Whispering Truth to Power: Everyday Resistance to Reconciliation in Postgenocide Rwanda by Susan Thomson (review)

For many in the western world Rwanda has been something of an enigma. Since the entire country was traumatized by massive violence in 1994, there have been remarkable changes. After ending the genocide that killed as many as 800,000 people, the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) army became the country’s dominant political party, led by expatriate Tutsis who had previously lived in Uganda. The RPF stabilized the political system and initiated a program called National Unity and Reconciliation (NURC). With support from many countries that provided economic aid, there has been significant expansion and development of the nation’s infrastructure. Politically, the percentage of women in the nation’s elected parliament is now the highest in the world.¹ Rwanda has also been ranked as one of the least corrupt governments in Africa.² Beyond the country’s borders, Rwanda’s military forces have made significant contributions to regional peacekeeping operations in Africa.³

In the best of circumstances it would still take many years and a somewhat authoritarian approach to promote reconciliation in a sharply divided society. Hutus continue to make up 85 percent of Rwanda’s population. Many had participated in killing, looting, and raping during the genocide; most of the victims were Tutsi. Some Hutus committed or facilitated crimes while under intense pressures to obey. But many others were innocent. After the RPF’s predominately Tutsi elite took control of the government in Kigali well over 100,000 Hutus were incarcerated for presumed involvement in the bloodshed. To the west of Rwanda, a large contingent of forces under the control of Hutu leaders alleged to be responsible for genocidal crimes had relocated in neighboring Zaire (since renamed the Democratic Republic of Congo or DRC). For years those forces posed a clear threat to Rwanda’s security.

The dark side of Rwandan politics is increasingly known abroad. In recent years there has been much evidence, despite vigorous RPF denials, that Rwanda’s persistent, destabilizing military interventions in the DRC were responsible for tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of deaths there.⁴ Within Rwanda, according to international watchdog organizations, the government has “continued to impose tight restrictions on freedom of expression.”⁵ It has also “continued to stifle legitimate freedom of expression and association.”⁶ Loosely worded laws prohibit politically incorrect talk about ethnicity and talk that is said to encourage “genocide ideology.” According to many independent observers, conditions now are politically oppressive.⁷ Under the leadership of Paul Kagame, who had been much praised for Rwanda’s economic progress, power has been consolidated in a hierarchical, authoritarian system dominated by the RPF. Kagame has easily been elected twice in Presidential elections. If and when he serves out his latest term in office Kagame will have been in power for twenty-three years.⁸

Presently, two decades after the catastrophic genocide, reports of human rights abuses by the government contrast sharply with a narrative of strenuous efforts to unify and promote reconciliation in Rwanda. The latter efforts are difficult to analyze. One question, perhaps most intriguing to outsiders, is whether relations between ordinary Hutus and Tutsis have improved. That question is difficult, and perhaps impossible, to research. Rwanda’s citizens are now prohibited from publicly labeling themselves or others along traditional ethnic lines. Regardless of that ban, according to Susan Thomson, ethnicity now plays a minor role in the lives of ordinary people.⁹ Thomson, a scholar presently at Colgate University, has systematically investigated how Rwandans think about their everyday lives and their government.

The heart of this book and the focus of Thomson’s research was on the lives of “ordinary people” in postgenocide Rwanda. The majority of those are Hutu peasants. At the onset of her essentially ethnographic project, her potential subjects for extended interviews were narrowed down to thirty-seven individuals. Most of them were landless farmers based in the rural south of the country. All...