the realities of both mothers and children and their shared and interrelated experiences. This paper explores the shared post-conflict experiences and realities of children born of conflict-related sexual violence and mothers in post-genocide Rwanda. Methods The paper draws on a case study of one mother and her now adult child living in Rwanda. The case study draws from a larger qualitative study using in-depth interviews with 44 mothers and 60 adult children born of conflict-related sexual violence in Rwanda. Results Participants revealed their shared, long-term post-conflict challenges, which included family and community stigma, marginalization, poverty and health issues. Participants also highlighted their shared strengths and the ways in which they drew enormous strength from one another, facilitating empathy, pride and hope for the future. Conclusions Given their shared realities, service provision should aim to engage both mothers and children together, enabling both parties to draw upon shared strengths and mutual support. Moreover, interventions that are community-driven, family-oriented, and culturally-attuned should be adapted to mothers and children, addressing the complexities, and potential ambivalences in their relationship.

Teachers play a crucial role in the political socialization of adolescents. Using Q-Methodology, we explored high school teachers’ conceptions of good citizenship in post-genocide Rwanda. Teachers ranked 50 statements, describing a ‘good citizen’, on a 9-column grid, anchored by ‘least important citizenship behaviour’ and ‘most important citizenship behaviour’. The four perspectives that emerged viewed good citizenship as (a) being mindful or considerate of the 1994 genocide perpetrated against the Tutsi and promoting unity as well as reconciliation among Rwandans; (b) being morally upright and demonstrating a strong sense of patriotism; (c) being politically enthusiastic; and (d) promoting justice. The study argues for a shift towards more critical forms of citizenship. It also advocates the reinforcement of democratic and participatory skills among teachers.

Figures and Tables List of Contributors 1. International Experiential Learning and Global Citizenship - Rebecca Tiessen (University of Ottawa, Global Studies) and Robert Huish (Dalhousie University, International Development Studies) 2. Grounding Experiential Learning in Thick Conceptions of Global Citizenship - John Cameron (Dalhousie University, International Development Studies) 3. Critical Hyper-Reflexivity and Challenging Power: Pushing Past the Dichotomy of Employability and Good Global Citizenship in Development Studies Experiential Learning Contexts - Jonathan Langdon (St Francis Xavier University, Development Studies) and Coleman Agyeyoamh (Director of Venceremos Development Consults) 4. Career Aspirations and Experiential Learning Abroad: Perspectives from Canadian Youth on Short-Term Placements - Rebecca Tiessen 5. Uncovering What Lies Beneath: An Examination of Power, Privilege and Racialization in International Social Work - Lahoma Thomas (University of Toronto) and Uppala Chandrasekera (M.S.W., RSW) 6. Secondary School Experiential Learning Programs in the Global South: Critical Reflections from an Ontario Study - Katie Fizzell (Queen's University, Global Development Studies) and Marc Epprecht (Queen's University, Development Studies) 7. Experiential Learning in Challenging Settings: Lessons from Post-Genocide Rwanda - Marie-Eve Desrosiers (University of Ottawa, International Development and Global Studies) and Susan Thomson (Colgate University, Peace and Conflict Studies) 8. Would Flexner close the doors on this? The Ethical Dilemmas of International Health Electives in Medical Education - Robert Huish 9. Getting Prepared for International Experiential Learning: An Ethical Imperative - Julie Drolet (Thompson Rivers University, Human, Social and Educational Development Studies) 10. Getting the Most out of Studying Abroad: Ways to Maximize Learning in Short-Term Study Trips - Stacie Travers (Canadian Bureau for International Education, Program Manager) 11. (De)colonizing Pedagogies: An Exploration of Learning with Students Volunteering Abroad - Katie MacDonald (University of Alberta) 12. Visual Representation and Canadian Government-Funded Volunteer Abroad Programs: Picturing the Canadian Global Citizen - Ellyn Clost (Researcher, Kingston, Ontario) 13. Volunteer Stories about International Development: Challenges of Public Engagement Campaigns in Youth NGOs - Manda Ann Roddick (University of Victoria) 14. Afterword: The Should be Nothing Experimental about Experiential Learning: From Globetrotting to Global Citizenship - Robert Huish and Rebecca Tiessen