La misión como variable estratégica

Anonymity and Sample Size

As mentioned above, political research in Rwanda and Burundi is difficult. Many participants were very reluctant about having their identities revealed even if it was just their first name and happily chose some form of anonymity. When asked about their consent to the interview being published,

59.6 percent of all participants chose partial or complete anonymity, while the number in Burundi was only 29.2 percent.

0.00%

20.00%

40.00%

60.00%

80.00%

100.00%

120.00%

Rwanda Burundi

Complete Anonymity

Anonymous, no Audio Storage

Anonymous w. Audio Storage

Open Public Access

Anonymity in Rwanda and Burundi (47 interviews in Rwanda, 48 interviews in Burundi)

In such environments, compiling a representational sample of the population as scientific practice suggests, is difficult to achieve, particularly if the researcher is alone and plans to ask a highly vulner-able set of the population personal and politicized questions.

In general, I was only interested in people who were at least six years old at the beginning of the conflict, so they could actively remember the conflict. The average participant was 45.3 years old. In countries with populations of 42-47 percent³⁶² under 14, this figure of course is not representative but I was primarily interested in the views of people directly affected by mass violence.

Networks of Trust and Affinity

In general, I chose an open-ended explorative approach to finding and interviewing my participants. I opted for a variation of respondent-driven or “Snowball Sampling³⁶³”, which is particularly popular in anthropology or ethnographic research, but combined it with some questions of rather quantitative character typical of political science and history, namely scaled questions and analyzing documents from official sources. The selection procedure of rural³⁶⁴ participants could probably be best charac-terized as an open partial network analysis³⁶⁵, with the inhabitants of the different communities

362 Cf. Heinsohn, 2003, 66 (in 2003).

363 Cf. Schnell, Hill & Eiser, 1995, 282;Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snowball_sampling (25 March 2013)

364 In Kigali, as well as Bujumbura and Ngozi, I mainly interviewed people that I knew personally. Nearly all of them had a higher education and belong to the elite (except Jean-Claude). These interviews mainly function as a comparative backdrop to the rural views I was mainly interested in. As many of the urban interviewees bene-fit disproportionally from the current power settings,I expected that urban and rural views strongly differ.

365 Cf. Schnell, Hill & Esser, 1995, 244ff.

forming these neighborly networks. While following these networks, I made sure that I would talk to people with differing backgrounds regarding their role during the genocide or civil war. I often asked people if they knew somebody from the former antagonist group they had reconciled with or people who had experienced similar things as they had. Most participants were very open to these sugges-tions and sent their friends and neighbors to be interviewed the next day.

Reimbursement

Once word had gotten around that a western researcher was doing interviews in the community, particularly in Burundi, many people came themselves and asked if I wanted to interview them. I never ran out of interviewees, which might also have to do with the fact that I reimbursed respond-ents with a sum of 1000 RWF resp. 2000 BIF³⁶⁶ for their time. While this sum barely represents a to-ken of appreciation in the west, it can amount to more than an average peasant’s daily wage in cer-tain regions in Rwanda and Burundi. Initially, I planned to reimburse participants by giving them phone cards in order to reduce the material incentive but, as most of my participants had little use for phone cards, and would probably have sold them anyway, I gradually progressed to reimburse my respondents in cash. Nevertheless, many participants seemed to be genuinely thankful for the possi-bility to share their views and experiences. Luce for example, a genocide survivor from “Gatumba”, talked for almost three hours and told us in the end that she was very happy we had asked her be-cause she had never shared her story before. The promise of reimbursement may have been a strong motivation for agreeing to an interview. I however do not believe that it influenced the interview as such significantly. We always made it clear in the introductive part that we wanted to hear the 'par-ticipant’s version' for academic purposes and made sure the respondent knew he would be reim-bursed regardless of what he said.

Overrepresentations

Even though the thesis goes to great lengths to make sure that every relevant group (survivors, per-petrators, bystanders, ex-combatants, refugees old and new) are sufficiently represented in the sur-vey, there is a certain intended bias: Among the participants, there is a disproportionately large number of genocide survivors³⁶⁷ in Rwanda, and generally Tutsi³⁶⁸. This has two plausible reasons:

Having been victimized over decades, genocide survivors are still one of the most vulnerable groups in Rwanda. Even if today, an ethnic Tutsi rules Rwanda and a plethora of organizations try to support

366 This roughly equaled 2 Canadian Dollars in 2011.

367 According to Rwanda Focus, the FARG provides assistance to 21’039 survivors (cf. Kamana, Laurent, FARG increases allowance for Genocide survivors, The Rwanda Focus, 2. June 2013,

http://focus.rw/wp/2013/06/farg-increases-allowance-for-genocide-survivors/ (13.April 2014); whereas Kayitare (Ex-IBUKA) spoke of 30’000 survivors which makes up for 0.18-0.26% of a population of 11.7 Mio.

368 About 35 percent (I did not ask about a person’s ethnicity in Rwanda) in all 95 interviews. By comparison:

only 14-15 percent of Rwandans and Burundians are believed to be Tutsi.

genocide survivors, their desire for security as a minority with a history of victimization is naturally higher and their voices are crucial for a peaceful coexistence. In Burundi, where the Tutsi at risk of becoming politically marginalized, their plight might even be more urgent. In both countries, the Tutsi are in the minority, meaning they are more likely to feel vulnerable and more sensitive to politi-cal tremors that might unsettle the process of nation building. Hence, a minority overrepresentation parallel to the quota regulation in the Burundian parliament³⁶⁹ offers itself in order to assess and weigh attitudes towards reconciliation.

In Rwanda, the great focus on survivors (15=31.9 percent) and ex-convicts³⁷⁰ (8=15 percent) is self-evidently not representative. These are the people who were most severely affected by the genocide and its aftermath, either as victims, prisoners or family members of victimized people. As their expe-riences are more likely to have pushed them to assume extreme positions, they can be considered the principal targets of reconciliation politics. With politics having affected and still affecting their lives to such an extreme extent, their standpoints are usually rather distinctive. In Burundi, there are probable overrepresentations of Tutsi (18 participants =37.5 percent), ex-combatants (4 = 8.3 per-cent) and refugees/IDPs³⁷¹ (10 participants =20.8 percent). With the focus clearly lying on overcom-ing the past, it made sense to seek out participants whose lives were strongly affected by genocide and civil war.

There are furthermore overrepresentations of people with a secondary school or higher education (27.7 percent in Rwanda, 27 percent in Burundi) as well as urban dwellers³⁷² in Rwanda (8 partici-pants=17 percent). This however does not pertain to Burundi ³⁷³. As 'the intellectuals' in the centers generally were seen as the instigators as well as the benefactors of ethnic conflict and usually felt sociopolitical changes prior to the rural populations, their views were important for understanding the relationship between center and periphery, and also as an indicator for the homogeneity of polit-ical views. In Rwanda, more men (29=61.7 percent) than women (17=38.3 percent) were inter-viewed, whereas the ratio in Burundi was fifty-fifty (24 men, 24 women).

Despite these statistical inconsistencies, the sample manages to involve a great variety of groups affected by the conflicts and provides an expressive and holistic overview of the diverse perceptions

369 60 percent Hutu, 40 percent Tutsi Cf. Lemarchand, 2006, 7f.

370 Straus, 2006, 117 estimates about 175‘000 to 210‘000 perpetrators. That would make 1.5%-1.8% of the population.

371 Even with the highest number of displaced persons I found, Uvin (2009, 15) speaks of 500’000 refugees and 800’000 IDPs, they only make up for 10.38 percent of the population.

372 Kigali has about one Million inhabitants, making up for about 8-9% of the Rwandan population.

373 In Burundi, the figure is probably too low with two urban participants (4.2%). With Bujumbura and agglom-eration estimated at 1 Mio. inhabitants, at least 9-10% of all Burundians live in an urban environment. However with the government not being nearly as concerned with shaping the population’s views in Burundi, I concen-trated on rural environments. With 91.5% of Burundians relying on agriculture, the great majority of Burundi-ans still live in a rural setting.

of reconciliation and reconstruction. Thomson³⁷⁴, Uvin³⁷⁵, Straus³⁷⁶, Fujii³⁷⁷ or Ingelaere³⁷⁸ have em-ployed similar techniques. I am particularly drawing from Ingelaere in utilizing a similar set of scaled questions³⁷⁹ , and by strongly encouraging the comparison of our results.

However, with the participant sample not being statistically representative, the frequently employed diagrams taken from an analysis of the subjective rankings should be mainly seen as illustration, ac-centuation and further corroboration of the qualitative findings and not as authoritative proofs.

In the following pages, all the participants are listed with a complete description of the categories applying to them.

Age Education Job Additional Job

Jean-Pierre Rwan- Gatsata, No Audio M 29 Higher Teacher / Public Sector Bystander (not

374 Cf. Thomson, 2010, 19-34; Thomson, 2013.

375 Cf. Uvin, 2009.

376 Cf. Straus, 2006.

377 Cf. Fujii, 2009.

378 Cf. Ingelaere, 2010b.

379 Please refer to the Questionnaire in the Appendix

380 The names of people who selected any form of anonymity have been changed according to their own wish-es.

da (47) Gisagara Partial Education Employee accused)

Maurice Rwan- Gatumba, Open Public M 58 Primary Farmer (Cultivator) Ex-Convict (accused)

da (47) Huye Access Education

Private Sector Employee Bystander (not accused)

Private Sector Employee Survivor (persecuted in 1994)

Job Additional Background Ethnic

Group

381 The names of people who selected any form of anonymity have been changed according to their own wish-es.

School

Teacher Tutsi IDP/Refugee Tutsi

Farmer (Cultivator) Tutsi IDP/Refugee Tutsi

Janvière Rohero,

Juvénal Rohero,

Farmer (Cultivator) Tutsi IDP/Refugee Tutsi

Maniriho Rohero, Ngozi

Audio Partial

M 32 Primary Farmer (Cultivator) Tutsi IDP/Refugee Tutsi

Marie Rohero,

M 50 Primary Farmer (Cultivator) Tutsi IDP/Refugee Tutsi

Retired Tutsi IDP/Refugee Tutsi

Gertrude Kamenge,

Teacher Hutu refugee Hutu

Hari Kamenge,

Venantie

3.2.5. Participant Categories in Rwanda