INTRODUCTION

As I argued in Chapter 2, gacaca is an intricate, multifaceted social practice that draws on a wide range of legal, political and cultural influences over sev­eral generations to produce the hybrid system that is now designed to deal with genocide cases.

This chapter briefly discusses the current controversy among many observers concerning gacaca as an institution dealing with genocide and related crimes and the confusion among many participants regarding gacaca's objectives. In order to lay a foundation for the interpretation of gacaca's objectives and the analysis of its practical function in the fol­lowing chapters - which is designed in part to overcome this confusion regarding the purposes of the institution and to show that much of the controversy over gacaca is based on a misinterpretation of these object­ives - this chapter outlines the rationale that underpins the interpret­ation of gacaca's aims and methods throughout this book. Various social, political and legal commentators have criticised gacaca on a number of grounds, particularly regarding perceived violations of individual rights, but what is lacking in the critical literature is a clear notion of how to judge gacaca's effectiveness. This chapter describes the basis on which I critique gacaca in the remainder of this book.

The following chapters interpret gacaca on the basis of the legal docu­ments governing the institution,¹ public pronouncements by and inter­views with Rwandan government officials, commentators' perspectives on gacaca (including observations of gacaca hearings by ASF^{[196] [197] and other researchers), my first-hand observations of gacaca hearings and inter­views with genocide suspects, survivors, gacaca judges and the general population. I argue that gacaca is designed to pursue a combination of pragmatic and profound aims. There is little controversy among most observers of gacaca over what I interpret in Chapter 6 as gacaca's three main pragmatic objectives - processing the immense backlog of genocide cases, improving living conditions in the jails and helping to foster economic development - though it is not always clear how these objectives may be pursued through gacaca and whether they in turn contribute to the ful­filment of gacaca's profound objectives. Few commentators would ques­tion that these pragmatic aims play an important role in the design and running of gacaca. However, I argue that these commentators have not always adequately described why and how gacaca pursues these object­ives and therefore it is necessary to interpret these aims more closely than has been done so far.}

Chapters 7-10 outline and interpret the profound objectives of gacaca which, relative to the dominant discourse, constitute a new, more wide-ranging interpretation of its aims.

In reply to the dominant discourse on gacaca, I argue that six key objectives emerge in its design and daily operation: truth, peace, justice (not only retributive or deterrent, but also restorative), healing, forgive­ness and reconciliation. I examine in detail how each of these objectives is defined and manifests practically according to various official, popular and critical sources and how the pursuit of each objective displays a dis­tinctive ethos of popular ownership, participation and public engagement which drives gacaca as a whole and which most observers disregard in their analyses of gacaca. My interpretation of gacaca's objectives then lays the foundation for the analysis of gacaca's practical efficacy.