Commentators’ perspectives on reconciliation through gacaca

Finally, the widest-ranging interpretations of the form, degree and types of methods of reconciliation through gacaca come from commentators. Most Rwandan observers view reconciliation as a central - if not the cen­tral - objective of gacaca, while most non-Rwandans do not discuss rec­onciliation in this context, emphasising instead the deterrent elements of the system in keeping with the dominant discourse on gacaca.

Regarding the form of reconciliation that gacaca facilitates, commen­tators describe, with varying degrees of clarity and precision, all three forms expressed in the official and popular views: reconciliation on group-to-group, individual-to-individual and individual-to-group bases. Commentators on gacaca rarely connect multiple forms of reconciliation in a philosophical or programmatic way, describing them instead as sep­arate processes that often appear to have little impact on one another. Both Rwandan and non-Rwandan observers emphasise the importance of gacaca for facilitating reconciliation, which is described variously as �?community-rebuilding’,^[746] �?reviving communal life',^[747] �?mending the social fabric',^[748] �?negotiating a new social contract’,^[749] �?recovering the culture of solidarity’^[750] and �?restoring social equilibrium’.^[751] It is not clear exactly what these terms mean, for example whether community rebuilding or reviving communal life entail the restoration of relationships between groups or between individuals or something entirely different.

Few commentators elaborate on who exactly is supposed to be rec­onciling with whom through gacaca. We may assume, however, that the form of reconciliation to which observers of gacaca usually refer is group-to-group because these descriptions take a largely top-down view of reconciliation that emphasises the need to restore a community-wide dynamic rather than relationships between individuals.

Most commentators are more explicit when describing reconciliation through gacaca as an individual-to-individual process, though they rarely discuss this form of reconciliation. In this instance, commentators focus on the potential for gacaca to reconcile individual genocide suspects and survivors. As with popular views of reconciliation through gacaca, when questions become more personal, moving away from generalities con­cerning reconciliation at the community level to focus on difficult issues of restoring individual relations, arguments regarding what reconcili­ation may look like and what processes it entails become more explicit and detailed.

Gacaca's requirement that offenders apologize publicly as a precondition for their confessions' acceptance may further facilitate reconciliation... [Apologies] backed by real remorse... will promote both the victim's sense of security, by assuring him that his attacker will not strike again, and a reconciliation between the two.^[754]

In this instance, Harrell is unequivocal that reconciliation involves rebuilding relationships between individual perpetrators and survivors and that apology and remorse are important means to this outcome.

No non-Rwandan commentators and only a small minority of Rwandan observers discuss the importance of gacaca for individual-to- group reconciliation. Commentators who discuss individual-to-group reconciliation mostly equate this form of reconciliation with reinte­grating detainees into their home communities.^[755] Harrell, however, argues that not only the reintegration of detainees may facilitate this form of reconciliation but, more importantly, also the involvement of those detainees in community service. By engaging those found guilty of genocide crimes in activities that provide material benefits for survivors, Harrell argues, community service as a punishment also has �?the poten­tial to reconcile a wrongdoer with the larger community' by changing the way in which the community views his or her motives and actions.^[756] PRI argues similarly that using community service as a form of punish­ment is partly intended �?to repair the social tissue and promote reconcili- ation'^[757]4 while contributing to �?the social rehabilitation of detainees'.^[758]

Both Harrell and PRI imply that the engagement of detainees with survivors through community service promotes reconciliation: convicted perpetrators must participate actively in work programmes, sometimes working side by side with survivors, such as in rebuilding houses or tend­ing communal gardens. This interpretation of reconciliatory processes on an individual-to-group basis is more robust than detainees' descrip­tions of this form of reconciliation solely as their peaceful reintegration into their previous communities.

This distinction between reintegration of suspects and the reconcili­ation of suspects and survivors is especially important for questions con­cerning the degree to which reconciliation may occur through gacaca. Not only do commentators note all three forms of reconciliation through gacaca examined so far but they also interpret the degree of reconcili­ation according to the three variations already described: reconciliation as cohabitation, as restoring a lost sense of unity and as creating a new dynamic between parties previously in conflict. There is a gulf between the views of non-Rwandan and Rwandan commentators in this regard. The former group expresses greater scepticism than the latter about the level of reconciliation that is possible after the genocide. From my inter­views with observers of gacaca and from the critical literature, a minority of non-Rwandan commentators views mere cohabitation - a largely prag­matic arrangement similar to the peaceful reintegration for which many detainees hope - as the degree of reconciliation that is possible or prefer­able through gacaca. Klaas de Jonge of PRI, for example, argues that the highest degree of reconciliation that gacaca can achieve is one in which �?Rwandans are able to live together without fear'.^[759] Gacaca, he argues, should aim only to achieve peaceful coexistence between genocide perpetrators and survivors, which would still be a remarkable outcome given the traumatic legacies of the genocide and the numerous institu­tional constraints upon gacaca. Concomitantly, to expect any more than facilitating the non-violent cohabitation of perpetrators and survivors would be unrealistic and may even result in the imposition on survivors of an expressed obligation to live with those who have wronged them.

For most commentators, however, and particularly for Rwandan observers, the peaceful cohabitation of survivors and perpetrators is too low an expectation of gacaca.^[761] Gacaca, they argue, can foster - and, according to many commentators, should actively foster - more mean­ingful interactions and relationships between parties previously in con­flict. Rwandan commentators place greater store than non-Rwandans in the engagement between participants in gacaca. In turn, the majority of Rwandan commentators interpret the degree of reconciliation that is possible or desirable through gacaca as a reversion to a lost state of social cohesion. Karekezi argues that a constant element of the gacaca pro­cess is an �?effort toward the restoration of social equilibrium’.^[762] Nsabiyera argues that gacaca helps Rwandans �?recover... a culture of solidarity which we lost during the genocide’.^[763] Both Karekezi’s and Nsabiyera’s interpretations of reconciliation assume that a desirable form of social interaction previously existed in Rwanda and can be regained. Nsabiyera argues, however, that the recent past also displays decidedly undesirable elements, such as a lack of genuine dialogue between different groups in Rwandan society, which gacaca must overcome in order to achieve reconciliation. This view emphasises the need for engagement between parties to resolve past conflicts. According to Nsabiyera, the past offers lessons on how Rwandans may live together again in the present, but they will not learn these lessons without genuine, long-term dialogue during, and outside of, gacaca.

What distinguishes most commentators’, and especially Rwandan commentators’, interpretations of reconciliation from the government’s rhetoric of regaining a sense of unity is the more rigorous processes that they believe reconciliation requires.

Concerning the types of methods for achieving reconciliation, most commentators argue that engagement between parties at gacaca is only the beginning of a long-term dialogue that is necessary for individuals and groups to be truly reconciled. Gacaca creates a forum in which indi­viduals and groups can discuss the nature of, and possible solutions to, their conflicts. This dialogue, however, must continue in the future, out­side of gacaca, to achieve a deeper sense of engagement and thus rec­onciliation. Therefore, most commentators, mainly Rwandan but also the few non-Rwandan authors who explicitly discuss reconciliation in this context, view gacaca as the beginning of a much longer, deeper pro­cess of rebuilding individual and communal relationships. Gasibirege emphasises the need for gacaca to instil important values in the popu­lation if gacaca is to succeed in �?creating a meeting place... for reviving communal life’.^[766] Other processes and institutions separate from gacaca, he argues, will then largely determine whether Rwandans can reconcile after gacaca’s initiation of restorative processes.