INTRODUCTION

The purpose of this chapter is to explore different sources' interpretations of gacaca's methods, while the following chapters focus on gacaca's objectives and how effectively it has pursued them. The first part of this chapter examines the ways in which popular participation is viewed by many sources as the modus operandi – and a principal virtue – of gacaca; a view opposed by many proponents of the dominant discourse on gacaca for whom only a formal, rather than a popular participatory, approach to transitional institutions is appropriate. The theme of popular participation is vital to our understanding of gacaca, given the high percentage of the Rwandan adult population that has personally engaged in the process, including attending hearings and providing first-hand evidence. Among transitional justice processes internationally, gacaca is unique in its direct involvement of such large numbers of civilians, many of whom have personally experienced mass conflict. The second part of this chapter contends that a central component of gacaca's modus operandi of popular participation is the need to foster genuine engagement between parties previously in conflict in order to rebuild fractured personal and communal relationships. As we shall see in later chapters, engagement is central to understanding how gacaca attempts to fulfil multiple legal and non-legal objectives simultaneously.

This chapter follows a structure that continues in Chapters 6–10: it outlines the Rwandan government's, the population's and commentators' perspectives on the given theme – in this case, popular participation – followed by a critical analysis of those perspectives.