For most people in rural South Africa, traditional justice mechanisms provide the only feasible means of accessing any form of justice. These mechanisms are popularly associated with restorative justice, reconciliation and harmony in rural communities. Yet, this ethnographic study grounded in the political economy of rural South Africa reveals how historical conditions and contemporary pressures have strained these mechanisms’ ability to deliver the high normative ideals with which they are notionally linked. In places such as Msinga access to justice is made especially precarious by the reality that human insecurity – a composite of physical, social and material insecurity – is high for both ordinary people and the authorities who staff local justice forums; cooperation is low between traditional justice mechanisms and the criminal and social justice mechanisms the state is meant to provide; and competition from purportedly more effective ‘twilight institutions’, like vigilante associations, is rife. Further contradictions are presented by profoundly gendered social relations premised on delicate social trust that is closely monitored by one’s community and enforced through self-help measures like witchcraft accusations in a context in which violence is, culturally and practically, a highly plausible strategy for dispute management. These contextual considerations compel us to ask what justice we can reasonably speak of access to in such an insecure context and what solutions are viable under such volatile human conditions? The book concludes with a vision for access to justice in rural South Africa that takes seriously ordinary people’s circumstances and traditional authorities’ lived experiences as documented in this detailed study. The author proposes a cooperative governance model that would maximise the resources and capacity of both traditional and state justice apparatus for delivering the legal and social justice – namely, peace and protection from violence as well as mitigation of poverty and destitution – that rural people genuinely need.

This volume analyses the prospects and challenges of the African Court of Justice and Human and Peoples' Rights in context. The book is for all readers interested in African institutions and contemporary global challenges of peace, security, human rights, and international law. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.

The Era of Transitional Justice explores a broad set of issues raised by political transition and transitional justice through the prism of the South African TRC. South Africa constitutes a powerful case study of the enduring structural legacies of a troubled past, and of both the potential and limitations of transitional justice and human rights as agents of transformation in the contemporary era. South Africa‘s story has wider relevance because it helped to launch constitutional human rights and transitional justice as global discourses; as such, its own legacy is to some extent writ large in post-authoritarian and post-conflict contexts across the world. Based on a decade of research, and in an analysis that is both comparative and interdisciplinary, Paul Gready maintains that transitional justice needs to do more to address structural violence and in particular poverty, inequality and social and criminal violence as these have emerged as stubborn legacies from an oppressive or war-torn past in many parts of the world. Organised around four central themes new keyword conceptualisation (truth, justice, reconciliation); re-imagining human rights; engaging with the past and present; remaking the public sphere it is an argument that will be of considerable relevance to those interested in the law and politics of transitional societies.

This book examines violence against women in Africa and criminal justice from the perspective of African scholars, practitioners and experts. As a global and long-standing issue, violence against women is gaining public visibility across the African continent with some states announcing a national crisis warranting immediate redress. At the global level, the elimination of all forms of violence against all women and girls forms a key part of United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 5: Gender Equality. Split across two volumes, these books present a comprehensive analysis of the latest research and theories, principles and practices of criminal justice systems, criminal justice accountability mechanisms, and the key challenges women face in their quest for justice on the African continent. Volume I focusses on legislation and its impact, the limitations of criminal justice responses, and the cultural and social norms regarding access to justice. Volume II examines sexual violence and vulnerable women's access to justice in Africa. They adopt a comparative approach that highlight gaps and good practices to provide a rich source of authoritative information for promoting an intra-African dialogue and cross-fertilization of ideas across the different criminal justice traditions in Africa. Both volumes seek to advance discussions on eliminating violence against women in Africa and speak to those interested in criminal justice, violence, gender studies and African legal studies. Emma Charlene Lubaale is an associate professor at the Faculty of Law of Rhodes University, South Africa. Ashwanee Budoo-Scholtz is the programme manager of the Master's in Human Rights and Democratisation in Africa at the Centre for Human Rights, Faculty of Law, University of Pretoria, South Africa. .

Dealing with the aftermath of civil conflict or the fall of a repressive government continues to trouble countries throughout the world. Whereas much of the 1990s was occupied with debates concerning the relative merits of criminal prosecutions and truth commissions, by the end of the decade a consensus emerged that this either/or approach was inappropriate and unnecessary. A second generation of transitional justice experiences have stressed both truth and justice and recognize that a single method may inadequately serve societies rebuilding after conflict or dictatorship. Based on studies in ten countries, this book analyzes how some combine multiple institutions, others experiment with community-level initiatives that draw on traditional law and culture, whilst others combine internal actions with transnational or international ones. The authors argue that transitional justice efforts must also consider the challenges to legitimacy and local ownership emerging after external military intervention or occupation.

This book offers the first comprehensive and in-depth analysis of the provisions of the ‘Malabo Protocol’—the amendment protocol to the Statute of the African Court of Justice and Human and Peoples’ Rights—adopted by the African Union at its 2014 Summit in Malabo, Equatorial Guinea. The Annex to the protocol, once it has received the required number of ratifications, will create a new Section in the African Court of Justice and Human and Peoples’ Rights with jurisdiction over international and transnational crimes, hence an ‘African Criminal Court’. In this book, leading experts in the field of international criminal law analyze the main provisions of the Annex to the Malabo Protocol. The book provides an essential and topical source of information for scholars, practitioners and students in the field of international criminal law, and for all readers with an interest in political science and African studies. Gerhard Werle is Professor of German and Internationa l Crimina l Law, Criminal Procedure and Modern Legal History at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin and Director of the South African-German Centre for Transnational Criminal Justice. In addition, he is an Extraordinary Professor at the University of the Western Cape and Honorary Professor at North-West University of Political Science and Law (Xi’an, China). Moritz Vormbaum received his doctoral degree in criminal law from the University of Münster (Germany) and his postdoctoral degree from Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. He is a Senior Researcher at Humboldt-Universität, as well as a coordinator and lecturer at the South African-German Centre for Transnational Criminal Justice.