Thursday morning, I met another friend. (I am surprised by how many people I know somehow who are in Kigali, and it seems like I am meeting all of them in the space of a few days.) We ate breakfast, and then I was lucky enough to be able to accompany him to the Gacaca Archive. This is located deep inside the Rwanda National Police headquarters in Kacyiru, and had I not been tagging along with influential people I probably could not have seen it.
Some background, first: The Rwandan Genocide is unique in recent history for the extent to which it was carried out not just by a government or a rebel movement, not just by people following orders, but by civilians. Brainwashed or otherwise, a staggering proportion of Rwandans took part in the killing. In its aftermath, then, the new government had the bewildering problem of how to prosecute those responsible.
The most developed of judicial systems would have been overwhelmed by the task, and Rwanda’s was pretty paltry. The solution was to set up informal courts in every cell (the lowest-level administrative division) of the country, with residents serving as judges and trials conducted somewhat informally, in whatever space was available, with members of the community present to give evidence.
You might see gacaca translated as “justice on the grass.” This is not really accurate: it is the diminutive form of umucaca “court,” though the more prosaic interpretation does reflect the way the system often worked. No one thought it was an ideal system, but there was not really any other way. Moreover, it allowed for an airing of grievances that was considered key to ultimate reconciliation. The Gacaca courts only finished their work a couple of years ago.
The archive was very memorable. It is the kind of archive that one would not see very much in the United States: a sizable building with several rooms just full of boxes. The amount of information there is staggering: almost 2 million cases were conducted, resulting in over a million convictions, and all of the trial materials were in this building.
The guide explained to us what kinds of documents there were; it was all more than a little unconventional, just by necessity. To start with, once staff had been found for the courts, they went on fact-finding missions: they surveyed members of the community, collecting names and suspected crimes, some oral evidence and names of witnesses. This was all handwritten in notebooks. Afterward, the information was processed: each individual was indicted on a government-provided form detailing the crime of which he was accused, as well as name, age and vital statistics. The proceedings of each case were then also recorded in large notebooks, and then the results processed into summary packets.
That is a lot of information for each case; multiply it by 2 million and it is mind-boggling. Remember, also, that it is all handwritten! The forms were printed, but they were filled in by hand. There were no computers at these courts: just finding enough people who were sufficiently literate and willing to help was a challenge.
There are problems that follow very logically. First, the reason the information is worth having in an archive is that it is very valuable, useful for research and remembrance and other purposes. However, for that to happen it must be organized enough to be accessible, which is an enormous challenge in itself. The guide said that finding requested information usually took 7–10 days, and sometimes they couldn’t find it because they were not done organizing.
Second, in their current form the records will not be preserved for long. The paper was what the government could afford, so often not the best quality; the building is not climate-controlled, and Rwanda is very humid for much of the year; there are insects and bacteria eating away at it every day; and with boxes stacked floor-to-ceiling, the papers in those on the bottom row are sometimes so compressed that they cannot be separated.
The solution they have in mind—the only one I can think of—is to try to digitize all of it. Any task is monumental when attempted on such a large scale, and this is no exception. Additionally, the archive has neither the equipment nor the staff to undertake it at present. In the past, international organizations have been willing to fund projects relating to remembrance of the Genocide; the connection here is not quite as direct as it is at, say, the main memorial in Gisozi, but nevertheless it would not surprise me if someone stepped up to provide financial assistance.
For lunch, I partook in a new part of Kigali life (for me, anyway): the lunch buffet. These buffets are all over the city; if the guidebook is to be believed, they proliferated after the government shortened workers’ lunch-hours in the ’80s, popular because they provided cheap food that could be eaten quickly and informally.
I have seen lots of signs for buffet restaurants, with lunch not usually costing more than 4,000 francs ($6). I read that Fantastic Restaurant, near the Kigali City Tower, had one that was “legendary,” so I went over to check it out. I had seen this place before, though it had only stood out to me as having an excellent name. That name, I think, is a good one: 2,000 francs ($3) for a buffet whose only limit is on the amount of meat one can take, with a huge variety of food and free Wi-Fi. I ate quickly and heartily and left very satisfied.
In the evening I ate with some other Harvard students at the Hôtel des Mille Collines; the restaurant there is usually very pricey, but Thursday nights are live-music-and-cheap-food nights, or something, so my dinner was only a few times more expensive than my lunch. I was happy to meet some new people, and to catch up with those I already knew. I annoyed my hosts a little bit by getting back at 10:00—they were in bed—but I am still glad I did it.
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