CHAPTER 4: ANALYSIS OF THE RWANDAN CONTEXT AND WOMEN’S PLIGHT AND ROLE IN THEIR COMMUNITY
4.2 Place and role of women in Rwandan pre-colonial society
4.2.5 Women as agents of unity in pre-colonial Rwanda from the perspective of marriage
Besides leadership, prosperity and fertility roles, women were also considered to be agents of unity. The terminology of peacemaking and reconciliation which are often used when speaking about Rwanda today could not be found in any written material about Rwanda before the year 1994. This terminology emerged in writings about Rwanda after the severe conflicts exploded into the genocide, a tragedy which caught the attention of the whole world and attracted outsiders to write on these themes. However, the Rwandan vernacular, the Kinyarwanda, had its own terms referring to the concepts of reconciliation and peacemaking. The adage36
36 Some of these adages will be repeated throughout this work because of the emphasis they make. For instance some of them are already given in the introduction and motivation of this work and others are discussed in the chapter on theories of reconciliation.
umugore ni gahuzamiryango (a girl is a bridge-builder between families) includes the verb guhuza meaning to unite or to reconcile and the word imiryango that refers to families, clans, tribes, neighbours and so on. Depending on the context, the saying may refer to a situation of broken relationships.
Because traditionally women are seen as best mediators in restoring broken relationships, the adage means that giving one’s daughter in marriage to another family strengthens the ties of friendship between the two families and their extended relatives. Even if the
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families were estranged before, the presence of the married daughter could change the situation and built harmonious relationships.
The Rwandan girl is therefore not supposed to be a child of only her biological family;
she belongs to the whole society. This is the meaning of the proverb, umukobwa ni nyampinga, mentioned earlier (chapter one). Marriage is then conceived as a sacred event in the community, not an issue concerning only two families. Concurring with the bridge- building aspect of marriage, Kalibwami observes that, Le mariage était, dans une large mesure, l’affaire de toute la grande famille. Il scellait l’union et l’alliance des familles de deux conjoints (Mariage was, to a great extent, an issue involving the whole extended family. It sealed the union and the alliance between the families of the two spouses) (Kalibwami 1991:67).
The bridge-building ability attributed to Rwandan women appears also in the adage umukobwa ntagira ubwoko (a woman, or girl, does not belong to any particular ethnic group). The perception was that the girl’s ethnic identity was not fixed but could be defined by the family into which she was to be married. Traditionally, this flexible ethnic identity enabled women to be bridge-builders and agents of unity in the society. They bridged the gap created by politics of ethnicity and exclusion. The saying umukobwa ni nyampinga, as already mentioned in chapter one, reflects the same thinking. It meant that Rwandan girls are those who provide for travellers despite their ethnic groups or their regions. The term umukobwa (young girl) has the meaning of a female person, which expresses the praise of respect and affection (Muzungu 2003:138). The saying captures the thought that weary travellers from distant hills or villages, who happened to be visiting or passing through, could expect to enjoy warm hospitality far from their homes whenever they meet women born in their villages who have been married into those far places. The travellers were then taken care of regardless of their kinship or regions. The mere fact that the woman recognizes the travellers to be from her own village should be enough for her to accommodate them as she would for her own family.
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Besides enjoying a flexible ethnic identity, women could play a peacemaking role between their husbands or sons and the neighbours in time of conflict by performing certain cultural practices (see chapter one). Bigirumwami points out that the wife or mother could stop the husband or her son from fighting by the act of locking the gate with her traditional belt which the husband or son could not cross to go and fight. By this act the woman could stop them from going to fight neighbours or to engage in unnecessary battle (Bigirumwami 1984: 43). If they persisted, it was believed that they would eventually suffer severe consequences, even death, as Sandrart has noted: Il suffit qu’une mère dispose sa ceinture au travers du chemin de son fils pour que celui-ci ne puisse la franchir sous peine de commettre le plus horrible des sacrilèges (by her simple act of placing her belt across the way before her son was enough to prevent the son from crossing it, lest he becomes guilty of the most horrible sacrilege) (Sandrart 1957:41).
Tradition recounts a tragic story of a Rwandan hero who defied this taboo and paid with his life, lending full respect to the practice in Rwandan society.37
It is relevant to emphasize that usually in Rwandan culture, the integrity of the group is more important than self-reliance. Muzungu argues that in Rwandan society the individual is not perceived as an isolated atom but as a part of the whole entity because the ancient Rwanda was conceived as a big family (Muzungu 2003:53). The contribution of women in this respect was viewed as crucial because Rwandan people value the
This act was done in times of conflict. It was the last option the mother/wife could do to stop her husband/son from going out of the compound. As Rwandans have a strong group orientation, and loyalty to the group, family and village, the husband or son could not ignore that initiative of the wife/mother.
37 According to the tradition this was what happened to one of Rwandan ancient heroes, the famous Ryangombe. Ryangombe was a renowned hunter and one day his mother Nyira-Ryangombe did not want him to go hunting because she was sensing danger. When Ryangombe continued to be stubborn, his mother felt compelled to stop him traditionally. Ryangombe ignored his mother’s warning, crossed her traditional belt and went into the forest. When he got into the forest he noticed the danger and realized that he was about to be killed by an animal of the forest but it was too late to escape. Before his last breath, he acknowledged his rebellious act and sent a messenger to his mother, Va annoncer ma mort a ma mère Nyira-Ryangombe: dis-lui: il a refuse de t’obéir; que l’enfant qui refuse d’obéir a son père obéisse au grillon…En tout cas, il a refuse de t’obéir et il a subi les conséquences. Meaning literally, ‘Go and announce my death to my mother Nyira-Ryangombe: tell her: he refused to obey you; a child that refuses to obey his father and mother obeys a cricket; he refused to obey you and he suffered the consequences’ (de Heusch 1966:205-206).
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communal life. Kagibwami confirms: “L’individualisme était inconnu au Rwanda. Toute personne était fortement encadré par un groupe …qui occupait une grande place dans la vie de l’individu” (the concept of individualism was unknown in Rwanda. Each person was fully integrated in a group…, which had a great impact on the life of each individual) (Kagibwami 1991:66).
Culturally, the wife or the mother was expected to play her role of peacemaking, reconciliation and unity building in her community. A husband whose wife was able to play her expected role adequately could enjoy peace and prestige among his colleagues who would say: ukurusha umugore akurusha ni urugo (One who has a wife of virtue has a better home). A particular aspect of bridge-building for Rwandan women was the role which was played by the queen mother who, as Lame has found, “filled the same function, ensuring the transition between two generations of men and the social and political cohesion secured by an alliance” (Lame 2005:438). The role of unity-building by the queen mother was vital because of the system of lineage of exogamy in Rwanda whereby the matri-dynastic lineage clans necessarily differed from royal clans. Kings and the queen-mothers could not come from the same clans. The purpose of this was to guarantee a degree of distribution of power in the kingdom. Muzungu has observed that the king was the son of the queen-mother designated before him and chosen from a determined matri-dynastic clan (Muzungu 2003:348). Women therefore were tools of unity and queen-mothers also played the crucial role of being agents of unity between the two different clans.
Moreover the queen-mother was seen as an agent of transition between the different generations, the generation of her husband (the deceased king) and the generation represented by the new king (her son) and the queen-mother’s family, together with the ancestors. Her function extended also to that of being the tool for social and political cohesion between the two kings (her son and her husband) as it was intended by the alliance (Lame 2005:438). Rwandan women surely contributed to peacemaking and peace-building throughout the history of the country. Many, however, are those whose contributions, though not less valuable, were not publicly recognized in a male-
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dominated society. Indeed, in some cases, women are the ones who are able to imagine alternatives that break the deadlock of a conflict situation (Schreiter 1998:26), but it is also true that, at other times, women may be sources of conflicts.
In Rwandan history, one particular woman became notorious for her evil deeds.
Kanjogera who died in 1931, was a famous queen, the favorite wife of King Rwabugiri and mother of King Musinga. Queen Kanjogera played a vital role as manager of the royal household, and was the focal point of all intrigue (Melvern 2000:41). Kanjogera used her power to organize and carry out a bloody coup d’état that cost the life of her stepson King Rutalindwa and ushered her own son, Musinga to the throne. Along with the king, a number of people were killed and others fled the country (Taylor 1999:179;
Newbury 1998:58-59). “Kanjogera has become synonymous with a woman who wields terrible power and is the real authority behind the public face of a male leader” (Powley 2003:10). Despite the negative aspect of Kanjogera’s character, however, she was one of Rwandan’s most famous and brave female leaders before and during the colonial time.
In short, the Rwandan culture seemed to promote women’s peacemaking role during the pre-colonial Rwandan society. However, with the arrival of the Europeans some aspects of the Rwandan culture were challenged. The few women who benefited from the changes that followed were primarily those who had the privilege to be admitted to the schools created by the missionaries.