Paper short abstract:

In Rwanda, the government program Itorero revives an old military institution of the pre-colonial kingdom’s Tutsi elite warriors, Intore (“the chosen ones”). By “building new Rwandan citizens” the program aims at countering the impact of experienced collective violence.

Paper long abstract:

In Rwanda, the state-driven development program, Itorero ry'Igihugu, revives an old military institution (Itorero) of the pre-colonial kingdom's Tutsi elite warriors, Intore ("the chosen ones"). By "building new Rwandan citizens" and a new national community of "chosen people" through civic education and cultural adjustment trainings (promoting a new guiding culture based on "Rwandan values") the program aims at countering the impact of experienced collective violence and inner division to ensure the success of the national development plan, Vision 2020. Introduced as an endogenous instrument for post-genocide national rehabilitation Itorero ry'Igihugu targets the entire population and is currently the most far-reaching governmental program, and the first one aimed at profound societal transformation through a new interpretation of an old tradition.

Drawing on the results of the author's first-hand field research in Rwanda as well as on the historical genesis and local meanings of the tradition, the paper seeks to shed light on the program's own logic of mobilization and societal reconstruction beyond normative views of political practice. It is examined how the government builds on facets and re-interpretations of the tradition and thereby mediates between diverging political orders to meet its objectives. In her contribution, the author examines the program's culture-bound political imagination and practice of mobilization and societal transformation, in which references to the ancient myth of a heroic nation play a central role in creating the image of the new man and a (potentially uniting) vision of a nation.