Sociality of Enforced Waiting in Rwanda's Postgenocide Legal Architecture

Abstract

On an afternoon in 2007, I sat with several hundred residents in rural southern Rwanda during yet another gacaca (grassroots genocide courts) session, in which suspects from the 1994 genocide were tried weekly among their neighbors before locally elected judges. As the long afternoon stretched with the now-familiar back-and-forth of competing versions of the past between case participants, the presiding judge suddenly interrupted the proceedings. He pointed to a young man standing at the edge of the assembled crowd, and sent him off to fetch a witness who had not responded to the official summons to attend.As I scanned the horseshoe-shaped group of attendees during this enforced waiting that I had come to expect on gacaca day, two women, Alice and Odile, caught my attention.

Of other times: Temporality, memory and trauma in post-genocide Rwanda

“…As these examples illustrate, in transitional justice the 'before and after time' that encompasses 'zero-time' as a reference point for a linear future trajectory of temporality appears to dominate current perceptions of time in the field (Doughty, 2017;Igreja, 2012;Teitel, 2003). Teitel asserts that transitional justice follows an 'implied notion of progressive history ' (2003: 86), whilst others emphasise how transitional justice 'requires a clear cut from past injustices so as to prevent their reoccurrence' (Buckley-Zistel and Zolkos, 2011, 3).…”

“…This linear temporality is entrenched in transitional justice institutions. For instance, Doughty describes how the legal architecture of the Rwandan gacaca courts ‘was built on, and attempted to be constitutive of, a rupture from the violent past’ (Doughty, 2017: 125). This ‘zero-time’ was reproduced by gacaca ’s temporal jurisdiction (October 1990 to December 1994) which differentiated between genocide crimes and other violence that occurred before the genocide and continued into the late 1990s.…”

“…However, different temporalities exist alongside and beneath formal institutional temporalisation processes (see, e.g. Doughty, 2017; Feuchtwang, 2009; Igreja, 2012). Doughty (2017) illustrates further how ‘social waiting’ during, before and after gacaca trials was linked to temporal uncertainty and how, at the same time concurrently, waiting as ‘sociality’ undermined the temporal logic – rupture, linearity and boundedness – of gacaca ’s legal architecture by reconnecting to previous interactions and relationships.…”

“…Doughty, 2017; Feuchtwang, 2009; Igreja, 2012). Doughty (2017) illustrates further how ‘social waiting’ during, before and after gacaca trials was linked to temporal uncertainty and how, at the same time concurrently, waiting as ‘sociality’ undermined the temporal logic – rupture, linearity and boundedness – of gacaca ’s legal architecture by reconnecting to previous interactions and relationships. For the case of Mozambique, Gregor Igreja (2012) points to the dynamics of indigenous practices of healing and justice anchored in the gamba spirits and how these produce different temporalities that foreground transitional justice’s linear ‘before and after’ conception of transition time.…”

“…It adds to the emerging work in critical transitional justice studies that integrates temporality in their analysis of post-conflict and post-genocide endeavours for peace and justice, with a special focus on how time is constructed within and alongside transitional justice mechanisms (see, e.g. Abramowitz, 2014; Doughty, 2017; Igreja, 2012). This article departs from the linear ‘before and after time’ that is generally found within the field of transitional justice research (Igreja, 2012) in significant ways.…”