Indigenous, Traditional, and Non-State Transitional Justice in Southern Africa: Zimbabwe and Namibia - Hardcover

Everisto Benyera

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1498592821 ISBN 13: 9781498592826

Publisher: Lexington Books, 2019

Synopsis

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.

About this title

About the Authors

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

Artwell Nhemachena is visiting associate professor at Kobe University, research fellow at the University of South Africa, and senior lecturer at the University of Namibia.

Ruth Murambadoro is a postdoctoral researcher at the Centre for Feminist Research at York University.

Chenai G. Matshaka is a researcher at the Centre for Mediation in Africa at the University of Pretoria.

Edition details

• Publisher: Lexington Books
• Publication date: 2019
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1498592821
• ISBN 13: 9781498592826
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 240