GACACA AND JUSTICE
In all official, popular and critical discussions, justice - along with truth - is the theme most readily identified as an objective of gacaca. This is not surprising given the immense backlog of genocide cases and the widespread moral conviction that perpetrators should be brought to account for their actions and receive the punishment they deserve.
Nonetheless, the sources analysed here regularly disagree over exactly how justice should be pursued through gacaca. Among the most conĀtroversial issues captured in discussions of justice through gacaca is why justice is necessary after the genocide: is justice required simply to fulfil a moral obligation to deal with perpetrators (which, as we saw in Chapter 1, constitutes retributive justice), to deter future perpetrators from committing similar crimes (deterrent justice), or to facilitate wider aims, such as rebuilding broken relationships and renewing the social fabric (restorative justice)?Broadly speaking, these sources' interpretations comprise views on the processes and outcomes of justice. Regarding processes, these sources interpret justice as pursued in two main ways: formally, according to preĀdetermined legal statutes, or through negotiation, in which the populaĀtion determines discursively how justice will be dispensed and what form of justice genocide perpetrators will receive. In turn, these sources interĀpret the outcomes of justice in the three ways just mentioned: retribuĀtive, deterrent or restorative.
This section explores the views of the government, population and commentators concerning justice through gacaca, particularly as they regard distinctions and connections between formal and negotiated processes and among retributive, deterrent and restorative outcomes. This section analyses their views concerning the form of justice that they believe gacaca facilitates and the means by which gacaca will pursue it.
Just as Chapter 5 argued that gacaca displays internal hybridity by comĀbining formal with negotiated methods (with emphasis on the negotiĀated, and the formal acting simply as legal boundaries), this section shows that gacaca represents an ingenious hybrid of retributive, deterrent and restorative justice outcomes (where the ultimate aim is restorative). This synthesis enables gacaca to achieve legal outcomes, especially punishing genocide perpetrators, in ways that facilitate important non-legal results, such as restoring fractured individual and communal relationships.In particular, this section highlights that gacaca embodies two elemĀents for shaping punishment towards restorative ends: first, gacaca's modus operandi of popular participation contributes to restorative justice by encouraging dialogue and collaboration between parties as they give and weigh evidence related to criminal cases. These forms of engagement in many communities have helped rebuild trust and relationships between previously antagonistic parties. Second, gacaca's use of community service as a form of punishment for some genocidaires contributes to restoration by reintegrating perpetrators more rapidly into the community and involvĀing them in communal work programmes. These programmes often entail perpetrators and survivors working side by side; a form of engagement that has further aided restoration in many parts of Rwanda.