Sobriety in a Post‐Genocidal Society: Good Neighborliness Among Victims and Aggressors in Rwanda?

Now as Rwanda begins to mourn the firth anniversary of its genocide, it should also celebrate the fifth anniversary of its survival. As time passes, Rwanda enters a stage of social and historical development which can be referred to as the "post-genocidal" stage. Some would say that Rwanda is actually in an intra-genocidal phase, given the persistence of Hutu rebel insurrection throughout the country, specifically in the Ruhengeri prefecture of the north-west. Although the merits of this classification can be debated, fatalistically characterizing Rwanda to be intra-genocidal assumes an ability to look in the future, a task no scholar is capable of completing. It can be safely agreed that Rwanda is "post-genocidal" in the sense that it has survived its first very serious genocide. Since .its independence in 1962, Rwanda has, of course, seen scattered bouts of ethnically motivated violence, but none of the depth and ferocity of the 1994 carnage.