Advance Access Publication 2 March 2009
I T S E M B A B WO KO “À L A
F R A N Ç A I S E ” ? – RWA N DA , F I C T I O N A N D
THE FRANCO-AFRICAN
I M A G I N A RY
ABSTRACT
This article explores the literary representation of the genocide in Rwanda, and
by extension, that of the Franco-African imaginary. Since the horrific events in
1994, “Rwanda” has become a discursive epiphenomenon, be it in global
human rights, African or francophone contexts. Literary works about itsembabwoko, mostly published in France, now represent both a varied and a substantial
corpus in Francophone literature. Problematically, however, France played a critical, if not insidious, role in the 1994 Tutsi genocide. This paper therefore
examines to what extent Francophone literature about Rwanda is shaped by
French politics. Specifically, it contrasts Franco-African texts produced as part of
the Écrire par devoir de mémoire initiative with novels by first-time Rwandan authors
Joseph Ndwaniye, Aimé Yann Mbabazi and Gilbert Gatoré. It investigates how
these diverse texts represent Rwanda post-genocide, and in so doing, how they
work to reflect or resist circulating cultural discourses about African francophonie.
Keywords: Tutsi genocide; France –Rwanda relations; postcolonial criticism;
globalisation; African francophonie; itsembabwoko
What hidden motive drives us to gaze wide-eyed
at death distorted by hatred?
(Véronique Tadjo)1
On ne peut écrire aujourd’hui en Afrique,
comme si le génocide au Rwanda n’avait jamais
eu lieu. (Patrice Nganang)2
IN 1994, during one hundred horrific days, more than 800,000 Tutsi and moderate Hutu were slaughtered in Rwanda, as the world stood by and did nothing
to stop genocide. Today, fifteen years later, everyone knows about “Rwanda”, or
the misnomer “the Rwandan genocide”:3 it has become a widely-disseminated,
albeit uncomfortable, discursive passe-partout, be it in Western, African or
Francophone contexts and, consequently, in Francophone texts about Rwanda.
Ironically, despite the proliferation of discourse about Rwanda, the Kinyarwanda
term for the 1994 extermination remains largely unknown and in limited
circulation: itsembabwoko, a neologism coined post-genocide, denotes the “extermination” of “a people”. Itsembabwoko is often not considered in its political, cultural
or historical specificity. Events preceding 1994 or post-genocide are dismissed,4
Forum for Modern Language Studies Vol. 45 No. 2
doi:10.1093/fmls/cqp008
# The Author (2009). Published by Oxford University Press for the Court of the University of St Andrews.
All rights reserved. The University of St Andrews is a charity registered in Scotland: No. SC013532.
I T S E M B A B WO KO “À L A F R A N Ç A I S E ” ?
163
and factors exacerbating Hutu– Tutsi or perpetrator– victim divisionism are
minimised or relativised.
In global discourse, “Rwanda” is more usually reduced to cultural conventions which often self-reflexively connote, or distantiate, guilt or shame. Most
generically, itsembabwoko is correlated with the Holocaust as the “African
Holocaust” or “tropical Nazi genocide”.5 In the West, itsembabwoko has come to
signal the failure of discourse, be it that of Western rationalism, interventionism
or human rights. The events of 1994 irrevocably transformed the celebratory
“never again” of fifty-year-old conventions into the cynical caveat of “yet again” –
with regards to Darfur, the Congo or genocides of the future. In the African
imaginary, itsembabwoko also occupies a precarious locus, as many African
intellectuals remained passive or silent in 1994. More importantly, this “autodestruction” was perpetrated by Africans on Africans, and as a result, Africa
can no longer claim to be “innocent”, but rather, as Patrice Nganang contends,
“le génocide rend pleinement humain l’Africain, voilà le tragique paradoxe.”6
African intellectuals after Rwanda have therefore been compelled to reassess the
celebratory discourses of Négritude or Pan-Africanism, as well as those facile
discourses related to “colonised victimisation”.7
In Francophone contexts in particular, Rwanda represents a contentious
polemic. In Belgium, Rwanda’s former coloniser, the death of ten paramilitaries
in April 1994 led to a public inquiry about Belgium’s involvement and abandonment of Rwanda (1997/98), and to trials of suspected war criminals living in
Belgium (2001, 2004, 2007). Support for Hutus and Tutsis is divided in Belgium,
broadly reflecting Belgium’s own ethno-cultural tensions between the Flemish and
Wallons. France, by contrast, was staunchly pro-Hutu and overtly anti-Rwandan
Patriotic Front (RPF), the army of Anglophone Tutsi exiles advancing from
Uganda and Tanzania: it viewed the RPF’s rise to power as a threat, connotative
of the loss of its Francophone sphere of influence in Africa. Furthermore, France
played an insidious role during itsembabwoko, much of which is only now emerging
in scholarship.8 France stands accused of arming genocidal militias, of assisting
Hutu forces during the genocide and of providing suspected perpetrators with
refuge post-genocide. Recently, French soldiers have been charged with “widespread rape” by a Rwandan commission investigating France’s role in 1994.9
France is also home to ten fugitives wanted on charges of genocide by the
International Tribunal in Arusha, and until 2008 was reluctant to extradite any of
them.
Just as “Rwanda” has become a discursive epiphenomenon, writing about
Rwanda has become a “hot commodity” in the West. Since 1994, there have
been hundreds of scholarly books published about Rwanda, as well as dozens of
literary works, including a rich assortment of novels, testimonial accounts and
plays, in addition to juvenile fiction and graphic novels.10 Arguably, then, literature about itsembabwoko now represents a significant subgenre of Francophone
literature. Though both a varied and substantial corpus, it has been largely
under-theorised in literary criticism. To date, only a small subset of these texts
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has received serious scholarly attention: namely, a selection of works by
Franco-African writers who participated in the Écrire par devoir de mémoire project.
Analysis thereof has largely focused on literary aesthetics, the ethics and lapsus
of discourse that genocide entails and, sometimes more politically, on their
African worldview.11 Other genres, such as the testimonial genre, have been
overlooked in criticism;12 so too have texts published outside of France, for
example in Belgium.13 More problematically, works by Rwandans themselves
have been similarly dismissed.14
In light of the fifteenth commemoration of itsembabwoko in 2009, this article
aims to delineate some of the richness of the Francophone corpus about
Rwanda, by showcasing some as-yet unexamined literary texts about the genocide, and highlighting some of the dynamics underlying the production and
reception of texts about itsembabwoko. Specifically, then, my analysis focuses on
novels by first-time Rwandan authors Joseph Ndwaniye, Aimé Yann Mbabazi
and Gilbert Gatoré.15 The objective will consist in examining how these diverse
texts represent itsembabwoko and post-genocide Rwanda, and in so doing, how
they reflect or resist circulating cultural discourses. Concomitantly, however, this
study will also examine how the texts address the contentious political issues
that Rwanda intimates, in particular regarding France’s role in Rwanda.
Conspicuously, most literary texts about Rwanda are published in France,
and marketed for and targeted at a French readership. To what extent, therefore, is Francophone literature about Rwanda shaped by French politics
concerning Rwanda? How is this polemical, if not shameful, episode in French
neo-colonial history presented, edited (or censored) for its target French readership? What might the literary representation of itsembabwoko tell us about the
representation of Franco-African writing more generally?
Writing “itsembabwoko”
Before engaging with these texts, let us consider some of the paradigmatic problems that writing about itsembabowoko engenders. As writer Boubacar Boris
Diop explains, “this immense tragedy” clearly forces writers to transcend “the
usual nonsense about the struggle between tradition and modernity” which
often characterises postcolonial texts.16 Rather, writers must contend with representing genocide which, as numerous theorists have noted with respect to the
Holocaust, defies representation; in Josias Semujanga’s summation, it is “irréel,
indicible, innommable et par conséquent, inacceptable”.17 In contrast to the
Holocaust, however, itsembabwoko was much more transparent, ubiquitous and
viciously intimate.18 The authors who contributed to the Écrire par devoir de
mémoire project, who witnessed evidence of this brutality at memorials alone,
clearly struggled with it; they were manifestly shaken by Mukandori’s corpse at
the Nyamata memorial, as several feature her in their texts – this woman was
not only raped and killed, but had a pickaxe impaled into her vagina.19 Again,
Diop reflects that “the only way to reproduce this distress in all its magnitude
was to try to do so with great simplicity”.20
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165
“Simplicity” represents another crucial element of itsembabwoko writing
because, unlike European history, Rwanda’s culture and history, in all its political intricacies, remain largely unfamiliar to Westerners. Rather, Western,
African or Francophone cultural assumptions often obfuscate the specificity of
itsembabwoko, its genealogy and aftermaths. Authors therefore face the dilemma
of demystifying Rwanda’s history and culture, while keeping the text comprehensible to readers. Many opted, for example, to deal with this difficulty by
adopting a child’s perspective and the Bildungsroman genre, a tactic deployed
from early colonial writing to current child-soldier narratives.21 In these works,
children, much like uninitiated Westerners, often do not fully grasp history or
politics. Moreover, as in child-soldier narratives, in most itsembabwoko
Bildungsromane, the child-hero is part Hutu and a killer (as, for example, in
Monénembo’s L’aı̂né des orphelins, Gatoré’s Le passé devant soi and Stassen’s
Déogratias); writers thus aim to humanise the representation of the “enemy”. Yet,
child-narratives also run the risk of being too simple or reductionist – of
infantilising or relativising the horrors of genocide.
Ultimately, writing about itsembabwoko cannot merely be “a great lesson in
simplicity”; it must also “call a monster by its name”.22 Therein, perhaps, lies
these texts’ most important function: their ethical function – not only to represent genocide, but also to resist the exterminationist ideology which
engendered it. In the case of Rwanda, this genocidal ideology, founded on
ethnic divisionism between Hutu and Tutsi, again derives from a complex
causality – be it the ethnographic Hamitic myth, Belgian colonial nepotism,
the post-independence pogroms and exile of the Tutsi, or Anglophone and
Francophone neocolonial interventions – which writers of itsembabwoko must
somehow address, simplify and resist in their works.
The Écrire par devoir de mémoire project is the most widely disseminated and critically analysed literary corpus about itsembabwoko. As part of this initiative, ten
writers from all over Africa travelled to Rwanda in 1998: Senegalese Boubacar
Boris Diop, Guinean Tierno Monénembo, Ivorian Véronique Tadjo, Chadians
Koulsy Lamko and Nocky Djedanoum, Djiboutian Abdourahman A. Waberi,
Burkinabé Monique Ilboudo, Kenyan Meji Mwangi, and Rwandan representatives Jean-Marie Vianney Rurangwa and Vénuste Kayimahé. By 2000, nine of
them had published works commemorating the atrocities.23 Associated with the
Fest’Africa festival of literature and culture in Lille, this project was largely
funded by the French Ministry of Culture, a critical factor in the production of
these texts.24 As such, the chief objective of the Écrire par devoir de mémoire project
was to celebrate multicultural diversity, by showcasing African literature, arts
and culture – not to delve into culturally-specific or contentious political issues.
Consequently, this corpus reflects, according to Africanist Lisa McNee,
“an attempt to translate the genocide into terms and forms that have meaning
for other Africans”.25 Just as importantly, these terms and forms must also be
meaningful for French readers and Western critics.
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Most basically, the circulation and reception of this corpus reveal key publishing concerns affecting Franco-African texts today. Works translated into English,
arguably the global lingua franca, have had greatest distribution and reception
(Tadjo, Diop and Monénembo), as have works by established authors published
in larger French publishing houses (Actes Sud, Seuil, Stock, etc.). Literary analyses continue to privilege the novel, and other genres have garnered much less
interest. Notably, the two Rwandan contributions to the project, Rurangwa’s
essay and Kayimahé’s testimonial account, have been excluded from analysis.
Moreover, of all the Écrire par devoir de mémoire texts, Kayimahé’s work most
overtly discusses the role of the French in Rwanda.
In telos, themes and scope, the Écrire par devoir de mémoire corpus is perhaps best
characterised by its focus on diversity – on interconnected, inclusive, albeit heterogeneous, globality. This diversity is manifested firstly in the variety of genres
within the corpus: Monénembo takes up the Bildungsroman; Tadjo, the travelogue; Waberi, short stories; Djedanoun, poetry; Rurangwa, the essay, and
Kayimahé, the testimonial. In content as well, none of these texts asserts a
singular perspective on the genocide; rather, each embraces a range of different,
often contradictory, outlooks. For instance, in Lamko’s La phalène des collines, the
spirit of Mukandori, reincarnated as a moth, engages with her emigrant niece
visiting Rwanda, whereas in Ilboudo’s Murekatete, a traumatised Tutsi rape-victim
is contrasted with her RPF saviour. Other texts are even more plurivocal:
Kayimahé offers us commentary on everyone connected to her ordeal, and
Tadjo, the perspective of everyone she meets on her journey.
To counter simple Manichean Hutu– Tutsi binaries, these texts therefore
adopt the aesthetic of métissage, or the “braiding” together of different cultural
perspectives, which “establishes a cross-cultural relationship, in an egalitarian
unprecedented way”,26 while also exploring what Bhabha terms the “third
space” or “in-between space” of cultural negotiation and translation, “where it
is possible to begin envisaging nationalist or anti-nationalist histories of the
‘people’ [ . . . ] [and] elude the politics of polarity”.27 Such métissage is exemplified in texts where the protagonist is a hybrid figure, both Tutsi and Hutu, such
as Murekatete in Ilboudo’s eponymous novel, Cornelius in Diop’s Murambi, or
Faustin in L’aı̂né des orphelins. Problematically, however, during itsembabwoko, there
was no generative or neutral “in-between” or “third space”: one was either
Tutsi or Hutu, a perpetrator or a victim, dead or alive. Nonetheless, these
authors all work to reconcile these fatal distinctions fictionally, and in so doing
they seem to posit that these polarities are best reconciled post-genocide, not by
the “third space” of the de-ethnicised “Rwandan” subject, but rather by the
hybrid figure of the globalised cosmopolitan.
What is perhaps most striking about this corpus is its characterisation of
Rwanda as a multicultural ubugali,28 or global melting pot. These texts clearly
draw attention to Westerners and other Africans in Rwanda. For instance, just
as Tadjo’s travels criss-cross from South Africa to Paris and Brussels to Kigali, in
Rwanda, she comes across exiles from Congo, Tanzania and Uganda, the grave
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of an Italian nurse, an NGO leader, tourists visiting the gorillas, and many
others. Similarly, in Monénembo’s novella, Faustin becomes aware of massacres
when Brazilian and Italian nuns are killed; later he is cared for by Claudine, a
Ugandan exile, and taken into an orphanage run by an Irish humanitarian.
Manifestly, in this polyphony of perspectives, we also find allusions to the
Belgians and French and their implication in the genocide. However, their culpability is often relativised, thus possibly minimised, by being set in counterpoint
to other actors. For instance, Monénembo’s Faustin informs us about a Belgian
“pédrophile”,29 and he talks about other customers picking up prostitutes at the
local brothel. Likewise, he notes that, just as his kite was made of Italian paper,
the grenades used in the genocide came from France and the machetes from
China.30 Tadjo indicts the Belgian and French authorities more directly; for
instance, she explains that the French armed Hutu extremists, and that Opération
turquoise enabled many Hutu killers to escape. Yet, in counterpoint, she also
introduces a Frenchman from Normandy who chooses to live in Africa because
he can no longer stand the comforts of home. This “model” French-African,
titled “l’homme renversé”, realises “le devoir de la différence” and readily
admits that “la France a tout gâché, [ . . . ] elle a trahi ce peuple”.31 Ultimately,
the only text which unequivocally condemns the role of the French is Diop’s
Murambi; in one narrative thread, high-ranking Opération turquoise commanders
enable a génocidaire to escape the country, and even set up camp atop the mass
grave at Murambi to hide his crimes. Even Kahimayé, who expatiates on the
French role in Rwanda, points out that the French at the Nairobi embassy were
much kinder than those in Kigali.
Mbabazi’s political thriller
Aimé Yann Mbabazi’s Sheridan, available from the small British publisher
Waterloo, outlines some of the difficulties that Rwandan or Franco-African
authors may face when attempting to publish fiction about such politically sensitive topics as itsembabwoko. Mbabazi, a witness to some of the events of 1994,
penned his novel in exile in 1995. In 2004, when commemorative literary and
cinematic works about itsembabwoko were finally gaining acceptance, Mbabazi
sent his revised manuscript to more than forty publishing houses in France and
Belgium and even one in Canada. It was rejected by them all, most often
without explanation.
For Mbabazi, the reason for these rejections was clear: his novel was simply
too polemical.32 The narrative begins with the training of elite African paramilitaries, including Miko, a Rwandan, by a secret intelligence unit in France. This
diverse group of Africans are taught all French military secrets,33 and learn
history (e.g. the Balfour Declaration, the War in Northern Ireland, the First
Gulf War) in revisionist versions, from the perspective of colonial strategy. As the
plot unfolds, the secret paramilitary agent Miko falls in love with Kenya, a
Tutsi, despite the reservations of his Hutu family in Rwanda. In 1994, both find
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themselves embroiled in the genocide: Kenya and her Tutsi friends flee for their
lives, and Miko is involved in secretly aiding the Hutu army. Both survive the
massacres and are reunited in the Goma refugee camp, their mutual love
unscathed by the horror they witnessed.
Mbabazi believes his work’s political connotations prevented its publication.
The portrait of a murderous secret intelligence unit in France as well as the
details of Mitterrand’s involvement with Rwanda might have been too inflammatory for French readers.34 Mbabazi’s depiction of a sympathetic group of
hired African assassins might similarly have been contentious; it ostensibly counters the ideas of respectful solidarity or celebration of diversity driving the Écrire
par devoir de mémoire project. Likewise, the text’s historical revisionism could have
been too provocative for readers more generally. For Mbabazi, the book’s most
controversial chapter describes Habiyarimana’s plane crash: it suggests he was
shot down by the RPF. In 1994, Hutu extremists had deployed similar reasoning
to justify the Tutsi genocide. While some scholars support this interpretation, it
may be too radical, even for fiction.35 Similarly, while Murakatete and L’aı̂né des
orphelins also allude to RPF atrocities, Sheridan does so much more explicitly. For
instance, General Illunga, ostensibly the fictional persona of RPF General
Kagame, now President of Rwanda, is depicted as “un homme à poigne [ . . . ].
Ces rivaux disaient qu’il était cruel d’un sadisme à damner le pion au célèbre
Kapo de Birkenau.”36 While France is not very sympathetic to Kagame’s
regime, these transparent anti-RPF and ad hominem remarks were perhaps too
critical for print.
Yet, Sheridan also shares marked similarities with the Écrire par devoir de mémoire
texts, namely the strikingly polyphonic and global scope of the text. It showcases
both “good” and “bad” Tutsis and Hutus, both affable and reprehensible
members of the French and African communities, as well as survivors, victims,
traitors, génocidaires and the RPF in Rwanda. Sheridan also offers a rich cast of
transnational characters – Kenya lives in France, but is a Canadian who was
adopted by Haitians. Like the Écrire par devoir de mémoire authors, Mbabazi’s
objective was to produce “une histoire nuancée, inspirée des faits réels, proche
de ce qui s’est passé, loin des clichés et des caricatures (vision simpliste et trop
manichéenne).”37 However, Sheridan also introduces a plethora of details about
Rwandan history that may be too convoluted for uninitiated Western readers,38
as well as numerous intertextual references to global politics, ranging from
Pinochet’s, Ataturk’s and Stalin’s regimes, to Iraq, Vietnam, the Holocaust, precolonial Zimbabwe and colonial America. For example, the novel’s title refers to
General Sheridan who used ruthless war tactics to force Indians of the
American Plains onto reservations, a characterisation here associated with
General Illunga. While Mbabazi is ostensibly attempting to imbricate itsembabwoko
with world events, perhaps this contrapuntal re-reading of global history may
have been too complex or distracting for readers, and taken away from the
novel’s central focus: on the dynamics of genocide.
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Ultimately, Sheridan may very well have failed to attract publishers because,
generically, it counters established expectations of fiction about genocide.
Subtitled a “thriller”, the novel resembles a hybridisation of an espionage novel
such as John Le Carré’s Mission Song and a Nollywood romance. Though
Mbabazi posits that he aimed to tell “l’histoire de deux peuples, en insistant sur
les non-dit, les petites nuances qui les différencient, montrer leurs angoisses,
frustrations, cauchemars, espoirs, et surtout leurs peurs,”39 the final product
seems more of an episodic love story set in any war, rather than an exploration
of mass extermination. Missing is some form of interiority, self-reflection or
emotion on the part of the characters. For instance, Miko never questions the
genocidal acts he commits, nor does he deliberate the genocidal ideology that
threatens his beloved. Perhaps Mbabazi was too absorbed by the secondary
objectives of his work: “d’apprendre en s’amusant” with “un thriller captivant
qui aborde le drame rwandais sous un autre angle, celui de l’humour”.40
Needless to say, readers are unlikely to be prepared for entertaining, captivating
or humorous thrillers on the sombre theme of itsembabwoko.
Ndwaniye’s cultural return
Joseph Ndwaniye’s La promesse faite à ma sœur starkly contrasts with Sheridan.
Ndwaniye, a Rwandan who has been living in Belgium for more than twenty
years, purposefully avoids politics in his work because of his awareness of the
diversity of Rwandan experiences in Belgium, and also because he believes politics in fact engendered and fuelled ethnic hatred in Rwanda.41 Instead, he
characterises his novel as “un message d’amour pour toute la grande famille
rwandaise”.42 Unlike Mbabazi, Ndwaniye experienced no difficulties when publishing his novel; it was immediately accepted by Impressions Nouvelles, the first
Belgian publishing house he approached, and has since garnered several
prizes.43
La promesse explores a Rwandan emigrant’s attempt to be reconciled with the
horrors of itsembabwoko: the protagonist, Jean, returns home in 2003 to seek
answers about his sister’s murder and his twin brother’s disappearance. In
Rwanda, Jean’s mother discloses that his twin brother Thomas is actually in
prison, accused of killing a neighbour. His mother thus epitomises the complexity of post-genocide Rwanda, since she is caught in “un triangle tragique avec
une fille assassinée, un fils assassin présumé et un deuxième en train de jouer
les juges”.44 Through the topoi of twinness, truth, memory, culpability and
responsibility, the novel probingly explores “le rôle individuel dans cette tragédie
collective” ( p. 182), be it that of the (Rwandan) bystander abroad or that of the
Rwandan during itsembabwoko. “Qu’aurais-tu fait à ma place?” ( p. 192) is the
question the twin brother is asked to ponder. Aside from emphasising reconciliation, thematically the novel also focuses on the aftermath of genocide,
examining such topics as AIDS, the penury of the survivors, the influx of
returning exiles, and the experience of Rwandan emigrants abroad.
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Most importantly, however, unlike Sheridan or the Écrire par devoir de mémoire
corpus,45 La promesse aims to showcase and reclaim traditional Rwandan culture.
Half of the novel depicts Jean’s childhood in the bucolic Rwandan countryside,
herding cows or tending his grandmother’s urugo (farm-estate) by day and listening to her riveting stories at night. Urugo life differs dramatically from Jean’s “vie
de château” ( p. 26) at home; there he rises to a clock or eats bread for breakfast,
“la nourriture des Blancs” ( p. 19). Reminiscent of early postcolonial narratives,
this section reveals how foreign presence impinges on indigenous culture and
seduces colonial subjects; as a child, Jean is drawn to the Belgian school
because of its Dutch desks and its “White” knowledge ( p. 31). Later, attracted
by the gleaming-white uniforms ( p. 12), he decides to be a nurse. Though little
Jean gazes reverentially towards the school and hospital erected on the highest
hilltop (buildings that will later be converted into hotels for tourists), narrator
Ndwaniye subtly notes the muddy, slippery slope leading to the summit ( pp. 8,
6). Ndwaniye similarly implicitly critiques the consumerist colonial mimicry of
Jean’s family. Jean’s parents are friends with some Flemish, whose house is filled
with foreign, manmade products: Dutch butter cookies, fake flowers and plastic
toys. To show off like the bazungo (White foreigners), Jean’s father likes to don his
grey suit, just as his mother enjoys displaying her cutlery.
In Belgium, as he faces isolation, poverty and discrimination, the student Jean
becomes disillusioned about life in the West. Upon his return to Rwanda, he
realises he has become “un étranger [. . .] dans [son] pays” ( p. 47), on tour
( p. 83) even in his home village, lamenting, “Suis-je réellement dans mon pays?
Autant être touriste!” ( p. 114). Most of his friends have left or died, and other
Rwandans are friendly only when they think he’s a tourist or consumer ( p. 109).
Yet even in post-genocide Rwanda, Jean encounters traditional culture, quite
personally. Intriguingly, in magic realist vein, he is visited upon his arrival and
his departure by abazimu, ghosts of his ancestors and dead family. In Rwanda,
belief in abazimu apparitions is common; even Jean’s ultra-Christian mother
finds abazimu “natural” and is happy that Jean had a visit ( p. 74). In like
manner, Jean encounters the growing multiculturalism and Westernisation in
Kigali – as natural. Unlike some Écrire par devoir de mémoire authors, Ndwaniye
does not view it as the redemptive balm for Rwanda’s wounds. Rather he
intimates otherwise, when, in polyphonic counterpoints, he contrasts the conditions
of poverty-stricken, often AIDS-infected survivors with the resources of returning
exiles.
Gilbert Gatoré’s dystopia
Published by the mainstream press Phébus, Le passé devant soi by Gilbert Gatoré,
a survivor living in France, represents the most widely-available novel by a
Rwandan. That being so, this work is also largely bereft of any political and cultural commentary. Thematically, the dystopic text intimates there is little
redemption possible for Rwanda post-genocide, be it by a return to one’s roots,
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achieving first-hand knowledge of itsembabwoko, or additional narrativisation of
1994 events.
Gatoré’s novel intertwines the stories of Isaro, a French-Rwandan returnee,
and Niko, a child-killer living amongst gorillas in Rwanda. When we meet
Isaro, this young woman adopted by a French couple in 1994 is living on her
own, isolated, unhappy and aimless, unable to remember her life in Rwanda.
Haunted by her past, she seeks funding to return to Rwanda so as to collect survivors’ and especially killers’ testimonies. While she initially receives funding,
this support is terminated without explanation upon her arrival in Rwanda.
Isaro pursues her project regardless, becoming obsessed with transcribing survivors’ testimonies. As her work progresses, she becomes increasingly paranoid,
suspecting everyone, including her new lover, of being a murderer. Eventually,
readers learn that Niko’s story is, in fact, the result of all Isaro’s research. Upon
completing it, Isaro commits suicide.
Niko’s story, recounted in fragmented, non-linear, albeit numbered sections, is
equally disturbing. Alhough he is a bright boy who excels at school, Niko is
ostracised by his family because of his disability: he is mute, lacks motor skills
and, to quote the book jacket blurb, has a “dentition monstrueuse”, factors
which transform his well-meaning smiles into a hideous grimace. He is fostered
by his loving uncle, a blacksmith, and learns the trade. On the fateful night of
Habyarimana’s plane crash, a cauldron also falls on Niko’s head and, in a
dream, he foresees killing his father. Indeed, as killings begin, in an out-of-body
experience, Niko is forced to kill his Hutu father, considered a traitor for marrying his Tutsi mother. Niko then witnesses further massacres. As the RPF
advances, traumatised Niko runs away to hide, and comes to live with gorillas.
Most of his account details his life among the gorillas who, as if aware of his
crime, also reject him. He dies of starvation, abandoned even by beasts.
Political allusions in Gatoré’s novel are sparse or difficult to decipher. For
instance, readers must deduce that the incident with the cauldron occurs on 6
April, or that gunfire during Niko’s flight signals the RPF advance. Similarly,
Isaro’s research funding, from a French institution, is presumably cut off
because of escalating political tensions between France and Rwanda. In this
text, there is only one clear reference to French attitudes towards Rwanda:
Isaro’s ex-boyfriend, commenting on Rwanda’s many prisoners, notes that this
provides “une idée effrayante de la violence qui a touché le pays mais aussi de
l’indifférence qui couvre tout cela”.46 Overall, however, France appears as a
saviour figure because of its rescue and adoption of Isaro. Although Isaro
slightly resents her parents for hushing up her past, she eventually forgives them
fully when they write her an explanatory letter that helps her remember the
events. Her parents, humanitarian workers, had planned to evacuate Isaro’s
family; alas, the killers murdered them all before they were able to. This
implausible scenario excuses, but also redeems, ordinary French people from
France’s involvement in itsembabwoko.
172
M A D E L A I N E H RO N
Gatoré’s portrayal of post-genocide Rwanda is also perturbing. Neither global
diversity, as in the Écrire par devoir de mémoire texts, nor reclamation of indigenous
culture, as in Ndwaniye’s text, seems a viable option here. In Niko’s account,
the only overt reference to Rwandan culture is to blacksmithing for the purpose
of making weapons of war; another covert allusion points to respectful commemoration, when Niko embalms a gorilla killed while protecting him. Niko is
clearly rejected by his community because of his difference. Just like Niko, Isaro,
“la petite Française”,47 never finds inclusion, community or meaning in
Rwanda, despite interviewing survivors all day, finding a lover, and being
accepted by his family. When Isaro is touring Rwanda, the gorillas have a
greater impact on her than do the memorials. In her account, the only memorable reference to traditional Rwandan culture is to banana beer, which figures
as a commodity of exchange. She is also told a traditional tale, both by her
lover and, notably, by her French father, about an ugly toad who envies a dove
because it is beautiful and can fly high above the marshes. Clearly, this parable
alludes to Hutu – Tutsi rivalries, but also to Isaro’s characterisation of Niko. It is
unnerving that, while Isaro transcribes survivors’ testimonies all day, she ultimately composes a killer’s chronicle. Her reconciliatory, sympathetic account of
a traumatised child-killer offers an infantilised portrait of a killer, one who is
also literally in fans, “unable to speak”. Yet, Isaro also feels the need to portray
him as physically “other”, disabled and grotesque. Moreover, when he flees the
community, he is debased even further as a beast. Ultimately, rejected even by
animals, Niko connotes a wholly monstrous, abject figure. Problematically, such
processes of dehumanisation are paradigmatic in both colonial and genocidal
ideology. In my interpretation, Isaro kills herself because, upon completing
Niko’s story, she realises to what degree she has failed in her task to understand
the mind of an “ordinary” genocidal killer.
Concluding with “lessons in simplicity”
The fiction I have presented effectively reflects how current French literary production and reception prefer to translate itsembabwoko and concomitantly,
perhaps, African francophonie. The Écrire par devoir de mémoire corpus offers us a celebration of global diversity, multicultural difference and cosmopolitan inclusivity;
in its plurivocal hybridity, political partiality is nuanced, and culpability therefore
relativised. In a more postcolonialist approach, Ndwaniye’s return to the roots
advocates the reclamation of traditional culture, as well as the acceptance of
present global conditions, as a means of coming to terms with genocide.
Gatoré’s mainstream novel also posits a viable model that is largely bereft of political or cultural connotations but which, in its starkness, denotes the impotence
of writing about genocide, while also connoting primitivism, dystopia and death.
Mbabazi’s thriller might well serve as a caveat for aspiring Franco-African
writers: to espouse accepted generic models, avoid superfluous historical
complexity, and above all, to avoid political biases and polemics.
I T S E M B A B WO KO “À L A F R A N Ç A I S E ” ?
173
Clearly, these works of fiction suggestive of itsembabwoko à la française do not
convey the facts or the experiences of the Rwandan genocide. Apparently,
however, we as readers seemingly prefer fictionalised, outsider perspectives,
rather than the experiential, albeit partial and politicised, reality of insiders. For
this, we would have to turn to the testimonial genre, which remains largely dismissed in the reception of itsembabwoko and in Franco-African writing more
generally. There are numerous testimonials focusing on the 1994 events:
Hatzfeld’s staggering interviews with killers and survivors;48 Mujawayo’s poignant recollections by women survivors;49 as well as further accounts (in line with
Isaro’s highly ambitious project) by survivors, perpetrators and witnesses alike.50
Audrey Small surmises that works of Rurangwa and Kahimayé have been
excluded from critical analysis of the Écrire par devoir de mémoire corpus because
they “invoke facts and arguments, but to a lesser degree the imagination”; this
exclusion, she suggests, “raises again the question of the ethics of writing fiction
about genocide”.51 In fact, one could conclude that this exclusion questions the
ethics of reading about genocide. This exclusion points, yet again, to the failures
of our imagination and our reluctance to imagine the horrors of genocide, in
solidarity with its victims and survivors.
M A D E L A I N E H RO N
English & Film Department
Wilfrid Laurier University
Waterloo
Ontario N2L 3C5
Canada
[email protected] and [email protected]
N OT E S
1
V. Tadjo, The Shadow of Imana, trans. V. Wakerley (Oxford, 2002), p. 15.
A. P. Nganang, Manifeste d’une nouvelle littérature africaine (Paris, 2007), p. 24.
3
The misnomer “Rwandan genocide” is equivalent to terming the Shoah the “German genocide” or the Armenian genocide the “Turkish genocide”. I therefore refer to “the genocide in
Rwanda”, “the Tutsi genocide” and use the Kinyarwanda term “itsembabwoko”.
4
For instance, the post-independence pogroms, forced deportations and eventual exile of the
Tutsi in 1959, 1963 or 1973 are rarely mentioned. And since 2003, an estimated 70,000 suspected
or convicted prisoners have been released from Rwanda’s prisons, told to go home, testify at gacaca
village tribunals, and live peacefully with their neighbours whose families they had killed.
5
For the use of these two terms, see, respectively, C. Scherrer, Genocide and Crisis in Central Africa
(Westport, 2002), p. 209, and B. Boutros-Ghali, Unvanquished: A U.S. –U.N. Saga (New York, 1999),
p. 132.
6
Nganang, Manifeste, pp. 24, 30.
7
Ibid., p. 43.
8
See e.g. D. Kroslak, The Role of France in the Rwandan Genocide (London, 2007), and
P. Saint-Exupéry, L’inavouable: la France au Rwanda (Paris, 2004).
9
S. Bloomfield, “French Troops ‘Raped Girls during Rwanda Genocide’”, The Independent,
31 August 2007, p. 30.
10
Examples of juvenile fiction include R.-M. Bayle, Souviens-toi Akeza!: les enfants rwandais dans la
guerre (Paris, 1997), and S. Nahimana, Yobi, l’enfant des collines (Paris, 2006). For graphic novels, see e.g.
2
174
M A D E L A I N E H RO N
J.-P. Stassen, Déogratias (Brussels, 2000); R. Bazambanza, Sourire malgré tout (Montréal, 2004), and
C. Grenier, Rwanda 1994: descente en enfer (Paris, 2005).
11
E.g. L. McNee, “Their Voices Cry out from the Earth: The Rwandan Genocide in the
West African Imagination”, in: Creative Circle: Artist, Critic and Translator in African Literature,
ed. A. E. Overvold et al. (Trenton, 2003), pp. 165– 86.
12
Exceptionally, the testimonial autobiography of Marie-Béatrice Umutesi, a Hutu refugee persecuted in Zaire, has been amply discussed in a series of articles in African Studies Review 48:3 (2005),
89–141.
13
E.g. Stassen, Déogratias; H. Brocqueville, Uraho?: Es-tu toujours vivant (Grâce-Hollogne, 1997), and
J. Ndwaniye, La promesse faite à ma sœur (Brussels, 2006).
14
One exception is B. B. Diop, “Le génocide et Les blessures du silence de Yolanda Mukagasana”,
in: Dix ans après – réflexions sur le génocide rwandais, ed. R. Gallimore & C. Kalisa (Paris, 2005),
pp. 79–93.
15
J. Ndwaniye, La promesse; G. Gatoré, Le passé devant soi (Paris, 2008); A. Y. Mbabazi, Sheridan:
Thriller (Hove, 2007).
16
B. B. Diop, “African Authors in Rwanda: Writing by Duty of Memory”, in: Literary Responses to
Mass Violence, ed. D. Terris (Waltham, 2004), pp. 109–24 ( p. 121).
17
J. Semujanga, “Murambi et Moisson de crânes, ou comment la fiction raconte un génocide”,
Présence francophone (2006), 93– 114 ( p. 111).
18
For specific differences between the Holocaust and itsembabwoko, see my chapter “ ‘ . . . but I Find
No Place’: Representing the Spaces of the Genocide in Rwanda”, in: The Camp: Narratives of Internment
and Exclusion, ed. C. Hogan & M. Marin-Domine (New York, 2008), pp. 196–224.
19
See Tajdo, The Shadow of Imana, p. 11; B. B. Diop, Murambi: The Book of Bones,
trans. F. McLaughlin (Bloomington, 2006), p. 73, and T. Monénembo, L’aı̂né des orphelins (Paris,
2000), p. 43. Lamko’s main character, “la phalène”, is the spirit of Mukandori incarnated as a
moth.
20
Diop, “African Authors”, p. 118.
21
For more on the child in African literature, see my article “Ora na-azu nwa: The Figure of the
Child in Third-Generation Nigerian Novels”, Research in African Literature 39:2 (2008), 27–48.
22
B. B. Diop, Murambi: The Book of Bones, p. 179.
23
B. B. Diop, Murambi: le livre des ossements (Paris, 2000); T. Monénembo, L’aı̂né des orphelins;
V. Tadjo, L’ombre d’Imana: voyages jusqu’au bout du Rwanda (Arles, 2000); K. Lamko, La phalène des collines
(Paris, 2002); N. Djedanoum, Nyamirambo!: Recueil de poésies (Bamako, 2000); A. A. Waberi, Moisson de
crânes: textes pour le Rwanda (Paris, 2000); M. Ilboudo, Murekatete (Bamako, 2000); J.-M. V. Rurangwa,
Le génocide des Tutsi expliqué à un étranger (Bamako, 2000); V. Kayimahe, France– Rwanda: les coulisses du
génocide (Paris, 2002).
24
For instance, Mwangi, the group’s only Anglophone, has yet to publish his projected book,
Great Sadness.
25
McNee, “Their Voices Cry out from the Earth”, p. 165.
26
F. Lionnet, Autobiographical Voices: Race, Gender, Self-Portraiture (Ithaca, NY, 1989), p. 4. Here
Lionnet is citing E. Glissant, Discours antillais (Paris, 1981).
27
H. Bhabha, Location of Culture (New York, 1994), p. 39.
28
Ubugali (cassava paste porridge) connotes a meal that is “globalised” throughout Africa: it is
known as fufu in Congo and Cameroon, amala in Nigeria, ugali and kowon in Uganda and Tanzania,
nchima in Mozambique, nsima in Malawi, and funge in Angola.
29
Monénembo, L’aı̂né des orphelins, p. 82. Monénembo uses solecisms to connote the childnarrator Faustin’s lack of understanding. Here, he uses “pédrophile” instead of “pédophile”.
30
Ibid., pp. 117, 121.
31
Tadjo, L’ombre d’Imana, p. 35.
32
Correspondence with the author, 18 September 2008.
33
Mbabazi, Sheridan, p. 58.
34
Ibid., pp. 39– 40.
35
See e.g. the revisionist work of P. Péan, Noires fureurs, Blancs menteurs (Paris, 2005), or the report
of the French judge Bruguière discussed in T. Diallo, Récusation du mandat d’arrêt de Bruguière contre le
Rwanda (Paris, 2007).
36
Mbabazi, Sheridan, p. 208. This Kapo is presumably Mengele.
37
Correspondence with the author, 18 September 2008.
38
Mbabazi, Sheridan, pp. 32–3.
I T S E M B A B WO KO “À L A F R A N Ç A I S E ” ?
39
175
Correspondence with the author, 18 September 2008.
Ibid.
41
Interview with the author, 8 June 2007.
42
Ibid.
43
These include the Prix du Marais and Prix Jean Bernard. He was also a finalist in the 2007 Prix
des Cinq Continents de la Francophonie.
44
Ndwaniye, La promesse, p. 182. Further references will be given in the text.
45
Devoir texts do draw on important cultural allusions (eg. Tajdo refers to Imana, and
Monénembo refers to the Kagera rock). However, the premise of these books is not ostensibly to
reclaim Rwandan culture.
46
Gatoré, Le passé devant soi, p. 48.
47
Ibid., p. 206.
48
J. Hatzfeld, Dans le nu de la vie (Paris, 2000); Une saison de machettes (Paris, 2003); La stratégie des
antilopes (Paris, 2007).
49
E. Mujawayo & S. Belhaddad, Survivantes: Rwanda, dix ans après le génocide (Paris, 2004), and La
fleur de Stéphanie (Paris, 2006).
50
For accounts by survivors, see e.g. Y. Mukagasana, La mort ne veut pas de moi (Paris, 1997), and
I. Ilibagiza, Left to Tell (London, 2006). For perpetrators’ accounts, see e.g. S. Scott & R. Lyons,
Intimate Enemy: Images and Voices of the Rwandan Genocide (New York, 2006), and Y. Mukagasana, Les blessures du silence: témoignages du génocide au Rwanda (Arles, 2001). For witnesses’ accounts, see
e.g. R. Dallaire, Shake Hands with the Devil: The Failure of Humanity in Rwanda (Toronto, 2003).
51
A. Small, “The Duty of Memory: A Solidarity of Voices after the Rwandan Genocide”,
Paragraph 30:1 (2007), 85–100 ( p. 98).
40