Indigenous, Traditional, and Non-State Transitional Justice in Southern Africa

Zimbabwe and Namibia

Everisto Benyera

• Publisher: Lexington Books
• Year: 2019
• Edition: 1
• eBook ISBN:
  9781978776241
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: African History
• Index: Politics & International Relations

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.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Indigenous, Traditional, and Non-State Transitional Justice in Southern Africa
• Indigenous, Traditional, and Non-State Transitional Justice in Southern Africa: Zimbabwe and Namibia
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Chapter 1
• Chapter 2
• Chapter 3
• Chapter 4
• Chapter 5
• Chapter 6
• Chapter 7
• Chapter 8
• Chapter 9
• Chapter 10
• Chapter 11
• Index
• About the Contributors