Gacaca short

On Saturday, our group was allowed to attend a gacaca court. I had been looking forward to this experience ever since landing in Entebbe, but to be honest, it was a bit anti-climactic. Gacaca is a traditional justice system in Rwanda where in the past, the accused and the accuser would sit on the ground together and discuss the crime committed. After the genocide in 1994, there were so many perpetrators that the jails were overflowing. So in an effort to speed up the judiciary process, gacaca courts were reestablished. Gacaca has also been said to be Rwanda’s way of dealing with injustice… some say the ICTR is a form of neocolonialism.

We didn’t sit on the grass. We sat on wooden benches in a cement floor room with Paul Kagame staring at us from his portrait behind the judges’ desk. We had translators (everything was in Kinyarwandan), but even they were confused sometimes. The man on trial was probably in his fifties and had been accused of training young men to kill Tutsis. His story was obviously bogus; he kept contradicting himself – even our Rwandan translators said they thought for sure he was guilty. We stayed for three hours, and were informed that it would probably go on for another three, so we left at the halfway mark. It would certainly have been intriguing had I understood Kinyarwandan. But nevertheless, I’m glad we got to see part of a trial.