A Time of Mourning: The Politics of Commemorating the Tutsi Genocide in Rwanda

Abstract

Memories of the genocide in Rwanda are conflicted, fuelling social tensions in the present and raising concerns for the future. The Rwandan government promotes a collective memory through annual genocide commemorations. It presents these as central to its policy of nation-building and genocide prevention, but the commemorations also serve the ruling party’s purpose of building legitimacy and suppressing dissent. Critics describe Rwandan official policies as flawed and authoritarian (Reyntjens, 2011; Waldorf, 2006), and discern local resentment beneath the veneer of popular support (Longman & Rutagengwa, 2006; Thomson, 2011; Ingelaere, 2007). Commemorations are judged to be among the most divisive of state policies: they have been described as ‘symbolic violence’ (Vidal, 2001) and an ‘enforced memory’ which ‘helps nurture ethnic enmities’ (Lemarchand, 2009, p. 105). In contrast, in this chapter I argue that the government cannot impose its authority through commemoration, which necessarily is an opportunity for other voices to be heard. Official efforts to cultivate a selective memory are successful only in part. Rwandan political space is circumscribed (Beswick, 2010, p. 248), but public memory serves as the focus for popular demands for justice and rights and therefore acts as a channel for posing challenges to the regime.