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Journal of Eastern African Studies

ISSN: 1753-1055 (Print) 1753-1063 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rjea20

What's on a peasant's mind? Experiencing RPFstate reach and overreach in post-genocideRwanda (2000–10)

Bert Ingelaere

To cite this article: Bert Ingelaere (2014) What's on a peasant's mind? Experiencing RPF statereach and overreach in post-genocide Rwanda (2000–10), Journal of Eastern African Studies,8:2, 214-230, DOI: 10.1080/17531055.2014.891783

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17531055.2014.891783

Published online: 17 Mar 2014.

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What’s on a peasant’s mind? Experiencing RPF state reach andoverreach in post-genocide Rwanda (2000–10)

Bert Ingelaerea,b,c*

aResearch Foundation Flanders (FWO), Leuven, Belgium; bInstitute of Development Policy andManagement (IOB), University of Antwerp, Antwerpen, Belgium; cCenter for Research on Peaceand Development (CRPD), University of Leuven, Leuven, Belgium

(Received 20 November 2013; accepted 3 February 2014)

This article attempts – for the Rwandan case – to answer a fundamental question ofstate-builders in Africa: to what extent and how is authority broadcast over people?There is much controversy concerning the nature of governance by the RwandanPatriotic Front (RPF) in contemporary Rwanda. This article moves beyond existingknowledge on local government structures and practice by analysing over 350 lifehistories of rural Rwandans collected in 2011. It will be explained that these dataprovide an insight into the ‘subjective realm’ of governance experience and function asa social commentary on the nature of governance during the era of RPF regimeconsolidation: 2000–10. An immediate observation – based on a simple wordfrequency count executed on the total sample of life stories – is the high presence of‘authority’ in the lives of Rwandans. This insight points towards a significant degree ofstate reach under the RPF in Rwanda, contrary to what is often observed in Africa. Inaddition, the findings identify an overall perceived improvement in basic servicedelivery but also reveal the often authoritarian nature and, at times, overreach ofunderlying governance practice. The observed state–society relations are qualified byexamining a number of life story narratives. The article concludes with reflections onthe methodological, theoretical and policy implications of the observed dialectic ofstate reach and overreach discernible in the lives of peasants in contemporary Rwanda.It calls for a reconsideration of ‘state fragility’ both in the Rwandan case and globally.

Keywords: Rwanda; Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF); governance; state-building; statefragility; structural violence; service delivery; authority; peasantry; life histories

Much controversy characterizes the nature of governance by the Rwandan Patriotic Front(RPF) in contemporary Rwanda. RPF regime consolidation is documented by manysources.1 Evidently, differing analytical perspectives influence the assessment andappreciation of governance under the RPF in contemporary Rwanda. Despite (or better,because of) these controversies, the objective of this article is nevertheless to deepen theunderstanding of how RPF governance affected the lives of Rwandans during the morerecent period of regime consolidation (2000–10). Without adopting a particular analyticallens or benchmark, this article attempts to explore this issue by adopting an inductivetheoretical drive that analyses over 350 life histories of rural Rwandans collected in2011.2

*Email: bert.ingelaere@uantwerp.be

Journal of Eastern African Studies, 2014Vol. 8, No. 2, 214–230, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17531055.2014.891783

© 2014 Taylor & Francis

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The nature and dynamics of local governance in contemporary Rwanda have beenthoroughly documented recently. The first section of the article summarizes these localgovernment structures and the governance practice that emanates from this architecture.However, one needs to move beyond this architecture to understand fully the nature ofgovernance in the Rwandan countryside. The objective is to explore a fundamentalproblem of state-builders in Africa as articulated by Herbst:3 how and to what extent isauthority projected and power broadcast over territory and people? Moreover, not onlythe extent but also the effect of dispersing authority throughout society needs scrutiny.The main question posed by this article is how does the practice of governance affectpeople’s lives in the popular experience, in particular those of the Rwandan peasantrywhich still makes up almost 90% of the population. In doing so, the objective is toexplore the ‘subjective realm’ through a systematic life history approach.

The findings identify a high presence of ‘authority’/‘authorities’ and an overallperceived improvement in basic service delivery, but they also reveal the experience ofthe often authoritarian nature and at times the overreach of the underlying governancepractice. The article concludes with reflections on the implication of the observeddialectic of state reach and overreach discernible in the lives of peasants in contemporaryRwanda.4

Local governance in contemporary Rwanda: a summary

The administrative layout, the nature of governance, the identity of local authorities, theparticularity of their practices and their connection with state power under the RPFregime have been widely documented.5 This section provides a general overview of localgovernment entities and summarizes the main findings related to governance practice.

The Rwandan government instigated a decentralization policy in 2000.6 Such a policywas partly motivated by an analysis of the driving forces of the 1994 genocide.7

Hierarchical state structures branched extensively and deeply into rural life, and wereidentified as catalysts of state-sponsored violence. Major changes came into effect in2006. Since then, the main administrative entities are districts, sectors, cells andimidugudu.8 Our focus here lies with the entities below the district level. The districtlies beyond the horizon of the everyday activities of a peasant, the subject of concernhere. A peasant interacts with government and administrative personnel at sector leveland below. Physical interaction with the district level only happens occasionally. Districtscoordinate and have financial functions. Sectors manage and execute development andservice delivery. ‘Mobilization’ and ‘sensitization’ of the local population happens at celllevel. Finally, cells contain ‘agglomerations’ called imidugudu (singular: umudugudu).Rwandan rural households used to live dispersed on the hills but are increasingly groupedin settlements with the objective of facilitating access to basic services such as drinkingwater and electricity.

Figure 1 provides an overview of these local government entities and personnel since2006. Figure 2 incorporates a number of changes implemented in 2011. As can be seen inFigures 1 and 2, a difference can be observed between appointed and elected post-holders. A hierarchy has been introduced with only those in appointed positions receivinga regular salary from the central/district administration. Field observations make clear thatthe executive secretaries are the most powerful persons at the sector and cell levels. Theyare assisted by similarly appointed ‘decentralized technicians’ receiving salaries as well.Most of these appointed authority figures are educated and dedicated to their task

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Figure 1. Local government from 2006 onwards.

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Figure 2. Local government from 2011 onwards.

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executing policy directives that emanate from the circles that appointed them and paytheir salaries, that is, the more senior administrative and political entities.

Sector and cell councils or committees of directly or indirectly elected residentscomplement this government structure. They are supposed to provide ‘an importantvehicle for the citizens’ voice’.9 In practice, however, the elections of these people are‘guided’; and although there is undoubtedly some popular agency at the local level, theelected post-holders mostly rubber-stamp decisions taken by those who are appointed.10

The balance between appointed and elected positions has two major consequences.One of the consequences of appointing people in administrative posts where they have nofamily or other emotional ties is the reduction of nepotism and clientelistic politics.11 Onthe other hand, low-level actors, such as the ‘heads of umudugudu’, are solicited toexecute all kinds of administrative tasks without remuneration (the reasons as to whysuch people offer a significant amount of their time to serve the public good voluntarilyneeds further research). In addition – and this brings us to the second consequence of the‘design’ of this apparatus – the appointed post-holders’ lack of emotional attachments tothe area under their supervision means that there is hardly any barrier to implementpolicies that are unpopular and which, at times, tend to militate against the wellbeing ofthe local population. This will be explored in one of the following sections. At this point,it is sufficient to note that another consequence of introducing a hierarchical structure ofappointed and elected positions is that the main direction of accountability is upwards.

Indeed, accountability and performance are considered to be important normsaccompanying the decentralization policy: ‘both policymakers and providers [should]be accountable to citizens, who should have strong influence over the availability andquality of services’.12 The Rwandan version of accountability in governance is calledimihigo and refers to a traditional vow of bravery in the execution of a task.13 It meansthat authorities commit themselves to other authorities with the avowed aim of reaching anumber of development targets in a given time period. Progress is regularly measuredduring evaluation exercises and ceremonies.

This entire dynamic excludes to a significant extent genuine citizen participation andconsultation, although it evidently does not preclude popular agency: there is always‘a sense of agency in the face of disempowering circumstances’.14 Such behaviour is notsimply reactive to the state scheme.15 What is important is the fact that the executivesecretaries and decentralized technicians are appointed and thus cannot be voted outduring elections. Moreover, they are accountable to higher authorities since the latter paytheir salaries and have the power to fire them in cases where they are considered to haveunderperformed in the execution of their tasks. A following section will address thisdynamic. One consequence is that even President Paul Kagame has started wonderingwhether the development outcomes reported during imihigo evaluations reflect genuineprogress on the ground: they seem ‘too good to be true’.16

Purdekova17 has further elaborated on the hierarchical structure of appointed andelected authorities by stressing the importance of lateral structures, which emanate fromthis vertical pole through the co-optation of multiple people into the ranks of theadministration by the grant of nominal responsibility within a certain domain: forexample, being a representative of youth or women, or as a member of communitypolicing committees, electoral committees etc. Indeed, as can be seen in the followingexcerpt from an interview with a Hutu woman born in 1963 and living in South-EasternRwanda, the fact that she became ‘companion of pregnant mothers’ in her localitychanged her relation towards the administrative structures of power:

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I’m very well represented because my husband was released [from prison], my authoritieslistened to me when I explained about the looting [in gacaca], and now they’re giving mesome administrative duties. Coaching all pregnant women in my village, it means that myauthorities take care of me.18

She feels incorporated in the authority structures and ‘very well represented’ despite thefact that she also expresses the sentiment of injustice in her life story which emanate fromthese very structures of power, especially in the context of the gacaca proceedings:

They started accusing me too in gacaca, of many things. They said I’d destroyed their housesfor firewood but that’s not true. They made me pay for myself and for my husband. […]A lot of things have changed in my life since 2000, especially because of restitution ingacaca, I have given a lot of money to survivors’ families who said that my husband hadlooted their homes or eaten their cows. They were lying and my husband didn’t lootanything, but I still paid and I’m still paying now. I started paying back in 2002. I’ve paid forseven families of survivors. […] My husband was released but I had to pay a lot of money.I was under a lot of pressure from the authorities. They [the authorities] accuse me a lot andforce me to pay a lot of money. I’ve paid the amount they wanted.

This incorporation ‘offers a number of the dispossessed and disempowered just a littleauthority over the rest’.19 People in similar roles survey and assess each other accordingto their alignment and compliance with the centre. In fact, incorporation in the powerstructure gives other ‘authority’ figures the means to assess those ‘incorporated’ by thestandards of the reigning order. It is a process of accountabilization towards the centre.The effect of dispersing centralized ‘authority’ throughout Rwandan society in the livesand minds of Rwandan citizens will be addressed in the remainder of this article.

The weight of the state: ‘authority’ animating the peasantry

Based on this insight into the nature of the state apparatus as depicted above, we canexpect that the ‘weight of the state’20 in the lives of Rwandans is substantial. This needsto be verified and the question is thus: how can the weight of the state in Rwandanpeasants’ lives be made explicit in a systematic way?

A systematic life story approach allows us to go beyond the mere observation ofthe administrative layout and dynamic depicted above; it facilitates an analysis of thepresence of state authority in the lives of Rwandans.21 In doing so, the life stories of 377Rwandans – all peasants – living in different regions of rural Rwanda are analysed. Theselife stories were collected between February and May 2011 and constitute a second waveof a survey initially conducted in 2007. Method and fieldwork activities have beendiscussed at length elsewhere.22 Anthropologists have often used a life history approachto address one of its main concerns, namely, subjectivity and meaning: ‘the life historyreveals, like nothing else can, the subjective realm’.23 Life stories thus contain acombination of factual and interpretative, objective and subjective information. It meansthat these life stories are also a social commentary. The exploration of this ‘subjective’realm in relation to the ‘objective’ context is paramount since it is our objective to movebeyond the administrative layout and governance practice depicted above.

Table 1 presents the findings of a simple word frequency count executed on the totalsample of life stories collected in 2011. These life stories thus covered the period 2000–11.‘Land’ is the most frequent word in the entire body of life story narratives, followed by‘children’, ‘authorities’, ‘house’, ‘problem’ and ‘cow’. The mere presence of ‘authorities’in these narratives, given the nature of the functioning of these authorities, reveals the

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omnipresence of central power, not only at the local level but in the consciousness ofRwandans.

Rwandan peasants mention ‘children’ almost as many times as they refer to‘authorities’. Ironically, the RPF presents itself as ‘umuryango’, the ‘family’. Given thefact that almost all local authority figures are RPF members, it suggests that ‘RPFauthority’ penetrated the intimacy of the household. ‘RPF authority’, as a sort of FreudianÜber-Ich, is animating Rwandan peasants’ lives as much as land, children, the household,daily problems and cows. Through the structures and governance practice identifiedabove, authority is present in all domains of life: education of children, cattle breeding,cultivating, heritage distribution, commercial activities, etc.

This insight suggests that there is little evidence of an ‘uncaptured peasantry’24 in theRwandan case, at least a peasantry uncaptured by state authority. Understandingthe nature of this ‘capture’ is more complex. For example, it needs to be noted that theranking of word frequencies does not imply any positive or negative evaluation. Thewords, and thus the issue referred to by these words, should simply be considered ontheir mere ‘presence’ in the life of the peasantry. Gacaca might have been referred to in apositive, negative or neutral sense. Harvest or production can be ‘good’ or ‘bad’. Andalthough ‘problem’, for example, evidently has a negative connotation, its high frequencycan be due to both the encountering of problems as well as the solving of problems. Thesame is true of the reference to ‘authorities’. A different analysis is needed to explorefully that dimension; it is sufficient at this point to conclude that the authority/authoritiesis/are one of the most important variables in peasant life. This is an observation, not avalue judgement.

A dialectic of state reach and overreach

Further analysis of the subjective realm – the life story narratives as a social commentary –reveals the experience of a dialectic of state reach and overreach. This section providessome examples to illustrate this insight.

It has been documented that a performance-based approach to governance resulted insignificant improvements in, for example, health outcomes.25 The following excerptsfrom life stories provide further testimony of the important role played by a plethora of‘authority’ figures with significant success in the agricultural domain. The distribution of

Table 1. Word frequency count (2000–2011) – life story survey 2011 (number of words = 574,081).

1. Land 2. Children 3. Authorities4. House 5. Problem 6. Cow7. Health 8. Gacaca 9. Household10. Family 11. Money 12. Prison13. Poverty 14. Work 15. Female16. Neighbours 17. Harvest 18. Genocide19. Production 20. War

Note: The study was conducted with Nvivo 9.2. Only nouns were considered. Words without meaning were leftout (e.g. the, it, he, she, as). The life story interviews were open-ended and avoided leading or suggestive termsas much as possible. However, the respondent was facilitated by structuring his/her narrative according to fivethemes (migration, economy, security, confidence and (political) representation) and by referring to years.Therefore, the following nouns were not considered in the ranking although they were situated high in theranking: confidence, security, person (because it can also be a negation in French), representation, economic,situation, year and level. Singular and plural were taken together. Nouns belonging to the same semantic field(similar meaning) were taken together, for example: authority, state, government (although the word authorityhad the highest frequency); health also contains references to sickness; etc.

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cows under the Girinka programme (‘everyone a cow’) or of fertiliser and adviceregarding the use of seeds is much appreciated:

My economic situation is bad now. I received a young cow under the Girinka [‘owning acow’] scheme and it calved after only four months so at the time I was happy because I hadat least 18 litres of milk every day and I sold at least 10 litres of milk per day at RWF 120 perlitre, i.e. RWF 1200 per day and the rest of the milk we used in my household and we alsogave our neighbours some free milk. In 2009, I gave the heifer to the cell leaders and thesector authorities gave it to someone else in our cell under the agreement setting the rules ofthe scheme. Unfortunately, the cow got sick and died in late April 2010.26

I’m well represented right now. The children go to school and study for free. The authoritiesgive us farming and rearing advice. They give us only selected seeds. They haven’t broughtdrinking water yet.27

I feel well represented at present because I don’t have a problem with officials. If I have aproblem to work my field, e.g. a problem with modern seeds, the authorities can give meadvice and explain where I can find seeds. Also in my new commercial activity. I pay thetaxes they ask me to pay and the authorities let me work without constraint.28

Indeed, progress is not only made ‘objectively’ but is also appreciated as suchsubjectively. On the other hand, other agricultural initiatives, especially the imposedcrop cultivation schemes that are also monitored and implemented by authority figuresoperating in the vertical and horizontal administrative structures detailed above, solicitsocial commentary that evokes the experience of a deep disturbance of the lived socio-cultural realm:

The arable plot is no bigger than this enclosure: 25 by 30 m. I rotate bean and potato cropsunder the land consolidation policy. It consists in having all peasants sow and plant the sametype [of seed] under government guidelines. They then tend their own land and harvest theirown part individually. […] We’re into the second year of this land consolidation policy. Itwas introduced in 2009 so it’s not so long ago that we can’t remember how we used to haveenough wealth and social cohesion thanks to barter and congeniality, sharing and talkingaround a pot of beer. Sorghum – the staple crop that our region mostly produced – hasincreasingly become an exotic product. We reluctantly have to comply with the directives ofthe authorities. Every season, they decide what we’ll put our efforts into producing next.29

Indeed, the exigencies of the state and its agents are often considered demanding andthere are clear indications of compulsion through the imposition of fines and even prisonsentences:30

In the year 2000, the economic situation was good compared with today. The State hadn’tstarted disturbing people, especially regarding trade. Now, if you want to set up a small shop,you have to apply for permits at sector and even district level. Then they ask you to paydifferent kinds of taxes. You’re not allowed to slaughter a cow without the authorisation ofthe authorities, etc. Another practical example: we used to pay RWF 1000 per capita forhealth insurance. Now, we’re going to have to pay RWF 3000 each. Is this State working forthe population? Where is the population going to find this money? It was hard enough toscrape together RWF 1000 for health insurance. This is serious.31

We often lack security because the authorities come up with devious schemes to collectcharges for projects that are not necessarily worthwhile. We pay RWF 1000 for security. Butwhen poor people can’t pay this fee, their house is searched for a whole day. So they lose aday in their field. When people can’t pay for mutual health insurance, the authorities applyextra-legal pressure. People are released from prison when someone has paid for them.

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Imagine that some people spend a week in prison to pay RWF 1000. Most people who areimprisoned or spend days in hiding are poor. They’ve got no income.32

The important role played by ‘authorities’ is also discernible regarding the experience ofthe policy of unity and reconciliation:

In our village, I trust everybody. I don’t have any conflicts with anyone. If hardship struckmy neighbours, for example, I’d rescue them. If they had something to drink, they’d inviteme over and when I had a drink, I’d invite them. I have no worries about the people of ourvillage. I know some of them might seek revenge. They won’t say because the authorities arepreaching unity. When I talk with Hutu, they don’t bear any grudge, unlike survivors. I cantalk to both groups and I’ve noticed that.33

For me, trusting someone means that they consider that you’re not bad. People trust eachother when they don’t kill each other. I trust everybody these days. I’ll have a drink withanyone. Now people are almost back to their old selves. Not like before when they killedeach other. The authorities have taught us. So I trust them [survivors] a lot. The authoritieshave said that there were no Hutu or Tutsi anymore and I’ve accepted that.34

Authorities preach unity and reconciliation; they explain that Hutu and Tutsi have nomore meaning, etc. The preaching of unity and the provision of security by authorities isappreciated by many, as the previous excerpts reveal. But this same experience of statereach has a ‘dark side’, an experience of overreach, as the quotation from the ‘companionof the pregnant mothers’ above illustrates. Further testimony lies in the fact that after thegacaca process came to an end in 2011,35 experiences and the frustration and sorrowresulting from the impossibility of mentioning victims not only of genocide against Tutsibut also war in the gacaca practice were still pronounced.36 This can be seen in anexcerpt from the life story interview with a female inhabitant of Rukoma, an area wheremany people were killed when the RPF took power. She recalled during a life storyinterview conducted in 2011:

At the time of gacaca I really felt insecure because I remembered the death of my firsthusband, the father of my three children. Soldiers of the Inkotanyi [the RPA] took him onthe road, he was with my three brothers, it was in 1995. The soldiers imprisoned them, thenext day we went to look for them at. […] Upon arrival, only one of my three brothers wasstill alive, the others were already dead, my husband and brothers. During the period ofgacaca, I did not feel at ease, one did not talk about my folk although they had donenothing wrong during the genocide. They as well, they were killed because of theirethnicity.37

In the Northern region, where many people died during the war with the infiltrators (aninsurgency war), similar experiences mark the recollection of participation in gacaca andthe guiding influence of authorities in that matter:

During the information collections by the gacaca courts, the genocide survivors confused theremains of bodies of their family members with those of bandits and the Hutu victims of the1994 war. They did not want to believe us when we tried to reveal them this damning truthand they accused us of adopting Hutu strategies of ceceka (‘keeping quiet’) or giving falseinformation to protect our criminal brothers. Many unjustified imprisonments followed thedistrust of Tutsi that we would be ardent to divulge that information. Such information wasvery unacceptable to the political authorities as well as the judicial ones, the National Serviceof the Gacaca Courts.38

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These quotations are testimony to the ideas, experiences and opinions that exist butcannot be aired openly since public space is policed by laws and public declarations ongenocide ideology. These laws and declarations on what constitutes genocide ideologyare justified given the country’s history. But the wide-ranging scope also criminalizes orsimply counters legitimate concerns, including the questioning of the nature of RPFgovernance.39 The impact of such public attention to this broadly defined genocideideology evidently cannot only be assessed by the number of cases of divisionism orgenocide ideology processed by the justice system. One especially needs also to analysewhether legitimate concerns or existing grievances are not publicly voiced by the generalpopulation owing to this socio-political climate.40 After all, ‘government is the way todirect the behaviour of individuals and groups’ and ‘governance […] is structuring thepotential radius of action of others’.41

At times, the presence of authorities and their actions in the ‘objective’ sphere leavedeep scars in the ‘subjective’ realm. This can be seen through the impact of a particularpolicy directive that seriously affected the lives of the rural peasantry in the second half ofthis ten-year period of RPF regime consolidation: the ‘Bye Bye Nyakatsi’ programme.This state scheme aimed at ‘eradicating’ houses covered with leaves, the so-callednyakatsi. The following excerpts from life story interviews are testimony of thisexperience:

I built this house this year in 2011. The authorities had just ordered my old grass thatchedhouse [nyakatsi] destroyed. And since I had nowhere to go – what with all the people in myhousehold – I had to sell all the beans and sorghum I harvested last year. I farm land we ownjointly with my neighbour under an agreement to split the harvest, half for him and half forme, because he’s the real owner. I bought seven sheets of corrugated iron for RWF 33,000.I told you it’s [the house] 3 by 5 m. It’s made of wood. I made this door myself to protectagainst the cold but the windows will have to wait for lack of wooden boards.42

I didn’t like the decision to destroy my old grass house [nyakatsi]. It’s made life moredifficult for me and my folks. I’ve moved several times with my entire family to differentborrowed places. To build this small house, I had to sell my last possessions, i.e. the foodstock we were going to need for energy to rent our labour daily. This house that theauthorities dreamt up for me is not very useful to me. I don’t think my life has changedbecause of it. All they did was destroy my home and not help me find betteraccommodation.43

I’m faced with the demands and pressure of the authorities of our District who want me toleave my fields. They say we have to comply – me and the people of my village – with theurban development plan. I don’t want to leave my plot. Eventually, under growing pressurefrom these authorities, I’m losing hope of living on the land I inherited from my parents. It’sthe law of the strong. People in Kigali and other wealthy people conniving with theauthorities cannot tolerate poor people’s houses. Every day, the authorities destroy adobe-brick houses, they want fired bricks and concrete blocks. Few ordinary people are up to thisplan, which seems to ignore that we have a right to live.44

These houses were destroyed since they were considered detrimental to the health of theiroccupants and, most probably, a sign of ‘backwardness’ in a modern, self-sufficientnation. The idea was to move rapidly: all houses had to be destroyed in a short time span.In practice and in some regions, all were simply destroyed without providing aid to theirinhabitants, as field observations made clear and as documented by local press reports.45

A parish priest who had criticized this policy initiative was imprisoned.46 Only at a laterstage, with many houses already destroyed, did a policy plan differentiate people in

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categories to identify those in need of assistance and others in need of a change ofmindset.47 Local officials who had lied about the outcome of their performance regardingthis particular policy and thus had not destroyed a number of nyakatsi were later fired orsuspended.48

Again, this particular case further illustrates the direction of accountability towardsthe top, and the limits of citizen participation and consultation that ultimately can result inthe experience of state overreach in the subjective realm. The slight revision of thenyakatsi scheme also illustrates that extreme excesses in policy implementation are attimes addressed after the fact and often under pressure from donors. Often, however, thedamage is already done, especially in the subjective realm. It is here, as summarized inthe concluding section, that one needs to locate ‘state fragility’ in the Rwandan case.

Conclusion

This article identified how appointed officials in local administration have become thekey actors in local governance over time and are primarily accountable to the centralgovernment as a result of their salaries and imihigo. Horizontal structures of co-optationgreatly inflate positions of ‘authority’ throughout Rwandan society and reinforce thechain of accountability towards the centre. The findings presented in this article illustratethe existence of an elevated awareness of authority throughout society.

The article further documented how the locally appointed post-holders have becomehighly skilled, professional and dedicated to their task and, indeed, attempt to improve theliving standards of the people they govern. Such an improvement is clearly visible inthe life story narratives presented. On the other hand, these narratives also reveal thestrong coercive presence – at times the experience of a destructive force – in the lives ofRwandans. The deep penetration of authority and the constraints on citizen participationand consultation have some detrimental effects with respect to the checks placed on thisvery ‘authority’. The subjective realm gauged by this life story approach reveals theexperience of a dialectic of state reach and overreach. The existence of this dialectic hasmethodological, theoretical and policy implications.

From a methodological point of view, more work needs to be done to identify andexplore the differences between ‘objective’ and ‘subjective’ data on governance. It mightbe argued that a number of the findings in this article do not correspond with insights onpoverty reduction,49 millennium development goals50 or other governance assessments.However, as already argued, the life story approach adopted in this article is particularlysuited to exploring the ‘subjective realm’. The findings in this article underscore theobservation of a disparity between so-called ‘objective’ and ‘subjective’ indicators ofthe nature and quality of governance in contemporary Rwanda.51 The (partial) mismatchbetween these subjective and objective assessments might be related to rapid and‘enforced’ socio-political and economic change. Further research must explore this issue.

From a theoretical perspective, the insights presented in this article solicit areconsideration of the use of Rwandan state structures and governance practice as amodel to be emulated when devising policies to tackle so-called ‘state fragility’.52 Indeed,state fragility in the Rwandan case – in the recent period and historically – does not(only) reside ‘in the failure of the state to exercise a monopoly over the legitimate use offorce […] the failure of the state to develop basic bureaucratic capacity […] and a deficitin the state’s ability to exercise territorial control’.53 Herbst lists Rwanda among the fewAfrican countries characterized by a favourable political geography for the broadcastingof authority.54 However, he notes that this is no guarantee that all will go well and

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highlights the fact that the high degree of control was paramount in the execution of thetype of decline (genocide) Rwanda experienced. It means that violence in the Rwandancase is also inherent in the structures of authority and the state itself and has therefore amore diffuse form. Peter Uvin has called these long-standing characteristics of theRwandan state and development edifice structural violence.55 The latter includesprocesses of humiliation, a theme that can only surface when entering the subjectiverealm. This article offered an insight into the subjective realm where the state isdiscernible owing to the high presence of authorities in the life stories. This experiencecan be positive (‘reach’, resulting in basic service delivery) but also negative, when thestate hurts its own people in the name of development and ‘progress’ (‘overreach’).

It is important to situate this insight in an historical perspective. Others havedocumented the role played by the state architecture – authority – and its agents in thebuild-up and unfolding of the genocide.56 It is here that the dialectic of state reach andoverreach is at play and where state fragility lies in the Rwandan case. One thereforeneeds to consider taking the element of structural violence into account whenconceptualizing ‘state-building’ and ‘state fragility’. When doing so, it is clear thatbuilding also comes at a price and that fragility is not absent in contemporary Rwanda, asillustrated in the findings presented in this article. It will also allow us to address the(policy) question: at what price is state building and development justified and legitimate?Indeed, in the Rwandan case the question is primarily not how to overcome a ‘distantstate’57 but how to distance the state from society to avoid overreach. Such a concernshould evidently seek to avoid losing the positive dimensions of state presence (i.e.provision of basic security and services).

When redefining fragility to incorporate fully the dangers of state overreach, one alsoneeds to consider whether Rwanda is not a clear ‘state of exception’ on the Africancontinent, even worldwide. The methodological implication is that governance issues incontemporary Rwanda only have limited comparative power in research on development,state-building or democratization. One route out of this comparative methodologicalproblem would be to undertake a thorough historical comparison between differentRwandan regimes over time, or to include in the sample other cases of states with similarhistorical trajectories and political geographies58 or (post)genocidal states with a clearhistory of state overreach.59

AcknowledgementsThe author would like to thank Phil Clark, Jason Mosley and two anonymous reviewers forinsightful comments. The usual disclaimer applies.

FundingFieldwork was supported by the Research Foundation – Flanders (FWO) and the FlemishInteruniversity Council – University Development Cooperation (VLIR-UOS).

Notes1. For example, see Reyntjens, “Rwanda: Ten Years On”; Reyntjens, “Constructing the Truth”;

Booth and Golooba-Mutebi, “Developmental Patrimonialism”; Golooba-Mutebi and Booth,Bilateral Cooperation and Local Power Dynamics.

2. Morse, “Principles of Mixed Methods,” p. 190, defines a ‘theoretical drive’ as ‘the overalldirection of the project as determined from the original questions or purpose and is primarilyinductive or deductive’. When the theoretical drive is inductive, the research is discovering

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answers to initial questions and exploring the concepts that underlie the research topic. Incontrast, working deductively is more suited to testing a hypothesis.

3. Herbst, States and Power in Africa.4. The insights presented in this paper are informed by over 35 months of fieldwork in rural

Rwanda from 2004. Names of individuals and places have been altered to ensureconfidentiality. The research process is extensively documented in Ingelaere, Learning ‘ToBe’ Kinyarwanda.

5. Purdekova, “‘Even If I Am Not Here’”; Ingelaere, “Peasants, Power and Ethnicity”; Ingelaere,“Ruler’s Drum”; Sommers, Stuck, pp. 73–94.

6. Republic of Rwanda, National Decentralization Policy.7. Republic of Rwanda, Report on the Reflection Meetings.8. The reform reduced the number of provinces (from 11 to 4), districts (from 106 to 30), sectors

(from 1545 to 416), and cells (cellules) (down from 9201); Republic of Rwanda, NationalDecentralization Policy. Boundaries and names of these administrative entities often changedas well as the roles of these administrative entities; provinces lost their autonomy (and are dueto be abolished).

9. Republic of Rwanda, Genocide Ideology, p. 210. Ingelaere, “Ruler’s Drum,” pp. 71–3.11. Golooba-Mutebi and Booth, Bilateral Cooperation and Local Power Dynamics, pp. 14–15.12. Republic of Rwanda, Making Decentralized Service Delivery, p. 9.13. Organization for Social Science Research in Eastern and Southern Africa (OSSREA), Rapid

and Extensive Assessment, pp. 17–19.14. Jackson, Politics of Storytelling, p. 15.15. The analyses emphasizing the reactive nature of agency as resistance to power often make use

of Scott’s analytical apparatus of public and hidden transcripts; Scott, Domination and the Artsof Resistance. I do not follow Scott to the extent that all these private conversations andbehaviours are automatically reactive to a situation of dominance and need to be qualified asresistance. I only consider behaviour resistance when there is a clear consciousness of resistingor a collective effort to resist. For example, in my research on the genocide and the functioningof the gacaca practice, I have always stressed the importance of localized dynamics that arealigned with but nevertheless differ from centralized dynamics. For example, see Ingelaere,“Changing Lenses”; Ingelaere, “Gacaca Courts,” pp. 53–4; and Ingelaere, “Mille Collines,Mille Gacacas.”

16. The New Times, “Imihigo.”17. Purdekova “‘Even If I Am Not Here,’” pp. 482–7.18. Life story interview, March 12, 2011, Marangara, South-East Rwanda, female, Hutu, accused in

gacaca, peasant, married, six children, born in 1954.19. Purdekova “‘Even If I Am Not Here,’” p. 483.20. Vansina also uses this expression in his discussion of the centralization of power of the

Nyinginya kingdom in the 18th and 19th centuries; Vansina, Antecedents to Modern Rwanda,p. 95.

21. This approach was adopted in a systematic way from 2007. It is based on an analysis of theoverall research environment, and the need to overcome obstacles such as self-censorship,widespread secrecy and constraint in public ; Ingelaere, “Do We Understand Life?” The choiceto resort to systematic life story interviewing in 2007 was the result of insights into strengthsand weaknesses of research techniques used in the period 2004–06. The research process wasdivided into several phases of which some were more open-ended and exploratory. Anextensive discussion and documentation of the research process can be found in Ingelaere,Learning ‘To Be’ Kinyarwanda.

22. Ingelaere, “Living the Transition”; Ingelaere, “Peasants, Power and Ethnicity”; Ingelaere,Learning ‘To Be’ Kinyarwanda. The objective of the 2011 wave was to replicate the samemethodology and revisit the same individuals and ‘update’ their life stories for the period2000–11. Details on fieldwork and method can be consulted in the publications mentionedabove. It is sufficient to highlight the main features: locations were selected based on theprinciple of maximizing variance (regionally, historical bases of power, agro-climatic zones,etc.); respondents were selected through a stratified random sampling scheme; a semi-structured interview guide was used; and the sample only contains individuals aged 18 years orolder during the 1994 genocide.

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23. Plummer, Documents of Life, p. 20.24. Hyden, Ujaama in Tanzania.25. Meessen et al., “Reviewing Institutions”; Rusa et al., “Rwanda: Performance-Based Finan-

cing”; Chambers and Golooba-Mutebi, Is the Bride Too Beautiful?26. Life story interview, March 15, 2011, Marangara, South-East Rwanda, male, Tutsi, genocide

survivor, seven children, born 1952.27. Life story interview, March 31, 2011, Mugwato, Southern Rwanda, male, Hutu, not accused in

gacaca, peasant, married, three children, born in 1940.28. Life story interview, March, 2011, Rukoma, Eastern Rwanda, male, Hutu, not accused in

gacaca, peasant, married, four children, born in 1943.29. Life story interview, April 19, 2011, Nyakabanda, Northern Rwanda, male, Hutu, not accused

in gacaca, married, two children, born in 1961.30. Also Ingelaere, “Ruler’s Drum,” p. 74.31. Life story interview, March 6, 2011, Ntabona, Central Rwanda, male, Hutu, accused in gacaca,

peasant, married, three children, born in 1971.32. Life story interview, February 28, 2011, Runyoni, female, Hutu, not accused in gacaca,

peasant, married, six children, born in 1971.33. Life story interview, April 3, 2011, Marangara, South-East Rwanda, Tutsi, old-caseload

returnee, peasant, married, three children, born in 1969.34. Life story interview, February 25, 2011, Runyoni, Central Rwanda, male, Hutu, not accused in

gacaca, peasant, married, three children, born in 1964.35. Gacaca proceedings ended well before the ‘official’ closure in June 2012 in many places.36. For a recent analysis of the relationship between crimes committed by the RPF and the gacaca

proceedings, see Ingelaere, “Gacaca Courts”; Ingelaere, “Hidden Death”; and Stefanowicz,“Gacaca Highlights Failure,” an interview with Phil Clark.

37. Life story interview, March 21, 2011, Rukoma, Eastern Rwanda, female, Hutu, no prison, notaccused in gacaca, peasant, married, five children, born in 1964.

38. Life story interview, May 20, 2011, Jali, Northern Rwanda, male, Hutu, accused in gacaca,peasant, married, four children, born in 1975.

39. For example, a senate report on genocide ideology provides examples that can be considered as‘dangerous’ claims, acts or ideas given Rwanda’s history such as ‘the Tutsi are naturallycunning, evil’ or ‘skilful Tutsi lobbying in lying, giving false information and infiltrating themedia, international organizations’; Republic of Rwanda, Genocide Ideology, p. 17. But thereport (ibid.) also enumerates claims considered to be genocide ideology although these seemto be politically motivated, such as ‘unpunished RPF crimes’ or accusations of a ‘totalitarianregime muzzling the opposition, the press, freedom of association and of speech’, as well as‘accusation of divisionism against political opponents and civil society associations’ or theevoking of the ‘guilty conscience of the international community that does not condemnsufficiently the post-genocide regime’. The link between the latter assertions and the intent tocommit genocide (against Tutsi) is opaque, even inexistent.

40. How this preoccupation with genocide ideology, in its broad definition, gains force andmomentum throughout Rwandan society has been documented; e.g. Ingelaere, “‘Does theTruth,’” pp. 521–3; Ingelaere, “Do We Understand Life?,” pp. 52–4; Ingelaere, “From Model toPractice,” pp. 393–5; Ingelaere, “Hidden Death,” pp. 220–5.

41. Foucault, Power/Knowledge.42. Life story interview, round 2, March 5, 2011, Rambura, Southern Rwanda, male, Tutsi,

genocide survivor, peasant, married, four children, born in 1956.43. Life story interview, round 2, March 21, 2011, Rukoma, Eastern Rwanda, male, Hutu, liberated

prisoner, accused in gacaca, peasant, married, seven children, born in 1935.44. Life story interview, round 2, February 25, 2011, Runyoni, Central Rwanda, female, Tutsi,

genocide survivor, widow, two children, born in 1963.45. Imvaho Nshya, 2–5 November 2010; La Nouvelle Relève, December 6–9, 2010.46. The New Times, “Clergyman Arrested.”47. Republic of Rwanda, Transmission for the Terms of Reference.48. The New Times, “Local Leaders Resign”; The New Times, “Five Local Leaders Suspended.”49. Republic of Rwanda, Evolution of Poverty.50. Abbott and Rwirahira, Against the Odds.

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51. This disparity has been documented elsewhere as well; e.g. Legatum Institute, LegatumProsperity Index, p. 56; Helliwell et al., World Happiness Report 2013, p. 23; Verpoorten,“Growth, Poverty and Inequality.”

52. For example, Putzel and Di John, Meeting the Challenges.53. Ibid., pp. 7–8.54. Herbst, States and Power in Africa, p. 155.55. Uvin, Aiding Violence.56. Straus, Order of Genocide; Des Forges, Leave None to Tell; Verwimp, Peasants in Power.57. Olivier de Sardan and Bierschenk, “Local Powers.”58. Herbst, States and Power in Africa, pp. 155, 161, refers in particular to Togo, Lesotho,

Equatorial Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Burundi, Swaziland and Gambia, and lists a number ofother countries with favourable political geographies.

59. A comparison with Burundi seems obvious on the African continent.

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