Le Football Rwanda: Un simulacre guerrier dans la créolisation d'une société (1900-50)

Abstract

To cite this article: Thomas Riot (2010) Le Football Rwanda: Un simulacre guerrier dans la créolisation d'une société , Canadian Journal of African Studies/La Revue canadienne des études africaines, 44:1, 75-109To link to this article: http://dx. AbstractThe history of football in Rwanda begins with the colonization of the country. In about fifty years, this game, which originated in England, has become a local cultural practice, by integrating an agro-pastoral and warlike society. In order to understand this phenomenon, one needs to articulate the colonial anchoring of a cosmopolitan activity into local cultural [re]inventions created by its implantation. This article aims to show how a ball game, introduced in a society in the process of westernization, has left its mark on the building of warlike modernity received and shaped by the players of the time. In analyzing the transpositions of the game into larger social and political stakes, one notices that this practice, while partaking of the "civilization" goal which the colonial administration had given itself, constituted one of the spearheads of the fight for emancipation. Résumé L'histoire du football Rwanda commence avec la colonisation du pays. En une cinquantaine d'années, ce jeu sport d'origine anglaise, en intégrant une société agro-pastorale et guerrière, est devenu une pratique culturelle locale. Comprendre ce phénomène nécessite d'articuler l'ancrage colonial d'une activité cosmopolite aux [ré]inventions culturelles locales suscitées

Physical Activities through Postcolonial Eyes: A Place of Epistemologic and Historiographical Experimentation

“…42 For this same African area, we can note Thomas Riot's research on colonial Rwanda, exploring how modern sports progressed in line with the 'sportification' of the local elite's physical activities. 43 Riot shows how these practices mediatized inter-ethnic oppositions that they would finally worsen, and marked a process of acculturation of the local elites while continuing with the radicalization of the colonial rationalization of Rwandan 'apartheid' within the framework of the competition between Tutsi and Hutu elites lasting throughout the political phase of emancipation of the country, then during the postcolonial period.…”

About Combat. Playing and Making War in (Post)Colonial and Contemporary Africa

“…Les circonstances -sociales, économiques et politiques -sont en effet déterminantes. Avec elles, nous nous posons la question suivante : en quoi les jeux les plus quotidiens de certaines communautés africaines, les jeux de semailles et leurs déclinaisons locales, les parties individuelles (Chevé 2014) et d'équipe (Riot 2010), les danses (Ranger 1975) et leurs disjonctions guerrières (Nkulikiyinka 2002 ;Riot 2011), peuvent être considérés comme des techniques susceptibles de se trouver réinvesties dans le combat le plus concret ?…”