Critique of sources' perspectives on reconciliation through gacaca

How convincing then are the official, popular and critical perspec­tives regarding the form, degree and types of methods of reconciliation through gacaca? In general, some components of the three groups’ views on these issues constitute useful interpretations of gacaca’s pursuit of reconciliation.

Regarding the form of reconciliation that gacaca facilitates, a synthesis of the official, popular and critical perspectives offers a more convincing account than any of these views taken separately. A key virtue of the popular interpretation of the form of reconciliation that gacaca encour­ages is its emphasis on the need for reconciliation between individuals. Greater engagement and dialogue in the general assembly are important for individuals to come to terms with the sources of, and solutions to, their conflicts. With their focus on reconciliation between groups previ­ously in conflict and in a national sense, some government and observer sources neglect the crucial ways in which large-scale events such as geno­cide also constitute a series of personal conflicts that produce long-term acrimony and mistrust between individuals. Reconciliation must there­fore occur on a personal level, between survivors, perpetrators and their families, to convince these individuals that they can live meaningfully with one another.

Similarly, state officials and commentators who focus solely on rec­onciliation in the form of a group-to-group dynamic neglect the vital ways in which individuals also need to experience reconciliation with entire groups, particularly in the case of detainees who seek reconcili­ation with their home communities. Nevertheless, many detainees’ arguments concerning the importance of reconciliation are problem­atic because they often equate reconciliation with reintegration. A peaceful re-entry into the community is very different from rebuild­ing relationships. Some detainees’ conflation of reconciliation and reintegration suggests their reluctance to engage fully with the com­munity when they return. Many suspects hope that avoiding reprisals will constitute a successful and meaningful transition back into their communities. As described in Chapter 4, regarding Laurent’s, Cypriet’s and Alphonse’s experiences of the gacaca journey, many provisionally released detainees returned to live in houses on the outskirts of their communities as they awaited their trials at gacaca. These suspects suc­ceeded for lengthy periods in avoiding reprisals by genocide survivors, but they also avoided any form of genuine engagement with survivors, thus scuppering any chances of interacting meaningfully with their communities and of achieving individual-to-individual or individual- to-group reconciliation. Of the three former detainees, only Alphonse stated that he had over time renewed contact with some survivors, while continuing to actively avoid others. The transition from reintegration to reconciliation takes substantially longer than some sources suggest and involves further interactions between detainees and their commu­nities beyond the initial interactions immediately after detainees return home and during gacaca.

That reconciliation should be interpreted as a group-to-group process is perhaps inevitable in a context such as post-genocide Rwanda where conflict has resulted primarily from antagonisms between Hutu and Tutsi. All of the sources analysed here to some extent interpret reconciliation through gacaca as occurring on a group-to-group basis. In the govern­ment’s interpretation, the form of reconciliation that gacaca may facili­tate is defined exclusively in this sense. However, what stands out from the various sources’ interpretations of group-to-group reconciliation is the general absence (with the exception of Ingelaere’s and Waldorf’s analyses) of an explicit discussion of ethnicity and particularly the role of ethnicity in fomenting conflict in Rwanda. Reconciliation requires a dis­cussion of the sources of conflict, if parties are to resolve their problems and build stronger relationships. Most sources discuss group-to-group reconciliation as necessary between perpetrators and survivors rather than between Hutu and Tutsi. There are very good reasons for emphasis­ing �perpetrators’ and �survivors’ in this regard, to avoid employing an absolutist discourse whereby all Hutu are considered perpetrators and all Tutsi survivors. As Nigel Eltringham argues persuasively, neither of these absolutist categories holds because many Hutu and individuals of mixed heritage were victims of crimes during the genocide and many Tutsi committed crimes.^[767] Nevertheless, it is necessary to recognise the funda­mental role of ethnicity in motivating the perpetration of the genocide.

Crucially missing from official, popular and critical interpretations of the form of reconciliation through gacaca is the need to view individual- to-individual, individual-to-group and group-to-group reconciliation as necessarily interconnected processes. Attempts to facilitate reconcili­ation between different groups are likely to falter if individuals within those groups still feel enmity towards individuals in other groups. If I hate my neighbour because of his or her membership of a particular collective, for example an ethnic group, then I will find it near impossible to partici­pate in wider processes of reconciliation between my own group and that of the person whom I hate. Conversely, an experience of personal recon­ciliation between myself and a member of a perceived rival group may aid my participation in processes of group-to-group reconciliation.

Humans function within different layers of identity, viewing them­selves as individuals who have crucial relations with other individuals around them, while all the time feeling embedded within deep commu­nal identities. These layers of self-understanding mean that events that affect the community to which individuals feel deep attachments will also resonate in the individuals concerned. Genocide as an event or pro­cess that is intended to destroy an entire people group such as the Tutsi affects the emotional and psychological conditions of members of the targeted group qua individuals, as they suffer personal injury at the hands of other individuals (and particularly in the Rwandan context, where so many victims know the perpetrators intimately), and qua members of the group, as their communal consciousness is afflicted by the destruc­tion wrought on the collective.

To what degree then should Rwandans pursue reconciliation and what degree of reconciliation is possible through gacaca? As they did regard­ing popular participation in gacaca, both the official and some popular sources analysed here regularly define reconciliation in a retrospective sense as restoring unity. For reasons already expressed elsewhere in this book, we should be sceptical of any discourse that conflates reconcili­ation and national unity or that holds that the response to the fractured nature of Rwandan society after the genocide should be to restore an assumed lost sense of social harmony. In all likelihood, this past unity never existed or, if it did, those who have experienced mass violence on the scale of the genocide cannot easily reimagine it. An additional argu­ment against defining reconciliation as unity is that unity as the gov­ernment and some genocide suspects define it emphasises the need to rebuild relationships at a group level, whether in separate communities or in the nation as a whole, thus neglecting the need for individual-to- individual reconciliation. An interpretation of the necessary degree of reconciliation after the genocide as retrospective, in the form of restor­ing unity, is therefore unconvincing.

Instead, an interpretation of reconciliation that lies somewhere between the optimistic and pragmatic interpretations articulated by various sources is more compelling. The problem with exclusively prag­matic views of reconciliation, such as those expressed by de Jonge and some genocide survivors, which holds that peaceful cohabitation is the best that Rwandans can hope for after the genocide, is their questionable fatalism. Certainly we should be realistic about the extent to which the three forms of reconciliation are possible after an event as devastating as genocide.

On this basis, it is judicious to aim for the highest degree of recon­ciliation possible: the optimistic interpretation outlined above, which emphasises the creation of a new sense of engagement and new forms of discourse and active cooperation. A core assumption of the optimistic interpretation of reconciliation proposed here is that, in most instances of broken relationships in the three forms discussed above, the damage wrought during conflict will have been so great as to require rebuilding these relationships from the foundations. People's memories of crimes during the genocide, whether they have been a victim or perpetrator, will be so overwhelming that these recollections will override any of a time (if ever there were such a time) when their relationships with mem­bers of other groups were more harmonious. Therefore, if parties pre­viously in conflict wish to learn to live together again, they will need to engage closely with one another at gacaca and create a dialogue on the root causes of the conflicts between them in order to build effective relationships after gacaca. They will also need to be creative rather than retrospective in their methods, seeking to build new relationships rather than reverting to old ones.

Reconciliation at the optimistic level requires a two-stage process: one by which parties engage directly with one another on the root causes of their conflicts, in order to find solutions to these problems, and a second by which they then seek to generate a discourse and modes of active cooperation that produce more meaningful interactions in the future. These stages are admittedly broad: the first is essentially one of conflict resolution and the second of relationship transformation, seeking to take the relationship beyond being defined solely by the conflict and empha­sising instead a deeper, long-term engagement. Completion of the first stage constitutes achieving the pragmatic level of reconciliation that commentators such as de Jonge argue is the best for which Rwandans can hope after the genocide. The second stage is motivated by a hope that something more than mere cohabitation - itself unquestionably an impressive achievement after such destructive conflict - may be possible. The second stage also assumes that parties will cultivate principles and methods of conflict resolution or, in the government’s language, �prob­lem-solving’, so that they are able to deal peacefully and effectively with conflicts as they arise in the future. This need for the development of long-term problem-solving mechanisms underscores the need for recon­ciliation to be sustainable and assumes that some degree of conflict in the future is inevitable. The evidence displayed in this book, from the statements of participants in gacaca and observations of hearings and people’s interactions in daily life, suggests that a minority of Rwandans may have reached the second stage of a deeper engagement than merely peaceful coexistence. For most Rwandans, however, even the first stage of addressing root causes of their conflicts has proven difficult, although as the discussions of popular participation and truth in this book highlight in particular, gacaca has enabled substantial progress in these regards, despite the manifest challenges.

Both stages of reconciliation are likely to take a long time and will require the sorts of difficult discussions to which several of the Rwandan critical and popular sources analysed above allude, particularly in the context of individual-to-individual reconciliation. In some communities, only stage one may be possible; in others, there may be scope for pursuing a more ambitious outcome. Those in charge of facilitating reconciliatory processes must discern the extent to which it is possible to achieve the second, transformative stage of reconciliation and when it is more pru­dent to aim solely for a more pragmatic result. Nevertheless, to aim solely for a pragmatic degree of reconciliation is to deny some individuals and groups, for whom reconciliation may prove to be a more viable pursuit if localised conditions are conducive, the opportunity to strive for the highest degree of reconciliation of which they are capable.

One of the most important localised factors that increases the like­lihood that genocide perpetrators and survivors will engage meaning­fully at gacaca in order to achieve reconciliation is people's religious beliefs, particularly when principles of grace, mercy and forgiveness constitute key elements of their faith. Many survivors' statements that, on the basis of their religious convictions, they are ready to for­give, and to reconcile with, genocide perpetrators are vital for gacaca's ability to facilitate reconciliation. As my interviews with genocide suspects and survivors show, people's deeply rooted religious beliefs regularly influence their interpretations of gacaca and its objectives to such an extent that they feel compelled to apply these principles in their engagement with others at gacaca. Christian gacaca hearings crucially reinforce many survivors' belief that they have a divine duty to reconcile with perpetrators. Pre-gacaca hearings have also allowed many suspects and survivors to engage in a quieter, more private environment before they interact more publicly during official gacaca hearings. These interactions have increased many parties' confidence in official gacaca's chances of facilitating their reconciliation in the future.

At the same time, we should be wary of some of the ways in which people's religious beliefs have so far shaped their views on gacaca and on reconciliation. As with the dangers noted earlier regarding viewing involvement of gacaca as fulfilling a duty to the state, there are dangers associated with the expressed duty to forgive or to reconcile, which stems from some people's religious beliefs and which is reinforced by practices such as Christian gacaca. In this case, the danger is that this religious sense of duty will lead participants in gacaca to simply go through the motions at official gacaca. Believers may engage in processes of reconcili­ation not because they genuinely view these processes as personally valu­able but because they wish to obey, and thus to win favour with, their religious leaders. Highlighting the general theme of civic education and coercion throughout this book, Irenee Bugingo, Senior Researcher at IRDP, said, �Reconciliation has become one of the key pillars of the RPF philosophy, and many of the churches share this view... Reconciliation and forgiveness should take time but instead reconciliation has often been taught.'^[769]

A religious sense of duty does not always equate, however, to simply wishing to obey church leaders: as we have seen, some survivors argue that obedience to God, rather than to their leaders, motivates them to display grace to the guilty in the form of participation in processes of rec­onciliation through gacaca. This sense of duty may prove advantageous to gacaca's chances of facilitating reconciliation because a divine obliga­tion may truly inspire believers to engage wholeheartedly in gacaca, as opposed to the debilitating sense of duty to the government that some sources express. It is not always clear from my interviews with survivors whether obedience to God or to church leaders motivates their expressed sense of duty to forgive and reconcile. However, duty to the former may inspire some participants to contribute to processes of forgiveness and reconciliation at gacaca.

Blind obedience to political leaders also ensures that participants in the gacaca process will not engage genuinely with others, increasing dis­trust between different parties and forfeiting any long-term benefits of their dialogue at gacaca. Ruth, the detainee in the ingando at Kigali Ville quoted earlier, who had been a high-school teacher before the genocide and claimed that she had been falsely accused of murder, said she was concerned that some of her fellow detainees had the wrong motivations for wanting to reconcile with their victims:

Reconciliation, in the end, really comes from the authorities. These people in the camp like to obey... They obey like animals. What we really need is reconciliation from the heart. People need to reflect on their actions during the genocide, then they will be ready to reconcile with the survivors.^[770]

Ruth's views echo those of Laurent, the detainee interviewed along the gacaca journey, who claimed, �We need reconciliation without sentimen­tality. Reconciliation doesn't come from the sky.'

This section has argued so far that we must view reconciliation as necessarily incorporating the simultaneous rebuilding of relationships in individual-individual, individual-group and group-group forms. Because the individuals engaged in reconciliation processes inevitably experience these forms of reconciliation as interconnected, to fail to facilitate reconciliation in one of these forms is to undermine reconcili­ation in the others. The critical literature has generally neglected the personal dimension of reconciliation. This section has also argued that it is justified to aim for the highest degree of reconciliation that is possible given localised conditions in communities after the genocide. For vari­ous reasons, some individuals and some groups will find it easier to pursue reconciliation than others. Gacaca therefore must be sufficiently flexible as to gauge the appropriate level of reconciliation, be it the optimistic or the pragmatic interpretation of reconciliation outlined above, that may be pursued given local constraints. The readiness for reconciliation that many suspects and survivors express as a result of their religious beliefs is a key indicator that a more optimistic level of reconciliation is possible in some communities.

With this view of the forms and degrees of reconciliation that gacaca is justified in pursuing, what types of methods is it capable of deploying in pursuit of reconciliation? Again we can draw much of our response to this question from the official, popular and critical sources analysed above. In some instances it is necessary to go beyond the views of these sources. In the concluding chapter, I recall the exact methods that gacaca deploys in pursuit of reconciliation, via the pursuit of earlier profound objectives such as truth, healing and forgiveness, but for now it is necessary only to draw the broad contours of the types of methods of reconciliation that are required, and that gacaca displays a capacity to facilitate.

Of the three sources analysed here, the government’s view of the types of methods necessary to achieve reconciliation through gacaca is the most problematic. The official view that reconciliation is a short-term process that occurs during gacaca hearings and is likely to produce rela­tively fast results is unsustainable and does not reflect most Rwandans’ experience. The conception of reconciliation as a relatively short-term process occurring almost exclusively within gacaca carries weight only if we accept that reconciliation equates to restoring a sense of unity which is latent within Rwandan culture. As already argued, the government’s rhetoric concerning restoring unity is highly flawed. The balancing of pragmatic and optimistic interpretations of the degree of reconciliation possible generally and through gacaca specifically entails long-term proc­esses, involving difficult discussions that take participants in gacaca to the root causes of their conflicts. The evidence from communities such as those observed during the gacaca journey and elsewhere suggests that some individuals may have begun experiencing reconciliation - even if they are predominantly in the early phases of meaningful relation­ship transformation - but most communities still find themselves heav­ily divided, particularly between Hutu and Tutsi and between Tutsi who lived through the genocide and those who have subsequently returned to Rwanda. In this context, processes of reconciliation will unavoidably take many years.

Gacaca creates a space in which individuals have begun discussing genocide-related issues, especially the sources of their conflicts, with a view towards rebuilding their fractured relations. As suspects are encour­aged to confess their crimes publicly and to apologise to their victims, survivors who often feel great anger and resentment towards suspects may now feel that they are ready to engage with them. Given the public setting of gacaca and its cacophony of voices, individuals may find that the most crucial discourse between them will occur outside of gacaca, in a more private space. However, gacaca is an important starting point, as suspects and survivors meet face to face and the entire community may engage in, and benefit from, their dialogue.

We must see reconciliation through gacaca as a long-term process that relies on meaningful engagement occurring during gacaca hearings but continuing outside of this immediate context. There are no easy solu­tions, no ready-made historical templates to which Rwandans can revert in order to achieve reconciliation after the genocide. As Norman Porter was quoted in Chapter 5, engagement requires individuals to make them­selves vulnerable to one another, often discussing and debating as they have not done previously. The risks involved in such a process, and the uncertainty over the results of such intimate interactions, are immense. Particularly if communities choose to pursue more ambitious degrees of reconciliation, the level of engagement between parties previously in conflict must increase as well as the possibility that people's vulnerability will lead them to act unpredictably and sometimes in ways that are coun­ter-productive to the pursuit of reconciliation through engagement at gacaca. Gacaca judges must be aware of the risks involved in the intense engagement required of participants in gacaca and must ensure that such engagement is productive in terms of pursuing gacaca's stated objectives.

This chapter has argued that we can identify a need in post-genocide Rwanda for reconciliation in three forms - individual-individual, indi- vidual-group and group-group - and that gacaca displays a marked capacity to facilitate reconciliation in each of these forms, especially in the individual-individual case that all of the sources analysed here, except for some genocide survivors, have largely ignored. Gacaca dis­plays an observed capacity to facilitate these three forms of reconcili­ation to either an optimistic or pragmatic degree, depending on local circumstances that shape the extent to which reconciliation is possible in particular communities. In practice, some individuals and some groups are closer to achieving reconciliation than others. This chapter has shown that people's religious beliefs, especially concerning Christian principles of grace, mercy and atonement, are a crucial local influence on communities' chances of successfully facilitating reconciliation. The current literature almost completely ignores the effect of people's reli­gious convictions on their interpretations of, and readiness to participate in, gacaca. Overall, there is greater optimism concerning the chances of achieving reconciliation after the genocide among segments of the population who, on the basis of their Christian beliefs, view these ideals as valuable responses to past crimes. Some religious views are detrimen­tal to the cause of facilitating reconciliation, particularly when certain Christian leaders and their followers define it as a moral duty to be ful­filled for the sake of the Church and its hierarchy or as a process that will be completed quickly and relatively painlessly. Nevertheless, most com­mentators', particularly non-Rwandan authors', interpretations of gacaca are inadequate due to their neglect of the effects of religious interpret­ations on people's understandings of gacaca, especially on themes such as reconciliation.

Finally, this chapter has shown that reconciliation through gacaca entails both short- and long-term methods and processes that involve immediate engagement between parties previously in conflict dur­ing gacaca hearings that then must flow forth into further engagement between these parties after gacaca. Gacaca constitutes an import­ant starting point for reconciliation. It has already reaped significant restorative dividends in some communities. If engagement between par­ties ceases at gacaca, however, then there is little chance of reconcili­ation occurring. Reconciliation, and the engagement that is the bridge to facilitating it, are arduous, long-term processes. The evidence from communities around Rwanda suggests that gacaca has at best aided some individuals and groups in embarking on the road to reconciliation.