Murambi (Southern Rwanda), January 14th, 2005 (FH) - Firomina Mukarusanga doesn’t know her age. But she reckons it is either 40 or 41.

She only did six years of school, can barely speak any foreign language and only survives off a two acre piece of land she owns with her husband.

Until recently, even in poor Rwanda, Mukarusanga would not have been your classic judge. But today she is one and an important one.

She also isn’t a rare one in terms of her education or income. A majority of the 200,000 judges elected two years ago to seat on Rwanda’s semi-traditional courts known as Gacaca fit Mukarusanga’s profile.

When Gacaca courts begin trials next month, they will deal with any thing from looting to murder committed during the 1994 genocide in Rwanda.

There will be about 10,000 courts across Rwanda. Gacaca was adopted when the government realized that it would take up to 200 years to complete trials of suspects of a genocide that claimed close to one million ethnic Tutsis and moderate Hutus.

Currently there are about 80,000 genocide suspects awaiting trial. The figure is expected to grow to over half a million as more evidence emerges from Gacaca. These courts will deal with all genocide cases but less than 10% ‘Category One’ that will be handled by regular courts.

Mukarusanga and thousands more judges were principally elected on the criteria of being persons of ‘high moral integrity’. Gacaca judges are volunteers.

A country of eight million, low literacy levels and a tiny economy, Rwanda would not get enough qualified jurists and resources to run thousands of regular courts.

To supplement their traditional judicial skills, Gacaca judges have each been given half a dozen days or so of training in conventional legal principles.

Most of the hope in Gacaca however lies in the hands of individual communities where the trials will take place. The government has been calling on Rwandans to invoke traditional Rwandan justice values that went beyond ethnic differences or the winner takes it all mentality of conventional justice and instead focused on fair punishment and reconciliation. That’s where all hope for Gacaca lies.

“I think people here will tell the truth”, Mukarusanga says boldly. “Testimony from confessed killers will also help a lot in digging up the truth”, she adds.

Peter Habayesu, a gacaca judge in Kayonza in the east of Rwanda is a little more skeptical but generally thinks the truth will come out. “Some people are willing to say what they saw. Others are not. But I think a fair amount of truth will eventually be told”.

Asked whether Gacaca would bring about reconciliation, Mukarusanga shifts her baby from one arm to the other, clears her voice, looks through the tiny wooden window in her leaving room and stares back at her baby.

“May be but it’s a long way”, she mumbles to break the silence.

Mukarusanga, a genocide survivor and mother of six lives less than two hundred meters down from Murambi genocide memorial, scene of some of the worst killings during the genocide.

The only separation between Mukarusanga’s little hamlet and the history that lies in a couple of dozen rooms with mummified bodies on this hill is an empty playing field that doubles as the local Gacaca courtroom.

This field may also turn out to be the difference between an ugly past and a unified Murambia process that modest judges like Mukarusanga and her colleagues will preside over.

GG/GF/FH(GA’’’0114e)