This book, edited by Scott Straus and Lars Waldorf, is a tribute to human rights activist Alison Des Forges, whose majestic work on Rwanda has been crucial both for scholars like David Newbury and for human rights activists like Kenneth Roth. It also represents an important overview of Rwanda's socio-economic development and its growing influence in the Great Lakes Region, as well as a discussion of the obfuscation of Rwandan realities by the mainstream narrative of the country.
Subdivided into six parts, the book includes contributions by authors in different fields, thus offering a wide-ranging account of the problems currently occupying the country despite its successful story of development and reconciliation after one of the worst outbursts of violence of the past century. In the aftermath of genocide, Rwanda has deployed several political and social strategies aimed at reconciling Rwandans by fostering development and justice. As the book shows in detail, however, there are serious flaws and alarming discrepancies between the achievements on paper and the reality of peasant Rwandans (roughly 90 per cent of the population), and a dangerous attitude, surfacing throughout the chapters, that prioritizes ‘Rwanda’ over ‘Rwandans’.
The authors analyse several aspects of Rwandans' daily life, particularly governance, justice, rural administration, the role of collective memory, and the regional influence exerted by a strong, hierarchical state. Bert Ingelaere highlights the financial constraints under which simple families and administrative units have to reach a complex series of development goals – top-down control is also extended to land administration. Linked to this, Catharine Newbury explores the imidugudu policy, which forced citizens, especially in the countryside, to move their previously isolated dwellings to small villages. Officially aimed at improving people's access to public facilities, this intervention has provoked serious consequences at a practical level: villagization has actually reduced economic security and quality of life. An Ansoms refers to this discrepancy between developmentalist interventions and their outcomes, discussing the social implications of rural engineering and the gap between Kigali's ambitions and peasants' reality. Chris Huggins takes this critique further by investigating land issues related to the mandatory sharing imposed by the government, which is shown to favour elitist circles.
Considering the relationship with international donors, Kirrilly Pells's analysis of government narratives of childhood suggests that the reference to children as the proverbial ‘future of the country’ demonstrates an instrumental rather than caring motive. While Paul Gready investigates the lack of transparent channels available to local and international communities seeking to engage with the state, Timothy Longman shows how this situation allows international NGOs to accept the country as democratic – or, as Rachel Hayman points out, as ‘democratic enough’ – and thus to choose not to ‘interfere’ in internal affairs. The powerful imbalance of this relationship is emphasized by Eugenia Zorbas: donors are allowed (and, at times, are willing) to exercise little power over Kigali's decisions, marking the absolute preponderance of government elites – due, in many cases, to what Filip Reytjens refers to as ‘genocide credit’.
This predominance is also clearly reflected in the influence that Rwanda has acquired in the region, which leads to identity-based clusters of violence particularly at the border between Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo (Jason Stearns, Federico Borello). Here both international actors and Rwandan citizens are indeed constantly reminded of ‘genocide credit’. As Victor Peskin and Don Webster point out, this authorizes Kigali's manoeuvrings with (and within) the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), while, as Carina Tertsakian points out, it creates in ordinary Rwandans the constant fear of being arrested. This abuse of genocidal accusations, Lars Waldorf reports, is causing a trivialization of the term in a repressive atmosphere generated by a culture of accusatory practices. On the same point, Jens Meierhenrich stresses that genocide memorials are not meant to ‘remember’ genocide victims, but to ‘state’ government's power.
The entitlement of the government to this power is legitimated by its historical narrative, which can be neither discussed nor scrutinized (Sarah Warshauer Freedman, Harvey M. Weinstein, K. L. Murphy and Timothy Longman) – a narrative that, according to Susan M. Thomson, the population is being taught through compulsory attendance at Ingando re-education camps. Lyndsay McLean Hilker explores the contrast between people's narratives concerning history and the need to deal with everyone's experience of suffering. In line with perceptions ‘from below’, Nigel Eltringham questions the prescription of ethnicity: enhanced by gacaca courts, it fosters exacerbation of social relationships, as shown in some of Max Rettig's interviews in the village of Sovu.
Finally, the collection ends with two polemical contributions from Joseph Sebarenzi, former Speaker of the Rwandan Parliament (1997–2000), and Aloys Habimana, Rwandan human rights activist, urging interventions on international and local grounds in order to build a country for all its citizens.
