Any adequate account of the 1994 genocide in Rwanda must acknowledge manipulation by external forces, domestic pressures and psychological factors. Even so, the nature of the Rwandan state must be seen as absolutely central. The genocide took place under the aegis of the state, and Rwandans were the main actors involved. Both precolonial legacies and colonial policies contributed to the formation of this state, whose increasingly autocratic and unpopular government was, by the early 1990s, facing serious threats to its hold on state power, for which genocide represented a last-ditch attempt at survival. Many of the mechanisms through which genocide was prepared, implemented and justified in Rwanda bore striking resemblances to those used during the twentieth century's other major genocide, the Nazi Holocaust against the Jews.

When the journal Ethnicities was launched in 2001, the first issueincluded an article by this author, which examined the politics of 'race' and identity as central ingredients in the Rwanda genocide of 1994. This current article considers how political identities have been reconstructed since the genocide, especially from above. History, law and politics are examined, as central instruments in government efforts to construct a new Rwandan society and ensure that genocide will 'never again' be possible. Evidence suggests that inequalities in income and land distribution have grown rapidly since 1994. At the same time, the poor and marginalized often find it difficult to openly express their views, including their political identities outside of officially circumscribed spaces and categories. Debates continue around numbers of victims and perpetrators, and new inter-elite conflicts have emerged along language lines. The article shows how race categories have been replaced with new terms, which arise from a particular reading of the genocide. A new foundation myth for Rwanda, a form of diasporic victim nationalism, is also briefly explored. Re-labelling Rwandans from above, the state continues to exercise tight control over the public expression of political identities. Open political debate is very difficult; the government frequently feels it is being attacked, and accuses critics of divisionism or harbouring a genocide mentality. If more inclusive forms of Rwandan-ness are to emerge in future, state controls will need to be relaxed, so that more complex forms of political identities can finally emerge.

The term 'identity' tends to have positive connotations. This article presents an example of a lethal form of identity politics, where self-expression was not possible for victims or victimizers. At the time, killings in Rwanda in 1994 were presented by (and to) the international media as the outcome of deep-seated 'ethnic' or 'tribal' hatred, between Tutsi and Hutu Rwandans. However, research on the period, oral testimonies from all sides, video evidence and court cases at the UN Tribunal in Arusha established since the genocide, have all confirmed that this was not the case. It has become clear that the killings were systematic, planned and enforced bureaucratically. The rural and urban Hutu population were persuaded to kill neighbours, friends, family members and strangers, and such killings were planned on a national scale and meticulously monitored. Genocide of the Tutsi was organized by a beleaguered inner core of state functionaries, principally comprising top military officers who came mainly from north-western Rwanda and who refused to implement the terms of the Arusha peace Accords (1991-4). Rwanda's genocide of Tutsi in 1994 is the most dramatic example of 'race science' in action since the Holocaust, with which some parallels are drawn in this article. In both cases, the genocide option was arrived at during a time of economic and political crisis, and a mix of terror and bribery was used to gain popular compliance. To make the genocide thinkable, myths of origin were reinvented and differential forms of citizenship enforced. Identity politics became a means of legitimizing collective violence and scapegoating, and a knife in the back of the civilian population as a whole, victims and victimizers alike. K E Y WO R D S Africa q colonialism q crisis q ethnicity q propaganda q race