By Professor Abdul Karim Bangura, USA.
After the genocide I realised that Rwandans are in total darkness and we need some light somewhere and I was among the first to convince myself that one day I will speak the truth and I would call on other Rwandans to speak the truth.
—Sylvester Mwanza
Indeed, as the preceding excerpt suggests, and a BBC World Service report concurs, many years after the genocide in Rwanda in 1994, there is still a sense of disbelief among the victims and even among some of those who committed the murders. In 1994, an estimated 800,000 people were killed in 100 days in Rwanda. Now there are about 120,000 men and women in prison awaiting trial for their involvement in the massacres. Entire communities were killed and entire neighborhoods participated in the massacres. Rwanda’s genocide became the worst in a series of massive crimes committed globally in the half century since World War II.
At the end of the genocide in Rwanda in July of 1994, the government was destroyed and the society dismantled. Rwandans needed to rebuild their society, so they sat down and went back to their roots—simply sitting together and discussing among themselves the truth. The truth included learning from the perpetrators where to find the dead bodies, so that families could give them proper burials. After learning the truth, healing could begin. Many Rwandans believe that through Gacaca, they will benefit. Thus, a poignant question here is the following: What is Gacaca, and why do Nzabmwita and many Rwandans believe that it will work given the bitterness precipitated by the genocide? The following paragraphs address this question.
Constance Morrill offers a succinct definition and an explanation of the origins of the Inkiko-Gacaca. According to her, the traditional Gacaca,
which literally means a “grassy space,” is commonly associated with the activities that used to take place in any open-air, grassy areas, such as the discussion and resolution of problems within the community. In the event of a conflict within the community, the parties involved in the conflict would be heard and ‘judged’ by an assembly of “inyangamugayo,” or individuals accepted by everyone in the community to be those who “detest opprobrium.” These were individuals whose status of “inyangamugoya” was acquired by virtue of their probity, old age, erudition, wisdom in decision-making, altruism or political or economic influence within the community.
Morrill also notes:
Before colonization and the introduction of written laws, Rwanda’s traditional Gacaca system was the only “real” justice system. “Sentences” were assigned according to the nature of the act committed by the guilty party and always involved reparations to the damaged party. (Imprisonment did not figure among the penalties, as the prison system was introduced by the colonial powers.) Even in cases where the commission of a ‘wrong’ was incurred by an individual, the responsibility for that wrong was shared by all members of the clan or family to which the individual belonged. As a result, family or clan members were equally responsible for “making reparations” to the damaged party. If both parties agreed to the terms of reparation, they would share a drink as a symbolic gesture of agreement. When the ‘crime’ was judged to be too serious for reparation to be an adequate sentence, the judgment could call for ostracism of the members of the particular clan or family associated with the wrongdoer or ‘defendant.’ As the Gacaca ‘rules’ were never written, they were passed down orally from generation to generation as part of the social education of all Rwandans.
She adds:
With the advent of colonialism, the Gacaca institution underwent some distortion. A law passed in August of 1924 confined Gacaca to the resolution of civil and commercial disputes among the indigenous population. Criminal cases became the responsibility of colonial courts, and the concept of the Inyangamugayo also had to submit to colonial influence: instead of acquiring this status by virtue of the individual’s good standing in the community, the Inyangamugayo were conferred their influential status by the colonial authorities, and this method was continued by Rwandan authorities even after independence.
Today, the Rwandan government believes that Gacaca, modified as necessary to factor in the realities of modern Rwanda, will enable the justice system to find the balance between mass release and the need for some kind of accountability on the part of the accused. But even more encouraging are the positive and peaceful developments that are taking place in the country because of this reintroduction of traditional Rwandan ways of doing of things. Two of the many examples I find outstanding are the Village of Hope initiative in Kigali and the leadership role being played by women in the reconstruction and reconciliation programs. The following is a discussion of these two examples.
As the UN-HABITAT office in Nairobi, Kenya reports, Village of Hope is a civil society initiative to rebuild the lives of women, mainly genocide victims. Several crimes committed against humanity like rape, torture and mutilation left the majority of the Rwandan women traumatized. The initiative also takes care of orphans and people living with HIV/AIDS. Most of the women had been widowed and dispossessed and had no means of survival. The initiative is an extension of the Polyclinic of Hope, a project of Rwanda Women Network (RWN), which addresses shelter needs of genocide victims. The village is made up of 20 housing units and a community center. The houses were constructed from 1999 to 2000 and the center in 2002. The center is located in Gisozi Sector, Gasabo District, Kigali.
After the genocide, Rwanda received a great amount of humanitarian assistance. Then United States President Bill Clinton visited the country in 1999 and was moved by the Women Survivors Empowerment Program. After his visit, RWN received a grant of $100,000 from the United States Department of State. The program’s members decided to build houses to meet the shelter needs of the most vulnerable women in the city, the Village of Hope. They use a holistic approach, with an end goal of healing the wounds of genocide, by supporting peace and reconciliation. They also undertake awareness-raising on the rights of women, including the right to own and inherit property. The program provides space for free interaction and dialogue. It has a participatory approach in decision-making, implementing, monitoring and evaluating activities. Weekly meetings are facilitated by the RWN staff at the Village of Hope, where women and youths share their problems, needs and vision, and discuss solutions to issues that affect them. Some residents also participate at the RWN General Assembly and planning meetings. Village of Hope raises most of its support through donor funding. The residents are also put into groups that make contributions through “basket funds” for emergency purposes.
The program’s major achievements include construction of 20 housing units, providing shelter to approximately 120 persons, a community center that provides support to around 1,000 women and 200 youths, a youth center for youth activities, tailoring training offered to 28 women, training on greeting cards making to 32 youths, beadwork training to 14 women, knitting and weaving training to 12 women, provision of school fees for 17 secondary school children, provision of medical services, psycho-social/trauma/HIV/AIDS counseling, and seminars on gender issues. Three out of every five employees at Village of Hope are trained in the center.
The impacts of the initiative have been felt throughout Rwanda. The spirit of volunteering has been re-cultivated among the women, who have initiated voluntary home-based care for HIV/AIDS patients in their villages. Women have willingly provided information for documenting case studies through personal interviews and testimonies. In essence, Village of Hope is a multidisciplinary initiative that deals with trauma in a post-conflict situation while at the same time providing realistic concrete solutions: i.e. shelter and livelihood. This gives the women confidence by “getting them out” of their traumatized state psychologically, physically and economically. The UN-HABITAT office in Nairobi has certified that the initiative fully meets the basic criteria of impact, partnership and sustainability as well as additional considerations of leadership and community empowerment, and gender equality and social inclusion.
By interrogating the various reconstruction and reconciliation programs in Rwanda, one can get a sense of the degree and the impact of their political, economic and social empowerment of women, and how women have translated and utilized this empowerment to mobilize and sensitize the grassroots as well as national levels as a means of combating the recidivist pressures that are likely to influence the recurrence of conflict. Specifically, the establishment of the National Unity and Reconciliation Commission (NURC) in 1999 is one of the most important programs which the government of Rwanda has instituted in its attempt to deal with the challenging issues emanating from the rejection and violation of the humanistic moral code: Thou shall not kill.
In 1995, Arch Bishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa visited the village of Ntarama, just a few kilometers from the Rwandan capital, Kigali. It is in this village where the Tutsi had been killed in a church. According to Tutu, “The new government had not removed the corpses, so that the church was like a mortuary, with bodies lying as they had fallen the year before during the massacre. The stench was overpowering. Outside the church building was a collection of skulls of some of those who had been brutally done to death—some of the skulls still had pangas (machetes) and daggers embedded in them. I tried to pray. Instead I broke down and wept.” But despite this heart rending experience for Desmond Tutu, he was so much humbled when he visited the Nelson Mandela Peace Village, a new settlement that had been built through the efforts of women themselves. The women at the village were all orphans, widows and refugees who had come together to try to forget their ethnic origins in an effort to live together in peace and build a new Rwanda. While visiting the village, Tutu spoke to the women leaders. What impressed him the most was the strength of these women and he reports his encounter and observations:
They (women) said, ‘We must mourn and weep for the dead. But life must also go on, we can’t go on weeping.’ How wonderfully impressive, how indomitable. Over at Ntarama, we might say, there was Calvary, death and crucifixion. Here in the Nelson Mandela Village was Resurrection, new life, new beginning, new hope. Once more it was noteworthy to see how women have this remarkable resilience and an instinct for nurturing life.
Addressing post-conflict Rwanda through the lenses of women provides one with the opportunity to appreciate their incredible sense of leadership that gives hope to their families and the people of Rwanda as doctors across their country’s landscape. In Rwanda, women who watched helplessly as their husbands, fathers, mothers, sisters, brothers, friends and even children were cut down with machetes have been able to pick up the pieces of their broken lives and their broken country and begin a process of rebuilding. Women have demonstrated an amazing strength and courage in the midst of the national tragedy and, it is that inner strength that enables them to survive even the most horrific conditions in which they find themselves.
In concerted efforts to restore peace in Rwanda, the government of National Unity was established and it came into existence as a result of the survivors’ desire to transcend the negative images that had led to the genocide. From the time of its inception in 1999, the NURC paid particular attention to issues pertaining to Rwandans, the civil society, efforts to bring the Rwandans of all walks of life together and the challenges posed by the prevailing poverty in the country. In order to ensure national cohesion, the government of national unity embarked on a number of strategies:
(a) Ensuring democratic governance: actions to ensure democratic governance since 1994 have included the passing of the genocide law to challenge the impunity which characterized acts of violence in Rwanda for three decades before 1994; adherence to the Arusha Accords of 1993 to guide the composition of the government of national unity and national assembly.
(b) Public service reforms to enhance transparency, efficiency and effectiveness in public service delivery.
(c) Promoting peace, security and unity through reconciliation programs.
(d) Creation of a community police force to enhance security at the local levels.
(e) Promoting national dialogue on the country’s needs and aspirations through fora.
(f) Initiation of the decentralized process to facilitate the devolution of administrative responsibilities and supportive to local government units, and consolidation of the structure of local governments.
(g) Provision of social and physical infrastructure in the local administrative units is substantially supported by direct contribution from local communities, a visible evidence of the popularity of representative local government.
(h) Cooperation with the international agencies in monitoring human rights standards and reconstruction. Above all, in a remarkably short time, Rwanda has succeeded in rebuilding a functioning civil society; in particular, strong women’s associations, and a free press, and employers and workers associations.
The NURC undertook aggressive measures to organize meetings for the various groups of people in the country. Other measures included workshops and conferences whose major themes specifically addressed concerns for National Unity and Reconciliation. These attempts by the Rwandan government to deal with the post-conflict crisis culminated into the organization of various national summits where Rwandans of all levels of society, including representatives from Rwanda’s Diaspora community, were present.
The NURC also organized workshops which targeted different segments of the population. The main objective was to give an opportunity for these individuals to undergo “civic re-education” or “solidarity camps”—the ingandos. Demobilized soldiers (from the national army as well as from the ex-FAR) Interahmwe and other groups that had been repatriated to Rwanda mostly from Eastern Congo provisionally released prisoners, and others were required to stay at an ingando from six to eight weeks. These individuals were offered courses covering among other areas, “their socio-economic reintegration into the society.” This became a preparatory stage through which an individual could begin to make the journey back to the real world, to the new Rwandan civil society after the ravages of the war period. It also formed part of the most important initiatives by the Rwandan government in its attempt to rehabilitate and enhance the spirit of National Unity and Reconciliation among its citizens.
The Rwandan government took a bold step towards the establishment of a government of national unity, and it recognized women as a formidable force within the society. Women had been both the providers for the two sides of the conflict. They took care of the sick, the wounded, the elders, the youth and the children. Even those who went on a killing spree returned home to be fed by women as well as those in the refugee camps. Therefore, in an effort to increase the representation of women, for example, in 1999, the government split the Ministry of Gender, Family and Social Affairs into the Ministry of Family and Social Affairs and the Ministry of Gender and Promotion of Women. The latter Ministry was charged with the responsibility of developing projects that would see to it that all laws that discriminated against women were reformed. It was also given the responsibility of promoting the education and training of women. Thus, it is not surprising that today women in Rwanda constitute 56% of the members of the Parliament, including occupying the Speaker’s chair.
The Constitution of Rwanda had allocated 30% of the seats in Parliament to the women. Indeed, with the elections of the year 2003, a large number of women were elected to that August house. Women garnered six out of the 20 seats in the Senate. On the other hand, in the Lower House, which comprises a total of 80 seats, women were able to garner 39 seats. The Rwandan women, in actual fact, got more votes than what was expected and it even surprised their male counterparts.
The Rwandan tragedy was a wake-up call for the women, as many of them took up new professions just to keep the country running. Women constituted an overwhelming majority in the aftermath of the conflict. At the end of the ethnic warfare of the 1990s, women greatly outnumbered men. Some of the existing estimates have put it at the ratio seven to one, and this is because of the wanton killing of so many men and the escape of so many others involved in the carnage. During the rebuilding of the country, the women’s anguished voices were difficult not to hear, and they became a powerful and credible force for reconciliation.
Some of the prominent women in Rwandan civil society include Donnah Kamashazi, the representative in Rwanda for the United Nations Development Fund for Women. Others include the Chief of Justice of the Supreme Court, the Head of National Unity and Reconciliation Commission, Deputy Police Chief, and those who hold ministerial posts in the government. Like any other world community, gender imbalance is still a major issue in much of the African continent; nevertheless, when it comes to parliamentary representation, Rwanda and South Africa as well as Mozambique have deliberately shown a great stride towards the political empowerment of women. This was just the foundation, the beginning, not suggesting that the problems in Rwanda are already solved just because of the presence of women in that August house.
One of the major achievements on the part of women in Rwanda has to do with the land issues where women and girls had been excluded from inheriting land. According to the July 19, 2000 report by the Secretary General to the United Nations General Assembly and Security Council, under Rwandan legal system, girls could not inherit land. But as a result of the visit to Rwanda in February of 1999, and building on the earlier work of several non-governmental organizations and United Nations agencies, the special Representative for Children and Armed Conflict engaged in a dialogue with the government of Rwanda, urging it to introduce legislation that would allow girls to inherit farms and other properties. These consultative meetings led to the enactment of legislation in November of 1999 by the government which embodied, among others, the rights of girls to inherit land and other properties. The other area of concern that has received significant attention of the international community is the issue of rape as it is perpetuated against girls and women. It was the disturbing and chilling accounts of the plight of the girls and women that led to the 1998 Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court which defined rape and sexual slavery as both war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Indeed, as Christian Sherrer has argued, the importance of customary law for dealing with the overwhelming consequences of genocide is widely underestimated. Thus, Sherrer suggests that in the context of future reconciliation, the genuine revival and “autonomization” of the traditional Gacaca system as arbitration needs more support by civil actors, local and foreign as well. He adds that the spontaneous reactivation of this grassroots scheme for arbitration and communal justice in over 20 of Rwanda’s 47 communes has given rise to hopes. He believes that Gacaca, like the Abashigantahe being used in Burundi, may greatly contribute to restore the moral order. He is also convinced that self-healing forces can be revived in every society, if needed against the will of politicians and conflict actors.
*Abdul Karim Bangura(photo) is Professor of Research Methodology and Political Science at Howard University and Researcher-In-Residence at the Center for Global Peace at American University.
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