Zivu — One by one, residents of this remote south Rwanda village quietly arrive at a hilltop meadow overlooking their farms and little houses on neighbouring hills and valleys.

After two years of investigation hearings, the first proper genocide trials in their Gacaca (Kinyarwanda for soft mound of grass) court begin today.

Gacaca is a mix of a traditional Rwandan court system and conventional legal procedures. The courts were set up three years ago to speed up genocide trials and aid the process of reconciliation. According to official estimates, it would have taken regular courts over 100 years to clear the backlog of genocide cases.

After some 150 villagers sit down on the lawn in front of a bench of eight of their community members elected as judges (there are supposed to be nine judges, but one is absent today), the presiding judge welcomes everyone and calls for a minute of silence in honour of victims of the genocide.

Presiding Judge Anicet Rwamugize, a 29-year-old farmer, quickly reads out a few rules of procedure and announces that the first trial will be that of ex-militia member Augustin Ntirushwamaboko.

During the pre-trial phase last year, and previously before a public prosecutor, Ntirushwamaboko pleaded guilty and confessed to having participated in the genocide.

The judge asks him to repeat his confession.

"First of all, I would like to ask forgiveness for all the wrongs I did. I'm asking forgiveness from God, from all of you and from the government", says the former militiaman.

"I hit him with a club on his head", the short and small ex-militiaman tells the court of the killing of his ethnic Tutsi neighbour Gonzaga Twagiramungu. "But he did not get finished off".

"Then I knocked him with the back end of an axe. He died instantly", he adds.

Other than the occasional cry of a baby and the shushing response of a mother, the crowd remains silent and generally expressionless. They heard this story several times during pre-trial hearings.

During the debate that follows Ntirushwamaboko's confession, the presiding judge warns the community against sidetracking to other trials. As the debate went on, accusations, counter accusations and defences of several people had begun to fly around.

But there doesn't seem to be any serious challenge to the veracity of Ntirushwamaboko's story.

The judges retreat to a nearby local administration building for deliberations on the date of Ntirushwamaboko's judgement, the next accused to go on trial and a list of witnesses for the next hearing. It's about four hours since the trial opened.

On their return, the presiding judge announces that the judgment will be delivered at their next hearing on Thursday next week. He closes the hearing.

At the start of this hearing, judges had announced that they would handle four trials today. In fact, only one was heard.

"This is only the beginning", says Anastase Barinda, director of documentation in the National Service for Gacaca Jurisdictions. "Completing a trial on day one is good for us. Some places managed four trials. We would even be happy with two trials per hearing. That would still be faster than the other options".

The other options are the regular courts in Rwanda operating a conventional national justice system and the UN International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) based in neighbouring Tanzania.

Over a period of seven years, regular courts in Rwanda completed about 7,000 trials, less than 10% of the total number of genocide suspects in custody (an even smaller fraction of the projected half a million genocide suspects expected to be indicted by Gacaca courts).

For its part, the ICTR has tried 23 accused persons over eight years. It has 57 suspects in its custody.

It is difficult to compare the performance of the ICTR with regular Rwandan courts or either of them with Gacaca courts. Each uses a different legal system and meets peculiar problems.

Nonetheless, if Thursday's trial in Zivu and others across the country are anything to go by, Gacaca, which is expected to have over 10,000 courts operating when at its peak early next year, will at least give each of Rwanda's many genocide suspects their day in court.