Rachel Ibreck

The politics of mourning: Survivor contributions to memorials in post-genocide Rwanda

The memory of the 1994 genocide overshadows the present in Rwanda. The landscape is marked with burial and memorial sites, and April has become a month of mourning with national genocide commemorations held annually. The genocide memorials have been sanctioned and promoted by the state, but they are also the product of initiatives by genocide survivors. This article argues that survivors have made substantial and distinctive contributions to memorialization in Rwanda. It explores a survivor politics of memory and its relationship to trauma and grief.

International Constructions of National Memories: The Aims and Effects of Foreign Donors' Support for Genocide Remembrance in Rwanda

Abstract Commemoration of the victims of conflict is a characteristic national act of post-conflict statebuilding in which the significance and ownership of memorials is typically contested. In the case of post-genocide Rwanda, such contestation is overlain with international agendas and influences. Certain international donors supported memorialization as part of programmes to aid societal reconstruction and reconciliation and to prevent conflict. Studies of international contributions to genocide memorials, especially the Kigali Genocide Memorial Centre, reveal tensions in this agenda, which seeks to construct both national identity and an imagined ‘international community’ and serves to extend the remit of international actors.

Hybrid social movements in Africa

Abstract This essay identifies patterns in the organisation and character of social movements in Africa, drawing upon examples from sub-Saharan Africa and finding connections with the 2011 ‘Arab Spring’ uprisings. It pays attention to historicising social movements, global linkages and the problem of sustaining change. Rather than defining social movements in an a priori manner, or generalising from definitions derived from the western societies, it explores their concrete meanings in Africa. Thus it aims to avoid both the ‘false negative’ of overlooking genuine African social movements and the ‘false positive’ of labelling movements in a misleading manner. It identifies constraints upon collective action in Africa, exploring the political dynamics which undermine the formation of durable and organised movements and limit their capacity to represent popular concerns.

A time of mourning: the politics of commemorating the tutsi genocide in Rwanda

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.

Victims and Survivors from Cyangugu, Rwanda: The Politics of Testimony After Genocide

Victim testimony is foundational to the pursuit of justice and social repair after mass atrocities and should be recognised as an expression of courage and transformative political agency. After the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, survivors recounted horrors that could hardly be communicated, creating precious records of human suffering and loss. Since then, other victims of injustice and abuse have also given testimony to human rights organisations, despite fears of repression. Taken on their own terms, these harrowing individual testimonies are profound critiques of atrocities and political violence. Collectively, they form a powerful legacy and a counterpoint to narrow political framings of Rwanda’s history.