Thursday, December 28, 2017

The Proof is in the Pudding: The Value of Traditional Justice Mechanisms for Post Conflict Africa

Gacaca Courts -Justice on the Grass
The dynamics of contemporary conflicts reveal the difficulties inherent in countries transitioning from conflict to peace and has given birth to transitional justice. The latter is the field of study where justice is not relegated to criminal or retributive justice only but to a holistic range of processes, the ambit of which includes accountability, truth recovery and reconciliatory processes.  Kofi Anan former UN Secretary General defines transitional justice as the “ full set of processes and mechanisms associated with a society’s attempts to come to terms with a legacy of large-scale past abuse, in order to secure accountability, serve justice and achieve reconciliation.”  In keeping within these processes and within this framework, particularly with regard to Africa, there has been resurgence in the use of traditional or local justice mechanisms.

In this blog I will thus briefly attempt to highlight the political contingencies that certain states face, which catalyze the use of traditional justice mechanisms and make it so popular within the African transitional justice landscape. I will contend that in some instances traditional mechanisms can adequately address massive human rights violations and establish peace and reconciliation in post-conflict settings. I suggest that the value of traditional justice within politically laden contexts is that they act as catalysts for the promotion of unity. They draw on cultural and religious linkages of interconnectedness that are of value to many African societies, such as the way in which ubuntu was ingrained in the TRC process and the traditional strands of Gacaca conformed into a modern version of Gacaca. This therefore, arguably creates a more “culturally familiar and socially secure” space for people to participate in.  

Drawing on the practices of many African states, since the 1990’s a plethora of judicial and non-judicial justice mechanisms have been used which has served as a testing ground for the development of transitional justice.  In terms of non-judicial justice mechanisms, there have been a variety of truth commissions used, as well as a number of traditional and community based approaches employed. The use of truth commissions was used in Uganda, Zimbabwe, Nigeria, Ghana and South Africa over the years, going as far back to the 1970’s. Some other mechanisms include, the Gacaca courts in Rwanda, the role of the Magamba spirits in central Mozambique, the use of Mato Oput in Northern Uganda, the tradition based practices of the Kpaa in Sierra Leone and the institution of Bashingantahe in Burundi. Ideally the ultimate goal of most of these mechanisms has been to attain some sort of political reconciliation and thus ultimately peace.