TRANSITIONAL JUSTICE DESTINED TO BE CRITICIZED AS FAILURE: UNDERSTANDING ITS UNIQUENESS FROM AFRICAN CASES

Abstract

African countries such as South Africa, Sierra Leone, Rwanda, Liberia, Ghana, and Nigeria share post-conflict policies known as transitional justice (TJ) to achieve accountability for conflicts, victimhood, and wrongdoing. This paper provides an assessment of the previous critical discourse on TJ, identifies the issues critics have focused on, examines why the assessments of TJ programs have been critical, and discusses whether the criticisms reflect essential conditions under which the TJ programs were conducted. The paper also examines the criticisms of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) in South Africa and traces the development of similar criticism aimed at Sierra Leonean and Rwandan programs. In so doing, it attempts to uncover the social conditions that affect TJ outcomes and induce repetitive choruses of criticisms. Finally, the author introduces a sociological framework based primarily on social movement theory to explore the contributions and potential of TJ for post-conflict societies.