The Politics of Reconciliation in Post-genocide Rwanda

In 1994, the fastest genocide in recent history left up to 1,000,000 people dead in the small African country of Rwanda. Christine Schliesser provides a critical reading of Rwanda’s current politics of reconciliation as a specific way of dealing with the past, indicating both the strengths as well as the weaknesses of these politics. After a brief sketch of the context, Schliesser’s contribution delineates the different components of Rwanda’s politics of reconciliation such as the gacaca courts. In a third step, she draws the connection between reconciliation and remembrance, arguing that both are inseparably connected. Due to their connectedness, problematic aspects in one area produce negative effects on the other.