Abstract
Exploring local experiences and views of some of the key issues addressed in Itorero—such as the genocide, national identity, and the Itorero program itself—Sundberg illuminates the diversity of local understandings that challenge political truths, unveiling the limits to political persuasion in Rwanda. Yet, state censorship exercised on alternative voices has bearing on people’s understandings of state power. It generates experiences of exclusion from what the new Rwanda has come to involve, and it fosters experiences of subjecthood and vulnerability to state power, as people are constantly made aware of the repercussions that may follow from openly questioning political truths and values. As such, these experiences indicate the authoritarian nature of government practices of narration and silencing.
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Notes
- 1.
In the run-up to the elections in 2003, President Kagame committed to releasing some 24,000 prisoners. Later, beginning in 2005, a high number of prisoners convicted of less severe genocide-related crimes were released or sentenced to community labor following their official expression of remorse (Tertsakian 2011, 214–215).
- 2.
Boniface Rucagu is today the chairperson of the National Itorero Commission.
- 3.
Akavukire can also designate Twa identity. The use of similar “proxy-definitions” has been recounted by various scholars. Burnet writes that “Hutu” could also translate into “infiltrators” (abacengezi) and “new caseload returnees” (abatingitingi, abatahutse, abahungutse), i.e. those who fled in 1994 and returned in 1996–1997, and Tutsi into “old caseload returnees” (abaturutse hanze, abarutashye; Burnet 2012, 131).
- 4.
Several scholars have alluded to the narrow support base of the RPF, mainly consisting of Anglophone Tutsi who grew up in Uganda. Its loss of initial or potential support among Tutsi survivors and Hutu democrats has been credited to the RPF’s current repressive tactics and killings committed during the 1990s (Straus and Waldorf 2011a,</CitationRef> 15).
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Sundberg, M. (2016). Local Voices on Rwanda and Rwandans. In: Training for Model Citizenship. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-58422-9_4
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