Remaking Rwanda: State Building and Human Rights after Mass Violence

17. The Past Is Elsewhere: The Paradoxes of Proscribing Ethnicity in Post-Genocide Rwanda

269  17 The Past Is Elsewhere The Paradoxes of Proscribing Ethnicity in Post-Genocide Rwanda nigel eltringham Introduction Throughout three years working in “conciliation” and development consultations in Rwanda (1995–97) and during fieldwork among members of the post-genocide government in 1998, I consciously avoided introducing ethnicity into conversations. Eager to avoid reductionism and to access nuanced understandings, I left it for the respondents to choose how ethnicity would become a subject of discussion. This was often immediate, in response to the opening question, “Does the ‘International Community’ understand Rwanda?” Respondents, especially members of the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), would then recount a standard, de-personalized history, which maintained that ethnicity had been created, or substantially distorted, by colonial authorities, thereby disrupting a pre-colonial unity (see Buckley-Zistel 2009, 34–41; Eltringham 2004, 163–77; Vansina 2004, 134–39). This key element of the “RPF healing truth” (Zorbas 2007, 94–98) reflects Valentine Daniel’s (1997, 309–10) observation that “the nation-state promises to soothe and heal, but its healing comforts are expressed in the language of recovery 270 T h e P a s t I s E l s e w h e r e and restoration, through an orientation toward the past.” Nationalism requires a golden age, requires restoration and, in this sense, the RPF are true revolutionaries , seeking a return to a prior state of affairs. While the “RPF healing truth” rests upon a dialogue with the past, it is, however, a past outside living memory, immune from the critique and detail of personal recollection. And yet, it is on such personal recollection, however selective, that individuals rely to navigate their current situation making them, in turn, immune to official, sanctioned narrative. None of my respondents in 1998 proposed that ethnicity should, or could, be legislated out of existence. But this is what the government has subsequently promoted. The de facto proscription of ethnicity has been interpreted as a cynical attempt to mask the monopoly of political power by the Tutsi returnees (Reyntjens 2004, 187); as an effort to silence political criticism (Waldorf 2009, 109–12); as irrelevant because of available proxies whereby “Tutsi” became rescapés and “Hutu” became génocidaires (Eltringham 2004, 75–76); or as obscuring the more assiduous divide between rural and urban Rwanda (see Ansoms 2009; Newbury and Newbury 2000). The question remains, however, whether restraining the manner in which Rwandans can openly commune with their past obstructs them in “their responsibility for ensuring that the worst of the past never happens again and the best of it is salvaged and retained ” (Jackson 2005, 357). Relativising Narratives The Rwandans I interviewed in 1998 were willing to talk about ethnicity and in a more nuanced fashion than one may expect. Here, I choose respondents who defined themselves as Tutsi. Some respondents maintained a notion of unity in ethnic diversity. For example, a government spokesman stated: The truth is that Rwandans are one people. If you deny this, you are driven by something else. One language, territory, culture of the people, of different groupings on one hill, secteur, village. The same language, poetry, and dancing. Everything is the same. There is no Hutuland, Tutsiland, or Twaland. In every administrative unit, cellule, secteur you will find Batwa, Batutsi, and Bahutu. In each and every unit of administration down to the smallest, you can find this mix. (interview, Kigali, May 1998) Many respondents adopted this impersonal, descriptive position. Others conveyed a more personal account of having to come to terms with ethnicity. N i g e l E l t r i n g h a m 271 For example, an “old-case load” returnee, who worked with street children in Kigali, commented: To be frank, when I came back from outside I thought Hutu were savages, but I met Tutsi who are even worse and I meet Hutu who are really committed to unity. You know we have extremists on both sides. Most of the street children are Hutu, which is surprising when people always say that the Hutu are killing the Tutsi. When I say we should help the orphans, people say to me, “But they are our enemies .” But I say, “You have come back to this country, you have been reintegrated, why not them?” (interview, Kigali, April 1998) This returnee had revised his initial attitude to “Hutu” not by dismissing...