Lessons learnt about ‘handshakes’ while on a trip to Rwanda countryside

I spent two weeks of July 2009 in Rwanda. While there I sat through three sessions of Gacaca Courts in the Rwandan countryside.

Gacaca Courts is a traditional judicial system in the country where recognised village elders constitute a jury to hear and resolve communal disputes.

In this case, the courts had been set up to try cases related to the 1994 Rwandan genocide where Hutu extremists massacred an estimated million Tutsis and moderate Hutus.

The first session of Gacaca Courts I attended was in the southern part of the country where a former education officer was accused of having drawn a list of teachers to be executed in his locality. The accused was a dark, tall and massively built fellah with intimidating looks of former Uganda dictator Idi Amin.

He spoke so rapidly through gushes of saliva that the English translator only captured a third of what he said. But his accusers, too, had come prepared and made him sweat and foam at the mouth throughout the session.

FUNDED GENOCIDE

The second session of Gacaca Courts I attended was in the western part of the country. The accused was a wealthy man alleged to have funded genocide activities in his neighbourhood. He was a fat, inarticulate old man with sleepy eyes.

It’s either they had just woke him up or he had sat the whole night imbibing liquids that had little water content.

If I were his lawyer I would have requested him to remain silent and let me do the talking for him.

The third session I attended was in the outskirts of the capital Kigali. On trial was a former government administrator.  He looked exhausted and tortured.

I learnt he’d just been released from jail on humanitarian grounds but told he must go through Gacaca system as a final step before he was accepted back into the society.

GACACA COURTS

I wasn’t in Rwanda long enough to hear conclusions of the three cases. However, I got the drift of the Gacaca Courts.

It clearly came out that the main purpose of the communal courts wasn’t to fix blames and mete out punishment, but rather an opportunity for victims and their accusers to ventilate, then reconcile and move on.

From Gacaca Courts, I can draw some comparisons with the Kenyan post-2017 election healing process popularly called the “handshake”.

The Kenyan “handshake” is at the top of the pyramid. In Rwanda it was at the bottom. In Kenya, it is the leaders who need reconciliation not the ordinary citizen, the Wanjikus and Akinyis. In Rwanda, it is the ordinary citizens who needed to be reconciled after decades of mutual communal hatred.

COLONIAL HISTORY

From their colonial history, the two dominant communities in Rwanda – the Hutu and the Tutsi – (there is also the Twa who are rarely mentioned) were taught to hate one another. A Hutu child was born knowing there is an enemy called Tutsi and vise-versa.

It was therefore inevitable that a social re-engineering be done after the genocide to make the Rwandese henceforth regard themselves as Rwandese not Hutu or Tutsi. Actually, ethnic profiling is today a criminal offence in the country.

The Kenyan case is different. Communities have no in-built hatreds. I know it from experience.

I was born and spent my early life in Elburgon in Nakuru county where Kikuyus and Kalenjins lived door to door.

There were no hard feelings about one another. Many of my childhood friends from Elburgon speak fluent Kikuyu and Kalenjin and you can only tell the community of their origin from their surnames.

ELECTION SEASON

From Elburgon my family settled in Laikipia, an area where you find all the Kenyan communities. In my adulthood, I have lived for many years in Lang'ata next to Kibra slums and it has never occurred to me that different communities are uncomfortable with one another. If you doubt it, go to any jua-kali motor garage in Lang'ata.

A Luo will do your panel-beating as his Kikuyu colleague does the mechanics, and the Mkamba supplies retread tyres and lubricants.

Unlike in the old Rwanda, Kenyan communities have no in-built hatreds. The problem is the politicians who make Kenyans rise against one another come election season.

That is why while President Uhuru Kenyatta needed a “handshake” with opposition leader Raila Odinga, the Mama Mboga in Kiambu and fishmonger in Siaya didn’t need any. They have no grudge.

If any, their common beef is on the political class who haven’t facilitated the fishmonger to sell as much fish in Kiambu as the Mama Mboga takes more of her commodities to Siaya. In the process, their nephews and nieces could have met and gotten married.

BAD SEED

That said, however, there is a bad seed we are germinating particularly in rural Kenya. Children in rural Kenya are growing up encased inside their communities with little interaction with other Kenyan communities.

A child born in Nyeri is going to a local primary and secondary school, then to Karatina University for first degree and a masters degree at Dedan Kimathi University all in Nyeri.

Likewise, another child born in Bondo is attending local primary and secondary schools, then proceeds to Jaramogi Oginga Odinga and Maseno universities for tertiary education. So one grows up with only Kikuyus and the other one with only Luos next door.

It wasn’t so in my youthful days. For instance, I attended a district secondary school, not provincial let alone a national school, but we were all there.

My school admission number at Nanyuki High School was 8424. 8425 was Feisal Mohamed from Isiolo; 8426 was Kenneth Ochieng from Kapenguria; 8427 was Sinkil ole Karia from Narok; 8428 was Samuel Chelimo from Elgeyo Marakwet; 8429 was Eric Mwongera from Meru, and 8430 was Allan Wanjala from Trans Nzoia.

POLITICAL INCLUSIVITY

In the class was also an Indian, Indranil Dutta, from Nanyuki town. In contrast, a few years ago I happened to be in Nanyuki town and dropped in at my old school. When I looked at the school notice-board every name of student and teacher were Kikuyu. It depressed me.

The other parallel I can draw from the Rwanda experience is political inclusivity, another common term in today’s Kenyan politics. From Gacaca Courts, I learnt that much of the community hatred was because one community felt excluded from the high table.

Next time I meet my old friend lawyer Paul Mwangi, the joint co-secretary of the Team “Handshake”, I will suggest that his committee comes up with an inclusive formula that will take care of the Big 5 and the Elmoro as well.

This is it: Over 70 per cent of Kenyan voters come from five communities, Kikuyu, Luhya, Luo, Kalenjin and Kamba. Why not create an executive system that has president, deputy president, prime minister and two deputies. That takes care of the Big 5.

PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE

As for the Elmoro and the Ogiek, let’s have only two and at most three strong political parties. A strong political party in the mode of Tanzania’s CCM or South Africa’s ANC can pick a presidential candidate from any community in the respective counties. So would a strong Jubilee or Nasa (does Nasa still exist?) pick Dr Ethuro Aukot as its presidential candidate?

But having our “own” at the high table isn’t a guarantee that Wanjiku will have bread on the table. In Kiambu county which has produced two presidents since independence, there is a place called Ndeiya where women in labour are taken to deliver at the only poorly equipped dispensary using donkey carts because there are no roads.

Elsewhere in Nyeri country, which gave us our third president, there is a place called Kieni where people still live on relief food. Even worse, a place called Tiaty in Baringo country is the most God-forsaken place I ever visited in my life, yet Baringo gave us a president for a record 24 years!

Devolution, if well implemented, is the surest route to take bread to Wanjiku, and ensure Gacaca Courts shall never have to come to Kenya.

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