Paper Grave: On Scholastique Mukasonga
Kevin Okoth, 14 December 2023
The Hutu authorities in Rwanda, Scholastique Mukasonga writes in The Barefoot Woman, portrayed the Tutsi as ‘inyenzi, cockroaches, insects it was only right to persecute and eventually exterminate’. The term inyenzi evoked images of an enemy that could survive anywhere, no matter the conditions, a pervasive force which had undermined Hutu civilisation. Mukasonga’s...
