9 - Mending hearts and minds: healing and forgiveness through gacaca

Summary

INTRODUCTION

This chapter explores two themes – healing and forgiveness – that are rarely considered in the context of transitional societies. This neglect probably stems from the centrality for healing and forgiveness of psychological, psychosocial and sometimes even spiritual issues – usually concerning individuals rather than societies as a whole – that most political and legal analysts consider irrelevant or at best secondary concerns after conflict. In the context of gacaca, however, official, popular and critical sources explicitly discuss healing and forgiveness, albeit in highly variable and often contradictory ways. The Rwandan population in particular links gacaca closely with healing and forgiveness, highlighting the need for rebuilding individual lives as well as the nation after the genocide. The population argues that gacaca should take a holistic approach, seeing individual and communal issues as related symbiotically.

Healing and forgiveness, more than any other themes explored in this book, underscore the importance of religious – particularly Christian – values and beliefs for popular interpretations of gacaca's objectives. The Rwandan population connects gacaca closely with notions of healing and forgiveness on the basis of Christian principles of mercy, grace, redemption and atonement. My findings concerning the importance of Christian theology for Rwandans' interpretations of gacaca echo Stephen Ellis's analysis of the importance of religious concepts of transformation for many Liberians recovering from their country's civil war.