The book investigates the use of bottom-up, community based healing and peacebuilding approaches, focusing on their strengths and suggesting how they can be enhanced. The main contribution of the book is an ethnographic investigation of how post-conflict communities in parts of Southern Africa use their local resources to forge a future after mass violence. The way in which Namibia’s Herero and Zimbabwe’s Ndebele dealt with their respective genocides is a major contribution of the book. The focus of the book is on two Southern African countries that never experienced institutionalized transitional justice as dispensed in post-apartheid South Africa via the famed Truth and Reconciliation Commission. We answer the question: how have communities healed and reconciled after the end of protracted violence and gross human rights abuses in Zimbabwe and Namibia? We depart from statetist, top-down, one-size fits all approaches to transitional justice and investigate bottom-up approaches.

This book presents the findings of a major comparative study examining the role played by traditional justice mechanisms in dealing with the legacy of violent conflict in Africa. It focuses on case studies of five countries -- Rwanda, Mozambique, Uganda, Sierra Leone and Burundi - that are used as the basis for outlining conclusions and options for future policy development in the related areas of post-conflict reconstruction, democracy building and development. "Traditional Justice & Reconciliation After Violent Conflict" suggests that in some circumstances traditional mechanisms can effectively complement conventional judicial systems and represent a real potential for promoting justice, reconciliation and a culture of democracy. At the same time it cautions against unrealistic expectations of traditional structures and offers a sober, evidence-based assessment of both the strengths and the weaknesses of traditional conflict management mechanisms within the broader framework of post-conflict social reconstruction efforts. The book is intended to serve both as a general knowledge resource and as a practitioner's guide for national bodies seeking to employ traditional justice mechanisms, as well as external agencies aiming to support such processes.

Beyond Transitional Justice reflects upon the state of the field (or non-field) of transitional justice in the current conjuncture, as well as identifying new possibilities and challenges in the fields with which transitional justice overlaps (such as human rights, peacebuilding, and development). Chapters intervene at the cutting edge of contemporary transitional justice research, addressing key theoretical and empirical questions and covering critical, international, interdisciplinary, theoretical, and practice-oriented content. In particular, the notion of transformative justice is discussed in light of the emerging scholarship defining and applying this concept as either an approach within or an alternative to transitional justice. The book considers the extent to which transformative justice as a concept adds value to scholarship on transitional justice and related areas and asks what the future might hold for this area as a field – or non-field. A timely intervention, Beyond Transitional Justice is ideal reading for scholars and students in the fields of human rights, peace and conflict studies, international law, critical legal theory, development studies, criminology, and victimology.

In Civil Society Narratives of Violence and Shaping the Transitional Justice Agenda in Zimbabwe, Chenai G. Matshaka shows the shaping of the transitional justice agenda in Zimbabwe from a civil society perspective. Based on the understanding that transitional justice approaches are seen through the lenses by which the violence and conflict is understood, Matshaka explores the complexities that arise when particular narratives of violence dominate the agenda. This book contributes to a discussion on how narratives intervene in the trajectory of a transitional justice process of a society in ways that may be beneficial or detrimental to breaking cycles of injustice and domination.

This book investigates the relationship between the International Criminal Court and Africa (the ICC or the Court), asking why and how the international criminal justice system has so far largely failed the victims of atrocities in Africa. The book explores how the Court degenerated from a very promising multilateral institution to being an instrumentalised, politicised, weaponised institution that ended up with the victims being the greatest losers. Instead of looking at the International Criminal Court as a recent alternative to a prevailing international criminal justice paradigm, this book argues that the Court is a manifestation of the same world order that was established by the Reconquista in 1492. Written from a decolonial perspective, the book particularly draws on evidence from Zimbabwe in order to demonstrate how the International Criminal Court is failing the victims of the four crimes that fall under its jurisdiction. Drawing on the perspectives of victims in particular, this book highlights the damage caused within Africa by the international criminal justice system and argues for a decolonial conception of justice. The book will be of interest to researchers from across African politics, international relations, law and criminal justice.

The book exposes various mechanisms and methods by which covert colonial mechanisms are employed to perpetuate colonialism, especially in Africa. Less overt and more covert perpetuation of colonialism is done through the use of networks. The main achievement of the initial phase of colonialism was the establishment of networks that are nefarious and omnipresent; constituting “distributed presence,” which allows for “action at a distance.” As a result, colonial subjects became willing participants in these processes, unbeknownst to them, which perpetuated their own colonialism. The book exposes forms of colonialism where manufactured consent is used to perpetuate colonialism. Trapped in this capitalist, Western, Christian language and moral world order without sovereignty, African countries continuously sink deeper into the colonial quagmire.

Nowhere in the world is the demand for peace more prominent and challenging than in Africa. From state collapse and anarchy in Somalia to protracted wars and rampant corruption in the Congo; from bloody civil wars and extreme poverty in Sierra Leone to humanitarian crisis and authoritarianism in Sudan, the continent is the focus of growing political and media attention. This book presents the first comprehensive overview of conflict and peace across the continent. Bringing together a range of leading academics from Africa and beyond, Peace and Conflict in Africa is an ideal introduction to key themes of conflict resolution, peacebuilding, security and development. The book's stress on the importance of indigenous Africa approaches to creating peace makes it an innovative and exciting intervention in the field.

This handbook explores the dynamic new field of Environmental Restorative Justice. Authors from diverse disciplines discuss how principles and practices of restorative justice can be used to address the threats and harms facing the environment today. The book covers a wide variety of subjects, from theoretical discussions about how to incorporate the voice of future generations, nature, and more-than-human animals and plants in processes of justice and repair, through to detailed descriptions of actual practices of Environmental Restorative Justice. The case studies explored in the volume are situated in a wide range of countries and in the context of varied forms of environmental harm – from small local pollution incidents, to endemic ongoing issues such as wildlife poaching, to cataclysmic environmental catastrophes resulting in cascades of harm to entire ecosystems. Throughout, it reveals how the relational and caring character of a restorative ethos can be conducive to finding solutions to problems through sharing stories, listening, healing, and holding people and organisations accountable for prevention and repairing of harm. It speaks to scholars in Criminology, Sociology, Law, and Environmental Justice and to practitioners, policy-makers, think-tanks and activists interested in the environment.

This book examines the epistemological, political, and socio-economic consequences of the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR) for Africa. Presenting various case studies on epistemic freedom, theology, race and robotics, tertiary education, political and economic transformation, human capital, and governance, it debates whether the 4IR will be part of the solution to the African problem, namely that of coloniality in its various forms. Solving the African problem using the 4IR requires ethical, just and epistemologically independent leadership. However, the lack of ICT infrastructure militates against Africa’s endeavours to make the 4IR a problem-solving moment. To its credit, Africa possesses some of the major capital needed (human, mineral, and social), and it constitutes a huge market comprising a young population eager to participate in the 4IR as problem-solvers and not as a problem to be solved—as equal citizens and not as the marginalized other.

This book brings together scholars from diverse backgrounds to provide interdisciplinary perspectives on national healing, integration, and reconciliation in Zimbabwe. Taking into account the complex nature of healing across moral, political, economic, cultural, psychological, and spiritual dimensions of communities and the nation, the chapters discuss approaches, disparities, tensions, and solutions to healing and reconciliation within a multidisciplinary framework. Arguing that Zimbabwe’s development agenda is severely compromised by the dominance of violence and militancy, the contributors analyse the challenges, possibilities and opportunities for national healing. This book will be of interest to scholars of African studies, conflict and reconciliation, and development studies.