Vernacular memories: recalling Rwanda’s 1943–44 famine during the Covid-19 hunger crisis

Abstract

This article explores how the vernacular memory of the 1940s-era Ruzagayura famine was deployed to critique the contemporary Covid-19-induced hunger crisis in Rwanda. It methodologically advances memory studies scholarship by emphasising the importance of textual analyses of oral histories, poetry, proverbs and panegyrics, especially when transmitted on social media. This crucial revision can begin to redress the Eurocentric knowledge production approaches prevalent in memory studies. Transgenerational vernacular memories run parallel to, in relation with, and in competition with Rwanda’s official memorialisation of historical crises. While the Ruzagayura famine and related narratives are forgotten in the official rewriting of history, they re-emerge and find new life online to be transmitted across generations and geographies. I consider how ‘born-digital’ youth revitalise oral histories of the famine as a form of resistance against official policy, and how powerful actors attempt to suppress these narratives. Thus, this paper contributes to broader literatures on resistance and memory politics in Rwanda and beyond.