ABSTRACT
This chapter explains to the social history of genocide and war by detailing the experiences and impact of violence on the individual and community life of the Twa. It traces the formation of the public narrative of historic marginalisation and the configuration of the outside onlooker during genocide, while also examining the significance of this positionality in post-genocide Rwanda. The chapter describes unravelling the public discourse that excludes the Twa from the master-narrative of genocide and that of war, and that, by positioning them as outsiders, disregards that their lives are embedded in the social fabric of the nation. It argues that there is a dissonance between the portrayal of the Twa community as the outside onlooker and individual stories of Batwa that show their presence in the national space of violence. The storyline of survival and the threat to survival succinctly describes the predicament of the Twa during and after conflict.
