THE JOURNEY BEGINS: FROM PRISON TO INGANDO

Until the provisional release of genocide suspects, the massive over­population of Rwanda's jails caused anger and consternation among all groups in society. Many survivors whom I interviewed argued that, while it was necessary to hold the suspects in prison until they could be tried, the population was suffering from detainees’ inability to publicly tell the truth about their crimes.^[227] Members of the general population complained that the government was unable to adequately provide food and clothing for detainees, a responsibility that fell to their families, who as well as supporting relatives in jail, suffered financially from detainees’ inability to contribute to community livelihoods.^[228]

By the end of 2002, the situation in the genocide prisons had become unsustainable.

When it became clear that the 1 January communique had caused widespread fear and confusion, government officials travelled to every genocide prison and various towns and villages to explain the nature of the release of detainees. According to detainees at Butare Central Prison, officials told them that not all genocide suspects would be liberated at this stage but only the very young, elderly and sick detainees, followed by selected prisoners who had already confessed to their crimes and therefore were considered ready to appear before gacaca. Not all suspects who had already confessed to their crimes, however, would be released. Furthermore, they would not be released directly into their home com­munities but first into ingando, where they would receive a civic edu­cation to prepare them for life in the outside world and ultimately for gacaca.

These government clarifications caused mixed responses both inside and beyond the jails. Some survivors were heartened to know that not all detainees would be released and that the suspects would have to pass through ingando before returning to their home communities. Many survivors worried, though, that because confession was a prerequisite for most detainees’ liberation, suspects would confess falsely to benefit from this provision. Some detainees claimed that their fellow inmates acted in precisely this fashion. �After the officials told us who would be released, everyone [in the jail] started confessing’, one prisoner said. �Everyone was writing confessions on pieces of paper and taking them to the warden’s office. Those who didn’t know how to write found a friend who could write for them.’^{[233] [234] Some detainees claimed that some fellow inmates faked sickness to secure an early release.13 Some prisoners also complained that most detainees released on health grounds or because they were elderly did not have to pass through ingando but instead returned directly to their home communities.14}

The issue of confession is central to the gacaca journey: to embark on the journey, suspects must first admit to their crimes. This entails a con­scious decision by detainees to participate in the process. Consequently, there is little doubt that many detainees confess to crimes significantly less severe than those they actually committed during the genocide. Many detainees wager that the benefits of an early, provisional release and decreased sentences under gacaca’s plea-bargaining scheme far outweigh the risk of being found guilty of crimes to which they have not yet confessed.

Survivors were not the only group to react furiously to the announce­ment of the prisoner releases. The announcement also caused anger and resentment among detainees who were told that they would not be going home. In particular, detainees who claimed that they were inno­cent of genocide crimes argued that it was unjust that those who con­fessed to, and therefore were guilty of, crimes would be liberated, while the innocent remained in jail. Some detainees went on hunger strikes to protest the rejection of their applications for release.^[235] At a prison workshop run by World Vision for detainees in Butare who remained in jail, a sixty-eight-year-old man joked, �The warden told me I was slightly too young to be released. If only I could’ve borrowed a couple of years from someone else.’ ^[236]Another man worried that, when the suspects who were released early reached their home communities, they would tell lies about those still in jail.^[237]

The government released an undisclosed number of elderly and sick detainees directly into their home communities on 10 January 2003 (most of whom never appeared before gacaca) and on 28 January released approximately 20,000 detainees into eighteen ingando in the country’s twelve prefectures.^[238] After several waves of provisional releases, by October 2008 around 85,000 genocide suspects had returned to their home communities.^[239] Following the first release in 2003, the mood of the detainees leaving Kigali Central Prison was celebratory but muted.

The ingando were officially inaugurated at a ceremony at Gashora in Kigali Ngali province on 31 January 2003. For the next three months, the first wave of detainees received a wide range of lessons and par­ticipated in group work programmes, often rebuilding survivors’ homes destroyed during the genocide. I visited four ingando during this period, in Kigali Ville, Gashora, Butare and Ruhengeri. The Gashora camp was one of the largest in the country, holding around 2,100 sus­pects, while the Ruhengeri camp was one of the smallest, with 469 detainees.^[240] The camps afforded suspects much more living space than the prisons; most camps had a football field where detainees were per­mitted to play matches at the end of each day. Detainees received more regular and higher quality meals in the camps and were often allowed to visit their communities, either to visit sick relatives or to meet sur­vivors in preparation for gacaca. One source of frustration for many detainees and their families, however, was the fact that the govern­ment initially told them that suspects would spend two months in the camps before being released. When the two months passed, detainees were informed that - for reasons unexplained - they would have to stay in the camps for an indefinite period, which eventually amounted to one extra month.^[241]

The civic education that detainees received in the ingando had little bearing on most survivors’ fears and concerns regarding the release of the accused. Rose, a thirty-six-year-old survivor in Nyamata whose son, three nephews and two nieces were murdered during the genocide - she suspected by Hutu neighbours - said,

Can we trust [the detainees] not to repeat what they did to us before? They might not have received enough lessons from the government [in the ingando]...

The government’s main aim in establishing the camps was to teach les­sons to the detainees before they returned to their communities. Sara Bawaya, a trained psychologist and one of two NURC coordinators of the Gashora ingando (who later became the Director of Civic Education at the NURC), explained the government’s purposes in establishing the camps:

If you look around you here, you will see that these are good people in this camp. I can’t really work out why they participated in genocide. Now they do everything we tell them to. We need to teach them now because, with a bad government, they will repeat the genocide. It’s like when a baby is born and reaches 7 years. By then.. it's too late to teach it anything else. But what we hope these people will learn is, �if I do wrong, a good government will get me.' That way, they won't repeat the genocide... And if we educate them, then they will educate their children, and this will become an education for future generations. The government is the most important agent in making people good or bad.^[243]

Little systematic research has so far been conducted into the use of ingando in Rwanda. Like gacaca, ingando represents the Rwandan gov­ernment’s invocation of a return to �tradition’ in resolving past con­flicts and inculcating civic values in Rwandan society. As highlighted by Bawaya’s comment that �[t]he government is the most important agent in making people good or bad’, ingando - which Ndangiza calls �reconciliation camps’ - is founded on the notion that the state must educate the populace in how to live harmoniously and prosperously.^[244] Patrick Mazimpaka, former Rwandan presidential envoy to the Great Lakes, describes the basis of ingando as the Kinyarwanda concept �ubu- rere buruta ubuvuke: people are not born with values; values can only be internalized through practice and education. And we have to have spe­cific education for reconciliation and democratization.’^[245]

Such views draw strongly on RPF ideology, replete with Marxist overtones derived from the NRM experience in Uganda, where lead­ers, including Yoweri Museveni, had been immersed in Marxism dur­ing their student years at the University of Dar es Salaam and later in Frente de Libertaqao de Mozambique (FRELIMO) training camps in Mozambique.^[246] Ingando draws on NRM concepts of �political edu­cation’ as embodied in Ugandan institutions such as chaka-mchaka, a form of indoctrination camp used during the Ugandan bush war for military cadres and as mobile schools for the broader population, which focused on the history of flawed politics in Uganda and the NRM’s self­identified role as political rectifier.^[247] The RPF used ingando for polit­ical and military education in its formative years in Uganda and during the 1990-3 civil war in Rwanda. In the post-genocide context, ingando has been employed since 1999 in the reintegration of ex-FAR (Forces Armees Rwandaises) and ex-interahamwe combatants from the east­ern DRC and since 2003 for confessed genocide perpetrators as part of their provisional release before facing gacaca. Frank Rusagara, Director of Military History at the Rwandan Defence Forces, describes ingando historically as

a military encampment or assembly area... where the troops received their final briefing while readying for a military expedition. In such gatherings, the individuals were reminded to subject their interests to the national ideal and give Rwanda their all. That was the idea behind the institution of Ingando as a vehicle for reintegration of captured ex-FAR and militia into the RPF/A.²⁹

In recent years, a wide range of social and cultural groups have under­gone civic education in ingando, including schoolteachers, university lecturers, students, business- and tradespeople and civil servants.³⁰ My purpose here is not to provide an in-depth analysis of ingando but rather a brief overview of the institution in so far as the Rwandan government has employed it to support the gacaca process.

In each of the four ingando I visited, officials refused to show me the teaching materials they used in their lessons. However, from lesson notes gathered from detainees during my interviews, I was able to identify the main themes of the camp pedagogy.³¹ Each camp employed different teachers, who taught a slightly different curriculum, although several topics were consistent across the four camps.

K. Njogu and H. Maupeu (eds.), Songs and Politics in Eastern Africa, Dar es Salaam: Mkuki na Nyota Publishers, 2007, pp.129-55.

²⁹ F. Rusagara, Resilience of a Nation: A History of the Military in Rwanda, Kigali: Fountain Publishers Rwanda, 2009, p.193.

³⁰ Author’s government interviews, Sara Bawaya, Director of Civic Education, NURC, Kigali, 24 August 2008.

³¹ In 2006, the NURC published the official, standardised ingando curriculum, drawing on the lessons that had been taught to date in different camps around the country. The curricu­lum comprises forty-four topics, including â€?Peace, Reconciliation and Good Governance’, â€?Social Consciousness and Social Revolution’, â€?The Ethnic Issue in Rwanda and the African Great Lakes Region’, â€?Genocide and its Concept’, â€?Prevention, Resolution and Management of Conflicts in Human Society’, â€?Gacaca Jurisdictions and Communal Work (TIG)’, â€?The Role of Religious Confessions in Healing and Development’, â€?Trauma and its Treatment’ and â€?Government’s Program in the 7-Year Period, 2003-2010, and Vision 2020’ (Republic of Rwanda, â€?Imfashanyigisho Y’Ingando N’Andi Mahugurwa’, Kigali: NURC, October 2006).

An early theme that lessons in all camps covered was what officials called �overcoming bad governance', which referred to the need for all Rwandans to resist the divisive or genocidal policies of past colonial or national political regimes and to embrace the supposedly more inclu­sive, harmonious policies of the Kagame government.^[248] Detainees were taught that Belgian colonists divided Rwandans into three ethnic groups and distributed identity cards, laying the foundation for genocide. Such views echo arguments made during Bizimungu's meetings at Urugwiro in 1999: �Before the Europeans' arrival, Rwandans were understanding each other, [and] the Country was characterized by unity.'^[249] Sylvestre, a farmer and a detainee in the Ruhengeri ingando, said, �This is the first time I have heard about the history of Rwanda and what our bad leaders did to us. Now I know where all our problems came from - they came from the bad leaders.'^[250]

Detainees were then taught how they could become what Ruth, a suspect in the Kigali Ville ingando, recorded in her notes as �agents of change'.^[251] As agents of change, detainees were told that they should return to their communities and spread the government's message that there was no place in Rwandan society for the ethnic divisions of the past and that �we are all Rwandans now.'^[252] To build a peaceful and stable country, Rwandans should draw on their underlying unity and traditional Rwandan educational and conflict resolution processes such as ingando and gacaca to resolve problems in the future. Detainees were instructed on the detailed modalities of gacaca, particularly its plea-bargaining sys­tem and how they would benefit from early confessions to their crimes. They were taught that gacaca would allow the community to �talk about its problems together' and to achieve justice and reconciliation.^[253] All Rwandans were needed to participate in gacaca, to resolve past conflicts and to regain a sense of national unity that first the colonists and later the genocidal regime had destroyed. �Gacaca lets us solve our own prob­lems', Sylvestre, the detainee in Ruhengeri, recorded in his lesson notes. �Outsiders cannot help us, only ourselves.'^[254] Most detainees described the ingando lessons as useful and believed that they would help them reinte­grate more quickly and smoothly into their home communities.