Abstract
Lived experiences of state power need to be considered in the context of people’s relations with each other and the collective histories that have shaped them. This chapter addresses how ruptures in Rwanda’s social fabric cannot be attributed to the government alone, yet they can be aggravated by it. Technologies used to engage the citizenry in national security engender in Rwandans a perceived inability to keep track of potential sources of insecurity stemming from both the state and other citizens. Meanwhile, the international support that Rwanda enjoys is partly motivated by the government’s track record of maintaining civic order despite the country’s legacy of mass violence. Hence, although social divides and local experiences of insecurity may be aggravated by authoritarian rule, they may also help legitimize it.
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Notes
- 1.
The neighborhood executive committee, headed by the coordinator, is charged with managing activities in the neighborhood on a voluntary basis and in accordance with the local performance contract.
- 2.
In 2005, about 2100 rape cases were investigated by the police. A large number of unreported incidents of sexual violence are believed to occur annually (Baker 2007, 355).
- 3.
- 4.
The women’s collective eventually ceased to operate, primarily because many of its most active members moved away.
- 5.
They include the former head of external intelligence, Patrick Karegeya, murdered in exile in South Africa in January 2014, and the former army chief of staff, Faustin Kayumba Nyamwasa, who went into exile in South Africa in February 2010 in fear of what he described as a plot to arrest him. A few months later in Johannesburg, Nyamwasa was nearly killed and later accused President Kagame of being behind the assassination attempt. Kagame, in turn, accused him, along with other exiled military officials in South Africa, of planning the grenade attacks in Rwanda in February 2010.
- 6.
See Danielle Beswick (2010) for a similar analysis of Rwandan civil society organizations (CSOs), and the silencing effects that threats and rumors of the state’s violent potential have on the political space of CSOs.
- 7.
The term “human security” first gained widespread recognition in international development circles through the UN Development Programme’s Human Development Report of 1994 (UNDP 1994).
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Sundberg, M. (2016). Securing Rwanda: A Fearful Civic Duty. In: Training for Model Citizenship. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-58422-9_7
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