The Anthropology Of Genocide - WNLibrary

the rwandan genocide of 1994 169
were referred to as “wives” by their rapists, who kept them as sexual slaves and even
brought them into the refugee camps in Zaire after the RGF was defeated. Among
Tutsi women who escaped their captors, many became pregnant and then subsequently
sought abortions in Catholic Rwanda, where abortion is illegal. Today in
Rwanda there are many children who are the products of these rapes. In many
cases these children have been rejected by their mothers and are now in orphanages
run by international relief organizations (Boutros-Ghali 1996:67).
There were also cases of forcing adult Tutsi to commit incest with one of their
children before killing them (ibid.). Here the image of misdirected flows is quite clear,
for incest causes blood and semen to flow backward upon one another in a closed
circuit within the family rather than in an open circuit between families. Not only
were the victims brutalized and dehumanized by this treatment but, in addition,
their bodies were transformed into icons of asociality, for incest constitutes the preemption
of any possible alliance or exchange relation that might have resulted from
the union of one’s son or daughter with the son or daughter of another family.
OTHER METAPHORS OF VIOLENCE
Not all of the violence or the metaphors associated with it that occurred during the
genocide followed the symbolic patterns that I have outlined above. Many of the
explicit metaphors used by promoters of the violence actually show little overt relation
to this symbolism. I do not see this as problematic; there were many levels
to the genocide, some quite conscious, others less so.
For example, the killers’ frequently made reference to the violence as akazi kacu,
or “our work.” In my opinion, this reference addressed more the killers’ psychological
discomfort with their unenviable social condition of un- and underemployment
rather than any implicit aspect of Rwandan habitus. Just by becoming
an Interahamwe and executing Tutsi, one could elevate oneself to the status of state
employee. One could even expect eventual compensation from the state for one’s
services, and indeed that was sometimes given and much more frequently promised.
In addition, the genocidiaires frequently employed horticultural imagery. Hutu
citizens were instructed to cut the “tall trees” down to size, an indirect but easily
understood reference to the physiognomic stereotype of Tutsi height. In other cases
the nation-state became a garden, as Hutu extremists called upon their followers
to clear away the “weeds.” Following this metaphor, promoters exhorted their followers
to remove both the “tall weeds” (adults) and the “shoots” (children).
The symbolization of Tutsi malevolence also drew upon other cultural sources.
Some of the Hutu extremist theories, for example, show the probable influence of
Nazi theories. Was this a coincidence, or was it a conscious appropriation of anti-
Semitic imagery? For example, the differing physiognomies of Hutu and Tutsi were
said to have moral implications, and particular attention was paid to the nose. (It
should be recalled that in Nazi Germany posters depicted various forms of the socalled
Jewish nose.) One extremist theory that I heard in Rwanda made the claim