Resistant Acts in Post-Genocide Rwanda

Abstract

This chapter will analyse how micro and macro socio-political dynamics are articulated in the gacaca courts used to adjudicate crimes linked to the 1994 genocide against Tutsi, during which over one million Tutsi and Hutu moderates were massacred.¹ I will illustrate how these different levels of power interact with each other through social performances (Alexander 2011) and to extend the concept of faltered speech as artistic resistance (Scott 1990). My analysis is primarily derived from fieldwork in Rwanda between 2004–2006 and 2010, noting that performance practices have assumed important and varied roles in the reconstruction project, both official and informal. My focus is on gacaca, and two other forms distinct from, but influenced by gacaca; both the shortcomings of a statemandated system that declined in public credibility over time, not least because of a lack of integrity in relation to procedures for bringing detainees to justice — and its (perhaps unforeseen or unintended) advantages: openness to subversion by faltered speech acts and counter-narratives; begetter of a culture of articulation of grievance and aspiration.