A: Each group tells a different
story. They all say "My ancestor was shaykh of the land." . . .
B: Perhaps you could
present several versions, each one from a different source, and not
say "this one is true; that one is false."
A: No way! . . .
If I present different versions, they will accuse me of sowing discord.
They will say, "He just wants to make problems." That's a sure thing.
Besides, there is truth; there is lying. How can I treat all sources
equally? By God, it would bring disaster.
Conversation with a Jordanian
local genealogist.1
|
After a while the truth of old tales changed.
What was true before became false afterward. |
A Kuba elder.2
|
|
The genocide that began in
April 1994 marks an infinitely sad watershed in Rwandan
history. It also marks a potential watershed in Rwanda's historiography,
for such a rupture with the past raises necessary questions on the ways
in which this past will be seen in the future. In the wake of the genocide,
many people were drawn to comment on Rwandan society. They began with
all good intentions, but too often these observers had little or no
background on the country. Their introduction to the society and its
people was through the genocide alone, and their intellectual experience
often drew heavily on the models of previous genocides elsewhere. So
the themes they chose to focus on—ethnicity, violence, and the
state—were those most obvious to the genocide itself. But Rwandan
history—and its historiography—as well go far beyond the issues
raised in the genocide. In fact, we argue, the relation between history
and the genocide, as portrayed in many recent accounts, needs to be
reversed. Instead of seeing history exclusively through the genocide
(as many did, misleadingly referring to "500 years of tribal warfare"),
one can only understand the genocide through an understanding of Rwanda's
history. |
1 |
|
Therefore, although
this article is not about the genocide, this may be an appropriate time
to pause and review some aspects of Rwandan historiography. We especially
want to explore an aspect of the historiography by which politics have
often been removed from rural life and agricultural practices separated
from political life. This disjunction of rural actors and formal politics
has been characteristic of many writings on the genocide, which tend
to focus on elite politics and central actors alone, but it is also
characteristic of broader Rwandan historiography as well. Rather than
attempting to provide a new integrated reinterpretation of the Rwandan
past, our intent is to inquire into how this separation of peasants
from politics occurred, asking how Rwandan history came to be understood
and interpreted in the manner that it was. This is an essay in historiography,
not history. |
2 |
|
The dominant vision
of Rwanda's history emphasized political homogeneity, ethnic distinctions,
and the power of the state. In so doing, it sublimated alternative visions,
which expressed regional particularity, diverse forms of identity (based
on kin, class, occupation, and friendship networks), and the interaction
of local agency with elite policy. We start by noting both the content
and the silences of these conversations on history—both what the
presentation of Rwanda's history includes and what it omits. We then
address the question of why incorporate peasants within an established
elite history, and we present various neglected themes that, by their
very nature, tend to transcend (and transform) the dominant historiographical
patterns. Finally, we discuss several important works in Rwandan rural
studies, exploring the ways by which their inclusion in the historiography
might lead to broader historical understanding. |
3 |
|
We have abbreviated
many of these discussions, and undoubtedly will have omitted some observers'
"favorite" topics and sources.3
But our intent is not to provide a complete inventory of sources on
Rwandan history.4
Instead, we seek to raise neglected issues and to provide an intellectual
grounding on how such themes might reshape an understanding of Rwandan
social dynamics. Such an approach compels one to move from a static,
statist vision to a complex consideration of the forms of peasant participation
that pervaded the history of this society. What we have tried to do
is indicate the possibilities of a rural dimension to conventional history
and a historical dimension to rural experience. In short, we seek ways
to bring Rwandan peasants into the understanding of politics and politics
into the understanding of rural society. |
4 |
|
|
|
To do so, we draw on wider
intellectual paradigms. While in this essay we do
not present peasants acting, we nonetheless hope to pry open a few cracks
in the monolith through which subalterns can find a place in their own
history. Our analysis draws on two analytic approaches that have gained
some prominence over the last several decades, roughly coinciding with
Africa's postcolonial historiography: peasant studies and subaltern
studies. |
5 |
|
Peasant studies
became one of the principal themes of postcolonial historiography in
Africa for two related reasons: the general absence of peasants from
the colonial literature and the development of methodologies that allowed
rural subjects to be included in historical inquiry.5
In general, however, the recent features of African peasantries differ
from those of other global regions. First, while peasant models from
elsewhere tend to privilege tightly knit villages, in Africa peasants
often lived dispersed across the land in interacting networks, not residential
communities.6
Second, African peasants constituted a substantial proportion of the
population (differentiating them from many Latin American models), and
they often retained some autonomy in relation to the state (differentiating
them from many Asian models). The combination of these two elements
meant that, though not unchanged, African peasantries have endured through
time well into the postcolonial period, when in other areas they have
been more fundamentally transformed.7
Third, historical methods to study peasants in Africa developed mostly
through the use of qualitative data (testimony) rather than quantitative
data (statistics); the disciplinary gap remained wide between those
who sought to understand social process through oral sources and those
who sought knowledge through statistical figures.8
Thus, despite significant differences among peasants within Africa,
peasantries in Africa differed from peasantries elsewhere in their relation
to the state and in the disciplinary approaches by which peasants were
studied. |
6 |
|
A second important
postcolonial school of inquiry has been that of subaltern studies, developed
principally through the work of South Asian scholars who sought to move
beyond elite-centered analysis.9
In exploring the interaction of elite and subaltern classes, these scholars
sought to reveal the forms of intellectual dominance of those in power
and to portray rural residents as competent historical actors with their
own goals, ambitions, resources, and defenses.10
For the most part, however, such approaches were not new to historians
and anthropologists working in Africa. From the late 1950s, these analysts
had moved beyond the history of colonial actors to inquire into the
experiences, initiatives, and exploitation of rural Africans. To account
for the importance of local initiatives as well as external power, they
privileged voices from below—voices outside the hegemonic script,
the dominant intellectual and cultural patterns of thought and behavior.
In order to do so, they developed a new set of methods—drawing
on oral sources, archaeology, linguistics, ethnography, botanical analysis—and
proceeded to submit these unconventional source materials to historical
critique through a new set of analytic tools. Historians referred to
these paradigms as "social history," to distinguish this approach from
earlier histories of political elites and to move beyond the formal
institutional histories that dominated colonial historiography. |
7 |
|
Thus scholars working
on Africa have long focused on the recipients of state power. They have
drawn on colonial documents by reading critically, accounting for the
ideological assertions or the outright fictive reconstructions that
pervaded colonialist discourses. They have looked for the dialectics
at the intersection of hierarchical power and the moral economy of the
oppressed. And they were aware that colonialist discourses could be
drawn on not only by the European powerholders but also by local actors
in circumstances where these promoted their particular goals. During
the colonial period in Rwanda, for example, politically dominant groups
adopted colonial hegemonies and drew on colonial force to extend their
power well beyond the effective administrative reach of the precolonial
monarchy. Analogies with European concepts of feudalism, portraying
clientship as a "social glue" that pervaded social intercourse at all
levels, gave the appearance of political homogeneity to Rwandan culture;
at different times, members of different politico-ethnic factions, both
Tutsi monarchists and Hutu counter-elites, had recourse to colonialist
paradigms of the racial foundations to social stratification (which
we discuss below).11
|
8 |
|
Like subaltern studies,
therefore, social history in Africa was counter-hegemonic in its conceptualization,
and, like the subaltern practitioners, social historians in Africa "read
against the grain" of colonial documentation and explored the silences
of history produced by elites. Nonetheless, these studies differed from
South Asian applications because the research context—and the sources—differed
from South Asia, as did the lived experiences of political actors. Today,
social history, like subaltern history, is seen as too complex to be
folded into a single rubric. But the principles and goals that animated
these fields of scholarly research were shared by analysts in Africa
and South Asia. In Rwanda, however, historians were slow to focus their
attention on peasants, whose histories were effectively sublimated within
the history of the state and seen as part of a society that was culturally
homogeneous, even if politically stratified. In most accounts, the image
of Rwanda overpowered the ethnographic realities. It is to that image
that we now turn. |
9 |
|
|
|
Located near the geographic
center of Africa (just south of the equator and not
far from the mid-point between the Atlantic and Indian Oceans), Rwanda
held the allure, for many observers, of the paradigmatic precolonial
African state: centralized, stratified, ethnicized, and "feudal."12
Like all stereotypes, each of these characteristics fit uncomfortably
with the historical record. But popular lore is powerful, and European
lore postulated for Rwanda an "ancient" history marked by exotic origins.
(Egypt, Ethiopia, or an early Judaic "tribe" were all candidates.)
Heroic migrations and military conquest added to the allure of this
historical drama played out in the highlands of Central Africa—a
landscape combining open plains in the east, stunning volcanoes in the
west, and, in between, the beauty of a thousand hills in infinite variation,
all garnished with the splendor of a luxuriant tropical "natural garden."
To European observers, Rwanda was "le pays des milles collines," the
"Switzerland of Africa."13
|
10 |
|
But most of all,
what attracted outside observers (and produced one of the largest bibliographies
of precolonial Africa) was the people. For this tiny, densely packed
country of 10,000 square miles (about the size of Vermont), with a current
population of more than 7.5 million (compared to Vermont's 600,000),
was most renowned for its ethnic configurations, which were heavily
idealized in popular lore. From the legacy of early twentieth-century
observers, these ethnic groups took on dramatic distinctions: in these
views, ethnicity was supposed to pervade all aspects of Rwandan culture,
from personal capacities to political stratification. So pervasive was
this assumption that, without empirical evidence, the three principal
ethnic groups—Tutsi, Hutu, and Twa—were seen as entirely separate:
separate in their cultures, histories, and racial origins. |
11 |
|
|
|
The precolonial
aristocratic lineages, which were Tutsi, were celebrated by European
observers for their physical characteristics—tall and slender,
with aquiline noses and fine hair: "black Europeans" some called them.14
Although these characteristics were associated primarily with members
of the aristocratic class, they came to be applied to all Tutsi. In
fact, however, there are significant physiological variations within
this social category, and even at the apogee of the precolonial monarchy,
the political classes—those who wielded power—accounted for
less than 10 percent of all Tutsi.15
In other words, by the assumptions of "corporate ethnicity," there was
a near universal tendency among outsiders to apply the dramatic physical
features of the ruling lineages indiscriminately to all Tutsi and to
assume that all Tutsi were members of the political elite; the reality
was significantly different. |
12 |
|
Similarly, "Hutu,"
a social classification that included the vast majority (about 85 percent)
of the population, were assumed to be invariably short, sturdy, and
dark. And physical features were taken as indicators of invariable intellectual
and cultural features: while all Tutsi in this racial matrix were seen
as "refined" and "born to rule"—as befit the "governing classes"—all
Hutu were seen as "naive," "stalwart," and "easily duped"—as befit
the laboring classes, in this sociological-cum-racial wonderland. Nonetheless,
here again, as with the Tutsi model, the perceptions of "corporate ethnicity"
were inaccurate; "Hutu" were never a homogeneous group, not in historical,
social, or cultural terms.16
Despite the differences among Hutu, however, the "dual colonialism"
of central court administrators, under the suzerainty of first German
and then Belgian rule, brought an awareness of shared exploitation within
the expanding powers of the state.17
During the 1950s, within a rapidly changing political climate (in which
the colonial power, the Catholic Church, and the United Nations all
had important roles), Hutu leaders responded to widespread rural discontent
and organized a political movement that eventually overthrew the monarchy
and led to the formation of a republic under Grégoire Kayibanda
(1962). While not unique, the fact that this "revolution" was one of
the few meaningful social transformations to accompany decolonization
in Africa added yet another layer to the aura of Rwanda. |
13 |
|
A third social category,
"Twa," was composed of people whom Westerners associated with pygmies;
popular imagery portrayed them derisively as "pygmoid": shorter still
of stature, dark, and "powerfully built," with short legs and round
heads. As a social category, however, the Twa were composed of disparate
groups showing diverse characteristics. Some were attached to the royal
court (at least one serving as an important notable under the late nineteenth-century
king Rwabugiri); others were more on the margins of state-defined society.
Twa were often exempted from state obligations, and, though individually
renowned for their strong personalities, as a group they were often
disregarded as well as disdained in state politics. Because of their
numbers (less than 1 percent of the Rwandan population), cultural diversity,
and economic marginality, Twa were not often accounted for in political
analyses; instead, they were usually relegated to the status of exotic
appendages to Rwandan society. Nonetheless, their presence was fully
a part of the Rwandan social matrix.18
|
14 |
|
Such were the alluring
features of Rwandan social imagery. But postcolonial work on Rwanda
has moved beyond the late nineteenth-century racial assumptions and
the early twentieth-century whiggish paradigms of earlier representations.
By contrast, postcolonial studies stress the social diversity, individual
agency, and historical transformations that have been central to Rwandan
social processes, in precolonial as well as colonial times. The social
groups noted above did not "arrive" as corporate groups, or with their
current labels; instead, more recent social identities emerged as part
of the larger processes of social flux, individual action, and political
power. There was a great deal more individual mobility and interchange
than any static model of some collective "Rwandan past" can account
for. The state was not "created" by a single culture hero or even by
a single group. Power and ethnicity did not coincide originally; they
took shape and salience in relationship to each other, not in confrontation
with each other. Before the mid-eighteenth century—and in some
contexts, long after—region was more important than royalty in
defining identity, and ecology more influential than ethnicity in molding
people's lives.19
In short, there was much more individual confrontation, social contestation,
and local effervescence than normally ascribed to historical process
in this region. |
15 |
|
|
|
| |
 |
| An example of the modern-day landscape
in western Rwanda, showing terracing, crop variety, and hilly
terrain. Photograph by Danielle de Lame, courtesy of the Musée
Royal de l'Afrique Centrale, Tervuren, Belgium. |
|
|
|
|
|
In what follows,
we will first trace the general contours of precolonial historiography,
stressing the local orientation of the early accounts and their transition
to an emphasis on royal history. We then examine the broader factors
that influenced this transformation, and the way in which the writing
of Alexis Kagame came to incorporate the one within the other, sublimating
local data to central court perspectives. But postcolonial work came
to challenge some of the centrist historiography of the colonial period;
our next section surveys some of the available documentation on rural
transformations. Finally, we explore more recent trends that have addressed
the postcolonial crisis of the rural areas and given voice to rural
actors. Still, the rural concerns of local peasants and the centrist
agendas of state administrators have largely been kept autonomous in
the historiography, we argue, as rural transformations have been viewed
as "technical" issues, while centrist policies have been seen as "political"
processes, independent of local influence. Rethinking Rwandan historiography,
therefore, requires giving central place to the dialogue that existed
between these two domains—and challenging the premise that Rwandan
history was royal history alone while local agency only became significant
when incorporated into the state. Since these assumptions were especially
prominent in precolonial historiographies, we turn to a consideration
of how these histories were forged and framed. |
16 |
|
|
|
The first histories—oral
histories—were local histories; and of course local histories still
exist in profusion, though they are often relegated to the shadows of
irrelevance.20
During the colonial period, however, what came to be seen as salient
was state history, the history of the elites, the features important
to outsiders. But history as process can only be understood as the interaction
of local agency with external influences—through commercial, ecological,
and social contacts with others. Consequently, with the development
among Western historians of methodologies of oral history from the 1960s,
postcolonial work has come to consider oral sources as essential to
the reconstruction of Rwandan history.21
In the process, postcolonial historians have done much to return a sense
of diversity, fluidity, and confrontation to history, to broaden the
range of social classes and intellectual themes included, and to introduce
a much richer understanding of colonial rule and colonial culture to
the written historical accounts.22
Yet, despite the breadth of new knowledge and revisionist understanding
such approaches allow, local data have been largely marginalized from
the conventional historical accounts. |
17 |
|
The earliest written
accounts on the Rwandan monarchy reflected those of the earlier oral
accounts: they often stressed the regional roots to historical knowledge
and emphasized the complicated combination between the penetration of
royal power and the sometimes superficial character of royal rule. From
these accounts, it is clear that local dynamics were often local as
well as dynamic, and that regional particularities were often more prominent
than the broader cultural generalizations extended to the entire society.
The German writings make this especially clear; in the early years of
colonial rule, for example, Jan Czekanowski underscored the importance
of regional particularities, especially contrasting the north and northwest
of the country with the royal court norms that characterized the central
and southern regions.23
Later historical writings, even through the 1930s, continued to highlight
regional cultural characteristics—and the tendencies toward regional
autonomy from the court. |
18 |
|
Père Albert
Pagès published the first great classic on Rwandan dynastic history,
Un royaume hamite au centre d'Afrique, only in 1933.
But because this work represented the fruit of over twenty-five years
of observation and involvement with Rwanda, it captured some of the
flavor of earlier accounts deeply rooted in local sources.24
Even while this account celebrates the ruling social stratum and the
royal line and focuses on Rwandan culture heroes (especially the epic
kings Ruganzu Ndori and Kigeri Rwabugiri), the events associated with
them are often presented in very localized fashion; their heroism is
shown in local—and sometimes humble—events. |
19 |
|
|
|
| |
|
| Rwandan royalty. Center right, Musinga,
the king of Rwanda from 1896 to 1931, surrounded by four of
his wives; to his right is Kanjogera, the queen mother. On
Kanjogera's lower legs, note the ubutega anklets, a product
acquired through the Lake Kivu regional trade network. Copyright
Africa-Museum Tervuren (Belgium). |
|
|
|
|
|
Similarly, the two-volume
study by Père Louis de Lacger, Ruanda (1939), is an important
transition work in this regard. It includes both local and statist viewpoints,
although they are kept chronologically separate: local elements are
most prevalent in his presentation of the precolonial period, statist
perspectives in the colonial section.25
Throughout his presentation of precolonial history, de Lacger stressed
the regional differences and historical autonomy of the different areas
that eventually became "Rwanda." Presenting the expansion of the Nyiginya
central court on the model of the extension of French royal power from
an "Ile de France," de Lacger gave full credit to the cultural integrity
and political autonomy of the various communities conquered by (and
to varying degrees absorbed into) the larger monarchical state—factors
omitted in later works. |
20 |
|
Nonetheless, turning
to the colonial period, de Lacger celebrated the "Hamitic" rulers, and
he presented a much more homogenized, less conflictual image, focused
particularly on the march of Christianity and the preeminence of Catholicism.
Not long before de Lacger's book was published, the Belgian administration
had deposed the king (Musinga), citing his opposition to "European civilization."26
Shortly thereafter, Musinga's successor Rudahigwa—carefully selected
by Belgian authorities in consultation with the principal Catholic prelates—was
to dedicate the country to Christ the King. In celebrating this success
story of the Catholic Church in Rwanda, de Lacger lost sight of the
diversity, heterogeneity, and lines of contestation that marked the
earlier sections of his book. But his approach also reflected more fundamental
changes in Rwandan historiography at about the time of his research,
from full attention to the regional disparities in the earlier works
to a concentration on the royal court and the homogenization of Rwandan
society in later colonial works. |
21 |
|
As part of the principles
of the Missionnaires d'Afrique, the earliest Catholic order in Rwanda,
the missionary priests (also known as the "White Fathers") had been
encouraged to study local customs and were required to learn the local
language; thus much of the early written historiography was the work
of Catholic priests.27
In the early years of European presence in Rwanda, because of their
involvement in local issues, the perspective of the White Fathers differed
from the views of the secular authorities. From the beginning, German
administrative policies extended the power of existing elites tied to
the royal court, in both Burundi and Rwanda.28
But German colonial authorities were few: for example, in 1913 in Rwanda
(a territory of more than a million people at the time), there were
five German administrators compared to forty-one missionaries (thirty-four
of them Catholics). So the German colonial administration depended on
mission personnel for local contacts. Following World War I, when Belgium
took over Rwanda, this civil dependence on ecclesiastics increased dramatically.
The Belgians were new to the area, preoccupied first with the war and
subsequently with boundary issues with Britain; because of these factors,
they felt pressure to assert greater effective administrative presence
than Germany had done. In this endeavor, they turned to their Catholic
co-religionists—and found them to be willing cohorts. |
22 |
|
The Catholic missionaries
were well placed. The strategy of the court had been to situate missions
in regions distant from the central court, areas recalcitrant to the
authority of the Rwandan Nyiginya dynasty; often, these were areas of
outright resistance to court rule.29
In ten years, nine missions were established, seven of them in outlying
areas, to varying degrees resistant to court control. Such placement
by the king was intended to remove missionaries from any meaningful
involvement in the activities of the court, but it also meant that early
missionary writings took full account of regional cultural distinctions
and local social action. The missions were thus suitable as institutions
advancing hegemonic expansion for the court as well as for providing
intelligence reports to the administration.30
So the Catholic Church provided many benefits the incoming administration
lacked: personnel, familiarity with the languages, cultures, and histories
of the different regions, and strategic spread. |
23 |
|
But the shift from
German to Belgian rule after World War I was also a shift from a predominantly
Protestant to a primarily Catholic power. To the Catholic missionaries
in a period of intense sectarian competition, this represented a welcome
change. After all, in the course of religious wars during the 1880s
in Buganda (a kingdom on the north shore of Lake Victoria, not far from
Rwanda), the White Fathers had been driven out by the Muslim faction.
They had taken refuge at the south end of Lake Victoria, converted the
exiled king, and returned to take power in Buganda, only to be defeated
again by the Protestant faction—which had benefited from the timely
arrival of British arms and advice.31
Subsequently, Baganda Catholics had been placed in what the missionaries
saw as a secondary status (to Protestants) in the colonial structures
of Buganda. Therefore, in Rwanda, the White Fathers were happy to participate
in a colonial administration favorable to the creation of a Catholic
state; indeed, the guidelines of proselytization for the order were
to work through the existing political elite.32
In addition, the Belgian administration eventually found an ambitious
leader to work with, one eager to participate in a catalytic role: Père
Léon Classe, the vicar-general of the order. The infrastructure
for forging an orthodox—or in Pierre Bourdieu's terms, a doxic—history
was thus firmly in place: it was composed of an alliance of ecclesiastics
and administrators.33
|
24 |
|
However, while these
were the internal features to the colonial historical drama, it was
an external conflict that, through an alliance of ecclesiastics and
administrators, sparked a transformation of the colonial historiography
of Rwanda. World War I had a significant impact on Africa. At enormous
cost to the local populations, Britain and Belgium had mobilized their
colonial subjects to fight the Germans in East Africa. In the case of
Rwanda, many men were mobilized as soldiers and porters, but a severe
famine in the northwest, resulting directly from the hostilities, took
the lives of many as well.34
The political effects following the war were no less significant. After
the war, the two victorious European allies sought to divide the territorial
spoils whose acquisition had disrupted the lives of so many Africans.
Britain sought to annex the areas immediately west of the Kagera River,
areas they claimed were particularly well suited for the construction
of the Cape-to-Cairo railway.35
They premised their demands on the claim that much of this area had
formed the kingdom of Gisaka, until recently politically autonomous
of the Nyiginya royal court of Rwanda. Without going into the details
of this diplomatic struggle, it is enough to note that such claims directly
affected the internal consolidation of colonial rule.36
Most important for our current interests, a shared reaction to the British
claims helped consolidate an emerging alliance between the three parties
noted above: the Belgian colonial authorities, the central court of
the Rwandan monarchy, and the Catholic Church. They countered with the
claim that the Rwandan central court armies had conquered Gisaka (a
claim contested by many in Gisaka) and therefore had extended its territorial
dominion to the Kagera River. Any deviation from this position was considered
treason to Belgium, subversion against the king, and (since Britain
was seen as a Protestant power) near heresy to the Catholic Church. |
25 |
|
Whatever their other
differences, these three factions agreed on the threat that British
claims posed to the integrity of the state. The royal court saw a threat
to its ideological and material bases, for the eastern areas in dispute
were particularly important to the monarchy, both symbolically and materially.
These were the areas where the Nyiginya monarchy claimed its origins.
Although in the eighteenth century, the center of the monarchy had moved
to the west, vast areas of this region nonetheless continued to serve
as the principal pasturage of the royal cattle herds. |
26 |
|
The church saw this
region as important because of the possibility it presented for the
intrusion of Protestant missions to a Catholic domain—a possibility
they wished ardently to thwart. Although German Protestants had been
established in Rwanda since 1907, the Church Missionary Society (CMS),
based in Britain, was seen as the greater threat; it was backed by the
diplomatic clout of a major colonial power, the financial might of an
industrial state with a strong tradition of missionary expansion in
Africa, and the resources and experienced personnel of one of the largest
and most established missionary orders in the region. In fact, during
the British occupation of this area after World War I, a semi-autonomous
evangelical faction of the CMS had established a mission—in Catholic
eyes, a "beachhead"—in this region.37
|
27 |
|
The Belgian authorities
saw such claims to the area west of the Kagera River as a threat for
three reasons. It was a slight to their colonial integrity and national
pride. Furthermore, they relied on the monarchical institutions (as
their administrative grid) and on the Catholic Church (for carrying
out social policy); they hardly wanted to offend their allies in the
administration of Rwanda. Moreover, the Belgian administration feared
that, through the railway scheme, British financial penetration to this
area could also draw off labor from this presumed "colonial labor reserve,"
which had been a central element in colonial thinking on Rwanda and
Burundi. Before the late 1920s, Belgian administrators had directed
Rwandan labor toward the mines in Katanga and elsewhere in the Belgian
Congo; they saw the emigration of Rwandan workers to British territories
as detrimental to their own economic aspirations. |
28 |
|
The primary response
to the British claims, therefore, was to assert the hegemony of the
royal court in this region. And the principal respondent was Monseigneur
Classe. But this debate was not simply a series of diplomatic niceties
carried on behind closed doors. It was a debate that raged at the League
of Nations, and it was well publicized in both missionary circles and
the popular press. In the process, it transformed the nature of Rwandan
historiography. Instead of the earlier emphasis on (or at least recognition
of) regional autonomy and regional distinctions, the written works now
focused almost exclusively on royal ascendancy; this shift promoted
a centralized view of "Rwandan" history. In sum, in responding to this
perceived external threat, the new "doxic" vision of Rwandan history
consolidated the administrative, court, and missionary perspectives
into a single secular narrative, one later to be taught in the schools,
promulgated in the press, legitimated in academic works, and "confirmed"
in diplomatic handbooks. |
29 |
|
The essential elements
of this vision stressed the homogeneity of the society, the power of
the monarchy (including ethnic stratification), and the longevity of
the kingdom. Rwanda was portrayed as a unitary and enduring society,
completely consolidated internally and clearly demarcated from its neighbors.
To be sure, both these points contradicted much of the earlier written
and oral historiography of this region. Nonetheless, this historical
image of a unitary "Rwanda" became as central as its claims to chronological
longevity, and there was a connection between the two. In this context,
"longevity" was a powerful factor in legitimizing "the state"—the
claim to time depth implicitly projected the colonial assumptions of
"the traditional monarchy," unchanged, into the distant past. From this,
there developed an image of a highly centralized, rigidly stratified,
and ancient state. From the 1930s, political issues came to focus not
on regions but on royalty, social issues focused not on ecological distinctions
but on ethnicity, and historical issues focused not on local initiatives
but on external origins. |
30 |
|
In this schema,
the state was seen to have been established 500 years before.38
And while full of conflict (often within the royal line or between the
Rwandan monarchy and other competing Tutsi dynasties), Nyiginya dynastic
history proceeded undeterred. The only major change was in its inexorable
expansion; even internal changes—coups d'état and dynastic
shifts—were masked behind the ideology of unbroken continuity.39
Most important, the linkages with the broader population, as expressed
through such institutions as clientship and army organization, were
portrayed as static and unchanged over 500 years. The Nyiginya state
institutions of the late nineteenth century, seen as the "traditional"
institutions of Rwanda, were assumed to have been characteristic of
the state since its founding at a particular moment in time: the state,
it was argued, was created whole. |
31 |
|
The proponents of
this centrist view of history were responding to an external stimulus,
the boundary dispute on the Kagera River. As is often the case, the
external context came to define the contours of a new historical imagery.
This revised internal historical understanding was produced to address
external political issues; the facts had to conform not to local evidence
but to regional agendas. Like many ideologies, this vision was based
on a "truncated empiricism"; "facts" were cited without being placed
in context, without consideration of alternative data, without internal
critique, and without reference to the contentions of historical process:
the events simply "happened." The manipulation of the ambiguous and
controversial claims of Nyiginya court presence in areas just west of
the Kagera River provides an example of this truncated empiricism, an
approach that removed ambiguity and contradiction and denied the possibility
of multiple histories. In fact, the Nyiginya lineages that became the
political core to the royal dynasty had had influence, varying over
time, in the disputed area. At issue was not whether they had a presence
there, but what sort of presence, how that had changed over time, and
what effect this had had on people's identities. In lived history, such
concerns were central; in the context of larger political debates, however,
such issues were easily elided. |
32 |
|
To assert the vision
of a consolidated Nyiginya monarchy, the writers advancing the Belgian
view against British claims ignored the local sources (which were more
ambiguous on such questions) in favor of Nyiginya royal accounts alone.
Such historical accounts irrevocably associated with "Rwanda" any region
attacked by armies of the Nyiginya court and any areas inhabited by
people of "Rwandan culture": there is a powerful irredentist streak
to Rwandan royal history.40
One example is in the treatment of the history of Gisaka, the area in
question during the dispute with Britain after World War I. Dynastic
Rwandan sources claim Gisaka as "Rwandan" from the time of Rujugira
(1675–1741 in the "official" royal chronology) or from Ruganzu
Bwimba (1312–1345).41
Yet Gisaka was still being fought over throughout the nineteenth century,
and even after the "conquest" of the Gisaka royal family in the late
nineteenth century, the population remained "rebellious" (that is, independent)
well into the colonial period. Nonetheless, colonial histories of Gisaka
ignore these "rebellions"; in this fashion, the presentation of local
history was restructured to conform to Nyiginya royal accounts.42
One problem evident from this example relates to the treatment of regional
diversity. Rather than being seen as an essential dimension to national
history, regional histories were seen as opposed to national history.43
In the view of the central court, to focus on a region, and especially
to privilege local initiatives, was a threat to the dominant paradigm.
Thus "history" was presumed to adhere to nationality; in this case,
"Rwandan history" could only belong to "Rwanda," and true historical
actors could only be members of the royal court. |
33 |
|
But these historiographical
issues were not limited to Gisaka. Within the area now referred to as
Rwanda, one can cite a score of historical polities of varying sizes
and characteristics, from extensive kingdoms of the east (such as Gisaka,
Ndorwa, Bugesera, Mutara) to the smaller autonomous political organizations
of the west. The latter were based on one of two models. The "forest
polities" included several thousand people, often a mobile population
that engaged in trapping and gathering as well as agriculture and livestock.
Indeed, several of these polities—Busozo, Bukunzi, Kingogo, and
Bushiru—continued as independent units into the 1920s.44
A second general model differing from that of the Nyiginya dynasty was
associated with the densely populated and sedentary social formations
in the far north of what is today Rwanda. These were based on a form
of segmentary kinship structures, without centralized political functions
or territorial ritual focus.45
In sum, within the area now referred to as Rwanda, there were numerous
regional variations: one can identify at least nine distinct cultural
zones, with their own (politically autonomous) histories, before the
eighteenth century, and often with important cultural connections reaching
beyond current Rwandan state boundaries. For several, their autonomy
continued well into the nineteenth century and, for some, even into
colonial times.46
Though not often present in the historiography, therefore, regional
differences are part of the ongoing story of Rwandan history. |
34 |
|
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|
Thus "conventional" history
has privileged royal over local sources—or rather, it has obscured
and silenced local sources. It also privileged written over oral accounts—or
rather, privileged early written accounts (based largely on speculation)
over later written accounts (based more often on local narratives).
Consequently, it may be worth looking briefly at the development of
this conventional history. Aside from the speculation of ancient Greeks,
the first written accounts for this general region were by late nineteenth-century
European travelers. John Hannington Speke was the earliest; he visited
Karagwe and Buganda (east of Rwanda) in 1862. Speke's book included
an entire chapter on his vision of the history of the region. A migrant
himself, he saw the history as one of migration: "In Abyssinia a pastoral
clan from the Asiatic side took the government of Abyssinia from its
people and have ruled over them ever since. It may be presumed that
there once existed a foreign but compact government in Abyssinia which
becoming great and powerful sent out armies on all sides of it."47
Subsequently, one of these "armies" was "lost sight of in the interior
of the continent and crossing the Nile close to its source, discovered
the rich pasturage of Unyoro [today part of western Uganda] and founded
the great kingdom of Kittara, where they lost their religion, forgot
their language, extracted their lower incisors like the natives, changed
their national name to Wahuma, and no longer remembered the names of
Hubshi or Galla."48
Thus Speke's self-defined "theory of ethnology" is apparently a history
of lost religion, lost language, lost incisors, and lost identity. (In
other words, it lacks any empirical indication of Abyssinian origin.)
And with little evidence to go on, Speke concludes: "So much for ethnological
conjecture."49
Yet despite the absence of any empirical basis for the historical scenario
he proposed, Speke's self-defined "conjecture" provided a convenient
paradigm for others uncritically to follow. |
35 |
|
Later accounts were
associated with the establishment of colonial rule. One of the most
influential of these was by Sir Harry Johnston. As a British colonial
administrator, he had arrived in East Africa in the aftermath of a long
civil war in Buganda, in which his administrative predecessor, Frederick
Lugard, had played an instrumental role. In the wake of conflict, Johnston
saw conquest as a key element to the history of the region, just as
Speke, as a migrant, had seen migration as the key to history. But Johnston
was also responsible for British negotiations with the elite to emerge
from the Buganda civil wars—an elite that had twice overthrown
the king. His aim was stability at minimal cost to Britain, and the
Buganda Agreement of 1900 had three principal results: the recognition
of Britain as the "protective power," the definition of the administrative
elite to rule Buganda supervising the infant royal successor, and the
introduction of freehold land tenure as the material foundation of the
newly established Baganda elite. But in Johnston's eyes, legitimating
the claims of this Protestant, pro-British elite also required legitimizing
the history of this neo-monarchy. Consequently, Johnston was active
in promoting a view of history that validated the new order; he was
joined in this by members of the ruling elite, who published many works
in Luganda as well as in English.50
|
36 |
|
Twenty years later,
a process analogous to that in Buganda was to occur in Rwanda. The development
of this aspect of Rwandan historiography, however, needed a third important
step—beyond migration and conquest—in this complex history
of histories. It was supplied through the work of Père Julien
Gorju, who worked in his early years in western Uganda before being
appointed bishop to Burundi. He was well placed to transpose Anglophone
"ethnological theory" into Francophone intellectual paradigms, and,
as he was working within an extremely tightly knit cohort of influential
Catholic intellectuals, the regional interpretations he applied to Burundi
became influential in Rwandan circles as well. Writing in the 1920s,
Gorju worked at two levels: he drew on local traditions of western Uganda,
but he fit them firmly within the broad regional framework sketched
out by Speke and his successors in Uganda.51
Furthermore, Gorju wrote in French, he wrote with the authority of the
church, and he wrote in a period when racial parameters were the principal
features of history, culture, and identity, all seen as intertwined.
So he was well situated to serve as the linchpin between Anglophone
works in Uganda and an emergent Francophone corpus in Central Africa
(including Rwanda), presenting a case for a broad history of this "interlacustrine"
region of eastern Africa.52
In this history, migration, conquest, and "racial" stratification were
all of a piece.53
Social stratification became the indicator of groups of different origins,
in a hierarchy established by conquest. Culture internal to an ethnic
group was seen as static because it was tied to race. Change, on the
other hand, came from outside; cultural contact between two unchanging
groups invariably meant conflict. In this region, social stratification
was seen as the inevitable result of contact between two irreconcilable
groups; it was also the proof of their incompatible racial differences.
In other words, this was history in which all the important parameters
were external: different racial origins, migration, and conquest were
the operative factors that produced social stratification. |
37 |
|
It is curious that,
throughout this intense consolidation of "official history" in Rwanda,
there remained an acknowledgment of local integrity. Nonetheless, since
official history was based on a written tradition and local history
on oral traditions, these were seen as parallel but separate phenomena:
the former was "history," the latter was "legend." Only after World
War II did these two approaches to history begin to be brought together.
In the 1950s, acknowledging that royal ideology was insufficient in
dealing with local problems, the Belgian administration assembled regional
histories in a small booklet for use by its administrators.54
Interesting in its content, this compilation, entitled Historique et
chronologie du Ruanda, is even more important for its admission that
useful history is local history—and for acknowledging the diversity
of local histories, even while it still tended to privilege local elites.
Furthermore, a collection of land surveys conducted in the late 1940s
and 1950s demonstrated the enormous institutional variability and individual
mobility within this supposedly heavily administered state and stable
society.55
So within some colonial circles, at least, local history was recognized;
it just was not recognized as important to "History." |
38 |
|
|
|
Even more
telling were the official royal court histories, mostly popularized
in the voluminous work of Abbé Alexis Kagame. He was an energetic
scholar who was both Catholic priest and court intellectual, with each
role enhanced by the other: Kagame of the 1940s represented simultaneously
the indigenizing church and the modernizing monarchy. To outsiders,
he served as the essential link between "tradition and modernity," between
"custom and civilization." As ecclesiastic, academic, and court interpreter
(and as a prolific writer), Kagame was the single most influential actor
in consolidating court historiography—and in turning court history
into "Rwandan History."56
But though intensely and uncritically focused on advancing the hegemony
of the royal court, Kagame's works still illustrate the significance
of local history. Many of his writings exude a mastery of local detail
that would challenge the most ardent empiricist; one way he asserted
his correctness was in the flood of undocumented "facts" that pervaded
his writing. But despite his access to local detail, Kagame virtually
neglected larger issues. While local data gave texture to central court
history, in Kagame's vision it was nonetheless central court contact
that gave significance to local data. So even the plethora of local
data seemed to reinforce statist history. In short, during this formative
period of Rwandan historiography (1930–1960), alternative histories
were not absent; they were just ignored (or absorbed). Postcolonial
historiographies unveiled such alternative accounts. |
39 |
|
|
|
From the 1960s,
a new methodological feature emerged. To move beyond
colonial history in Africa, one needed to move beyond colonials: the
history of Africans required understanding the visions of those affected
by power as well as the intentions of the powerholders. How was power
implemented, how was it received, and what were its effects? These were
important issues—equally important to how power was conceived by
the powerholders. To pursue these issues meant a return to the history
of the local level. This shift differed from colonial hegemonic accounts
in two ways. It introduced new topics and themes. More important, it
introduced new conceptual understandings of old topics. Clientship,
ethnicity, kingship, clanship, and royal ritual were all staples of
colonial historiography. But for the most part, they had all been treated
as fixed, unchanging, often primordial features of Rwandan society:
they were presented as unhistoric in themselves, lacking internal transformation.
The new historiography broke open these black boxes and saw these institutions
as historical products embedded in multiple historical forces. They
were no longer seen as just primordial features of the Rwandan social
landscape: they were susceptible to history; they were testimony to
change.57
|
40 |
|
By giving voice
to an array of social groups with diverse perspectives on these issues,
the new methodologies uncovered multiple versions of history. A historian's
task was no longer that of selecting one "correct" version of history
but of finding ways to account for plurality; empirical evidence was
not just identifying the "correct" facts but accounting for and explaining
multiple experiences. Institutions appeared different—they were
different—when experienced from below. The critical factor was
that the vision of social process moved away from the court to include
the rural areas and away from elites to include peasants. But the real
question here is not, "How are peasants treated in the historiography?"
but, "How are peasants seen to participate in the historical debates?"
There are two dimensions to this issue. First, in small-scale societies
where face-to-face relations are important, history was always present
in the public domain, whether in judging the boundaries between fields,
tracing the genealogies of cattle clientship, negotiating marriage or
divorce, succeeding to the role of head of household, or participating
in a religious séance: the local community always included history
in its public discourse. |
41 |
|
On the other hand,
local history that diverged from state paradigms was not easily retained
in the wider sources. Even in conflicts among the elites at the central
court, the hegemony of the state in Rwanda was powerful, and, in challenging
the historical interpretations of the powerholders, the stakes were
high. An example from court history illustrates this pattern in dramatic
terms. It concerns Nkoronko, the son of one king, Gahindiro, and the
brother of another, Rwogera. In the mid-nineteenth century, Nkoronko
was killed because he was aware that Rwabugiri, Rwogera's successor,
was not the legitimate heir to the throne. In fact, Nkoronko was killed
on the orders of Rwabugiri. Since Rwabugiri was one of Rwanda's most
autocratic warrior-kings, Nkoronko's execution in itself might not be
surprising. But the drama went deeper, for in all likelihood Rwabugiri
was also Nkoronko's biological son.58
So the power of historical interpretation led not only to eliminating
one's rivals, even one of the most powerful of the land, but to patricide.
Historical knowledge was a cause of concern in other instances as well.
In one case, even ritual leaders of the court were killed for asserting
the legal rules of succession; and in many other cases, individuals
were either driven off their land, or bound, mutilated, or killed for
refusing to accede to claims on their land by incoming nobles.59
In such contexts, power becomes an effective tool for molding historical
thinking. |
42 |
|
The preeminence
of state authority over local knowledge is present even in recent times
at such "mundane" levels as local production, where an agricultural
officer often becomes a hegemonic authority. Several factors account
for this. First, such agents often serve more as representatives of
the state than as advocates for agriculturalists: their job is to enforce
state directives in agricultural production. But they often have much
less direct knowledge of their field (or others' fields) than those
they are advising, for such officers are often chosen more on the basis
of educational levels than agricultural experience. Furthermore, they
are invariably males. Although women are the major rural producers,
and often know more about local conditions than men (including the agricultural
officer), relations between men and women are frequently strained in
rural areas—male agricultural officers relate to women producers
with difficulty. Finally, even for male cultivators, respect for an
agricultural officer often marks this relationship as one of deference
rather than dialogue. Consequently, an agricultural officer may arrive
and ask to talk to the male head of household, yet the critical advice
does not get to the actual (female) producers, nor does the critical
knowledge of local conditions get to the agricultural officer. As a
result, not only does "state agriculture" become a coercive field, but
much local knowledge (local variations of crops, soils, pests, labor
practices) is lost, in the name of standardizing and "rationalizing"
agriculture.60
Even the field of agrarian history, therefore, is subject to the state
and often neglected by the state; in an analogous fashion, the same
is true for intellectual fields such as "history," also seen as the
prerogative of the state and its authorities. |
43 |
|
But there are ways
to assert alternative views. One is through orality, often indirectly
by allusion, occasionally by direct narrative. Another is through local
newspapers or articles in local journals; during the 1950s in Rwanda,
for example, a Rwanda-language newspaper, Kinyamateka, published alternative
histories divergent from those of the dynastic oral traditions. They
were extremely important in affecting political attitudes and mobilizing
political action in the late 1950s, because of the inherent power of
the articles themselves and because they articulated widespread, preexisting
perceptions among rural Rwandans.61
For more recent periods in Rwanda, radio programs sometimes served this
purpose of representing perspectives that differed from those of the
powerful. For example, in the 1980s, one of the most popular programs
on Radio Rwanda consisted of interviews with youth and "people in the
hills." The opinions that aired on these shows were often critical of
the state. Such outspoken views reflected more general discontent and
contributed powerfully to the process of undermining the legitimacy
of the government in the rural areas during the late 1980s. When handled
sensitively and critically, these are the kinds of sources that are
needed to transcend state hegemonies. They are the kind of "subaltern
voices" that oral historiography has always dealt with—when it
has moved beyond the oral narrative of the royal court. And it is the
kind of knowledge that we must presume has always been present but to
which historians have not always lent a ready ear. |
44 |
|
|
|
Nonetheless,
the question remains: do these alternative visions change our understanding
of social process, or are they simply different ways of addressing the
same topics? The answer is both. Where dynastic histories stressed the
expansion of the state and the glories of the court, for example, local
accounts stressed the brutal character of the internal state processes
and the inequities of the system. Both perspectives addressed royal
power, but one celebrated the power of the state while the other stressed
the insecurity of the peasant. However, these divergent perspectives
represent more than different constituencies being interested in different
things and seeing different outcomes: these debates relate to divergent
definitions of the state and represent differing understandings of state
power. To trace power relations meant that one had to move beyond the
conventional definition of state politics and address neglected themes
of Rwandan rural history. |
45 |
|
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|
Postcolonial writings generally recognized
the narrow character of earlier work and sought to move beyond court perspectives.
But in inquiring into the world of those outside the privileged elites,
writings on Rwandan rural areas diverged, taking one of two pathways.
Anthropologists, political scientists, and historians often applied the
new methods and the new interest in rural peoples to questions relating
to colonial or precolonial issues. They thus focused on the past, reassessing
earlier presentations.62
On the other hand, many "development" studies addressed postcolonial rural
life, but these were technical studies and tended to extract rural areas
from politics. In these perspectives the rural crisis was generated by
rural realities—ignorance, population pressure, soil degradation:
the state entered into these issues only to "solve" them. Thus these separate
schools reproduced some of the same characteristics of the earlier historiography;
they separated rural life from central politics, but they did so within
a context marked by chronological segregation. Those who looked at peasants
within a political matrix did so only with reference to the past, while
those who looked at rural areas in the postcolonial period did so without
accounting for power relationships.63
Those who looked at the state in rural areas saw the rural residents as
objects or victims, as recipients of state power, not as subjects, or
actors in their own right.64
One school removed peasants from power, displacing the focus of their
work to earlier periods; another removed power from rural residents, by
examining the technical aspects of the rural crisis without politics.65
All parties addressed issues of conventional politics and the state—but
some saw the state as a causal factor of class formation, while others
saw it as a palliative to existing social differentiation. |
46 |
|
|
|
Relations
of power, however, were more complex than could be measured through
policy issues alone. To move beyond such debates over the peasantry
and the state, therefore, different themes needed to be explored. These
have usually been neglected in general accounts but were often present
in an unintended fashion in the technical accounts referred to earlier.
Though many could be illustrated, five themes in particular seem important
to Rwandan social process but have not been well represented in the
official historiography: the uneven representation of regions; the congruence
of the state boundaries with the historical unit; labor; gender; and
ecology. As with rural historiography, these have not always been absent,
but they have been sublimated, by their absorption into state-defined
visions of history. To be sure, they are all interrelated. But disentangling
them from state parameters allows "hidden histories" to emerge. The
examples below help illustrate the pattern by which these new intellectual
configurations help conceptualize the diverse forms of historical agency,
previously veiled within the elegant trappings of central court discourse. |
47 |
|
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|
First, as
noted earlier, hegemonic historiographies emphasized central court narratives
at the expense of local narratives—despite the "subliminal" presence
of such data in several sources. After Rwanda's independence (in 1962),
some sought to redress the lack of local voices through the use of case
studies; if peasants needed representation, their specific circumstances
and goals needed clear articulation. Nonetheless, little was done to
draw out the common themes or comparative processes among such local
narratives. A second feature, related to, but distinct from, the first
theme, concerns the insular nature of Rwandan history. In conventional
historical inquiry, official state contours marked the only arena of
historical action; political boundaries had come to define the historical
unit. But such conventions largely neglected the flow of resources,
commodities, people, ideas, ritual concepts, religious practices, friendship
networks, and identities across the "inviolate" boundaries of the state—boundaries
sometimes established, as we have seen, through the combined efforts
of the Belgians, the Catholic Church, and the court. In fact, members
of most of the nine subcultures mentioned earlier often maintained broad
ties outside the colonial boundaries that were often as intense as those
within the current state parameters. Moreover, these ties—in religion,
marriage, commerce, and productive activities—helped define the
regional characteristics of these subcultures, characteristics often
mocked by or written out of Rwandan history.66
Nonetheless, if official Rwandan historiography—or national hagiography—has
arbitrarily cut Rwanda off from neighboring areas and treated "Rwanda"
as a historical island, it behooves historians to reexamine the record
and to explore these broader linkages.67
To do so would represent more accurately the lived experience of Rwandan
non-elites. |
48 |
|
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|
In addition
to regional and cross-border dimensions to the history of the people
of Rwanda, the remaining three related themes have been neglected as
well. One is the issue of labor—curiously so, since one of the
attractions of Rwanda to the colonial strategists was as a convenient
labor pool for the mines in Katanga, the European plantations in Kivu,
and the production of cash crops from Rwanda. But what was justification
for Belgian acquisition of colonial territory became invisible in Belgian
representation of their rule. Rather than publicizing labor policy as
part of the civilizing mission, colonial representation shrouded such
policies with the veil of "traditional obligation."68
Official historiographies—premised on the presence of an atavistic
"feudal state"—emphasized clientship, especially ubuhake cattle
clientship, as the essential mode of mobilizing labor. Rather than a
form of forced labor, ubuhake was presented as based on "the premise
of inequality," as a voluntary, benign institution—in which a client
freely offered his labor in return for the usufruct of a cow; colonial
apologists, reflecting royal court ideology, claimed that this incorporated
the poor and bound Rwanda into a single social unit, transcending ethnic
differences.69
To structural-functionalist anthropologists, the beauty of this interpretation
was that, as portrayed in this form, clientship appeared to resolve
a fundamental contradiction in colonial thinking: that Rwanda was seen,
on the one hand, as a single enduring, coherent society and, on the
other, as a "caste" society, characterized by permanent, unchanging,
cultural and racial differences. This portrayal reinforced the distinctions
between ethnic categories while binding them together. In other words,
the power of clientship preserved simultaneously two competing concepts
of "tribe"—one applied to the "culture" as a whole, the other applied
to an "ethnic" group alone. Within the anthropological discourse on
ubuhake, these two coexisted. |
49 |
|
Research since Rwanda's
independence, however, has clearly established the ideological nature
of such a vision.70
These studies show that clientship was frequently driven by considerations
of power: the "protection" received by the weak was often protection
against the outright expropriation of their existing cattle—and
sometimes of their personal safety as well. The "voluntary" aspect of
this relationship, therefore, often consisted of a choice between losing
one's life or losing control over one's labor. Furthermore, clientship
evolved among many complex forms and was contextually defined: practices
changed according to changing power relationships. Whereas formerly,
cattle clientship was seen as the social glue connecting different classes
and ethnic groups, the new data showed clientship to be a much more
diverse phenomenon, with cattle clientship less important than land
clientship in many areas. |
50 |
|
Several factors
emerged from postcolonial research that challenged the orthodox view
of ubuhake, the iconic form of cattle clientship.71
Ubuhake clientship was infrequent in the precolonial period, not widespread—and
certainly not universal—as the conventional understanding asserted.
For example, at the end of the nineteenth century, at the height of
precolonial state institutions, only 8 percent of family heads were
involved in ubuhake ties at any time in their lives, according to a
careful study carried out in south-central Rwanda, near the cultural
heartland of the kingdom. Far from being universal, ubuhake was of very
limited extent. Furthermore, according to the precepts of "modernization
theory," during colonial rule, as individuals are released from the
responsibilities placed on them by archaic institutions, "feudal" institutions
such as clientship would be expected to diminish in their extent. Yet
the data suggest something else: over the first generation of colonial
rule, ubuhake ties in this sample actually increased, almost doubling
the percentage of family heads involved; therefore, clientship appears
to have been extended and reinforced by colonial power. Finally, rather
than serving to link Hutu and Tutsi in "voluntary" association, and
thus binding ethnic groups, clientship ties in this area were primarily
contracted among Tutsi with political positions: in empirical terms,
ubuhake appears more important as an alliance among political elites
than as a mechanism that brought all people into the political system.
In light of these data, the conventional view of cattle clientship as
a pervasive and voluntary form of "social glue" is untenable. It presumes
as universal within Rwandan society an acceptance of the ideology of
the central court—the "premise of inequality," whereby clients
willingly accepted subservience. We now know, instead, that such subservience
commonly resulted from the routine use of political power on the part
of the elites. |
51 |
|
The ideology of
clientship was so powerful that other forms of labor control were often
not explored, even while recognized.72
Yet labor relations extended far beyond clientship forms; they were
tied to state power, to land access, to mobility factors, to local power
relations, to the politics of kinship, and to power relations within
the residential unit: drought, commercial opportunities, marriage relations,
and health all had an effect on labor. So did religion. Religious units
sometimes had shared work patterns, and religious celebration was often
seen as withdrawal of labor. One such incident occurred with the emergence
in the mid-1920s of a cult for young women on the shores of Lake Mohazi.
Although described as a process of celebrating the spirits of the lake,
and as a means of assuring the later fertility of the women involved,
it was opposed by many of the chiefs, since it had the effect of withdrawing
labor from the chiefs' fields.73
Labor was gendered in other ways as well. Men were drawn
away on forced labor for porterage (before the 1930s), for work on communal
fields, for required cultivation, and by recruitment for mines and plantations.
These various forms of male labor requisition of course meant added
burdens on women for domestic production.74
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| Forced labor in colonial Rwanda. Church
Missionary Society. Copyright Africa-Museum Tervuren (Belgium).
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Yet Rwandan historiography
has virtually ignored gender issues—a fourth neglected theme of
the literature.75
An illustrative case is coffee production, the preeminent colonial crop
that by the end of the 1950s represented more than 70 percent of the
export earnings for Ruanda-Urundi.76
Of the work that went into coffee production, 70 percent fell to women,
by one postcolonial estimate.77
But labor was gendered by exclusion as well as by inclusive demands:
many Rwandan men left to work in the Congo and Uganda, sometimes for
long periods of time; in their absence, all the burdens of agricultural
work, including required crop cultivation and sometimes even corvée
labor, fell to the wives left behind.78
Yet domestic labor relations are one of the most "naturalized" of social
functions; because these gender relations are portrayed as "normal,"
the emphasis on state power obscures the political nature of such contradictory
power contexts and economic fields of force.79
"Official" histories of Rwanda have left labor relations to languish
behind the veils of clientship, "development," and the domestic domain,
and historians have failed to bring gender into labor issues. Furthermore,
just as labor is tied to gender issues, it is also tied to the question
of borders and the concept of "insular Rwanda." Large numbers of Rwandans
were involved in quasi-capitalist labor relations, over long periods
of time, in Uganda, Tanganyika, and the Congo.80
But this occurred outside the boundaries of the Rwandan state; thus,
though wage labor was in many cases a formative experience for Rwandan
men, it tended to be excluded from "Rwandan" history because it was
experienced outside the territorial domain. Once again, Rwandan history
was misleadingly limited to the state boundaries. |
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Finally,
the theme of ecology is as neglected as it is important in Rwandan history,
for many of the same reasons noted above: the belief that Rwanda was
a "homogeneous country," that regions were not important, that state
initiatives were the preeminent feature of Rwandan history, that the
history of the country was embedded in the history of the royal court,
and that colonial and postcolonial "development" progressively brought
under control the capricious natural forces of the peasant's world.
Yet a great deal of colonial documentation was given over to such capricious
forces, and, contrary to the official discourse, the major bulwark against
ecological disaster was not the state—which over time extracted
resources and expropriated pasture—but the knowledge and abilities
of the peasants themselves. For the people of Rwanda, one defense against
natural disasters was mobility—their access to different internal
ecologies and their willingness to migrate across international boundaries,
despite the vigorous attempts of the state to control such movement.81
Official histories from the colonial period celebrated the required
cultivation of "famine crops" (such as manioc), and indeed, these were
important.82
However, these same histories also systematically effaced (or misinterpreted)
rural initiatives addressing ecological crises, since such initiatives
(flight, cultivating marshes, killing livestock) were often seen as
a threat to administrative control—especially by local (Rwandan)
administrative elites; on the other hand, required cultivation, especially
forced cultivation, could directly benefit these elites, who sometimes
redirected such labor to their own benefit. |
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Understanding
peasant ecology demands much more than describing the suffering experienced
under dramatic crises or detailing the application of exogenous technology
to rural production. Yet these were the major ways it entered colonial
discourse. In Rwanda as elsewhere in Africa, colonial documentation
privileged technical subjects such as climatological conditions, the
suitability of different crops, and the carrying capacity of the land.83
The dominant view of rural areas assumed that poverty derived from problems
of climate, soils, illness, and "la mentalité paysanne," with
rural producers characterized as ignorant or indolent. Therefore, solutions
to poverty were also posed as technical—terracing, culling cattle,
draining swamps for cultivation, or requiring the cultivation of "famine
crops"—with little discussion of confrontation, conflict, or struggle
in the countryside; politics and power were almost entirely absent.84
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To be sure, under
some circumstances, rural producers recognized the benefits of communal
labor.85
Nonetheless, resistance formed around the forced implementation of communal
labor by chiefs or agents who often bent these colonial demands to their
own advantage. Moreover, colonial demands often diverted labor from
consumption crop production. Issues relating to struggles over the "commons"
were also important.86
These included access to pasture, deciding whose cattle were to be culled,
rights to the resources of communal forests, and claims to farmland
formed from swamps drained with communal labor. The peasants saw these
as political impositions, not technical innovations, and many of these
requirements worked against rural production patterns; what the state
saw as simply "technical" issues, therefore, rural producers saw as
eminently political. Technical rural studies often recognized many of
these issues; what they failed to account for were the peasants who
silently lined the roads in the late 1950s at the time of UN Trusteeship
Council Visiting Missions, holding placards that read "Our Fields, If
You Please!" (NOS CHAMPS S.V.P.!). Theirs were the political
voices suppressed by the "anti-politics machine" of statistical tables.87
And their placards—indeed, the entire rural effervescence associated
with the "Rwandan Revolution"—prompted historians to revisit the
available documentation, rereading it in a way that challenged the power
of centrist history. |
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| Awaiting a UN delegation in the late 1950s,
Rwandans protest in front of terraced fields. The placard
on the left reads, "Our Fields, If You Please!" (NOS CHAMPS,
S.V.P.!). In the center, the placard states, "Down with Tutsi
colonialism. Democracy first, independence will follow. No
immediate independence." (À BAS LE COLONIALISME TUTSI.
DÉMOCRATIE D'ABORD, INDÉPENDANCE VIENDRA. À
BAS L'INDÉPENDANCE IMMÉDIATE.) The placard to
the right says, "Long live Rwanda, long live Belgium, long
live the ONU." (VIVE LE RWANDA! VIVE LA BELGIQUE! VEVE [sic]
L'ONU!) Copyright Africa-Museum Tervuren (Belgium).
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Many of the postcolonial
sources mentioned earlier were valuable not only
for their critique of colonial historiography but also for opening possibilities
for a new historiography—one that is inclusive of rural dynamics
as well as state initiatives.88
The lacunae of the historiography stemmed from the neglect of voices
and sources that did not conform to the hegemonic vision. Such sources
did indeed exist (as we discuss below), but the possibilities of exploring
rural agency were not always seized upon. Therefore, the challenge to
historians today is to draw from these sources an understanding of rural
conditions, reading against the grain of statist assumptions and assessing
the interaction of local initiatives with state policy. But to date,
that has seldom been attempted. Because colonial documentation on rural
areas was often of a technical, scientific nature, such sources have
been almost entirely marginalized when drawn on by historians; at best,
only bits and pieces have been utilized, and even then, this has been
done in such a way as not to threaten the hegemonic contours of the
dominant state paradigms. Consequently, in portraying rural issues,
centrist assumptions were retained in a manner analogous to the way
Alexis Kagame had mediated between local histories and central court
hegemony in the context of political history. |
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However, recent
studies of rural Rwanda have given greater prominence to local agency
and to the particularities of rural communities.89
Transitional in this regard was Philippe Leurquin's inquiry into rural
living standards in Rwanda and Burundi during the mid-1950s.90
Nonetheless, while this study broke through the separation of court
and countryside, Leurquin's approach still preserved the characteristics
of colonial discourse; as a "scientist," he avoided direct discussion
of politics and rural class relations. Yet the empirical content of
his study raised important questions and provided valuable data on rural
poverty. For example, establishing that the principal variables in wealth
were urban/rural, this work challenged colonial assumptions of ethnicity:
Leurquin's data showed no significant differences between rural Hutu
and Tutsi in income and access to food.91
Tutsi households had slightly more access to cattle than Hutu, in part
because of more frequent Tutsi ties to an urban population, and thus
greater off-farm resources. But other differences were minor. No longer,
concluded Leurquin, could one assume that all Tutsi were wealthy cattleowners,
and all Hutu poor agriculturalists. To be sure, writing in the 1950s,
Leurquin still operated within a mental framework of viewing Hutu and
Tutsi as distinct but internally homogeneous groups—a thought pattern
itself a product of colonial ideology. But this colonialist assumption
in his work only lent greater credibility to his statistical findings,
which cut against the grain of such thought paradigms; Leurquin's data
disproved the centrist assumptions that royal aristocrats represented
all Tutsi. |
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