Upcountry insight: gacaca courts an everlasting legacy of reconciliation

NORTHERN PROVINCE Gacaca, the community-based courts formed to quicken and the caseload of Genocide suspects, institutionalized in 2000, is preparing to round up sessions for 2007. It has been a widely-accepted form of jurisprudence within Rwanda, and has certainly helped ease the pain shouldered by official courts in clearing up the legal devastation after the 1994 Genocide, but from the outside it has also drawn Boften unfair criticism. When Gacaca finally closes its doors or cleans up its lawns in 2007, how exactly will it be remembered? Everything, when finished, has a legacy, and the Gacaca legacy may very well be that, though it did not complete its backlog of cases, it played an priceless role in unifying an otherwise divided and derelict country and society. Rwandans view Gacaca as a way of incorporating traditional ways of solving disputes within their respective communities with more formal, modern legal methods. National Executive Secretary of Gacaca Domitila Mukantaganzwa, while meeting the Inyangamugayo recently, said that Gacaca was closing its chapter and was “90 per cent” successful. She asked local authorities together with Inyangamugayo to assess the impact of Gacaca in regards to unity and reconciliation and to record the peculiar challenges with could have been faced in the due course. Latrice Akimana, a Inyangamugayo from Cyuve sector, said Gacaca had helped bring together the community, and to consider Rwandans as “one people.” Jacqueline Kamaliza, victim and a widow of the 1994 Genocide, speaks of her healing and reconciliation she experienced, coming out of a state of misery and forgiving the family that killed her husband and children. Unlike high courts, Gacaca is community-owned and involves perpetrators, witnesses, survivors, local leaders and elders, children and Inyanagmugayo, who act as intermediaries. Mukantaganzwa cited the issue of compensation for lost property as one the main obstacles which hinder quick proceedings of Gacaca. Three provisions in regard to the lost property are being suggested here; first returning what was being taken, paying back in cash for what was being destroyed or stolen; or working to install what was destroyed. Concealment of evidence and ‘the silence’ were reported to be strong hindrances which affected the proceedings. But the process of information and data collection received and then the validation from within the community has helped put the records straight for those who still believed in Genocide ideology. It is a story of success to see that the survivors live reconciled with the families that killed their family members. As hard that is to imagine, for anyone anywhere in the world, that is what is happening in Rwanda today. Ends