“The fruits of gacaca may not come until the gates have long closed,” the Director of training and mobilization at the National Service of Gacaca Jurisdictions, Denis Bikesha, told me yesterday. “Reconciliation is a gradual process and it might not bear fruit for quite some time.”
Denis began working for the government, specifically on gacaca, immediately after graduating from law school. Today, he monitors and evaluates the process, suggests alterations to make it more just, and when the process finishes (he estimtes by the end of July), he will oversee the publication of a report on gacaca. Oh, and he also decides if interested muzungus (i.e. yours truly) can go and observe a gacaca trial.
During our hour-long meeting in the hottest room in Rwanda (please note: I wore a suit), Denis laid out the recent history of gacaca. Gacaca had traditionally been used in Rwanda to resolve disputes in villages. After the genocide, Rwandese wanted to see genocidaires brought to justice, and the process in place - international tribunals and ordinary courts - was too slow. When trials began in 1996, there were only 13 chambers available to try 120,000 suspects.
To speed up the process and to ensure that evidence could be properly collected, Rwanda decided that trials should take place at the community level, hence the birth of gacaca. After a pilot phase beginning in June 2002, gacaca was fully launched later that year.
Anyone who has followed gacaca knows that it is controversial. Some believe it is the only path to reconciliation; others think that it is unfair, while some, such as Denis, claim it is patriotic.
“Rwanda has been challenged and now, we have an obligation to search for strategies to fight these challenges. That is gacaca.”
Denis laid out gacaca’s four-fold mission:
- Find out the truth about what happened in 1994
- Speed up the justice process
- End the culture of impunity
- Determine if reconciliation is possible
Today, gacaca has tried over a million cases with three categories of suspects: those who looted, those who carried out the genocide, and those who planned and executed the genocide. Judges are elected by the community on the basis of “integrity,” and both men and women judge and are judged.
When I asked Denis if he thought gacaca would bring genuine reconciliation and was the best way to bring genocidaires to justice, he replied, “What I am doing as my job, I believe I am supposed to be doing. I am one person, so I cannot do one thing and think another. Every person has his or her own feelings, but I was chosen to be among those who ensure peace.” At one point during our meeting, Denis, a member of the RPF party, told me that “President Kagame is our Moses.” It was Kagame’s army, the RPF, that brought an end to the genocide and it is his goal - through gacaca - to bring peace and prosperity to Rwanda.
Today, after having my photo taken, getting forms from the Office of Emigration and Immigration, submitting a copy of my passsport, and returning to wait in Denis’ office for an hour and a half, I have a permit to visit gacaca in July. To be continued…
