squeezing the many for the benefit of the few?

the government is at it again. about 3 weeks ago, a government order to close all kiosks and other informal road-side businesses, like newspaper sellers, water vendors, and the kids that sell sweets and biscuits from over-stuffed boxes they so carefully balance on their tiny heads. the logic is that these individuals are not paying tax and so cannot conduct business until they register as formal shops. the discourse is that if you are not paying taxes, you are not building your nation.

i spoke to several of these informal sellers. the majority are men as the dirty work of informal business is not seen as a place for women. the kiosks tend to be ramshackle wooden structures that have been patch-worked into a recognisable shape while the remainder are mbati (sheet metal) match box-shaped structures that are emblazoned with the logos of international companies like coca-cola or Heineken beer.

kiosks are found every few blocks, they provide a stock of basic goods. soda, beer, water, cooking oil, rice, soap, batteries, candles and the like. instead of walking the up to 2 hours to get to the local, government-run market, Rwandans hopped out their back door for these basics. the kiosk in my neighbourhood often proved a life-saver. unexpected guests and you need 6 soda pops? no problem. eric has them. electrical power cut again and flash-light not working? no worries. eric has batteries.

not only a location of convenience, the kiosks are centres of community life. many of the participants in my research reported to me that they did not like to be alone. when alone, the memories of genocide, or the hunger pangs of poverty, dominate their thoughts. hanging out at the kiosk is an acceptable past-time and one that provides a sense of camaraderie and sense of place. if you can find your spouse, child, work-mate, check at the kiosk. more often than not, you’ll find your missing at the kiosk.

but no longer. the government has outlawed the existence of kiosks and owners are no longer able to trade until they turn the kiosk into a “proper” store front. what counts as proper is not clear; what is acceptable is registration with Rwanda Revenue Authority and payment of local, regional and national taxes…. as for the street sellers, all i can say is that they no longer populate Butare’s main road. where they have gone and what they are doing to survive on what was already a tenuous existence is anybody’s guess.

my first question upon hearing the new law to close down informal businesses was, “is there an international meeting coming up?”. it is well-known that African governments, and Kigali is not exempt, sweep up “vagabonds, street urchins and other unsavories” when other Heads of State come to town for conferences. it is, as Foucault would say, a classic display of sovereign power.

but no, there was no international event that was been stage-managed. it was bona fide government policy instituted at the highest levels, swiftly and deftly as is usually the case in Rwanda, with immediate and lasting impact on the lives of ordinary Rwandans.

to add insult to this injury, the government then decided on another (seemingly) whim, to outlaw taxi-motos on all of Kigali’s paved roads. the decision was made without forewarning and taxi moto owners and operators woke up yesterday (21 August) to find that they could no longer offer their services. Kigali is a city built on the top of seven hills, with the population leaving in the valleys and working in the peaks. with reliable and cheap transport from the outlying parts of the city to town, the city is at a virtual stand-still. the official argument is that the taxi motos are dangerous to life and limb, with the majority of Kigali’s traffic accidents occurring at the wheel of a the small two-wheelers that have been modified to carry passengers and a bag or briefcase.

Rwanda’s english-language daily, The New Times, reports that actually cars and motos are in the same number of accidents. and i’ve been in Rwanda long enough to know that the official story is usually VERY far from reality. the question is, how is driving these policies that touch the working lives of a great many Rwandans? what i see is that the authoritarian government is instituting policies that serve a large policy agenda. what i can’t figure out is what is really driving these recent actions.

one of my friends is stringing in the DRC

one of my good friends, eva g, is a videographer with reuters in the drc. she recently reported on the elections there. check it out:
http://www.blogger.com/profile/27413590

national unity is a tourist brochure

National unity actually reinforces ethnic divisions by foisting ethnic identity on Rwandans. the core assumption of the government is that individual identity is caught up in being either Hutu or Tutsi (notice no mention of the Twa). But many Rwandans have not hardened around their ethnic identity as the myth suggests. I have spoken to Hutu who did not they were different from their Tutsi neighbours until 1990 when the Hamitic myth of Tutsi superiority was first broadcast on Radio Rwanda. For them, the genocide is not a genocide, but a war that started in 1990 and did not end until 1996 when enforced repatriation of Rwandan refugees from neighbouring countries was undertaken. I have spoken to Tutsi who did not know they were Tutsi until local authorities rounded up entire hills – where both Hutu and Tutsi were resident – in the game of moving them to safety from the war, and from invading RPF. Upon arrival at the ‘safe zone’, Hutu were separated from Tutsi, with the remaining Tutsi encircled by Interahamwe.

There is some room to talk to Rwandans formerly-known-as-Hutu about their identity, but virtually none with Tutsi. Never Again means never again target Tutsi. It does not, never again will their be genocide in Rwanda. Interesting response by a government that proclaims national unity on the backs of Tutsi survivors of the genocide and in a country where everyone you speak to considers themselves a survivor as well.

a piece of the puzzle

Part of the code has been cracked. It is now plainly obvious how associational life works here in rwanda, or at least among the survivors. survivors are the bread and butter of the governments public face. Survivors are why certain policies are chosen over other ones; survivors are why the emotional blackmail about the failure to stop the 1994 genocide lingers and is a viable option vis-à-vis the international community. Meeting the needs of survivors is said to be the sole purpose and key objective of this government. the slogan never again is uttered time and time again in the name of survivors, and in respect of the memory of those fallen Rwandese; the tutsi that died during the genocide.

But associational life is highly controlled; membership to groups is necessary to receive support from the government – payment of school fees, provision of health care, transport to and from gacaca trials. Remaining a member of these associations – like IBUKA – is even more arduous. Get on the party line of how a survivor is to behave and act, or get out.

What is the performance? The government says… and survivors respond. It is a ‘perform or else’ situation.

What does this performance mean? And what are the implications for individual peace-of-mind?

the week of 17 to 21 july...

a most interesting week of interviews with ‘Rwandans’ of all walks of life. they ranged in age from 18 to 56 years old. two were cultivators, considering themselves unemployed; another sold newspapers; one fellow works as a taxi-moto driver; my sole woman works as a cake decorator at a local restaurant. the last of my participants was a young woman, 20 years old, a secondary school student. who claims to be born during the genocide. but that doesn’t add up. the 1994 genocide was 12 years ago. her sense of memory, and her sense of belonging — of being a rwandan citizen — are clearly conflicted.

many commonalities emerged all of them were in Rwanda when the genocide started. some of them were caught off guard by its arrival, and its intensity as several of them lived on hills with no tutsi individuals. neighbours and friends were all from the bahutu ethnic group according to this group, and so the local authorities were not ’sensitising’ these populations to do the work of genocide. many of them fled the country after the war, when the former regime pushed individuals out of the country, towards Tanzania. this struck me as unusual since Congo is closer, and Burundi is even closer. the common line was this: t”he RPF was in Butare town, and we were outside. instead of passing through town because we saw so many dead ‘brothers’ that had been killed in revenge by the RPF, we decided to go to Tanzania.” so many walked straight through the hills to Tanzania, avoiding larger villages, towns and Kigali city, as they avoided reprisals undertaken by the RPF in the post-genocide period. ao they feared the RPF; this is also contrary to what the RPF reports in its speeches and policy document. Rwanda was peaceful from the moment they formed government on 1 July 1994.

one of my participants was on the other side of Butare town so decided to walk to Bukavu, Congo. he got tired, he had too many people that he was caring for as they fled. they were walking towards Cyangugu, the Rwandan border town with Bukavu. they stopped at Kibeho, yes the famous Kibeho as written about by both Human Rights Watch and African Rights. the French were to protect them, he said. and they did, because he and his people are Bahutu. the Batutsis and the Bahutus were separated into two groups. i heard a similar story from Tutsi survivors who were not pushed to flee the country once the RPF took power. instead, these individuals went to a French-protected camp near Gikongoro. they too were separated by French troops into groups of Batutsi and Bahutu. that the French assisted the previous government to continue the policy of genocide is widely known. Bahutu, according to my participants, were shipped by truck home to their hills under French supervision. the Batutsi were to remain behind. what happened when the RPF got wind of this is well known (refer to African Rights for their version of events, which is pretty well done).

all this made me think of Marc Lepine, the disgruntled Canadian engineering student who walked into the University of Montreal on December6 1989. he put the male students in one corner and the female students in another. Lepine shot dead all of those women because he believed they were stealing his opportunities for work as an engineer. but there are two differences with the Lepine story. first, Lepine was an isolated incident; an individual that had taken matters into his own hands in a bid to regain some sense of personal power. the Bahutu i spoke to found themselves in flight and eventually in camps because of the political situation within Rwanda at the time; they were in many ways without personal power, but that did not mean they lacked agency. they made life-and-death decisions based on information passed through informal networks, and they survived the genocide. more importantly, they also avoided prison. because of the choices made, the Bahutu i spoke to last week were not swept up by the RPF and put in jail, accused of acts of genocide. the RPF, according to both Bahutu and Batutsi participants, put all Rwandans into camps after the genocide ‘ended’ in July 1994. the difference in rwanda is that almost all of my participants had no clue that they were this ethnic group or that ethnic group. they report that before the war, they were Bahutu, now, as the radio says, they are Rwandans.

all of these Rwandans, whether former Bahutu or Batutsi, have no economic opportunities, just as they had none before the war. most Rwandans live on less than 50USD a month. cultivators are ‘lucky’ if they see the equivalent of 10USD pass through their households in a month. ordinary Rwandans are desperately poor and their poverty is exacerbated by the reconciliation and reconstruction programme of the government.