Rwandan Gacaca : A Sure Solution to Attain Social Cohesion in Pakistan
By Mohammad Ashraf Chaudhry
Pittsburg , CA
The spirit of Rwandan Gacaca, pronounced as “ga-cha-cha”, cannot fail anywhere in the world, not even in Pakistan where nothing appears to be working, because it has worked successfully in the lowest of the low; and the poorest of the poor countries of the world, namely Rwanda.
I had offered, on my own, yet another recipe for Pakistani ailments in my article, published in the Pakistan Link of August 8, 2008, under the title: “The Recipe for Pakistan to Rebound”; the application of which had worked miracles in small city-states like Singapore, Taiwan, Vietnam, and countries like Malaysia, Columbia and even India. The contents of that recipe, however, could have been hard for our leadership to procure, keeping in view the culture they belong to.
The current nosedive decline in governance, and the total societal collapse, with target killings becoming a favorite sport, leads one to conclude that the recipe suggested a year ago, must have fallen flat on the deaf years of the main leadership in Pakistan. The main ingredients of that recipe were: strict adherence to Merit, Accountability/Justice, Quality Education, and Equality for all, and an immediate end to the “impunity culture”.
Gacaca , however, cannot fail because it does not involve any sound financial mark-up, or any foreign aid, nor does it need any lecturing sessions by the foreign experts. It is an indigenous potion. Our ages old “Panchayat system”, can be termed as its closest cousin.
WHAT IS GACACA : It is a community-based quickest way for the resolution of petty conflicts that basically relate to property disputes and civil conflicts. It is a Rwandan indigenous mechanism that the government felt constrained to extend to such heinous crimes as mass genocide. It effectively handled thousands of cases that the country’s courts could never have been able to handle. Its headman is picked up by the local people with a known sterling character, and in the Rwandan perspective, he is the one who had not participated in the genocide; it meets once a week outside in the open for the hearings. Its main emphasis of gacaca courts has been to extract truth, establish responsibility and accountability and promote RECONCILIATION. It did not replace the country’s main judicial system, because its jurisdiction and modus operandi are determined and assigned by the country’s courts.
Transitional societies such as those of South Africa and Rwanda where gaps created by apartheid, and centuries old ethnic animosities, resulting in the unprecedented level of genocide in Rwanda, could have been hard to plug in, or narrow through the normal and lengthy judicial system. In view of the dire need of the country to first affix the responsibility, bring the culprits to book and most importantly attain reconciliation, such a mechanism as Truth Commissions or Lustration Programs of South Africa, or Gacaca courts in Rwanda were created. Most senior perpetrators and actors, however, that had been responsible for initially creating an atmosphere of hatred for their political gains had had to be tried in the main courts. And that involved the main leadership behind the genocide.
WHAT HAPPENED IN RWANDA ? It would be hard to honestly gauge the wonders these simple Gacaca courts perform, if readers fail to recall what actually happened 15 years ago in that country known as “a land of a thousand hills”, a tiny, vividly beautiful, land-locked country in Central Africa. It is surrounded by Uganda, Tanzania, Burundi and Zaire.
The trouble started with the killing of the first Burundian president, Mr. Melchoir Ndadaye, a Hudu, by a Burundian Tutsi dominated army in 1993. Rwanda is a country which is inhabited by 90% short-statured, (mostly backward, illiterate farmers), Hutus and 10% elegantly-tall, (educated, sophisticated and patronized by colonial powers), Tutsis. The ethnic cleansing started in Burundi that finally spilled over to Rwanda in 1994.
What made Rwanda synonymous with the worst kind of genocide in human history in 1994 was the rapidity with which the process of human mowing started. 800 people got butchered per day for a total of 100 days, killing in all about 800,000. Killing spread in every hill and in every corner till the rivers got clogged. 250,000 were killed in Kigali (the country’s Islamabad) area alone; 500,000 women and girls were raped and tortured; 2,000,000 got displaced. The country was virtually left without men. In the aftermath of the genocide, the country had 70% women and 30% boys and wounded or crippled men. The curse did not stop there. Every fourth child became further orphaned due to AIDS. 80% of the homes came to be managed by impoverished widows.
The people of Pakistan should be grateful to God that they are still hundreds of times better than the people of Rwanda were fifteen years ago. But make no mistake, the people of Pakistan are being led in that direction. Let us see how Rwanda re-bounced.
RWANDA : A POSTER-BOY OF AFRICA . According to Fareed Zakaria on the CNN of July 19, 2009, today among all the African states, Rwanda is a model country, a poster-boy of the continent. It all happened due to the reconciliation and social cohesion achieved through the crude and primitive Gacaca courts. According to Zakaria, in the Second World War, in the aftermath of Holocaust, the Jews chose to move to Israel or the United States of America. In Iraq, Pakistan and Afghanistan, it is the culture of revenge and retribution that is taking roots. Can somebody imagine the Nazis and Jews living together once again? The Hutus and Tutsis are living together now in Rwanda.
Today the CEO’s of Google, Costco, and Starbucks and other IT firms are lining up to invest in Rwanda. As admitted by Fareed Zakaria on CNN, the income of the Rwandan people has tripled; its government run by Paul Kagame, a Tutsi intelligence officer, is honest and efficient and is trusted by the majority of people, namely the Hutus. While most African countries are poor, corrupt and efficient; Rwanda is emerging as a budding country in their midst.
HOW DID GACACA ACHIEVE IT ? These courts aimed to achieve assimilation not by hiding what had happened, but keeping the ugliness of this genocide vivid by adequately advertising it as a lesson for all. This they did in order to invoke the feelings of remorse and guilt in people who had joined the mayhem because they saw others doing it. In concrete bunkers they buried the dead and turned them into monuments. They put the human skulls like a souvenir in the churches where the major massacres took place as people took shelter there. Now people cast a look at their dear dead ones as they pray in those churches.
After the genocide, there were about 130,000 who were put in jail, till there was left no room to accommodate another equal number wanting punishment. People wanted quick justice; and the government wanted quick assimilation through reconciliation.
According to President Paul Kagame, “the biggest problem was how to move forward. We couldn’t get stuck on the problems of the past. We wanted to give a future to the people”. In Gacaca village courts, people came forward or were brought forward. They were tried by their own people who had witnessed them committing atrocities, and in many cases they even punished up to 30 years. It were the victims’ families who had to be satisfied; the women who had been raped and tortured who had to be satisfied. The only way to seek forgiveness of the aggrieved people was not by hiding the facts, or cheating the system through clever and crafty ways, but by making an open confession. And a majority of people did that. Real forgiveness came when the aggrieved people heard them making confessions, feeling guilty. This ultimately led to an atmosphere of real reconciliation, and not to a forced one.
In the words of Christopher J. Le Mon, in his article, ‘Rwanda’s Troubled Gacaca Courts’, “after the violence subsided, Rwanda’s government, like others emerging from periods of atrocity or repression, had numerous goals: to rebuild the country, establish a historical record of the genocide, ensure that those who committed crimes did not escape with impunity, impart to survivors and victims that justice was being done, and integrate the vast numbers of perpetrators into their communities without provoking retributive violence against them. Like many transitioning societies, however, Rwanda’s courts were in shambles, and prosecution and imprisonment of all perpetrators seemed an impossible task … in an attempt to overcome its institutional incapacities and the logistical hurdles involved in such an endeavor, the government took a traditional Rwandan mechanism, known as gacaca, and transformed it into a system of informal criminal courts, which it called gacaca courts”. Readers are invited to think about all this in what happened in Swat, and what gave popularity to people like Sufi Muhammed.
About 10,000 fled fearing that gacaca courts would not be fair as false accusations would be made. The system was fragile, but it worked under the circumstances as its aim was noble.
LESSONS FOR PAKISTAN : Pakistan is really in bad shape these days. Its leadership is clueless and confused; real governance is missing; and people are angry. Pakistan is really sitting on a keg pin of a volcano. The economic problems are getting compounded by the social, ethnic and religious differences. New Pandora boxes are being opened by the main political parties instead of staying focused on the main problems of terrorism and lack of water, electricity and law and order. An independent judiciary does not mean a replacement of the Executive institutions.
The other day somebody asked a layman as to what is the 17 th Amendment? His answer was, ‘Two roties”. And should Musharraf be brought to justice? the answer was, “Two roties” How about the rift between Mian Nawaz Sharif and President Zardari on one hand, and PM Gilani and President Zardari on the other hand?”. Again the answer was, “Two roties”.
Read whatever you may in this classic answer, one thing is becoming clearer. People will resort to unprecedented violence; a civil war is just around the corner and the quartet of our main leadership, (PML (N), PPP, PML (Q), and MQM), is actively engaged in inventing new scapegoats. After the restoration of the “Independent Judiciary” and Mian Nawaz Sharif’ honor, now they are agreeing to flog the dead horse, namely Musharraf. Who cares whether he lives or dies? He can be exhumed later. Remember my article entitled “Khuh Vich Pia Vardka… the bull is trapped in the ditch, castrate him now”, but that was when he was still in the steering seat. Why waste energy and time on him now? This does not mean that he should be left to go unscathed. But making his retribution as the dawn for a new era may appease some very expensive lawyers on both the sides, but it would never satisfy the man in the street whose answer to every question is, “Two roties”. Besides, it will not stick.
Learn from what President Paul Kagame of Rwanda said in his interview with Fareed Zakaria on July 19, 2009: “Social cohesion precedes economic well-being… self-reliance in Rwanda is our main objective”. He tells on the CNN that “international justice is a fraud as it is selective….that America, the UNO and the European were all spectators when the genocide took place… that if China builds our Foreign Ministry Complex and donates it to us, it does not mean that China would be running our country. After all America is more hand in glove with China, than Rwanda is with China; does that mean that China is running the American foreign policy”.
Pakistan is rich in natural resources; its people are exceedingly resilient and hard-working and Pakistan is not land-locked like Rwanda or Afghanistan. Let not the spill-over of other countries impact Pakistan the way it has done in the past. The main leadership of the country, especially Musharraf and now Mr. Zardari, unfortunately always appeared as best-dressed beggars, always asking for more and more. They should learn from Paul Kagame the lesson of how to be self-reliant even in Rwanda, even when you are small, exceedingly poor, and ethnically like a live-wire. Now that country has become the favorite hub for foreign investment, a Malaysia in Africa in Internet technology, and a favorite spot for foreign tourists.
In the 2003 elections of Rwanda, 49% seats of the parliament went to women. It was women’s courage and their ability to triumph over every obstacle in Rwanda, rather than their mourning over what had happened to them that made it happen. It was because of their boldness to speak out that for the first time in the history of Rwanda, rape became classified from a third rate crime to a first rate crime. Now 50% women openly claim that they can read; 93% say that their health has improved; 49% plan to start their own business; 80% acknowledge betterment in their economic situation and best of all, 99% admit that they are more self-confident.
People have adopted up to 6 orphaned children. This is what should be done in an Islamic country like Pakistan. The country may have less political freedom; but it is on the road to be a Singapore or Taiwan in Africa.
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