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

The book explores the use of bottom-up, community-based healing and peacebuilding approaches in post-conflict communities in Southern Africa, highlighting their strengths and suggesting ways to enhance them. It focuses on Namibia and Zimbabwe, which never experienced institutionalized transitional justice, and investigates how they have healed and reconciled after protracted violence and human rights abuses.

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 240 pages
Publication date: 15 March 2022
Publisher: Lexington Books

The book explores the use of bottom-up, community-based healing and peacebuilding approaches, highlighting their strengths and offering suggestions for enhancement. It presents an ethnographic investigation of how post-conflict communities in parts of Southern Africa utilize their local resources to build a future after mass violence. The book's main contribution lies in its examination of how Namibia's Herero and Zimbabwe's Ndebele communities dealt with their respective genocides. It departs from state-centric, top-down, one-size-fits-all approaches to transitional justice and delves into bottom-up approaches.
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.

The book explores the use of bottom-up, community-based healing and peacebuilding approaches, highlighting their strengths and offering suggestions for enhancement. It presents an ethnographic investigation of how post-conflict communities in parts of Southern Africa utilize their local resources to build a future after mass violence. The book's main contribution lies in its examination of how Namibia's Herero and Zimbabwe's Ndebele communities dealt with their respective genocides. It departs from state-centric, top-down, one-size-fits-all approaches to transitional justice and delves into bottom-up approaches.

Weight: 358g
Dimension: 220 x 153 x 18 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781498592840