Genocide and The Killing of Motherhood, Mothering and Maternal Body: Their Rehabilitation in Post-Genocide Rwandan Society

My mother
she was hands
she was a face
They set our mothers before us naked
Here mothers are no longer mothers to their children
(Delbo, 1968, 15)
Mom, I was not there to cover your body, all I have is

words – words of language you didn’t even understand – to
fulfill what you have wished. I am alone with my poor
words, and my sentences, on the page of a notebook, I
weave and reweave the shroud of your absent body”
(Mukasonga, 2008: 13).
Genocide and the Killing of Motherhood, Mothering and Maternal Body: Their
Rehabilitation in Post-genocide Rwandan Society
Rangira Béa Gallimore
Abstract
This linguistic, cultural and feminist study analyzes how the 1994 genocide in Rwanda
was an assault against mothers, mothering, motherhood, and the maternal body of Tutsi
mothers. It discusses the negative impact of killing mothers, motherhood and the
maternal body on Rwandan society through analyzing different tropes used by Rwandan
mothers in their genocide survivors’ testimonies. It also demonstrates how through the
use of “maternal politics,” Rwandan women revived their essentialist roles as mothers
and gained societal respect even in political spheres. The study describes how they
subverted “maternal politics” through “maternal subjectivity” that asserts the mother as
a subject, a person in her own right, differentiated psychologically from the person of her
child. The article concludes with answers to the following questions: Should “essentialist
motherhood” strategies adopted by Rwandan women to overcome cultural barriers and
to reclaim their rights be considered dangerous to a “real feminist agenda”? Should
maternal subjectivity be used as a means to reclaim women’s rights or as an end to be
reached through the process of negotiation, recognized as “nego-feminism,” a type of
African feminism that doesn’t relegate the practices of African women to the margins of a
feminist theoretical framework?
Key Words: Genocide, Motherhood. Mothering, Maternal body, Community Other-

mothers, Maternal politics, Negro-feminism
The International Journal of Conflict & Reconciliation
Spring 2017, Volume 3 Number 1
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Introduction
The corpus of this study is based on testimonies published by international
organizations such as Human Rights Watch, UNIFEM, UNICEF, the UN International
Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), and mainly on testimonies narrated to
me through interviews that I conducted with the women of Abasa1 in 2006. This
linguistic, cultural and feminist study analyzes how the 1994 genocide in Rwanda was an
assault against mothers, mothering, motherhood, and maternal body of Tutsi mothers. It
discusses the negative impact of killing mothers, motherhood and the maternal body on
Rwandan society as a whole and demonstrates how these concepts were rehabilitated
through maternal politics and subverted through maternal subjectivity.
In her book, Of Woman Born, Motherhood as Experience, Adrianne Rich, a
feminist of the second wave, establishes a distinction:
between two meanings of motherhood, one superimposed on the other: the

potential relationship of any woman to her powers of reproduction—and to
children; and the institution—which aims at ensuring that that potential—
and all women—shall remain under male control (Rich, 1986:13, emphasis
in original).
Rich goes further to say that her book “is not an attack on the family or on
mothering except as defined and restricted under patriarchy” (Rich: 14, emphasis in
original). In the introduction to her edited book, From Motherhood to Mothering : The
Legacy of Adrienne Rich’s Of Women Born, Andrea O’ Reilly rephrases Rich’s
distinction of motherhood and mothering in the following terms:
The term “motherhood” refers to the patriarchal institution of motherhood

that is male-defined and controlled and is deeply oppressive to women,
while the word “mothering” refers to women’s experiences of mothering
that are female-defined and centered and potentially empowering to
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women. The reality of patriarchal motherhood thus must be distinguished

from the possibility or potentiality of gynocentric or feminist mothering.
In other words, while motherhood, as an institution, is a male-defined site
of oppression, women’s own experiences of mothering can nonetheless be
a source of power (O’Reilly, 2004: 2).
In this study, “killing motherhood” refers to the destruction of the institution of
motherhood as one of the pillars of the Rwandan patriarchal society, also to the
shattering of motherhood through the abandonment of all Rwandan traditional cultural
taboos surrounding it. The expression “killing the maternal body” implies the killing of
the sacred maternal body that is to say the desacralisation of all the sacred powers
invested in it by the patriachal Rwandan traditions. The killing of motherhood is also
exemplified in this study by mothers who took part in the genocide as agents of the
killings or as bystanders. Such killing is the destruction of the essentialist nature of a
mother as seen through the lense of patriarchy. The “killing of mothering”, on the
contrary should refer to the non-patriarchal experience of mothering lived by a woman,
but unfortunately in Rwanda the distinction between mothering and motherhood is
blurred. Adrienne Rich, herself seems to nuance the distinction of the double meaning of
motherhood:
The institution of motherhood is not identical with bearing and caring for
children, anymore than the institution of heterosexuality is identical with
intimacy and sexual love. Both create the prescriptions and the conditions in
which choices are made or blocked; they are not ‘reality’ but they have
shaped the circumstances of our lives (Rich, 1986: 42).
It is worth noting that in the Rwandan culture, “mothering” as a woman’s experience of
bearing, caring for, and raising children is not really sheltered from the patriarchal
precsriptions. The institution whether social, political, or religious continues to exercise

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control on these functions because the boundary between private and public is blurred.
That is why the killing of “mothering and motherhood” has equally shaken the Rwandan
traditions built on the base of patriarchy.
The first part of the article provides a context for understanding gender relations
and the importance of motherhood in the traditional and pre-genocide Rwandan society
and the genocide’s impact on mothering and motherhood. These impacts will be studied
through the linguistic embodiment of the pain imposed on the maternal body by
analyzing different tropes that survivors use in their testimonies, mainly two important
figures of style privileged by them: metaphor and metonymy.
The second part of the study analyzes how in the aftermath of the genocide,
women reclaimed their essentialist role as mothers to mend the Rwandan social fabric
that was torn apart by the genocide. They played an important role in surrogate
motherhood through adoption and fostering motherhood. And through the use of maternal
politics, Rwandan women revived their essentialist roles as mothers and asked the society
to respect them even in political spheres.
The study also discusses how in the last ten years Rwandan women have moved
progressively towards becoming the agents of their own destiny through political
empowerment achieved by constant negotiation between old and new, between private
and public.
The article concludes with answers to the following questions: Should “essentialist
motherhood” strategies adopted by Rwandan women to overcome cultural barriers and to
reclaim their rights be considered dangerous to a “real feminist agenda”? In spite of the
progress made on gender issues, are Rwandan women moving from the essentialist
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motherhood towards “maternal subjectivity,” as defined in feminist psychoanalytic theory
that asserts the mother as a subject, a person in her own right, differentiated
psychologically from the person of her child? Should maternal subjectivity be used as a
means to reclaim women’s rights or as an end to be reached through the process of
negotiation, recognized as “nego-feminism,” a type of African Feminism that doesn’t
relegate the practices of African women to the margins of a feminist theoretical
framework?
Historical and Socio-cultural Context
It is estimated that more than one million people were killed in 1994 during the
Genocide against Tutsi in Rwanda2. But murder was not the only form of abuse and
victimization used by the perpetrators. Rape, a widely used tactic in genocide and armed
conflict, was also a very common weapon of torture used by those who participated in the
genocide in Rwanda. Although rape was mainly directed against Tutsi women, many
Hutu women were raped as well, often because they were affiliated with Tutsi men, or
because they tried to defend or hide Tutsi. Foundation Rwanda, a non-profit that works
with genocide survivors and their children, estimates that between 250,000 and 500,000
women were raped during the 1994 genocide. These statistics do not include the women
who were raped before they were killed. Amnesty International estimates that 67% of the
women raped during this period developed HIV-AIDS and died after 2004. Thus, the
genocide in Rwanda deeply affected women not only by taking their lives or the lives of
loved ones, but also by gender-based violence and its consequences on the lives of the
women, their children and their body. In order to understand how the mother’s body was
desecrated during the genocide and the consequences of this ignominious act, it is
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necessary to outline how mothering and motherhood were perceived and shaped by the
patriarchal traditions of pre-genocide Rwandan society.
In her book, Male Daughters, Female Husbands: Gender and Sex in an African
Society, the Nigerian critic, Ifi Amadiune asserts:
Maternity is viewed as sacred in the traditions of all African societies. And in all
of them, the earth’s fertility is traditionally linked to women’s maternal power.
Hence the centrality of women as producers and providers and reverence in which
they are held (Amadiume, 1987: 191).
The Rwandan society is no exception. A woman is linked to the earth and its fertility. In
Rwanda, tradition required the division of labor based on sex, and for that reason, during
farm work, men were usually in charge of the hard labor involved in cutting trees,
clearing the bushes and plowing. Women worked behind them, planting the seeds, thus
linking them with the power of maternity and fertility.
Rwanda is still a patriarchal society in spite of the progresses made in gender
inclusivity in all social spheres. Despite the laws passed to ensure gender equality and
equity, traditions still require that a woman be married and bear children for her husband.
In return, these maternal accomplishments give her respect and a place in society. It is
still true that almost every Rwandan woman aspires to become a mother some day.
Traditionally, once a woman has her first child, she starts wearing the crown of maternity
known as urugori in Kinyarwanda, the local language of Rwanda. The crown is made of
sorghum stem, the oldest grain in Rwanda. The plant is used in many rites and sorghum
beer is served during the harvest. Once again, maternity is clearly linked to the fertility of
the earth. Wearing the maternity crown attests also to the public that a woman is legally
married and a mother, and as such the society owes her respect. As the saying in

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Kinyarwanda states: “a child of an unmarried woman has a look but no value” (Umwana
w'umugore agira akamero ntagira akamaro) because marriage makes a mother a
complete being and gives her offspring the right to belong. The unmarried Rwandan
mother is deprived of the right to wear urugori. Wearing a maternity crown not only
brings respect to the mother, but also indirectly to her husband. The Kinyarwanda
expression Kwambarira umugabo urugori means “to wear the maternity crown for one’s
husband”, in other words to make him a proud parent. This symbol also denotes the
husband’s fatherhood and the respect that society owes him.
Like in most countries, the Rwandan mother is historically depicted as the
“mother of the nation” and this remains true today. In some ceremonies, some women
wear the crown of maternity for their country because they are the mother of the
generations that will lead the country to a better future. The country itself is assimilated
to the mother. Rwanda is often referred to as “Motherland”, “Urwatubyaye”, literally
“Mother Rwanda”, a place of birth and origin. The female parliamentarians who occupy
the majority of the seats (65%) in the Rwandan Parliament since 2013, are often
reminded of their double role as the “heart of the home” and “the heart of the parliament”
because when a woman enters into politics or any other function previously reserved for
men, there is always a risk for her becoming “igishegabo”. This Kinyarwanda name is
composed of the verb “gushega” (to want very much) and “gabo”, a stem that denotes
masculinity. The best equivalent in English would be “a wannabe man”. The advice is
that women in the parliament should be able to balance the private and the public, be able
to enter politics without sacrificing their femininity and their domestic nurturing qualities.

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Kinyarwanda Tropes: A Tool to Understand the Powers of Maternal Body and its
Defilement
The expression “maternal body” is here understood as a woman’s embodied
potential for containing, producing and nurturing life. It refers therefore to her
reproductive organs, and her breasts. And in the case of a Rwandan woman, it refers also
to the woman’s back, as a carrier of the baby. Living in a maternal body gives a woman
sacred and supernatural powers that shape the way she is perceived in Rwandan society.
These powers are often encoded in Kinyarwanda tropes such as metaphors and
metonymies that denote her body.
According to Jakobson and Hall (1956), metaphor and metonymy are the two
fundamental modes of communicating meaning. In their groundbreaking book,
Metaphors We Live By, cognitive semanticists George Lakoff and Mark Johnson state
that metaphor and metonymy are the basis for much of our understanding in everyday
life. They are not just a device of “the poetic imagination and rhetorical flourish”, but
they shape our “thoughts and knowledge” (Lakoff and Johnson, 1980:3). Lakoff and
Johnson conclude their study with the important statement that, “Metaphor is as much a
part of our functioning as our sense of touch, and as precious” (Lakoff and Johnson,
1980: 239). It must be noted that there are still ongoing debates among general linguists,
cognitive semanticists, and literary critics about the difference between metaphor and
metonymy. I am considering these two figures of style as they are understood in literary
analysis. That means they are two figurative expressions that shift a word or words from
the literal meaning to a non-literal meaning. The difference between the two figures of
style in literature is the fact that in a metaphoric expression, there is a resemblance

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between the literal and the figurative meaning, whereas in the metonymic expression
there is not similarity, but instead association, keeping in mind the fact that difference
between the two figures is not rigid but porous as shown by Gérard Genette in Figures
III, especially in his essay: “Metonymy chez Proust” (Genette, 1973: 53). In the latter,
Genette discusses the interdependence between metaphors and metonymy in the
structuration of Proust’s narrative. In most of his essays, he also shows that figures allow
us to have an immediate grasp of events, which are important tools in analyzing genocide
testimonies as will be discussed later in this study.
The privileged figure of style in the linguistic embodiment of maternal powers in
Kinyarwanda is clearly metonymy. A woman is considered powerful because she lives in
a maternal body. The proximity or spatial relationship she entertains with her body
confers on her powers that can trigger a change in the course of events even without her
active participation. For example, Rwandan tradition prevents women from going to war.
However, Rwandan mothers are believed to be able to influence military victory thanks
to their maternal body. Before going to war, or to court, men often ask mothers to hold
their right breast in the air (gufata iryiburyo), as a way to wish or ensure victory on the
battleground or success in a court trial. Even in modern Rwandan society, it is not
unusual to hear a child asking a mother to hold her right breast in the air as a way to wish
him/her good luck on an exam or any other challenge. Thus “breasts” are powerful not
only because they define and symbolize femininity but also because they are a part of the
maternal body and, as such, they are thought to carry mysterious powers. A similar
expression is to wear “impumbya” (charms stuffed inside the maternal belt) to bring

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somebody good luck in time of adversities. These amulets acquire magical power
because of their metonymic proximity to the mother’s womb. By such power, a mother
is able to avert an imminent danger by preventing her sons from starting a conflict or
from getting involved in it by performing the ritual of “gutambika umweko”. This ritual
involves putting the maternal belt across the threshold of the house, an action that
obstructs the son from crossing the threshold to exit the house and enter a conflict zone.
In this case again, the maternal belt acquires these powers through its proximity to the
mother’s womb. In spite of his rage or anger, the son cannot “jump the belt” to go to war
or to pursue an opponent. For a Rwandan woman, living in a maternal body allows her to
develop a sixth sense by which she is in telepathic communication with her loved ones.
The bodily sign in this communication would be the engorgement of her breasts although
she is not breastfeeding (“amabere yikora atonsa”) or the sudden feeling of labor pains
(“kugira ibise”) although she is not expecting.
It is also said that a mother can hypnotize a snake just by standing on one foot and
raising both breasts in the air. Apparently in that position, a mother can paralyze the
snake, and in the meantime call for help to get someone to kill it. Her maternal body has
somehow acted as a shield for self-protection and the protection of others. These
embodied maternal powers discussed above are drawn from essentialist beliefs that rob a
Rwandan woman of her role as subject. She is not really an agent of her own powers. It is
her maternal body that acts as a weapon or a shield. Nervetless, they are important
devices in order to understand how motherhood and the cultural framework that sustains
it were shattered by genocide. Analyzing tropes such as metaphor and metonymy help to

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understand the correlation between language and culture. It is through these tropes that
we can understand, for example, the impact on genocide survivors’ psychological well
being and the degree of trauma endured as a result of the violation of some cultural
codes. Lakoff and Johnson have also shown in Metaphors We Live By that metaphorical
language is influenced by culture. It bears noting that the Kinyarwanda words for
“figures” is inshoberamahanga, which means a challenge to foreigners. That refers to all
those who are not familial with the Rwandan culture.
Maternal Body in Pain and its Embodiment in Survivors’ Testimonies
In spite of all the powers attributed to the mother and her body, Tutsi mothers,
their maternal body, and their children were not spared during the genocide. Their sacred
powers were defiled during the genocide. Réne Degni-Segui, the Special Rapporteur on
the situation of human rights in Rwanda who was appointed by the United Nations
Human Rights Commission, estimated that between 250,000 and 500,000 rapes occurred
during the genocide. He states that rape was “used as a weapon of war against women
aged 13 to 65 and that neither pregnant women nor women who had just given birth were
spared.” He reported that “rape was systematic and constituted the rule and its absence,
the exception” (Degni-Segui, 1996)3.
Reflecting on the crimes he witnessed during the genocide, the head of the UN
Peacekeeping Force in Rwanda in 1994, General Roméo Dallaire deplored the state in
which victims were left after rape and sexual torture:
The legs bent and apart. A broken bottle, a rough branch, even a knife between
them. Where the bodies were fresh, we saw what must have been semen pooled
on and near the dead women and girls. There was always a lot of blood . . . .
[M]any of the young girls had their breasts chopped off and their genitals crudely
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cut apart. They died in a position of total vulnerability, flat on their backs, with
their legs bent and knees wide apart (Dallaire, 2003: 403).
These are characteristic acts of genocide “on women’s body” attests Révérien
Rurangwa in his published testimony, Génocidé4. “Hutu killers chose to target organs of
fecundity . . . It is one of the significant marks of genocide: in order to exterminate a race,
one needs to strike in the first place those who perpetuate it (Rurangwa, 2006: 48).
Victims of such atrocities often do not describe in detail what they endured, they
simply speak euphemistically, using a litote such as “I am no longer a woman”; meaning
I lost my maternal role, my womanhood and my sexuality. We also hear the same
euphemisms used by women whose breasts were cut off. These victims not only lost their
maternity and sexuality, but also their place in society. In traditional Rwandan culture, a
woman without breasts is a dangerous and socially unfit being:
Women whose (chest) breasts were not developed were. . . considered as real
calamities and a menace to the well-being of the whole country. They were
sentenced to death or forced into exile on the decision of the court (Smith,
1975:180-81)
Stuck in their maternal body, it is through the linguistic embodiment of their pain that
Rwandan mothers and women are able to speak about the unspeakable. Holocaust and
genocide in general are unspeakable, inenarrable, unimaginable, and language often fails
a survivor or a witness who cannot find the exact words to express what happened to him
or to her.
Pain destroys language, asserts Elaine Scarry in her book, The Body in Pain: The
Making and the Unmaking of the World: one reaches “physical pain-unlike any other

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state of consciousness-has no referral content” (Scarry, 1985: 5). She reiterated this idea
in her book:
…. intense pain is language destroying: as the content of one’s world

disintegrated, so the contents of one’s language disintegrates; as the self
disintegrates, so that which would express and project the self is robbed of its
source and its subject (Scarry, 1985: 35).
The Holocaust survivor Primo Levi underscored the notion of genocide as a
language destroyer in the testimony relating his experience in Auschwitz, If This Is A
Man. Levi wrote that, “for the first time we became aware that our language lacks words
to express this offence, the demolition of a man. In a moment, with almost prophetic
intuition, the reality was revealed to us: we had reached the bottom” (Levi, 1979: 32).
In the face of this linguistic obstacle, several Holocaust and genocide scholars
recognize figurative language as a special tool in trying to represent the unspeakable.
Others oppose its use, arguing that it is a subtle way to falsify facts and deceive the
readers or listeners. This is the case of genocide for both the Jewish people and for the
Tutsi in Rwanda and in many other genocides. Figurative language, especially metaphors,
were used in pre-genocide propaganda and today are being used in the literature of
genocide deniers. James E. Young, in his study on interpreting Holocaust argues that,
"the critic might be better served by exploring the interpretive aspects of metaphor and
their consequences for both the victims and for our understanding of events now"
(Young, 1988: 92).
Karsten Harries wrote that, "Metaphors speak of what remains absent. All
metaphor that is more than an abbreviation for more proper speech, gestures towards
what transcends language. Thus metaphor implies lack" (Harries, 1980: 82). And of

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course the “lack” in her statement implies the lack of language, or rather its inability to
convey what a genocide witness is trying to say.
Rwandan mothers who survived the genocide frequently use bodily metaphors
such as “to have one’s breasts chopped off.” Although that was a physical punishment of
Tutsi women in genocide, a survivor can use the expression about having her breast cut
off even though they are still intact. In Kinyarwanda, this expression signifies that her
children have been murdered. This expression describes the pain of the physical
mutilation perceived in her maternal body, and also its psychological consequences
because for a Rwandan woman, the ablation of her breasts, as well as the killing of her
children, are a mutilation of her identity as a mother and a woman. This is one of those
cases where the metaphoric and the metonymic overlap.
In her testimony La Mort ne veut pas de moi (Death Doesn’t Want Me) the
Rwandan genocide survivor Yolande Mukagasana asks numerous times the rhetorical
question, “where are my children?” The question is followed by the lament “they cut my
breasts off”! These two sentences form a continuous rhythm in her testimony and turn it
into a long Rwandan song of lament. The use of this poetic device makes her testimony
more poignant and invites readers to enter the intimacy of her pain. The following is
another poignant testimony of the same type from one of the Abasa women:
I was breastfeeding a baby. I was thirsty and I was starving; my baby on my back
was in an agony and I didn’t have anything to give him. My breasts were empty.
Then I looked at them, these rags made of flesh which were hanging on my chest,
and suddenly, I felt like cutting them off my chest. They were heavy to carry; they
were no longer useful at that time; they were just a big load to carry (Abasa,
2006).

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The woman giving this testimony resents the maternal body, a body that
traditionally gave her more power and respect in society. She even expresses the desire
for self-mutilation to get rid of her now useless body member. When she found a place to
hide and tried to feed her baby, it was too late, the child was dead on her back. At the end
of her testimony, she looked at me with tears in her eyes and said, “Which kind of mother
am I? The child died on my back! They tore my kid from my back (barampekuye)!” This
verb comes from the infinitive “guhekura” which literally means to tear a child from the
mother’s back, and figuratively “to kill someone’s child.” This is a very powerful
metaphor because typically the verb without the negative suffix [ur] is “guheka”, to carry
a baby, and this action is performed with much care. The same can be said of the
appropriate verb “kururutsa” describing the action of taking the baby from one’s back
after it is awake. In performing the latter action, the Rwandan mother first opens the top
knot of the baby carrier, leaving the lower knot loosely tied, and slowly slips the baby to
the front, on her chest and establishes eye contact while talking or sometimes singing a
lullaby to the child. She then puts the baby on her lap and starts stretching its neck, arms,
and legs. It is only after performing this wellness ritual that she can begin the
breastfeeding. The verb “guhekura” that the Abasa mother used in her testimony denotes
the cruelty by which the baby was taken away from her back after having starved, and
indirectly by the killers who were pursuing her. The same verb also means figuratively to
kill someone’s child/children, no matter the age.
Survivors are often shocked by the action of the female militias who participated
in the killing despite their role as mothers. “If a mother kills with the child strapped on
the back, what do you expect of the child,” asked a survivor in my conversation with her
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(Abasa, 2006). This rhetorical question implies the transmission of intergenerational
trauma. For that survivor in the group, no matter how old the baby, the mother killed the
innocence of her child and symbolically committed infanticide.
The notorious case of Pauline Nyiramasuhuko is perceived by a Rwandan society
still grounded in essentialism as an abomination of the values of motherhood. In 2011, a
United Nations tribunal handed the former government minister and her son a life
imprisonment sentence for their crimes in the 1994 genocide, finding them guilty of
genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity, including multiple rapes5. This
former minister who had been in charge of family and women’s affairs, is the first
woman to be convicted of genocide by an international tribunal. As a mother, as a
representative of women and family, she committed the unthinkable in the eyes of
Rwandans whose principles are still founded in essentialist traditions. The negative effect
of those actions on the survivor’s psychological being is relevant to Rwandans, but
feminist debates on issue of agency or non-agency are irrelevant to them and those
debates offend survivors who think of feminists as sympathizers of these female killers.
Even Nyiramasuhuko herself uses a cultural argument in her own defense because
she knows it is the only one that can appeal to the Rwandan mind: “I am ready to talk to
the person who says I could have killed. I cannot even kill a chicken. If there is a person
who says that a woman, a mother, killed then I’ll confront that person ....”6 In the eyes of
many Rwandan survivors, Nyiramasuhuko and those like her who committed genocide
cannot be “ treated like men, like women, but something else like monsters”7. They are
unforgivable because their crimes have a strong negative impact on the cultural values
such as mothering and motherhood that sustained Rwandan society. “It is difficult to
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accept in Rwanda that women are killers. . . . . It is like a taboo, to think that women
killed”8
Rape and the disemboweling of pregnant women were practiced as the final
solution in the ideology for genocide against the Tutsi: full extermination of the group.
Some of women who survived that ordeal are physically and psychologically scarred.
After one of these survivors gave her testimony to my students in a 2012 summer study
abroad program in Rwanda, she requested to meet with the female students and me in
private. She then uncovered her stomach and said firmly: “I want you to be the witnesses
of this so that you do not say that you didn’t know. I want you to tell the whole world
what happened to me.” After showing and explaining the source of the deep scars all over
her stomach and genitals, she whispered in Kinyarwanda “narashize”, meaning, “I am a
damaged goods.” The killing of the fetus conformed to the genocide ideology of total
extermination of the Tutsi.
Having their bodies exposed after rape or after death was one of the greatest fears
of Rwandan women, especially mothers. Some women wore tights under their traditional
Rwandan wrap-around skirts to avoid being exposed naked in public after their
victimization. Some even thought naively that these tight pants would help them to avoid
rape. But in spite of these precautions, they were brutally stripped of their clothes by
killers who were busy searching for any hidden cash on their bodies.
In her testimony, La femme aux pieds nus (The Barefoot Woman)9, the Rwandan
writer, Sholastique Mukasonga deplores and regrets the fact that she was unable to
guarantee her mother, Stephania, her wishes: “When I die, and you see me dying, make
sure to cover my dead body. It is you my daughters who have to cover me. Nobody
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should see the dead [naked] body of a mother”(Mukasonga, 2008: 12). The whole
testimony is dedicated to Stephania, her mother, and to all Rwandan women.
Révérien Rurangwa recounts in his testimony Genocidé that when he witnessed
female looters stripping his own mother, he was seized by unbearable hate against all the
Hutu in general. He said that he felt, “hate against Hutu, all Hutus drilled in [him] at that
moment like teeth of a harpoon that can’t be pulled they have penetrated a far way in the
flesh. A black hate, deadly, intense, inextinguishable, redoubling and multiplying”
(Rurangwa, 2006: 48).
Some women were stripped naked and asked to parade in public, dancing the
traditional dance, arms raised and hands in the air, imitating a longhorn cow’s movement
of a popular Rwandan ballet. This put them in the most vulnerable position possible.
Some of these sadistic exercises were done in front of the women’s husbands, male
children, and in-laws. Public rape and nakedness has caused an endemic shame in these
women who unjustly feel guilty for breaking the traditional Rwandan taboos. The
following is a compelling expression of that type of guilt:
You think that I have something to fear. The shame (scruples), “I shit it!” I was
raped in front of my children and as I was lying naked, I looked at my scared
children. My eyes encountered those of my seven-year-old son. He was not
scared, but he was rather disgusted. Maybe by me or maybe by the rapists, I
cannot know. I don’t know! He was killed afterwards … (silence)… I cannot
however forget the look on his face. He died disdaining me. (Abasa, 2006)
The mother is worried by the disdaining look of her son because in Rwandan
tradition, and in many others, to see one’s mother naked is the worst insult to a boy or a
man. The “mother of all insults” in Rwandan tradition, and in many other cultures, is to
say to a boy or a man, “undress your mother”. This was often phrased as “Your mom!”
18

(kambure nyoko) or simply (“Nyoko!). In the above testimony, the mother feels as if her
son’s disgusted gaze undressed her. The survivor of this rape seemed to be even more
traumatized by her son’s gaze than by the actual rape.
In their article, “The Psychosexual Trauma of Torture”, Agger and Jensen assert:
the victim experiences the torture as directed against his or her sexual body image
and identity with the aim to destroy it. Thus, the essential part of sexual torture’s
traumatic and identity damage effect is the feeling of being accomplice in an
ambiguous situation which contains both aggressive and libidinal elements of a
confusing nature” (Agger and Jensen, 1993: 687).
It is important to point out here that cases of forced incest took place during the genocide
in Rwanda. “According to reliable testimony, militiamen forced fathers or sons to have
sexual relations with their own daughters or mothers and vice versa” (Degni-Ségui,
1996).
The crown of maternity lost its meaning during the 1994 genocide. Extremist
Hutu mothers committed murders or encouraged killing while wearing the maternal
crown. Referring to a woman who allegedly killed her little brother, a young survivor
from the Abasa asserted with anger: “That Nyirabibi” (that evil woman), should never
put the crown of maternity on her forehead, if I were a “Gacaca”10 judge I would make
her wear the crown of thorns” (Abasa, 2006). For this genocide survivor, it was
unforgiveable to see a mother killing a child while wearing the maternal crown.
Many genocide survivors are no longer afraid to break traditional cultural taboos.
Mothering was shattered by the ignominious acts of extremist Hutu mothers who killed
Tutsi mothers while the latter were carrying babies strapped on their backs or while
breastfeeding. During the genocide, Hutu mothers cheered while watching Tutsi babies
being smashed against walls and rocks; others simply looked on as voluntary bystanders.
19

Genocide in its many forms was a “demythification”, particularly of motherhood
and mothering. As previously demonstrated, during the genocide the concepts of
motherhood and mothering were violently knocked off the pedestal where essentialist
cultural traditions had placed them and hurled into genocide pits. Their rehabilitation was
a necessity for the survival of many Rwandan women and also for the nation.
Surrogate Mothers and Community Other Mothers at Work in the Rehabilitation of
Motherhood and Mothering in Post-genocide Rwanda
After the genocide, there was a marked absence of men in Rwanda. Many were
killed during the genocide and the civil war, some left the country and went into exile,
while others were imprisonned because they committed genocide. Women became a
significant percentage of the population, many of them genocide widows. A large number
of households were headed by women and children because of the absence of men in the
society. Facing this cultural calamity, some men behind the scene even thought polygamy
offered a way to repopulate the depopulated country and to help out the “helpless
widows.” For the post-genocide Rwandan women, polygamy was not an option. They
instead took up the challenge and filled non-traditional female roles such as building
houses, or raising and milking cows. One survivor described that:
In Rwanda women are not allowed to go on the roof. That is the man's job. At
first we'd go out at night to repair our houses, so no one would see us. But then
someone found out and gave us pants to wear. Then we decided it did not matter
if anyone laughed. We went out during the day (Anonymous, 1997)11
With these efforts women started to attend to the needs of their children, orphans, and
street children who were separated from their families by the genocide and the war. In
their role of surrogate or “othermothers,” they rebuilt the Rwandan family.

20

In her article, “Mothering: A Possible Black Feminist Link to Social
Transformation?” Stanlie A. James defines “community othermothers” as:
women who assist blood mothers in the responsibilities of child care for short – to
long – term periods, in informal or formal arrangements. They can be, but are not
confined to, such blood relatives as grandmothers, sisters, aunts, cousin, or
supportive fictive kin (James, 193: 45).
James recognizes that although “Community othermothers” was coined by Black
Feminists, the practice is rooted in African culture. The concept “can be (also) traced
through the institution of slavery, developed in response to an ever growing need to share
the responsibilities” (James, 1993: 45). This concept is evident in the African proverb “It
takes a village to raise a child” made famous in the U.S. by Hilary Clinton’s book of the
same title. This practice was, and is still, popular in African polygamous families.
In post-genocide Rwanda, children also received care and were nurtured through
women’s associations such as “Tumurere” (Let’s raise him/her, mother him/her), and
through the Association of Widows of the Genocide (AVEGA) whose branch
“Duhozanye” (Let’s comfort each other), is based in Save, a village in the South of
Rwanda. It was among the first women’s association to transcend ethnic divisions. In
2006, a woman from AVEGA told me that some female Tutsi survivors of genocide from
Duhozanye used to care for children of genocide perpetrators while their mothers were
away, or bringing food to their incarcerated husbands. This surrogate mothering took
place after the genocide and during the periods when the genocide perpetrators who were
at large in neighboring Congo would cross the border back into Rwanda and kill Tutsi
survivors and take young Hutu children to join the fighters in the bush. In order to

21

confront this family and security issue, community othermothering was put into action
addressing simultaneously the needs of the children and those of the community.
Maternal Politics as a Tool for Economic and Political Empowerment of Rwandan
Women
Rwandan women used diverse associations to take charge of their lives, to speak
for the children, but also to express their needs and desires. Rather than stay in small jobs
near their home to help them survive, they drove the economy of the country forward by
entering public work places such as construction sites, factories, and by becoming taxi
and truck drivers and mechanics.
Women also began to insert their voices into the political sphere by lobbying the
government to banish the archaic patriarchal laws that were still prevalent in Rwandan
society. These laws prevented women from inheriting family land, from opening a bank
account or from obtaining a loan without the permission and the signature of a husband.
They campaigned against many other gender-discriminatory laws that were a handicap to
women’s economic empowerment. Women started excelling in trade and business.
Through their advocacy as mothers and women, they started seeking government
offices and seats in the national parliament. They become more actively involved in
public life without neglecting their responsibilities to the country and their families. They
learned to make greater use of their abilities and strengths as mothers and to contribute to
the new society and identity of the Rwandan people.

22

Speaking on good governance in Rwanda in her article, “Lessons Learned: How
Women Transform Good Governance,” Roxane Wilber praises post-genocide Rwandan
women for their courage after the genocide. She recognized that, “Rebuilding was a
logistical and emotional nightmare. To hear most Rwandans tell it, women were the first
to face it. From the grassroots to civil society and government, they were at the forefront
of innovation and action” (Wilber, 2011).
The Rwandan woman’s success can be traced to the practice of “maternal
politics.” According to Julia Wells, “maternal politics refers to political movements
which are rooted in women’s defense of their role as mothers and protectors of their
children” (Wells, 1998: 251). In other words, it is the transference of women's traditional
maternal, nurturing, and caretaking roles to the political sphere. As mothers, Rwandan
women have broken numerous taboos when their motherhood and mothering were
threatened. In order to make their voices heard, many women decided to testify in local
and international courts in the name of “maternal politics.”
After the chaos left behind by the genocide, women’s organizations in Rwanda
have re-established traditional representations of women and maternal politics as a means
of political empowerment, for resolving conflict and for grassroots reconciliation in the
society. These organizations, along with constitutional set-asides catapulted Rwandan
women into positions of political power in unprecedented numbers. Rwanda now has the
highest percentage of women elected to the national government of any country in the
world. Women won 65 percent of the seats in the September 2013 national elections
making Rwanda a world leader in gender balance in political representation and decision-

23

making. The genocide has ditabilized the concept of “motherhood as an institution” in
Rwanda.
We can say that “motheing” was a site of women’s power in aftermath of the
genocide and it still is today. Wells, like many feminists in the West, expresses however
reservations about political movements such as maternal politics:
Maternal politics are clearly not to be confused with feminism. Women swept up
in mother-centered movements are not fighting for their own personal rights as
mothers …. [Those] movements must be recognized as limited in scope, duration,
and success in achieving their goals and, above all should not be mistaken for
political maturity (Wells, 1998: 253).
Patricia Hills Collins, responding to Wells’ remarks asserts:
This type of thinking set up a hierarchy of feminisms, assigns the type engaged in
by US. Black women and women in Africa . . . a secondary status, and fails to
recognize motherhood as symbol of power. Instead, the activist mothering
associated with Black women’s community work is a “politically immature”
vehicle claimed by women who fail to develop the so-called radical analysis of
the family as a site of oppression similar to that advanced in Western feminism
(Collins, 200: 194).
“Maternal politics” as used by Rwandan women needs to be understood within
the process of the “social transformation policy” grounded in homegrown solutions that
has guided all Rwandan sectors from aftermath of the genocide to the present. I am using
“social transformation” here as defined by William Kirby, an “accumulative process in
which insignificant changes accumulate quantitatively until they become significant
enough to generate qualitative changes in the entire society” (Kirby, 200: 11). Rwandan
women realized these small changes before undertaking the big tasks they are now
tackling today. After the genocide, with a nation torn apart by exacerbated ethnic
tensions, women as mothers undertook the restructuration of the nuclear family, the basis
of the nation. They became heads of households in the absence of men and then decided
24

to make their voices heard through advocacy for the rights of children and their own
rights as they entered the political sphere.
The new Rwandan female politician was born during this process of
transformation that requires constant negotiation. Her politics is situated in a “third
space” as defined by a critic of postcolonial theory. In his book, The Location of Culture,
Bhabha defines the “third space” as a space of enunciation that is:
unrepresentable in itself. . . constitutes the discursive conditions of enunciation

that ensure the meaning and symbols of the culture, has no primordial unity or
fixity; in which not “even the same signs can be appropriated, translated and
rehistoricized and read anew (Bhabha, 55).
It is a space of hybridity in which “political identities [are] in the process of being
formed, cultural enunciations in act of hybridity, in the process and transvaluing cultural
differences” (Bhabha, 361). Female Rwandan politicians stand in a “hybrid space,” a site
of constant negotiation between old and new, between private and public.
Rwanda is a country in the process of transformation. It is a palimpsest which by
definition signifies “a written document, usually on vellum or parchment, that has been
written upon several times, often with remnants of erased writing still visible.” In his
critical work, Palimpsests: Literature in Second Degree, Gérald Genette defines
palimpsest as “the presence of one text within in another.” He calls this phenomenon
“hypertextuality” defined as “any relationship uniting a text B (which I shall call
hypertext) to an earlier text A (I shall, of course, call it the hypotext), upon which it is
grafted in a manner that is not that of commentary” (Genette 1997a: 5). The post-
genocide discourse would be an excellent example of a palimpsest whose real meaning
lies in the relation between its hypertext; post-genocide discourse, and its hypotext, the

25

pre-genocide text. The latter is so recent that its traces are still visible on the surface, but
invisible to a foreign eye that may misinterpret it. The best illustration would be the post-
genocide Rwandan landmarks that now stand in the place of the old ones. The new
landmarks have a recent story behind them, one that can mislead people about genocide
issues, gender issues or more.
The earlier discussion of “maternal politics” can be used to support the argument
that landmarks that are part of the post-genocide hypertext can be easily misleading to
those who do not understand the context of the new cultural discourse. Today there is a
statue of a Rwandan woman standing in the center of one of the main traffic roundabouts
in Rwanda’s capital, Kigali. The circle is also known as the “MTN Roundabout” because
the phone company MTN has adopted the spot to contribute to the beautification of
Kigali. This prominent statue of a Rwandan woman was erected in the center of the
roundabout in honor of the Rwandan woman and her milestone accomplishments after
the genocide. The statue represents a woman who stands elegantly, her head high,
clothed in elegant traditional dress, holding the hand of a child walking beside her and
who is himself holding a notebook. Most likely he is on his way to or from school. “This
is not the original statue that was erected there”, a taxi man explained to me in 2006. He
explained that, “some women lobbied to get rid of the preexisting one”. When I asked
him for a more detailed explanation, he simply said, “No one can really tell why.
Kagame’s women12 do whatever pleases them”! I was told later by different women in
leadership positions that the women in Parliament and some other women from the civil
society lobbied to remove the old statue because it reproduced the stereotypes that they
had been fighting against since the end of the genocide. The original statue depicted a
26

woman carrying a jug of water on her head and a baby on her hip. In another description
of the statue, there was no baby on her hip but the woman was holding the hand of a
young girl beside her. The former statue, the so-called representation of a new Rwandan
woman of post-genocide society, was rejected because it represented the Rwandan
woman burdened by motherhood and domestic work. The new statue in contrast, depicts
the emerging Rwandan woman relieved of her load. She stands alone, without a child on
her hip or the load on her head. She is still shown as a mother wearing the crown
maternity but her motherhood is not a burden; it doesn’t inhibit her progress although
she is still involved with her child and his schooling. In the rejected statue, the little girl
was not going to school but was accompanying her mother to complete houseshold
chores, and she was unconsciously being groomed to follow the mother’s traditional
destiny.
When I asked why the new statue depicts a young boy going to school and not a
girl, I was told that they want to show that women are fighting for the rights of all
children in general with no distinction between the sexes. What we see here is the system
of checks and balances in action. The female lobbyists were not iconoclasts. In their
demands, they negotiated a solution between the old and new and they got the results
they wanted at that time. “On ne peut pas brûler les étapes”, (we cannot go too fast – skip
too many steps), explained a Francophone female member of the Parliament. What is
really happening here is what the French feminist Luce Irigaray sees as the masquerade
of femininity, a strategy to unsettle patriarchal order, a mask to be worn or be removed at
the appropriate time. Irigarary wrote:

27

One must assume the feminine role deliberately “which means already to convert
a form of subordination into affirmation, and thus begin to thwart it . . . To play
with mimesis is thus, for a woman, to try to recover the place of her exploitation
into affirmation by discourse, without allowing herself to be simply reduced to
it. . . . To make “visible” by an affect of playful repetition, what was supposed to
remain invisible: the cover up a possible operation of the feminine in language
(Irigaray, 1985: 76).
This “feminine masquerade” was put to use in the Rwandan Parliament in 2008
during the debates and the drafting of a very comprehensible law against Gender-Based
Violence (GBV) that was adopted in 2010. Under the Rwandan GBV law, sexual
violence, martial rape, sexual harassment, domestic violence, polygamy, concubinage,
and adultery are all crimes punishable by the courts. During the drafting of the law,
female members of Parliament had to convince each other first about the need for the
law, then lobby and negotiate with their male colleagues. They had to act strategically to
engage men on gender issues.
The draft bill used inclusive language and highlighted issues of direct concern to
men, such as crimes against young boys, in addition to those of concern to
women. The genuine commitment to protecting men and boys as well as women
and girls and the strategic use of non-threatening language worked in the bill’s
favor (Pearson, 2008: 35).
The Forum of Rwandan Female Parliamentarians also conducted participatory research
with numerous civil society groups and engaged in direct communication with the
population at the grassroots level in the villages and in the cities to understand these
communities and their perceptions of GBV, seeking at the same time their
recommendations. After this extensive research, it was important to work on the drafting
of the law that sometimes brought heated debates on the floor of the Parliament. This
statement of a member of the Female Rwandan Parliamentarians Forum is illustrative:

28

[T]he way you start is really very important if you don’t want a backlash. Because
the way you start—don’t give examples of activists like [myself]. Then that’s an
issue, for example. They say, “Oh, you mean those women who really have no
respect for men?” Then it becomes like a men/women thing. But then it takes
away [from] the gender-based violence thing, which is the thing we are trying to
fight (Pearson, 2008, 37).
However, when some reluctant male parliamentarians tried to use a cultural practice as an
argument, female parliamentarians were not afraid to refute it.
When they say a culture,” said one female parliamentarian, “I always ask
them, ‘a culture for who?’ because if it’s a culture, it’s supposed to be
shared and enjoyed by both people. But if it becomes a culture that hurts
me and gives you pleasure, then it’s not a culture (Pearson, 2008: 34).
What is being practiced in Rwanda is what the Nigerian critic Obioma Nnaemeka
calls Nego-feminism in her article, “Nego-Feminism: Theorizing, Practicing, and Pruning
Africa’s Way”. Nnaemeka explained that:
I call nego-feminism — the brand of feminism that I see unfolding in Africa.

But what is nego-feminism? First, nego-feminism is the feminism of negotiation;
second, nego-feminism stands for “no ego” feminism. In the foundation of shared
values in many African cultures are the principles of negotiation, give and take,
compromise, and balance. Here, negotiation has the double meaning of “give and
take/exchange” and “cope with successfully/ go around.” African feminism (or
feminism as I have seen it practiced in Africa) challenges through negotiations and
compromise. It knows when, where, and how to detonate patriarchal land mines; it
also knows when, where, and how to go around patriarchal land mines. In other
words, it knows when, where, and how to negotiate with or negotiate around
patriarchy in different contexts (Nnaemeka, 2003: 377-78).
There is no doubt that female leadership in politics, and in peace and reconciliation
was heavily influenced by the role of Rwandan women as mothers, life-givers, nurturers,
and mediators who are perceived through essentialist lenses as more trustworthy than
men. But their politics as practiced doesn’t show a lack of political maturity but rather a
use of political wisdom because after all, what matters most in politics is diplomacy that
delivers results. Rwandan women came a long way in a short period. They have achieved
29

much in spite of the formidable obstacles they had to overcome. They are successful
because they know when and how to “detonate patriarchal land mines” and when to “go
around” them13.
As politicians and mothers they have been lobbying in recent years for a longer
maternity leave for working mothers so they can achieve self-realization as mothers and
individuals. On March 25, 2015, this long awaited law passed granting women maternity
leave of 12 consecutive weeks, including at least two weeks before delivery with full
salary for six weeks. “The government could soon table before Parliament an amendment
bill that seeks to cut the bureaucracy involved in the process of authorizing
abortion”(Rwahira and Nkurunziza, New Times Rwanda, Oct. 10, 2015). Female
activists and human rights organizations suggest that “the law should leave permission to
health centers and those in charge of social affairs at the grassroots, to decide who was
raped and incest cases, respectively, instead of referring all the cases to courts that take
long to decide” (Rwahira and Nkurunziza, New Times Rwanda, Oct. 10, 2015).
Progress is an ongoing process in Rwanda. No one knows when this process of
social transformation will be completed. Meanwhile, behind the scenes Rwandan female
and male activists are raising their voices and asking for a woman’s right to choose.
Conclusion
The agency role and the diplomatic practice of politics in Rwanda may not fully
account for women finding their place in all spheres of influence in the post-genocide
society. Rwandan women have had to adopt essentialist motherhood strategies to
overcome cultural barriers and to reclaim their rights. The results that they achieved
should not be considered threats to the traditional feminist agenda because of the progress
30

they have made on gender issues through their involvement in the traditionally male-
dominated political space. Rwandan women accomplished all this by restoring the
societal value of motherhood, a value trampled by the crimes that men and mothers
committed against women during the genocide. The modern Rwandan woman is a
mother as well as a person in her own right who can maintain her own psychological
differentiation and nurture her children and family at the same time.
Rwandan women have found a way to heal themselves through testifying in
figurative speech to bear witness to their victimization. They reclaimed their dignity in a
paternalistic society that recognizes the power of the maternal body, but obligates
women to use their maternal subjectivity as a means to reclaim their rights through the
processes of diplomacy and negotiation in the corridors of political power. They have
also healed the nation by restoring maternity and rewarding it through laws that grant
new mothers paid leave to establish a strong foundation with their newborns and to
sustain nuclear families that are crucial to the future of the country. Negotiation and
diplomacy have resulted in better legal protection for women and girls from domestic
violence, and freed them from the degrading practices of polygamy, sexual violence and
sexual harassment.
The symbols in the new discourse of post-genocide Rwanda recognize and
redignify motherhood without burdening women with the discriminatory practices of
traditional society. Rwandan women have demonstrated that the female identity that
made them vulnerable in traditional society, and victims during the genocide, can be
transformed into a source of power. Motherhood not only elevates the position of women
in society, it can also heal and restore a nation from the cataclysm of its past.
31

Notes
1
“Abasa” is a common Kinyarwanda name that literally means “those who look
alike, those who share the same destiny.” After the genocide in 1994, a group of 60
women from the Huye District in the South of Rwanda, who are survivors of genocidal
rape banded together to start the Abasa association around the unfortunate fate they
shared: rape. I met the women of Abasa in 2006 when I was conducting a research
project sponsored by the Rwandan Ministry of Education. Abasa has been an inspiration
to me in founding and operating Step Up! American Association for Rwandan Women,
an NGO operating in America and in Rwanda to provide psychological and financial
assistance to women survivors of rape and genocide. My interactions with the members
of Abasa as a researcher and activist have continued from 2006 up to now. References to
their testimony will be identified by the word Abasa and the year in parenthesis.
2
Rwanda, a country in East Africa, had a population of 10 million when the
genocide started in April 1994. Three ethnic groups make up the population, the majority
Hutu, the Tutsi, and the Twa. They all share the same culture and speak a common
language—Kinyarwanda. The minority Tutsi group was targeted for extermination by the
Hutu. “Half a million to a million lives were ended in one hundred days. Hundreds of
thousands of children were either orphaned or separated from their families. The entire
government fled the capital, destroying offices, equipment, and documents as they went.
A functioning economy was nonexistent” (Wilber, 2011).
3
UN Commission of Human Rights, Fifty-second session, Jan., 29, 1996.
https://www1.umn.edu/humanrts/commission/country52/68-rwa.htm (Accessed, Oct 26,
2015)
4
Translation from French to English is mine.
5
“ICTR witnesses asserted that Nyiramasuhuko’s victims were reportedly often
forced to undress completely before being taken to their deaths and numerous individuals
claim that the former minister incited, witnessed, and even ordered the rapes of some of
these women, including by her son” (Nyiramasuhuko Amended Indictment, cited by
Hogg, 2010: 92, no.133).
6
Interview with Lindsay Hilsum, BBC, mid-August 1994 as cited by Hogg, 2010:
93, note 136.
7
Interview with Lawyer Vincent Karangura , Kigali, 13, July, 2001 as cited by
Hogg, 2010: 100, note187.
8
Woman convicted of genocide, Gitarama prison (interview, respondent #10), 17
July 2010, as cited by Hog, 2010: 82 , note 79.

32

9
Translation is mine
10
It is a system of community justice inspired by Rwandan tradition, which was
readopted in 2001 to fit the judiciary needs of Rwanda after the genocide against Tutsi in
Rwanda, in 1994.
11
Stephanie McCrummen, Washington Post/Foreign Service, Oct, 2008.
12
The expression is frequently used in post-genocide socio-discourse by some
men who are not at ease with women’s political power. This implies that they feel above
the law because of the help from President Paul Kagame, certainly thanks to the
affirmative action quota of 30% to allow female politicians a place in positions of
leadership.
13
In my article in Chronoque Féministe on Rwandan women in politics, I reach
the same conclusion, (Gallimore, 2011: 27).
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Genocide and The Killing of Motherhood, Mothering and Maternal Body: Their Rehabilitation in Post-Genocide Rwandan Society

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Genocide and The Killing of Motherhood, Mothering and Maternal Body: Their Rehabilitation in Post-Genocide Rwandan Society

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Mom, I was not there to cover your body, all I have is

Rehabilitation in Post-genocide Rwandan Society

Rangira Béa Gallimore

Key Words: Genocide, Motherhood. Mothering, Maternal body, Community Other-

The corpus of this study is based on testimonies published by international

organizations such as Human Rights Watch, UNIFEM, UNICEF, the UN International

Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), and mainly on testimonies narrated to

through maternal politics and subverted through maternal subjectivity.

In her book, Of Woman Born, Motherhood as Experience, Adrianne Rich, a

feminist of the second wave, establishes a distinction:

between two meanings of motherhood, one superimposed on the other: the

Legacy of Adrienne Rich’s Of Women Born, Andrea O’ Reilly rephrases Rich’s

distinction of motherhood and mothering in the following terms:

The term “motherhood” refers to the patriarchal institution of motherhood

women. The reality of patriarchal motherhood thus must be distinguished

In this study, “killing motherhood” refers to the destruction of the institution of

shattering of motherhood through the abandonment of all Rwandan traditional cultural

invested in it by the patriachal Rwandan traditions. The killing of motherhood is also

killings or as bystanders. Such killing is the destruction of the essentialist nature of a

contrary should refer to the non-patriarchal experience of mothering lived by a woman,

but unfortunately in Rwanda the distinction between mothering and motherhood is

It is worth noting that in the Rwandan culture, “mothering” as a woman’s experience of

precsriptions. The institution whether social, political, or religious continues to exercise

traditions built on the base of patriarchy.

figures of style privileged by them: metaphor and metonymy.

to respect them even in political spheres.

motherhood” strategies adopted by Rwandan women to overcome cultural barriers and to

motherhood towards “maternal subjectivity,” as defined in feminist psychoanalytic theory

means to reclaim women’s rights or as an end to be reached through the process of

negotiation, recognized as “nego-feminism,” a type of African Feminism that doesn’t

relegate the practices of African women to the margins of a feminist theoretical

Historical and Socio-cultural Context

patriarchal traditions of pre-genocide Rwandan society.

Society, the Nigerian critic, Ifi Amadiune asserts:

linking them with the power of maternity and fertility.

Rwanda is still a patriarchal society in spite of the progresses made in gender

The International Journal of Conflict & Reconciliation

w'umugore agira akamero ntagira akamaro) because marriage makes a mother a

husband’s fatherhood and the respect that society owes him.

Like in most countries, the Rwandan mother is historically depicted as the

to the mother. Rwanda is often referred to as “Motherland”, “Urwatubyaye”, literally

The International Journal of Conflict & Reconciliation

The expression “maternal body” is here understood as a woman’s embodied

metonymies that denote her body.

fundamental modes of communicating meaning. In their groundbreaking book,

style in literature is the fact that in a metaphoric expression, there is a resemblance

Genette discusses the interdependence between metaphors and metonymy in the

testimonies as will be discussed later in this study.

The privileged figure of style in the linguistic embodiment of maternal powers in

Kinyarwanda is clearly metonymy. A woman is considered powerful because she lives in

battleground or success in a court trial. Even in modern Rwandan society, it is not

The International Journal of Conflict & Reconciliation

(“kugira ibise”) although she is not expecting.

The International Journal of Conflict & Reconciliation

“figures” is inshoberamahanga, which means a challenge to foreigners. That refers to all

those who are not familial with the Rwandan culture.

Maternal Body in Pain and its Embodiment in Survivors’ Testimonies

the exception” (Degni-Segui, 1996)3.

which victims were left after rape and sexual torture:

fecundity . . . It is one of the significant marks of genocide: in order to exterminate a race,

simply speak euphemistically, using a litote such as “I am no longer a woman”; meaning

woman without breasts is a dangerous and socially unfit being:

The International Journal of Conflict & Reconciliation