Post-genocide Rwanda and discursive construction of legitimacy: contesting seemingly dichtomous political narratives

Abstract

ABSTRACT The 1994 Rwandan genocide represents a period of unprecedented violence that almost destroyed the small Central-East African country. The Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), in control of the state after the genocide, committed itself to reconciliation and inclusive nation-building. Analysts of the various approaches adopted by the RPF to addressing peace-building and reconciliation have observed that, despite this rhetoric, the dominant political narratives propagated by the ruling political party are “framed dichotomies” in their concurrent promotion and negation of ethnic division between the Hutu and Tutsi. Although the concurrent de-ethnicisation and ethnicisation of the Rwandan public sphere appear paradoxical, a closer analysis of the “public transcripts” enacted by the Rwandan Patriotic Front reveal that they are not completely irreconcilable. This article shows that these “incongruent” political narratives constitute the cohesive basis of the rule of an ethnically elite minority that demobilises ethnicity as the mode through which to articulate competing political claims on the post-genocide Rwandan state.