Transitional justice in Rwanda and South Africa

Abstract

This chapter analyzes ideological claims regarding South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) and Rwanda’s Gacaca courts. Both transitional justice practices have been praised as restorative or even therapeutic. The TRC popularized the quasi-religious ethics of Ubuntu (i.e., shared humanity) engendering feelings of forgiveness in victims of apartheid injustice. Similarly, the Gacaca informal justice proceedings have been considered by restorative justice advocates as a paradigm case of overcoming ethnic hatred. I will argue that the TRC may have fallen short of such lofty goal of forgiveness, but in the end it did not succumb to a logic of revenge. By contrast, the Gacaca courts, set up by a Tutsi-dominated government with approval of the world (legal) community, unraveled a retributive victors’ justice while eliding true restorative justice. However, Rwanda’s authoritarian government presented quite successfully Gacaca as a restorative justice model. The comparative analysis will show that the Rwandan experience of tarrying with transitional justice could be characterized as negative Ubuntu or victor’s justice ideology, while the South African experience can be portrayed as Ubuntu in the positive, championing authentic Ubuntu ethics, which avoids an Othering process that often leads to further violence between aggrieved parties.