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

Zimbabwe and Namibia

Edited by Everisto Benyera - Contributions by Everisto Benyera; Tapiwa Warikandwa; Artwell Nhemachena; Umali Saidi; Shari Eppel; Ruth Murambadoro; Chenai G. Matshaka; Tom Tom; Clement Chipenda; Patience Thauzeni; Torque Mude; Tafirenyika Madziyauswa and Christian Harris

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.

Lexington Books

Pages: 240 • Trim: 6¼ x 9

978-1-4985-9282-6 • Hardback • September 2019 • $117.00 • (£90.00)

978-1-4985-9284-0 • Paperback • March 2022 • $41.99 • (£35.00)

978-1-4985-9283-3 • eBook • September 2019 • $39.50 • (£30.00)

Subjects: Political Science / World / African, History / Africa / South / General, Social Science / World / Africa

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

Zimbabwe and Namibia

Hardback

Paperback

eBook

Summary

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.

Details

Lexington Books

Pages: 240 • Trim: 6¼ x 9

978-1-4985-9282-6 • Hardback • September 2019 • $117.00 • (£90.00)

978-1-4985-9284-0 • Paperback • March 2022 • $41.99 • (£35.00)

978-1-4985-9283-3 • eBook • September 2019 • $39.50 • (£30.00)

Subjects: Political Science / World / African, History / Africa / South / General, Social Science / World / Africa

Author

Everisto Benyera is associate professor of African politics at the University of South Africa in Pretoria.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1: Transitology, Transitional Justice and Transformative Justice

Everisto Benyera

Chapter 2: A Dozen Transitional Justice Realities and Some Preliminary Problematisation

Everisto Benyera

Chapter 3: The Case for Indigenous, Traditional and Non-State Transitional Justice

Everisto Benyera

Chapter 4: Construing Transitology in the Context(s) of Democratization, Transitional Justice and Decolonization in Africa: A Legal Anthropology Perspective

Tapiwa Warikandwa & Artwell Nhemachena

Chapter 5: Operation Murambatsvina, Transitional Justice & Discursive Representation in Zimbabwe

Umali Saidi

Chapter 6: ‘Healing the Dead’ in Matabeleland, Zimbabwe: Combining Tradition with Science to Restore Personhood after Massacres

Shari Eppel

Chapter 7: The Aftermath of Gukurahundi: Dealing with Wounds of the Genocide through Non-State Justice Processes in Bubi (Inyathi) and Nkayi Districts, Matabeleland North Province, Zimbabwe

Ruth Murambadoro and Chenai Matshaka

Chapter 8: Grassroots Mechanisms for Justice, Peace-building and Social Cohesion in Zimbabwe’s ‘New’ Farm Communities

Tom Tom and Clement Chipenda

Chapter 9: Young women in peacebuilding and development in Zimbabwe: The case of Zimbabwe Young Women’s Network for Peacebuilding in Mutoko

Patience Thauzeni and Torque Mude

Chapter 10: Stains on the Wall: Struggle to survive post genocide violence by Nama- Herero communities in Namibia

Tafirenyika Madziyauswa

Chapter 11: Uncharted Waters: Reparations through Indigenous Forms of Transitional Justice for Namibian Victims of a colonial Genocide

Christian Harris

Reviews

Everisto Benyera is indeed carving a fine niche in the field of transitional justice in Africa and that his ideas frame this important volume of essays is inevitable. Bringing together insights from colonial genocide in Namibia and postcolonial violence in Zimbabwe, this volume enriches us conceptually, theoretically and empirically.
— Sabelo J. Ndlovu-Gatsheni, author of "The Decolonial Mandela: Peace, Justice and the Politics of Life" (2016) and "Epistemic Freedom in Africa: Deprovincialization and Decolonization" (2018)

This edited volume, written by a new generation of prominent scholars on African political transitions, deserves to be read by students, policymakers and everyone generally interested in contemporary processes of transitional justice in Southern Africa. Given some of the entanglements in the histories of violence in Zimbabwe and Namibia, this collection of essays offers fresh knowledge regarding non-state practices deployed to address the legacies of political violence in both countries.
— Victor Igreja, University of Southern Queensland, Toowoomba