Transitional Justice: Global Mechanisms and Local Realities after Genocide and Mass Violence

4. (In)Justice: Truth, Reconciliation, and Revenge in Rwanda's Gacaca

95 /////////////~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 4 (In)Justice Truth, Reconciliation, and Revenge in Rwanda’s Gacaca JENNIE E. BURNET The goal of the gacacas was not to parade people before the courts for form, but to try them well! —Benoit Kaboyi, executive secretary of Ibuka, the National Genocide Survivors Association The inyangamugayo (“people of integrity”/Gacaca judges) won’t stop until all the educated Hutu are in prison with long sentences. —Woman from Northern Province, May 2007 Fifteen years after the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, many genocide survivors and victims are still awaiting justice, although it has been sought through a plurality of mechanisms: an ad hoc international tribunal, foreign courts, Rwandan justice system, and a local justice mechanism known as Gacaca (pronounced ga-cha-cha). In a radical departure from precedents in other postconflict countries, where amnesties, truth commissions, selective prosecutions, or some combination thereof, have been used to bring closure to conflict, Rwanda decided to put “most of the nation on trial” (Waldorf 2006, 3). To accomplish this task, the government reinvented a “traditional” conflict resolution mechanism known as gacaca.1 Beginning with a pilot phase in 2001 and a nationwide roll-out in 2005, the entire population has been enlisted to prosecute, defend, testify, and judge an estimated 761,000 suspects accused of genocide as of March 2005 (Reyntjens 2005, 3). Gacaca has been framed both as transitional justice and local justice (e.g., Uvin and Mironko 2003; Waldorf 2006). According to Hinton, 96 JENNIE E. BUR NET Transitional justice is often defined as the process of redressing wrongs committed in states shifting from a violent, authoritarian past toward a more liberal, democratic future—though more recently the term has been defined in a broader manner (for example, a more general “response to systematic or widespread violations of human rights”) and extended to encompass a larger set of outcomes, such as advancing development and social justice. (Hinton, this volume) While Rwanda has not moved very far toward “a more liberal, democratic future” in the assessments of most regional specialists (see Longman 2006; Reyntjens 2004, 2006), it has moved a very long way from the genocide crimes and crimes against humanity of the 1994 genocide and the reigning insecurity of the 1990s. According to many economic indicators, Rwanda is developing at a rate far surpassing other postconflict African nations. Yet, characterizing Gacaca as transitional justice is problematic, because, as Waldorf (2006) notes, it only adjudicates cases related to the 1994 genocide and does not touch the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) killings. Given that Gacaca placed the power of law and justice in the hands of ordinary citizens, it fits the attributes of local justice well (see Hinton, this volume). In public awareness campaigns about Gacaca, the Rwandan government portrayed it as a Rwandan solution for a Rwandan problem and as a way to foreground the experiences and voices of genocide survivors.2 Yet, as with any local process, Gacaca is a site of friction where local, regional, national, and international processes intersect (Tsing 2005). Based on ethnographic fieldwork in urban and rural Rwanda between 1997 and 2003, focus groups and interviews conducted in May and June of 2007, and additional interviews conducted in May 2009, this chapter explores local perceptions of the Gacaca process and asks whether Gacaca has fulfilled its primary goals to “end impunity,” promote reconciliation, and establish the “real truth of what happened during the Genocide” (Official Website of the Republic of Rwanda 2001). My findings indicate that how well Gacaca has functioned varies a great deal from community to community. The most important variable appears to be the character of the inyangamugayo (people of integrity), who serve as judge and jury in the Gacaca system. Regardless of how well Gacaca has operated, in the short term it increased (or at least brought to the surface) conflict in local communities and intensified ethnic cleavages. Increased ethnic cleavages in the short term would not necessarily be a negative outcome if the long-term prospects for building a peaceful society were good. By May 2009, nearly a year and a half after the official end of Gacaca trials, community-based organizations in some districts have managed to reintegrate released prisoners and reestablish the weft of the social fabric. (IN)JUST ICE 97 The Move toward Local Justice Since 1994, many justice mechanisms have been used to prosecute the planners and perpetrators...