Abstract
This chapter discusses engagement between civil society and African communities in pursuit of transitional justice, focusing on the role of civil society in leading and supporting community-based processes. Civil society organisations and transitional justice practitioners have increasingly focused on community-based processes in recent years, both as complements and as alternatives to national processes. While national processes tend to garner more headlines, community initiatives may better reflect the agency of survivors and more effectively unravel the complexities of local power dynamics that lie at the root of conflict. The engagement of civil society organisations with communities is shaped by local culture and power dynamics. The impact of local power dynamics depends on the ability of civil society to engage constructively and thoughtfully with communities and their leadership. This chapter calls attention to two complementary dynamics that shape civil society engagement in rural African communities: the density of local authority structures, and the turn to ideas of ‘tradition’ and associated canons of practice. These features are illustrated through three case studies, including the Fambul Tok process in Sierra Leone, the work of the Acholi Religious Leaders Peace Initiative in Uganda and the Peace Building Network of Zimbabwe. Finally, the chapter draws out a few preliminary lessons for civil society leaders regarding the importance of ‘due diligence’ in choosing local authority interlocutors and the necessity of interrogating ideas of ‘tradition’ that may shape community-based transitional justice processes.
I would like to thank the participants in the Centre for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation February 2015 workshop on civil society and transitional justice in Africa for their insightful presentations and thoughtful feedback. I would also like to thank Hugo van de Merwe and Jasmina Brankovic for their feedback and assistance in shaping and revising this chapter.
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Notes
- 1.
Throughout this chapter, I have placed the word “tradition” in quotation marks to emphasise that, as discussed in this chapter, the canon of customary practice and philosophy designated “traditional” is neither static nor uncontested.
- 2.
In one of the most prominent examples, Archbishop Desmond Tutu’s faith illuminated his articulation of the philosophy of ubuntu, which in turn was a guiding principle in the work of the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
- 3.
The Special Court for Sierra Leone sought an accommodation between demands for broad accountability and truth telling with recognition that many perpetrators could not be considered fully culpable due to threats and compulsion. While some may disagree with the categorisation of the ICC as a TJ body, the Court’s policy of “positive complementarity”, encouraging investigation by states parties wherever possible, has contributed to innovative accountability processes in, for example, Colombia.
- 4.
For a discussion of the ICTJ as norm entrepreneur, see Naftali (2010).
- 5.
In Sierra Leone, for example, the Fambul Tok community-based intervention (discussed below) operated alongside national level mechanisms including the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and the Special Court for Sierra Leone.
- 6.
Demobilised former child soldiers in Uganda , discussed briefly below, are an example of a particularly vulnerable group in rural communities that, in the absence of TJ and reintegration processes such as mato oput, often struggle to participate in community life (Baines 2007).
- 7.
For a discussion of the central role of victims as a constituency in TJ, see Findlay (2009).
- 8.
In some resettlement communities in Midlands province in Zimbabwe, for example, communities are fractured between Shona dialect groups such as Karanga, Zezuru and Rozvi.
- 9.
The challenge of defining “civil society” is taken up with varying success by a range of political theorists seeking to answer difficult questions about the role of revenue generation, partisan politics, kinship, advocacy and power relations between members, coercion of different kinds and many other definitional challenges. See, e.g., Young (1994). For a discussion of the origins of the idea, see Seligman (1992).
- 10.
For a typology of the different roles of civil society in TJ processes, with particular reference to international norms of law and human rights, see Boesenecker and Vinjamuri (2011).
- 11.
In northern Nigeria, for example, two religious leaders—Pastor James Movel Wuye and Imam Muhammad Nurayan Ashafa, popularly known as “the Pastor and the Imam”—have sought to reconcile Christian and Muslim militias by drawing on their own personal histories and relationship, creating a grassroots organisation.
- 12.
Other fundamental functions of TJ NGOs—lobbying national governments and commissions, and making representations to supranational bodies—are addressed in other chapters in this book. Civil society does oppose certain TJ initiatives in some cases, but here we are concerned with civil society that seeks to support and promote TJ objectives broadly conceived. See, for example, Stan (2013). In Africa, Victor Igreja and Elin Skaar have described Mozambican urban civil society as rejecting a truth commission and remaining on the sidelines of the TJ debate (Igreja and Skaar 2013).
- 13.
Alexis de Tocqueville, one of the great observers and theorists of civil society, observed, “If men living in democratic countries had no right and no inclination to associate for political purposes, their independence would be in great jeopardy. … If they never acquired the habit of forming associations in ordinary life, civilization itself would be endangered” (quoted in Young 1994: 35).
- 14.
Donald Ray (2003) distinguishes between “government” and “governance” to differentiate between formal state mechanisms and the wider circle including unofficial political activities and culture.
- 15.
For example, Khulumani Support Group, a membership-based organisation for survivors of human rights violation s in South Africa, launched the Asikaqedi campaign in 2014, insisting on the need to address the “unfinished business” of the country’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission, chiefly reparations and rehabilitation (Khulumani 2014).
- 16.
The (mis)use of the term “sensitisation ” to refer to almost any sort of NGO intervention in Sierra Leone is described in Shepler (2005). The term assumes a more hegemonic aspect in Catherine Bolten’s (2012) description of the reintegration of ex-combatants in Sierra Leone, in which “sensitisation ” refers to the uneasy relationship of these ex-combatants to the official discourse of peace and amnesty.
- 17.
Abdullahi Ahmed An-Na’im has discussed the need to foreground “indigenous formations of justice” in transitional justice processes, and the need to reimagine traditional justice processes in order to address contemporary conflicts (2013: 199).
- 18.
The difficulty of these multiple vetoes in the context of traditional leadership in South Africa is discussed in Mashele (2004).
- 19.
Alexander Laban Hinton, following Anna Tsing, describes this interaction between global and local priorities in the context of transitional justice “transitional frictions” (Hinton 2010: 9).
- 20.
Boesenecker and Vinjamuri (2011) identify ARLPI as a “norm reflector” in their typology.
- 21.
The Republic of Uganda, “National Transitional Justice Policy”, prepared by the National Transitional Justice Working Group (3rd draft, May 2013).
- 22.
Mato oput and other Acholi rituals have been criticised for failing to encompass the other ethnic groups affected by the northern Ugandan conflict (Baines 2007).
- 23.
While peace building and TJ are helpfully conceived of as distinct fields, in the absence of a transition from a violent political regime, the ongoing threat of violence requires that primarily retrospective approach of TJ be complemented by the prospective orientation of peace building work to try and reduce the continuing vulnerability of communities.
- 24.
For analysis and discussion of rural local governance and the resultant “triple veto”, see Centre for Conflict Management and Transformation (2014).
- 25.
Much of the following analysis draws on the author’s experience working directly with three PBNZ member NGOs, and indirect insight into the work of other members.
- 26.
For further discussion of grassroots transitional justice work in Zimbabwe, see the discussion of PBNZ member organisation Tree of Life in Iliff (2012).
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Iliff, A. (2018). Civil Society Engagement with Communities: Tradition, Authority and Transitional Justice in Rural African Communities. In: Brankovic, J., van der Merwe, H. (eds) Advocating Transitional Justice in Africa. Springer Series in Transitional Justice. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-70417-3_8
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