Transitional Justice in Africa

The Case of Zimbabwe

Ruth Murambadoro

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN:
  9783030480912
• eBook ISBN:
  9783030480929
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: African Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This book provides insight on the effect of political violence and transitional justice in Africa focusing on  Zimbabwe and comparing it to Rwanda, Uganda and Mozambique. The case of Zimbabwe is unique since political violence observed in some areas has manifested as contestations for power between members of various political parties. These political contestations have infiltrated family/clan structures at the community level and destroyed the human and social relations of people. Also, the author examines an understanding of how communities in the most polarized and conflict-ridden areas in Africa are addressing their past. The project would appeal to graduate students, academics, researchers and practitioners as it will help them to understand African justice systems and the complex network of relationships shaping justice processes during transitions. 

© The Author(s) 2020

R. MurambadoroTransitional Justice in AfricaDevelopment, Justice and Citizenshiphttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-48092-9_1

Begin Abstract

1. Centring Justice on Human Relations

Ruth Murambadoro¹

(1)

Johannesburg, South Africa

Ruth Murambadoro

Email: [email protected]

Abstract

In post-independence Zimbabwe, many civilians were subjected to state-sanctioned violence with grave consequences on human relations and harmony at community level. Elitist transitional justice processes employed by the state have not managed to address the relational harms that occur at the interpersonal level, which I argue in this book to be essential for obtaining justice and peace in the cosmological sense. This book offers an interpersonal understanding of violence, peace and justice, by focusing on relational harms that occurred in three rural communities, namely Buhera, Mudzi and Uzumba between 2000 and 2008. This shift from state-centric to the interpersonal level allowed the book to offer a new lens on the efficacy of African justice systems in managing transitions at the community level in post-colonial Africa.

Keywords

State-sanctioned violencePolitical contestationsHuman relationsRelational harmTransitional justiceRelational justiceState-centricSocial harmony

End Abstract

Introduction

About eight years ago, I started working on transitional justice as a desktop researcher who reviewed secondary literature on conflict and peacebuilding processes in sub-Saharan Africa. Much of the literature I read was fixated on statist justice and the human rights discourse (Boraine 2009; Teitel 2000). The dominant idea that informed this discourse was the assumption that human rights violations emanate from the breakdown of state institutions, which can be fixed by building or rebuilding the collapsed institutions following international laws and standards (Westendorf 2015). This exercise of building or rebuilding the broken institutions involves a range of technocratic processes such as criminal prosecutions, truth commissions, reparations and institutional reform (Lederach 1997). These measures are guided by international laws and standards, particularly, human rights law, humanitarian law and international criminal law.

These legal canons have been universalised and tend to override the needs of survivors of violence because criminal justice is often prioritised as the most politically viable and morally acceptable response to gross human rights violations (Mamdani 2015: 80). For example, the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) set up in 1997 prioritised to criminally prosecute ‘serious’ human rights violations of the apartheid era, which excluded other human wrongs that did not fit this category even though they engendered long-suffering to the South African population (Mamdani 2015: 81). Mamdani (2009: 2) has criticised the TRC for failing to shift the discourse of justice from the criminal and political to the social. This has been the case in Zimbabwe, with the state-led transitional justice initiatives such as the Chihambakwe and Dumbutshena Commissions of Inquiry established in 1983 and 1984, respectively, at the height of the Matabeleland massacres, and the current National Peace and Reconciliation Commission which was mandated through the 2013 Constitution, that all failed to give human centred or social approach to the state-sanctioned violence faced by Zimbabweans.

Rendering justice through these elitist mechanisms, Phil Clark (2018) describes in his book Distant Justice makes it inaccessible to those who do not understand the Western legal framework they rely on or cannot afford to attend the court hearings. Others are excluded by the sheer fact that the mechanisms are designed to attend to incidents of violence that meet a certain threshold (e.g. prosecuting persons responsible for a genocide or gross violations of international humanitarian law), which leaves non-classified encounters in terms of threshold unaccounted for (McEvoy and McConnachie 2013). Yet a lot of money and time is invested by international donors and state actors rendering these legal mechanisms, which in many ways exceed the resources required by some of the affected parties to exercise justice.

An example can be made of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) set up post the 1994 genocide, which has been criticised for being slow, expensive and detached from the Rwandan community (Clark 2010, Wielenga 2014). Between 1994 and 2007 the ICTR had spent more than one billion US$ on its court proceedings which indicted 90 high-level perpetrators of the genocide, made 72 arrests and completed 33 cases, 18 of which were convicted and five were acquitted (Dieng 2011). The ICTR made strides with regard to advancing the international criminal justice framework and prosecuting some high-level genocide perpetrators but fell short on administering justice to the greater population of Rwanda (Batamuliza 2009).

To date there is, therefore, limited successes in terms of violence-stricken communities obtaining justice through the state or international legal bodies and the human rights discourse. Moreover, transitional justice processes have not made an interest in attending to the relational harms that occur at the interpersonal level, which in many respects require much more than a technocratic proceeding or preserving just the rights of a single subject directly affected by violence. Few writings in Africa have looked into interpersonal experiences of persons in violence-stricken communities with the exception of Holly Porter (2016) ‘After Rape: Violence, Justice and Social Harmony in Uganda’, Shannon Morreira (2016) ‘Rights after Wrongs: Local Knowledge and Human Rights in Zimbabwe’ and Gabrielle Lynch (2018) ‘Performances of Injustice: The Politics of Truth, Justice and Reconciliation in Kenya’. I am focusing on Zimbabwe looking at understandings of violence, justice and peace that draw on accounts of participants who encountered state-sanctioned violence associated with the political contestations between the Zimbabwe African National Union Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) and the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC)¹ parties in the period 2000–2008. Working with several communities in Zimbabwe that encountered state-sanctioned violence during this era, I learned that political contestations have infiltrated family/clan structures at the community level and destroyed the human and social relations of people. It has become harder for members of the same family/clan to trust each other or work collectively when they belong to different political groupings resulting to the weakening of the interpersonal ties and values (i.e. social fabric) that hold communities in harmony.

Even though this book is focusing on Zimbabwe, it links with global issues as it deals with contemporary debates on the global peace project and the failure of technocratic state-led transitional justice processes to address past injustices in post-colonial African communities. Transitional justice remains a key component of the global peacebuilding project because of the anticipation to hold to account perpetrators of violence, bring peace and social harmony to violence-stricken communities. In the African region, both the African Union (AU) and the Southern African Development Community (SADC) have been working on policies related to transitional justice to inform the processes that ought to occur on the continent. From the draft policy of the AU, namely the AU Transitional Justice Framework (AUTJ), this regional body emphasises that transitional justice ought to be anchored on African understandings of justice, which raises the growing need to address knowledge gaps in the African context (Wachira 2016: 6). At the global level, both the United Nations (UN) and European Union (EU)...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Front Matter
• 1. Centring Justice on Human Relations
• 2. Violence, Transitions and Relational Harms
• 3. Harm, Displacement and Interpersonal Justice
• 4. Spirituality, Rituals and Remedy
• 5. Discourses on Transitional Justice: A National Dialogue
• 6. Conclusion: Transitional Justice in Zimbabwe—Myth or Reality?
• Back Matter