Population’s perspectives on popular participation in gacaca

The government’s sustained discourse about the community’s partici­pation in gacaca has significantly influenced popular interpretations of gacaca’s modus operandi. The popular perspective, among suspects, sur­vivors and the wider population, echoes the official view of this theme, though without much of its nationalistic ideology.

Gacaca is important because it brings everyone together, to talk together.

When we come together, we find unity... Sometimes there is even too much talking and I have to slow the people down. The women especially talk too much because they are used to talking much more than the men.^[320]

Many everyday Rwandans believe that greater �unity’ is likely to result from this dialogue at gacaca, though they tend to describe this on a local rather than national level. Many Rwandans argue that parties at gacaca will carry this dialogue and the peaceful methods of conflict resolution embodied in the hearings into their everyday lives, leading to a greater sense of cohesion in previously fragmented communities. Many survivors view gacaca in a similar way to one man in Kigali Ville who described gacaca as a place where �we all sit and talk like family’.^[321] Valence, a forty- four-year-old genocide survivor in Bugesera, said, �We use gacaca today in the way we always used it - to gather people to solve problems. The problem is the genocide and everything that happened here, not just in 1994 but even in earlier years, when there were many killings... We talk at gacaca because we have to rebuild the family that has been broken apart.’^[322]

This view of rebuilding a sense of �family’ in the community echoes the official argument that one likely outcome of gacaca will be the redis­covery of a lost sense of Rwandan unity.

Various government and academic surveys in the early years of gacaca indicated widespread enthusiasm within the Rwandan population for active participation in hearings.^[323] An important feature of several gacaca hearings observed by ASF is the extent to which some communities have instituted ad-hoc procedures to punish local people who fail to attend gacaca hearings. In one cell in Kigali Ville, gacaca judges maintained a list of habitual absentees. In a cell in Kigali Ngali, the general assembly discussed whether it should impose fines on those who arrived late to hearings or failed to attend altogether.^[324] PRI reports that some commu­nities have discussed sanctioning the owners of bars and other businesses that open while gacaca hearings are underway.^[325] While underlining the extent to which many members of the community do not attend gacaca, thus necessitating these punitive measures in the first place, such actions also display many Rwandans' view that the entire community should attend, and participate in, gacaca. In turn, these practices constitute one example of how local communities shape gacaca in ways that depart from the legal statutes and guiding principles outlined in the Gacaca Law or Gacaca Manual, which make no mention of punishment for absentees.

Meanwhile, a large section of the population expresses a degree of scepticism or fear of the level of interaction between antagonistic parties that gacaca entails. Marie-Claire, a survivor in Kigali Ngali whose hus­band and five children were killed during the genocide, said that she was fearful of meeting those who killed her loved ones. Therefore, she said, �I won't go to gacaca unless I am forced to go.'^[326] Several other survivors whom I interviewed expressed a similar reluctance to attend or partici­pate in gacaca, either because they did not believe that it would benefit them in any way or because they feared publicly facing perpetrators.^[327] Some family members of detainees said they did not expect to participate in gacaca hearings. �It is hard for farmers to work and also go to gacaca', said Raoul, whose two brothers and two sisters were accused of commit­ting genocide crimes. �We are very poor and gacaca takes many hours.'^[328] Jerome, a sixty-three-year-old man in Kigali Ville whose three accused brothers were not among the released detainees, said, �I am too old for gacaca. There is too much talking there. We should send the women to gacaca... They will come back and tell us what is said.'^[329]

In contrast, some sources describe popular involvement at gacaca that are even more forceful than the government’s own enthusiastic discourse. Whereas the official perspective tends to trumpet the personal and com­munal advantages of people’s participation in gacaca, many Rwandans describe their involvement as fulfilling a duty to the government. This perspective manifests in practices such as some communities’ sanction of absentees from gacaca but, more directly, in some individuals’ descrip­tions of gacaca �as doing the government’s work’.^[330] Many detainees in particular describe gacaca as �helping the government solve the prob­lems of the country’.^[331] Here they do not articulate the personal or com­munal advantages of gacaca but rather their service to the state.