On Behalf of Ordinary People: Bridging the Gap between High Politics and Simple Tragedies

Abstract

Without minimizing the horrors of the genocide in Rwanda in 1994, the book by Marie Béatrice Umutesi,Fuir ou mourir au Zaïre(“Running Away or Dying in Zaïre,” L'Harmattan, 2000), published under the English titleSurviving the Slaughter: The Ordeal of a Rwandan Refugee in Zaire” throws a much needed light on the plight of Rwandan refugees in Kivu from the time they fled Rwanda, many of them as ordinary, peaceful citizens. If we want to understand the events that continue to unfold in the region, and if we want to improve the aid humanitarian agencies provide, we need to consider Umutesi's story—a story in which distant international organizations, with their own views and objectives, took actions that had deleterious consequences for ordinary people.While some refugees pursued dubious policies in the camps, people of good will went on helping others while they all were in exile. Their collective support systems helped them retain their dignity under the worst of circumstances and, when their fragile safe haven came under attack, helped them endure a hell that seemed at times unendurable. Telling the complete history, as Jan Vansina helped to do in his recent book (2004), and putting ordinary people back into the picture, are the surest ways to avoid lethal stereotypes and quick categorizations that hinder our understanding of complex situations and produce simplifications that contribute to more injustice.

Histories of authority in the African Great Lakes: trajectories and transactions

“…This rigid approach to authority has been criticized by long-time observers of the region (de Lame 2005; Newbury and Newbury 2000). It is also being increasingly challenged by work on the grass-roots, local, lived or subjective experience of power (Bayart 1984; Ingelaere 2014: 215; Planel 2015: 14; Thomson 2013), and by perspectives on ‘hybrid governance’ and ‘negotiated statehood’ in the region and elsewhere (e.g.…”

A Matter of lies and death - Necropolitics and the question of engagement with the aftermath of Rwanda’s Genocide

“…From the mid-1920s to the mid-1930s, the Belgians made sweeping reforms, culminating in the issuing of identity cards to formalise and codify these categories, thereby creating rigid, racialised boundaries between what had once constituted much more fluid identities and relationships between people (de Lame, 2005). Tensions were exacerbated continuously by the colonial masters' treatment of the Tutsi as an elite, who were granted preferential access to education, employment opportunities and government posts, with the attendant formal privileges and positions of power over the Hutu and Twa.…”

“…The RPF, backed by the Ugandan Government, invaded Rwanda on 1 October 1990 (Goolooba-Mutebi, 2008). The invasion began a civil war that killed thousands and displaced hundreds of thousands, mainly from the majority Hutu ethnic group (de Lame, 2005;Lemarchand, 2005;Newbury, 2005;Umutesi 2004). It culminated in a peace agreement, signed on 4 August 1993 in Arusha, Tanzania.…”

Rhetorical legacies of leadership: projections of ‘benevolent leadership’ in pre- and post-genocide Rwanda

“…This has marked a divide between this ‘new’ Tutsi elite and the former Tutsi elite, francophones born and raised in Rwanda. Beyond its relations with elites, the regime maintains an ambivalent relationship with ordinary Tutsi survivors whom it suspects of having colluded with Hutu in order to survive (de Lame 2005: 135).…”

“…5.Exceptions exist. See for example the work of de Lame 1996, 2005, Lemarchand 2008, Longman 2001, Newbury & Newbury 2000 and Straus 2006.…”