Beyond restorative justice : understanding justice from an African perspective

Over the past few decades, there has been a growing interest in restorative in terms of the alternatives it offers to the narrow limits of the criminal system. This has also been the case in the African context, where some that local justice processes reflect a restorative approach to justice. In this article, we explore this assertion and argue for the adoption of the term African justice to encapsulate the ways in which local justice processes on continent echo certain aspects of restorative justice approaches globally, but have characteristics that make them uniquely African. Of interest is what restorative justice can offer national, state-led interventions in relation mass conflict. reference the cases of South Africa and Zimbabwe, where interviews held, together with observations of tradition-based practices, in order to local understandings of justice. This article discusses the findings include the difficulties in bringing together human rights, human dignity, law and the state-led justice system. It argues for the importance of and ‘endogenous’ knowledge in helping us overcome and move the dual thinking that is often apparent in public discourse, of either local justice practices as being undemocratic and having nothing to a new, contemporary democratic order, or accepting them idealistically uncritically.