Reclaiming Motherhood and Resisting Erasure in Belgian Colonial Rwanda: The Story of Perusi Kagaju

Abstract

This article brings to light the overlooked experiences of Rwandan mothers of colonial Métis whose mixed-‘race’ children were forcibly removed under Belgian colonial rule and who remain largely absent from both public memory and feminist scholarship. Focusing on the life of Peruth (Perusi) Kagaju, a Rwandan mother whose two sons were taken without her consent and adopted by a white Belgian family, it explores how the Belgian colonial authorities depicted Black motherhood as both threatening and disposable. Grounded in narrative biography, oral testimony, and intergenerational memory, this article offers three key interventions. First, drawing on Frantz Fanon and Patricia Hill Collins, it theorizes how colonial systems devalued Black motherhood through the intersecting concepts of undeserving and denied motherhood. Second, by centring Kagaju's story, as told by her daughter, Julienne (Julie) Toch, it constructs a counter-history in which reclaiming motherhood emerges as an act of resistance: a powerful response to historical erasure, asserting Black maternal voices as sites of memory, care, and political struggle. Third, it critiques the official apologies made to the Métis and their mothers as perpetuating colonial silences.